Latest news feeds from Dive magazine

• Revillagigedos archipelago, Mexico
  Like Simon, I have had the pleasure of manta encounters in the Maldives and in many places around the world.

• THE MALDIVES
  For any UK-based diver looking for manta rays, I recommend the Maldives.
• Did you see the manta?
  They are possibly the marine creatures that divers love the most, but where do you go for the best manta encounters, and what else is there to see?
• Mares Abyss 42 regulator
  I've always been a great fan of compact regulators, but for the past decade, valve manufacturers have been battling it out to improve the cold-water capabilities of their demand valves rather than reducing the sizes of their regs.
• MONTY: Ruminating on shark feeding
  I sit in a rather sumptuous hotel in Inverness as I type this, burping gassily having just fallen upon a gigantic club sandwich like a ravenous predator.
• Maritime heritage
  English Heritage is appealing for divers to help conserve some of country's most important historic wrecks, following a mass underwater survey of 'at risk' sites.
• Credit due
  BSAC national instructor Eugene Farrell flew over to the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm El Sheikh to accredit a team of 13 BSAC open water instructors.
• Definitive Underwater Guide to Papua New Guinea
  From Mahé to Aldabra: The Underwater World of Seychelles
• The Art of Underwater Photography
  This is a clever concept that should appeal to anyone interested in underwater photography.
• Scuba Diving - Malta, Gozo, Comino
  The second edition of Peter Lemon's excellent guide to the islands of Malta, is an absolute must for anyone visiting that corner of the Mediterranean.

