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Posts Tagged ‘World’

Trickett misses world championship selection
Australia’s triple Olympic gold medallist Libby Trickett’s world championship hopes have been dashed after she missed out on qualifying in a 100-metre freestyle relay selection trial.

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A Dog’s life: The world of Notts County boss Martin ‘Mad Dog’ Allen
Martin Allen, more commonly known as ‘Mad Dog,’ was last month charged with keeping Notts County in League One.

Read more on Daily Mail

Swimming risks ending year without a world record
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The clock is ticking very slowly in swimming these days.

Read more on KGW NewsChannel 8 Portland

Sitting in a torrent of activity where the Pacific pours into the Indian Ocean, Komodo Island is home to a multitude of marine life. Simon Rogerson dips his fins in two worlds.

Amazing things happen when two oceans meet. At Komodo National Park in Indonesia – a relatively small stretch of sea around the famous ‘dragon island’ – cool upwellings from the Pacific are forced into relatively shallow water and then flood into the Indian Ocean. The area which sees this massive movement of water is marked by a few volcanic islands which conspire to create some of the most powerful and unpredictable currents on the planet.

It’s a remarkable place – a hothouse for evolution and home to an incredible array of marine life. Of the 500 or so coral species found in the Indo-Pacific, Komodo has 260. It harbours more than 1,000 species of fish and 70 species of sponge. Acre for acre, it is one of the most diverse coral reef environments in the world.

My journey began on the 42m Kararu, a traditional rigged sailing vessel which serves as an extremely spacious liveaboard. It operates from Bali, 160 miles to the west, but the journey to and from Komodo is punctuated by dive sites which are fascinating in their own right, and serve as a build-up to the world-class diving at Komodo and its neighbouring island, Rinca. My host was the boat’s co-owner, Tony Rhodes, a Brit with an easy manner and a knack for spotting near-microscopic animals.

On an early dive at a site called Mentjang Wall, we were finning along in mid-water when Tony suddenly swooped down to the reef. I followed, squinting at the scrappy patch of coral to which he was pointing. At first nothing, then I could make out a tiny brownish nudibranch (of the Flabellinidae family). He had seen it from 10m away! Suspicious, I wondered if he had sneakily placed it there when I wasn’t looking, possibly inspired by Donald Pleasence’s similar trick in The Great Escape.

As I was to discover, his spotting skills were quite genuine. While there are plenty of sizeable creatures to marvel at in Indonesia, the area does tend to attract divers with a penchant for the diminutive. These are rich seas, and there is a perpetual battle for space on the reefs. After just a few days, your eyes become familiar with the environment, so that semi-camouflaged critters begin to reveal themselves. Professional dive guides become finely attuned to this sort of diving.

Komodo National Park comprises the seas around the islands of Komodo, Rinca and Padar, and some smaller islands. It’s a two-wetsuit trip: on the northern side of the islands, the water is warm, and most people dive comfortably with the thinnest of skins. Cool, nutrient-rich upwellings prevail on the southern side, where 5mm suits, hoods and gloves are the order of the day.

These islands act like a dam, holding back the warmer Pacific waters, which are then forced through various straits, creating a pressure void along the park’s southern side. This allows cold water from the Sumba Sea to rise up, effectively replacing the water removed by the currents at the surface. With the cold water comes a bloom in phytoplankton, forming the basis of Komodo’s super-charged food chain. It is a very, very special place indeed.

The results of these crazy upwellings are best experienced at Horseshoe Bay on Rinca’s southern side. These are the most crowded reefs I have ever seen, but the payoff is low visibility caused by all those nutrients suspended in the water. Horseshoe Bay’s famous site is a pinnacle known as Cannibal Rock (named after a monstrous Komodo dragon seen eating one of its own kind nearby), where dense swathes of black, yellow and red crinoids jostle for space.

It’s a great place to test buoyancy skills, because crinoids stick to neoprene like glue; any contact whatsoever and you’ve got yourself a hitchhiker. Once, after taking head-on photographs of an implacable lizardfish, I looked down to find I had picked up two featherstars complete with clingfish and crinoid shrimps – a whole ecosystem! I guiltily set them back on the reef.

