Fat-Bottomed Divers

by Erik Olsen on

Are you a bit flabby around the mid-section? Perhaps you’ve put on a few pounds since the active days of your youth
and now wonder if diving is a safe activity for you? When you dive, do you find that you need a bit moore weight on
your belt than you did just a few years ago? Does the divemaster suggest you try an anchor instead?

Here is an article for the fat diver. It discusses
health concerns like heart attack and diabetes, as well as a nice equation for determining your BMI or body-mass
index.

  — Divide your weight in pounds by your height in inches squared.

  — Multiply the result of step 1 by 705

Simple, eh? Did you know that if you are really obese, your dive calculator might actually be inaccurate. the article
explains this, too. So, as you embark on your next diet, give this a read and start to drop those pounds.

Zest Two Dive Kayak

by Erik Olsen on

Over at Divester I posted a short bit about
Ocean Kayak’s Zest Two EXP, one of the very cool new dive
kayaks on the market. In looking around, I have found that many of these boats are quite expensive, but the Zest Two
comes in at a reasonable $800-$1200, depending on options like cargo holds, etc.

As an avid fan of both sports, I find these boats to be very cool…a truly wonderful way of reaching dive sites
should you not possess a full-fledged dive boat. Dive kayaking is a rapidly growing activity, and there are several
great sites dedicated to it. This is a sport
I’d like to follow more closely, so if anyone has any good dive kayak sites to recommend, please post a comment.

Photo of the Day: (6/23/05)

by Erik Olsen on

A great dive photo of a diver and a jellyfish is today’s POTD. It comes from the
British Society of Underwater Photographers and was shot by Trevor Rees. BYW: the BSOUP site is actually quite good and
worth checking out on your own.

Dive: The Ultimate Guide

by Erik Olsen on

We haven’t posted much about scuba diving here since our sister site divester launched, but a friend of mine
recently brought to my attention a cool book that every diver should know about. It’s called
Dive: The Ultimate Guide to
60 of the World’s Top Dive Locations.

The book is a glorious 320-page reference to more than 400 dives around the world, from Australia to Yap (and
everything in between). The book is filled with luscious maps and photographs, and author Monty Halls has scads of
information on water temperature, visibility, specific dives and depths and animal-life, as well it provides an
excellent beginner-to-expert grading system and the low down on where to find recompression chambers (which hopefully
you will NEVER need). A fine addition to the library of any avid bubble-blower.

Extraordinary Experience

by Erik Olsen on

Sorry folks, I just have to mention a pretty amazing experience I had yesterday. I am in California to get some work
done, and just for fun, last night I took a small boat out to do some fishing in the Pacific near Newport Beach.

I was alone, about a mile off-shore with the pole in the water when out of my peripheral vision, I caught site of a
pod of porpoises. They were coming right at me, about 25 of them, leaping out of the water and cruising along at an
even pace. They went right below my boat. I decided to follow them, and caught up with the pod going about 8 mph. There
were about two dozen animals and they were split evenly on each side of the bow. Then a pair of them cut in close, and
started to ride on the bow waves of my small boat. They swam with me like that for about two minutes, jumping in the
waves not more than four feet from me.

I let the boat drive itself and went up to the bow and put my hands out over the water and one of the porpoises jumped
up to my hands so I was kind of patting it’s back and dorsal fin. This went on for about a minute. Truly extraordinary.
If I was new agey, I’d probably believe that I was communicating with them, perhaps a quick tactile discussion about
the Middle East conflict, but in reality it was just a brief human/animal interaction. Of course I have no photo
because I left my camera at home (the one here, I just found on the Web), but man, it was cool.