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Share your thoughts, experiences or questions and participate in discussions over our favorite topic : SCUBA diving!

Fighting moisture in your underwater housing

by Ksso on May 05, 2011

If you're doing some underwater photography, you know how painful moisture can be. A few drops of waters in your housing, pressure, and *bam*, you can't take pictures anymore.That's why god (well science rather) gave us silica gel.Those funny tiny white bags actually are supposed to capture moisture and keep the inside of your housing dry, but beware, those do not last forever - when they captured all the water in the air they stop working, and drying them out is a pain (and can be just impossible in some cases). Even worse, it's almost impossible to tell the state of your silica bags, they may be useless already but you have no way to tell...Now here's my little secret : I use those...

Diveboard feature updates : Export your dives

by Ksso on May 04, 2011

Dear Diveboarders, we just released in production a upgrade to the service. The Changelog includes:

Export your dives:You can now export one dive as ZXL / DAN DL7 from the profile pane of your dive, or multiple dives from the "Bulk Upload" wizard on the "Export" pane.

Better support for UDCF & ZXL:A couple of users have experienced some trouble uploading their dive files, this is now fixed. As you may know, each software vendor has its own interpretation of the format norm... so we'll do our best to include support for all those flavors as we encounter them ...

Objective Atlantinde : a treasure hunt in France's mediterranean sea

by Ksso on May 02, 2011

Objective Atlantide is a treasure hunt that has been around since 1989. Since 2003, a Mediterranean-sea-only version is organized over a period of 3 months. A pack of clay tablets (20000 this year) are scattered on popular spots of France's Mediterranean sea and groups of divers have to work together and find 14 of those to enter the final and have their club win one of the numerous prizes. The clay tablets are dropped at a max depth of 20m (60ft). The hunt just started this week-end, so if you're looking for you next dive, you may consider entering the challenge !

Incredible spots: the Orda Cave (Russia)

by Ksso on April 26, 2011

A team of russian divers have been exploring the Orda cave for the last couple years taking incredible pictures and producing a beautiful 50$ picture book.Orda Cave is the most extended underwater cave in Russia, the second in Eurasia, with regards to length, and the world’s greatest gypsum cave. It has status of All-Russia natural monument. It is the first and the world only underwater gypsum excursion cave, member of I.S.C.A (Association of Excursion Caves of the World). In 2008 Orda cave was applied to be included in the List of UNESCO World Natural Heritage. Unique beauty of Orda cave was marked by the world-famous British cave-diver, cave-diving instructor of the Royal court of Great...

Fish round-up: (deep) Sea Pig

by Ksso on April 22, 2011

After a post on the Sea Cow and another one on the Sea Cucumber , I guess Sea Pig has to be next.The sea pig is a funny invertebrate than can be found at depth over 1000m (3000ft). He gets his chubby look because of his especially unusually large round feet and the pinky skin got him this common name. As you can see on the map below, it's pretty widespread, although due to the insane depth there are few records of his presence.

Richard Branson's next challenge : Ocean's bottom

by Ksso on April 18, 2011

Richard Branson recently introduced his latest venture : Virgin Oceanic.With Virgin Oceanic the voyage is to the last frontiers of our own Blue Planet: the very bottom of our seas.The expedition is made possible by technology breakthrough by the world’s foremost submarine designer, Graham Hawkes.

Sea cow round-up : the Dugong

by Ksso on April 18, 2011

Steve (see Steve's dives on Diveboard) who has been diving tens of times in Egypt's Red Sea told me last Friday about the Dugong, and I got absolutely fascinated by this huge mammal.The Dugong is a cousin of the Manatees and spends most of his time eating seagrass at the bottom of the sea. The Dugong and by extension the members of the Sirenians are more related to the elephants than to other marine mammals.Wikipedia tells us that the word "dugong" derives from the Tagalog term dugong which was in turn adopted from the Malay duyung, both meaning "lady of the sea." Other common local names include "sea cow," "sea pig" and "sea camel."Dugongs are found in warm coastal waters from the...

Fish round up: Sea Urchin

by Ksso on April 09, 2011

Sea urchin are a common ornament of the reefs. They can be seen about everywhere, as you can see on the map below. Those small spiky balls look harmless, but beware, they actually can be deadly !They feed on algae and move very slowly. They are hunted by many predators including humans (yummy maki-sushis), sea otters, wolf eels, triggerfish...Wikipedia states:The spines, long and sharp in some species, protect the urchin from predators. The spines inflict a painful wound when they penetrate human skin, but are not dangerous. It is not clear if the spines are venomous (unlike the pedicellariae between the spines, which are venomous). ...

Diveboard alpha : D-4

by Ksso on April 04, 2011

It took so much more time and energy than I expected, but we're finally getting there ! Did you thing Diveboard was going to remain only a blog ? Of course not ! And while the blog remains one of the key aspects of diveboard as a way to share and feature interesting stories and interact with the community, it's time today to finally unveil the second side of Diveboard.But maybe a screenshot will help out a bit !As a scuba diver, there are gazillions of things I was missing. First things first, as a Mac geek I've been über frustrated for years to not be able to do anything useful with the dives stored in my Mares M2 - and let's be realistic the Windows software (IRIS) is a joke. On top of...

Coral Reef Spawning : Now in Australia

by Ksso on March 30, 2011

As Wikipedia states, (in case you don't know what a coral is):Coral reefs are underwater structures made from calcium carbonate secreted by corals. Corals are colonies of tiny living animals found in marine waters that contain few nutrients. Most coral reefs are built from stony corals, and are formed by polyps that live together in groups. The polyps secrete a hard carbonate exoskeleton which provides support and protection for the body of each polyp. Reefs grow best in warm, shallow, clear, sunny and agitated waters. Also, a coral reef is a reef consisting of coral consolidated into limestone. ...