Just outside Horseshoe Bay is a fascinating site known as the Great Yellow Wall of Texas, renowned for its soft corals. Visibility here was reminiscent of British shore-diving standards, and the coral polyps were all retracted, so I hardly saw the reef in all its glory. Still, I could appreciate the sheer intensity of the place. Nestling among the crinoid forest were some fascinating animals, including brightly coloured sea apples, a spectacular member of the sea slug family. Tiny hawkfish nestled between the fronds of soft corals, while gobies darted around their tiny territories.

Night dives were even more atmospheric. The currents sweeping over Cannibal Rock were too much to cope with after dark, so we searched for night creatures in the shallows. At first glance, the sandy expanses were devoid of life, but a closer inspection revealed a wealth of nocturnal drama. Octopus each the size of a child’s fist moved over the sand, extending their tentacles into tiny holes as they hunted for suitably small prey. Every now and then, they would retract their foraging limbs in pain, having received a nip from some hidden sand-dweller.

Inshore sites often serve as nurseries. I saw lots of tiny fish, including juvenile oriental sweetlips (flapping wildly like some out-of-control bumblebee) and a rockmover wrasse complete with protruding unicorn’s horn. Photographers found the night dives to be the most productive of all, and some would sacrifice an afternoon dive to be alert for the evening.

The best night dive took place beyond Horseshoe Bay on a sandy slope near Banta Island. The site has a particularly cheesy name – ‘It’s a Small World’ – which nevertheless hints at the macro wonders which have made it their home. I dropped in and descended 10m to what looked to be a lunar landscape, devoid of life. The gritty sand billowed briefly into the water column as I landed on the sea bed and looked down to see a skeletal face leering back with utter contempt.

It was a stargazer, a voracious lunge-predator whose stealth is rivalled only by its monumental ugliness. It buries itself in sand right up to its eyes, then waits for a suitable morsel to happen along. Ambush predators don’t like being seen, and this one looked up at me with undisguised disgust as I gently fanned the sand away from its fearsome features. Eventually, the indignity of being exposed in this way proved too much; it launched itself off the sand and sped off into the darkness.

I enjoy watching other divers at night. Despite the best intentions of the buddy system, there is something about the combination of shallow, current-free sites and diving by torchlight which internalizes the diving experience. Divers retreat into themselves, their attention focused chiefly on the thin column illuminated by their lights. I hovered behind a professional videographer, Roger Munns of Scubazoo (the film-making outfit based in Southeast Asia) fame, who had found a handsome red frogfish – okay, ‘handsome’ isn’t a word often associated with frogfish, but we’re talking ‘eye of the beholder’ here, okay?

As he trained his video lights on the frogfish, the brightness attracted a small food chain. Driven by some inexplicable urge, tiny worms massed around the lights in writhing density. They in turn attracted the attention of some cardinalfish, which foolishly took the frogfish to be a lump of coral. They were soon disabused of this notion as the predator extended its jaws and sucked a hapless cardinalfish into its maw.

This super-gulp is too fast to see. Later, watching Roger’s footage on an iBook laptop, we studied the lunge frame by frame. You see the frogfish give a dainty little leap, and there is a slight blur around its mouth as it takes the fish, but the movement itself is too fast even for a professional-quality video recording in slow motion mode. Viewed at normal speed, the frogfish twitches slightly and the cardinalfish simply disappears.

In addition to illustrating the efficiency of the frogfish’s feeding mechanism, this episode revealed to me the depth of the cardinalfish’s stupidity. The ‘not exactly quick on the uptake’ survivors kept returning to the lights, and the frogfish enjoyed a further six courses while the cardinalfish doubtless wondered where all their companions had gone. By the time I had sidled in to photograph the frogfish, it was noticeably bulkier and appeared to have a case of the hiccups.

Providing a contrast to Komodo’s macro dives is a great manta site off the island of Langkoi, a busy little channel where the graceful rays can be seen feeding on plankton-loaded water. Langkoi’s mantas are among the biggest I have ever seen, some even approaching the legendary 6m mark.

