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It seems like the Thistletons have closed up shop and sold the business. KI divers will undoubtedly miss them. But yes, to see Leafies, it is recommended to do some guided dives - and I highly recommend any diver heading to KI not miss the Leafies unless they are familiar with the piers and...

Of course, it is NOT Dumaguete, the provincial capital 20-40 minutes north, it is Dauin. Locally, terrific muck diving with some reef material and artificial reefs including a group of welded angle pyramids at Pyramids, some car bodies at Car Wrecks, some pyramids made of tires at several...

This drawing of a bull shark shows some of the more significant and obvious differences...

For those who think Oz is the only place to go dive, I agree North Island diving can be unexpectedly good! We've had the pleasure of diving Bay of Islands, Volkner Rocks and White Island, and more than once at Poor Knights, as we love the spectacular underwater scenery / caverns (driving a...

Though this is to late for the OP, I want to comment: Kangaroo Island is worth a few days of visit. K.I. was never infested with mainland imports, so interesting wildlife not generally seen outside of reserves can be seen (e.g. echidnas) and the scenery is spectacular. For the diving, several...

Where do you live? Roseville, CA (near Sacramento) Where do you dive? IndoPacific when I can (Fiji, Indonesia... next stop the Philippines) Favorite dive shop? My nearest one ;) Current certification? MSD, Wreck, Shark, a number of others including longtime OFDA membership Began diving in 1956...

There's hunting and fishing, and then there's what passes for same: Spearfishing for one's food, a sustainable species and not wasting, it's pretty much a primordial human endeavor modified to today's reality. "Spearfishing" a pair of friendly wolf eels in Monterey Bay and tossing their bodies...

I tend to favor silvertips Carcharhinus albimarginatus) - I don't know, they just seem like a "shark's shark" to me, and I've seen whitetips, blacktips, grey whalers / reefies etc. give way to them. (From DeepSeaImages.com)

The irony here is that, yes, bull sharks do head up rivers like the Ganges, the San Juan to Lake Nicaragua, the Zambezi, the Mississippi (where they seem to not be much of a problem) and have undoubtedly done so for much longer than people have inhabited those waterways. In South America, the...

I agree - true enough. I have dived with literally hundreds of gray whalers / reefies in Tiputa Pass, Rangiroa, and ditto scalloped hammerheads in the Galápagos (the best chances are Darwin and Wolf, which I dove for my 60th birthday, along with some time hanging out with a huge marble ray and a...

is what we are talking about. So, in the end, a thickener for what is often chicken broth with various spices, but the bottom line for shark fin soup is not the flavor - it is conspicuous consumption so you can get bragging rights by showing off you can afford shark fin soup for your party, a...

Thanks for sharing! Jean-Michel indeed "walks the walk" - and teaching our kids about the marine environment may be the best way of assuring it continues.

Argh! There they are, and here I am in the USA - what a waste! Thanks for sharing.

The difficulty factor is that sometimes the same fish will have a number of different local names - perhaps even more in Castilian / Spanish than in English. In the end, the most useful thing to know is the scientific (binomial nomenclature) name and find out what it is called locally, or use...

Ah, well, quite late to the discussion... but: Some dive ops will bait Nautilus pompilius / Chambered Nautilus in deep water and bring them up in the trap, releasing them in the morning at shallow diving depths. This seems controversial, and some claim they have tagged animals and recovered...

IMO, there is a variety of shark dives. Some use broadcast chum to bring in sharks to boats; in some areas, sharks become fixed on engine sounds /vibrations and come "running". In N.E. Papua New Guinea (among other places), the sharks were then found out by fishermen, attracted, caught and...

Just too busy to be here, I suppose, but, it was easy: sit backward on the bulwark, put a hand over mask and reg, the other over your weight belt and drop backward... I've been diving since 1956 in over 30 countries, from wrecks to cenotes, but really enjoy spying on critters, especially...