• U.S. coral reefs under threat, report finds
  Half of U.S. coral reefs are in poor or fair condition, threatened by climate change and human activities like sports fishing, shipping and the release of untreated sewage, a U.S. government report has said. Reefs in the Caribbean, in particular, are under severe assault and coral in the U.S. Virgin Islands and off Puerto Rico had not recovered from 2005, when unusually warm waters that led to massive bleaching and disease killed up to 90 percent of the marine organisms on some reefs.
• Update: Diving Mozambique
  The five-star dives are piling up in the Mozambique section of the SCUBA Travel site. "Pinnacle at 35 m with Shark on every dive: Bull, Tiger, silver tip, Hammerheads, Manta, devil rays...
• Marine bill 'can strike balance'
  Energy investment in Scotland's seas can be balanced with protecting marine wildlife and seabirds, the Scottish Government has claimed. The comments came as Environment Secretary Richard Lochhead launched a consultation on Scotland's Marine Bill. Campaigners urged the government to use a "once in a lifetime opportunity" to protect the marine environment. They want the bill to include strong measures to protect seas around the country and the wildlife they contain.
• Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone Could Reach Record Size
  The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico could reach a new record size this year. The discharge of pollutants and nutrients from the Mississippi River causes algae to bloom in the Gulf of Mexico. When the algae dies, the decaying absorbs so much oxygen from the water that large areas become inhospitable to fish. The resulting lifeless area is called a eutrophic or hypoxic zone, or more colloquially, a dead zone. The condition is cyclic, and reaches its maximum in late summer.
• Making Marine Protected Areas Work for Everyone
  The establishment of marine protected areas is often viewed as a conflict between conservation and fishing. A new study in the journal Conservation Biology, shows that involving all the different groups of people affected by the protection zone early in the planning stage will more effectively protect the environment than ignoring detractors concerns.
• Rubik's Cube used to get on right side of octopuses
  It may be an infuriating puzzle which has baffled and defeated countless children and their parents over more than two decades, but an octopus appears determined to solve the Rubik's Cube. The three-dimensional puzzle, which became a huge success in the early 1980s, is among toys being given to the intelligent sea creatures to determine whether they favour a particular tentacle, or if they are octidextrous.
• The Shark Handbook
  New publication aims to be the "Essential Guide for Understanding and Identifying the Sharks of the World". This field guide contains a complete listing of every known shark in existence as well as some extinct species. It talks about sharks from their birth to death, their anatomy, how to distinguish one shark from the next, how their teeth are developed, how they hunt and attack and their importance and purpose within the ecosystem.
• New Coral Bleaching Prediction System Indicates Some Bleaching In Caribbean This Year
  A new NOAA coral bleaching prediction system indicates that there will be some bleaching in the Caribbean later this year, but the event will probably not be severe. NOAA issued the first-ever seasonal coral bleaching outlook this week at the 11th International Coral Reef Symposium in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.
• Update: Diving Taiwan
  Claimed to rival any dive site in Asia, there is now more information on the dive sites and dive operators of Taiwan on the SCUBA Travel site.
• Acidifying oceans pose danger to coral reefs
  Like a tooth dipped in a glass of Coca-Cola, coral reefs, lobsters and other marine creatures that build calcified shells around themselves could soon dissolve as climate change turns the oceans increasingly acidic.
• Giant vacuum cleaner leaves reefs thriving
  Sucking problem algae from beneath the sea may sound like a futile task, but a trial shows the technique can help preserve coral reefs. Around the globe, the explosive growth of invasive and native seaweed species is wreaking economic and ecological damage. The "Super Sucker" was developed as a potential solution to the problem, which is blamed on overexploitation of algae-grazing fish and pollution from fertilisers.
• One Third of Reef-Building Corals Face Extinction
  One third of reef-building corals around the world are threatened with extinction, according to the first-ever comprehensive global assessment. The results emphasise the widespread plight of coral reefs and the urgent need to enact conservation measures.
• New Coral Reefs Teeming With Marine Life Discovered In Brazil
  Scientists have announced the discovery of reef structures they believe doubles the size of the Southern Atlantic Ocean's largest and richest reef system, the Abrolhos Bank, off the southern coast of Brazil's Bahia state. The newly discovered area is also far more abundant in marine life than the previously known Abrolhos reef system, one of the world's most unique and important reefs.
• Update: Diving Italy
  More on the dive sites and dive operators of Italy is now on the SCUBA Travel site at http://www.scubatravel.co.uk/italy/
• Cleaner fish create safe havens
  Cleaner fish are well known to divers on the reef. They eat parasites from much larger fish, many of which are normally predators. Some of these predators let the little cleaners safely enter their mouth and gills. A single cleaner fish can clean more than 2,300 fish a day from over 130 species and each cleaner eats about 1,200 parasites daily. Most fish are cleaned daily, with some fish seeking cleaners around 150 times a day. Both cleaner and cleaned fish benefit from this behaviour. Cleaner fish are also thought to benefit from immunity to predation. They stroke their "clients'" with their fins to help persuade the predators not to eat them. Researchers in Australia have found that the more stroking the calmer the predator. And it wasn't just the cleaner fish who benefited. Other fish nearby the cleaner station experienced less aggressive behaviour from the predators. The suggests that cleaner stations act as safe havens from predator aggression.
• Archaelogical Oceanography
  New definitive book on the emerging field of deep-sea archaeology. Marine archaeologists have been finding and excavating underwater shipwrecks since at least the early 1950s, but until recently their explorations have been restricted to depths considered shallow by oceanographic standards. This new book describes the latest advances that enable researchers to probe the secrets of the deep ocean, and the vital contributions these advances offer to archaeology and fields like maritime history and anthropology.
• Air travel in the tropics is worse for climate
  A typical flight to the tropics has a greater impact on global warming than a flight in temperate latitudes. As well as producing carbon dioxide and contrails, planes also produce nitrogen oxide, which triggers both the creation of the warming gas ozone, and the destruction of another greenhouse gas, methane. In mid-latitudes, these ozone and methane reactions cancel each other out and you get zero net warming from nitrogen oxide emissions. But the brighter sunlight in the tropics is very efficient at converting nitrogen oxide to ozone - in fact it creates ozone five times faster than in the air of mid-latitudes
• Issue 98 of SCUBA News Now Online
  In this issue: Red Sea competition results, ocean facts, diving news from the Med, Australia, Mexico, New Zealand and Britain plus the latest underwater research findings.
• ROV Finds New Coral Species
  Researchers on the third-largest atoll in the world, the Saba Bank in the Netherlands Antilles, have discovered and collected two new species of soft corals (gorgonians) and documented severe anchor damage with the aid of a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) from Seabotix. Experts collected 40 species of soft corals, seventeen of which were collected using the ROV.
• Update: Diving Thailand
  Discover the best and worst dive operators in Thailand at the newly updated SCUBA Travel site.