It was a pleasure to dispense with the hood and gloves when our boat Kararu returned to the balmy sites of the north. Here, I was presented with dizzyingly clear water and some classically beautiful reefs. There were plenty of reef fish, but I saw little in the blue, despite the preternatural clarity of the water. Occasionally, schools of barracuda, jacks or bannerfish would appear, but there were no sharks or tuna. This is the case across much of these islands, where shark-finning has decimated reef shark populations over the past decade. Illegal shark fishing and even dynamite bombing still takes place in Komodo National Park, despite its protected status.

Still, conservation efforts at Komodo – reinforced by the presence of tourism – have succeeded in preserving vast tracts of reef. These reefs have an additional importance which transcends the pleasure they give divers. The coral here is especially resilient to the effects of coral bleaching caused by factors such as global warming and El Niño. This is due to the upwelling effect of cooling water from the depths of the Sumba Sea.

Marine biologists believe that as coral reef systems continue to be lost, it is places such as Komodo that will replenish and re-colonize devastated habitats elsewhere in Indonesia and the wider Indo-Pacific. The same currents which make life so difficult (if entertaining) for divers, carry coral larvae beyond the national park to places where reef space is available. In this sense, Komodo is a mother among coral reefs, and one we should all cherish.

• Simon Rogerson dived with Kararu Dive Voyages. Charters are available for trips of different duration, but the standard Komodo tour takes 11 days. Trips to the remote reefs of Alor and Rajah Empat are also available. For further information, contact UK agents Divequest on 01254 826322 or check out Kararu’s website, http://www.kararu.com.

The world’s easiest wreck dive?
No diver should visit Bali without diving the wreck of the Liberty, a First World War-era cargo ship which lies off the beach at the village of Tulamben on the nortwest coast. The Liberty grounded itself on this beach after being torpedoed by a Japanese submarine in 1942, and stayed there until 1963 when the Agung volcano exploded, pushing her into the water and splitting the hull in two.

Today, the wreckage sits on black volcanic sand at a diver-friendly 27m, providing a home for a prodigious amount of marine life. It pained me not to include the Liberty in DIVE’s recent rundown of the world’s best wrecks, but the truth is that this is a wreck dive for divers who don’t like wrecks.

The structure of the wreck is undeniably impressive, but the resident marine life steals the show. There is a school of jacks which regularly form the classic spiral shoaling formation, and tame reef fish abound (they’ve been fed, and approach divers with feverish enthusiasm).

The wreck is coated in coral, and sought-after macro subjects such as the pygmy seahorse can be reliably found. It has to be one of the world’s best shore dives, but what makes it so ludicrously easy is the presence of a local co-operative which charges a small amount for access to the shore, then carries your BC and cylinder to the entry point.

What makes all this slightly shameful is the fact that the co-operative is made up of local women, most of whom are slightly built and less than five feet tall! They can carry two sets of kit at a time for the ten-minute walk over the pebble beach! On their heads!

I couldn’t bring myself to let them carry my gear, but my guide warned me that it would be seen as unforgivably patronizing not to let them do their job. So, I hobbled over the beach behind my petite kit-bearer praying to the Balinese gods that no one would recognize me.

Want diving, cruising and liveaboard in komodo?

A whole new world

From the eyes of a sea creature living in the depths; a fish, a turtle or a crab looking up through the rays of sun streaming through the blue azure, a large grey-green object passes over head at the surface, its fins revolving at high speed-churning white froth and a grating whining noise that suddenly dies as the rest of the body glides to a halt. Then, a strange two legged creature plunges in from the side with its long fins propelling it down deeper. We can only try to imagine how we scuba divers must look to these creatures, yet at the same time make us realize what a wonderful, extraordinary world exists beneath our oceans.

 

When visiting Thailand, you should not only explore the culture, its people and its jungles, but you should also make the time to discover a whole new world beneath the waves.

 

Whether your passion is snorkelling on the surface or diving the depths, it’s always advisable to seek formal instruction of some kind before taking the plunge. Though extremely safe, complacency is a danger that cannot be ignored when it comes to any marine recreation, however once you have learned the ropes, you can enjoy the fun safely and free of accidents. The best way to do this would be to take up an introductory course in diving at one of the many schools in Phuket such as PADI Course Director Chris Owen’s Indepth Instruction. This school offers a wide range or PADI courses from beginner snorkel or scuba discovery courses to PADI IDC diving instructor courses.

