So, you are new to diving and interested in finding out what it takes to become a certified Scuba Diver? The underwater world is a magical and alluring place. In this article, we will look at the steps to take to become a scuba diver.
Becoming a scuba diver can be life-changing as you enter into this whole new world. Diving can go from easy to challenging and everything in between. Here’s how it works and what you need to do to become a scuba diver.
This is a question many divers ask: "Should I spend money on buying my own scuba equipment or, should I continue to rent gear each time I go for a dive?" If you’re on the fence about buying new gear, you can start by doing a cost estimate of renting gear for the amount of diving you plan to do in the next year and compare that to buying your own. Here are a few other things to keep in mind when deciding.
Never been to Egypt and dived the Red Sea? You are missing out, this trip will keep you coming back for more.
The Red Sea has some of the warmest and clearest water in the world with pristine reefs and historic shipwrecks. Here are 10 reasons why this is a dive experience not to be missed.
Info about our next trip HERE
Cape Town boasts many magnificent features for divers to explore. There are beautiful dive sites that can be reached by boat, but unlike many other places around the world, that’s not the only way to dive in Cape Town. Our shore dives are something spectacular in their own right.
This is definitely a proven way to help protect our wonderful ocean and marine life for the benefit of people and nature.
Like a nature reserve but in the ocean, it is an area of coastline or ocean that is specially protected with limits put into place in these specific areas.
A major new study re-assessing the IUCN Red List status for all sharks, rays and chimaeras has found that more than one-third of species from these groups are now at risk of extinction from overfishing.
The report, published on 6 September in the online journal Current Biology, is the conclusion of the IUCN's Global Shark Trends project, from which highlights published earlier in March 2021 revealed that 39 species had been reclassified as 'Critically Endangered', 'Endangered', and 'Vulnerable to Extinction', since the last assessment report, published in 2014.
Read more: Number of Endangered Shark and Ray Species Triples Since 2014
Nicolene Olckers tells us about her interesting career as a photographer and dive professional with some great advice for people considering a career in diving.
I must admit, I am a bit of an adrenaline junky. Over the years I have taken on the usual suspects, skydiving, bungee jumping, adventure motorcycling scuba diving, and open water swimming.
I was super excited to do my scuba course. After hearing and seeing all the amazing experiences that others had underwater, I couldn't wait to start my journey.
The Open Water Diver Course requires a medical check-up. I didn't think much of it, it's just standard procedure. The doctor heard a noise in my heart and declared me unfit to dive. He told me that just a week before there was a case where he heard the same noise in another patient, and she ended up being diagnosed with PFO (Patent Foramen Ovale). This means that there is a small opening between the two upper chambers of the heart. The opening normally closes soon after birth, but in some people, it doesn't. This opening makes it dangerous to dive as it cannot handle the pressure, and can cause an air embolism.
Being a great underwater photographer is not just about the pictures you take, but also about how you go about getting them.
After making some rookie mistakes myself, I have decided long ago that I never wanted to be ‘that photographer’. Therefore, I made these rules to dive by.
What do I mean by 'that photographer'?
Well, we have had some really bad experiences on dives with underwater photographers. This is by no means all of them, after all, I am one too 😉
Read more: 10 Unspoken Rules for the Underwater Photographer
Sea urchins are echinoderms in the class Echinoidea. The name Echinoderm came from Greek. “Echinos” means ‘’Spiny” and “Derma” means “skin”. Some marine animals that are classified as echinoderms are sea cucumbers, sea stars or starfish, sand dollars, and sea urchins. Sea Urchins are like the porcupines of the sea and get their name from an Old English word for the spiny hedgehog.
Sea urchins inhabit all oceans and can be found from the shallows to 5000 meters deep, there are around 950 species.
If you looked out onto the water on Thursday, 8 April, you would have seen a strange natural occurrence. A massive red tide has entered our waters.
If you’ve never seen this happening, you would probably have thought that this was a frightening, or at the very least, a peculiar occurrence. But there is an excellent reason why this is happening.
False Bay is a body of water in the Atlantic Ocean between the mountainous Cape Peninsula and the Hottentots Holland Mountains in the extreme south-west of South Africa. The mouth of the bay faces south and is demarcated by Cape Point to the west and Cape Hangklip to the east.