Diving The GBR

by Erik Olsen on

There are diving locales and there are diving locales. But
probably the grandfather of them all, or let’s say the emporer who rules them all is the
Great Barrier Reef. So forget the grisly scenes (and implied scenes) of the
film Open Water, where two unlucky divers are left to drift miles away
from land to become shark snacks. That’s probably not going to happen to you. OK, now click around the Great
Barrier Reef Marine Park Site for a whiile to get fired up.  Finally, get your equipment
together, gather up those frequent flier miles, and consider a trip to Wilson
Island. The “Wilson Island Experience”, not to be confused with the Jimi Hendrix Experience, allows a maximum of 12
guests to access pristine reef and beach environments including rare turtle and bird breeding grounds.

If this isn’t a recipe for some serious underwater fun, what is?

Seychelles Gets the Outside Magazine Thumbs Up

by Nino Marchetti on

If snowboarding really isn’t your thing this time of year, how about a trip
to a remote, tropical location instead? No, I’m not talking about the Caribbean. I’m actually referring to the
Seychelles, which Outside
magazine highlighted in their December issue. Describing the island chain scattered across the Indian Ocean as “a
21st-century refinement of the Robinson Crusoe fantasy”, Outside goes into three pages of wonderful details about a
location so isolated that unless you happen to spot a cruise ship on the far horizon, you are utterly alone. Their
conclusion: a perfect time and place to just chill and do things like lay out or scuba dive.

Getting there and staying apparently isn’t easy or cheap though, as no direct flights exist from the United States
and most hotels are in the four and five star ranges (including the place the writer of the article stayed at – ahh,
expense accounts).

Make Me an Island

by Erik Olsen on

The Maldives are a string of coral islands in the Indian
Ocean that, some scientists have predicted, will disappear beneath the big blue sea sometime in this century. A
few of the islands have already been submerged…a creating peculiar life-style problems for the people who once
inhabited them. But despite this, they remain one of the world’s most amazing diving destinations, with kick ass
beaches to boot. But in order to save some Maldivians,
an
island has been built, literally, out of coral and sand to provide homes for those whose homes have been lost.
No joke.

The new island is called Hulhumale, and is providing a sanctuary for about 1,500 people who now live in a first
cluster of houses built on the 465-acre island. The Maldivian government hopes around 15 percent of the country’s
300,000 mostly Sunni Muslim inhabitants will opt to migrate over the next 15 years, making Hulhumale a quite crowded
place…but of course crowded is better than no place at all.

The Happy Island of Uepi

by Erik Olsen on

Here at his site Wet Pixel, Eric
Cheng, who has one of the best jobs in the world running the site and diving a lot, reviews Uepi Island in the Solomon
Islands. The writing is strong and the photography is superb. Chen gives a detailed account of the place and the dive
itself. Very thorough. I’ve singled out this site before, and will do so again, but I am sitting here on a somewhat
dreary Saturday morning and dreaming of such climes as these.

Scuba Tips: Clear Your Ears

by Erik Olsen on

Probably the hardest thing for most new divers to get used to when they first start going
underwater is clearing their ears. (btw: that’s a picture of an ear there on the right). Even if you’ve been
diving a while it can seem uncomfortable to depressurize. And of course, diving with a cold or a stuffy head
is a complete no-no since it makes depressurizing so difficult and can cause pain and ear damage (ask a friend of mine
who’s now partially deaf in one ear because he didn’t think it mattered whether he cleared his ears or now). Here’s
an article that talks about depressurizing
and gives a few tricks how to do it well – and often (remember you should clear your ears about every 5 vertical feet).
Even if you’re an experienced diver, give it a read because you’ll probably learn something.