 

The way the world learns to dive

If you fall in love with scuba diving like so many of us have, then you may even want to teach your passion to others. The Professional Association of Diving Instructors or PADI formed in 1966, is the world’s largest recreational diving membership and training organization of diving instructors. The PADI members consist of Diving Instructors and Divemasters and teach most of the world’s recreational divers. PADI courses are proactive based dive programs that start from entry level programs like PADI Scuba Diver and Open Water Diver to PADI Open Water Scuba Instructor and Specialty Instructor Courses.

So are you hooked with the idea? Do you not only have a passion for diving but also a passion to teach? Regardless of your knowledge and ability to dive, you can take a 10+ day PADI IDC course that will enlighten your knowledge of the aquatic world and bring you closer to your goal. PADI Course Director Chris Owen can offer you this chance, a professional PADI Instructor Development Course for all divers with his PADI IDC Phuket programs!

Wonder of wonders

Don’t expect miracles over night, becoming a diving instructor will take time, but with a little effort and the proper training you can do it. PADI IDC classes are ideal for those who are not only not afraid of hard work, but also wish to achieve their goals, while at the same time enjoying the experience of a life time. Lots of fun and great moments.

With both confined and open water training, students utilize the accumulated knowledge and experience from his team of dive professionals, the team spirit you will encounter will aid you in your training and further improve your ability. Consider other advantages of signing up with PADI Course Director Chris Owen’s Indepth courses; small classes of up to ten students make team bonding that much easier. Class language is in English, French, Dutch, German, Danish and Swedish or Thai, but language assistance for other nationalities is also available. There is a 5% Early Bird discount for those who sign up early and another 5% Cash Incentive discount, a total of 10% discount off the whole package. The programs are so well structured; they aim to intensify training periods with equally long relaxation periods. Practise freely in the pools available to tune your diving skills and prepare you for the day you test in open waters.

Other

Other PADI IDC lessons include the very important safety features so that you will know what to do in emergency situations. One of the latest is the newly released PADI Emergency Oxygen Provider Course where you will be taught how to give first aid and oxygen administration to divers in trouble. Needless to say, all PADI scuba divers and PADI scuba diving instructors must be prepared when faced with these types of emergency situations.

Other courses available include Emergency First Response Instructor; this allows PADI Divemasters, Assistant Instructors and divers who have completed an IDC to become Emergency First Response Instructors.

All this achieved in beautiful surroundings with state-of-the-art equipment and up to date facilities aimed at making your examination testing preparation a pleasurable and memorable experience.

Ushuia, the most southern city in the world, is a vibrant yet intriguing frontier city in the Patagonia area of Argentina. Its remoteness is what attracts the thousands of visitors each year as well as it surrounding natural scenery and wildlife.

Ushuaia is situated between the Beagle Channel and the panoramic Martial Mountains in the Tierra del Fuego region. With boats leaving from here to the remotest islands as well the marvel that is the Antarctic. What is unknown to many is the cities unique location as a shopping haven in the Southern Hemisphere, not much is produced here however the areas tax free status makes imported items pretty cheap. The city holds a number of attractions of its own such as the Museo del fin del Mundo and the Museo de Maquetes Mundo Yamana that recounts the history of the people that populated the region before colonalisation by Europeans.

The region is a must for people that love the outdoors. The sheer choice of tracks, lakes and mountains are a hikers dream. Not only that, but camping is a serious option here reducing accommodation costs and making for a more interesting hikes.

Near to the city is the Tierra del Fuego National Park, actually located in neighboring Chile. The area received national park status in 1960 and so is protected from development. The topography of the park is very tough as it has been affected by extreme geological circumstances which makes the area so stunning, slit between snow capped mountains and vast fresh water lakes. The range and diversity of the land and marine wildlife is clearly visible and visually stunning.

Within the park you should take the historical Tierra del Fuego train, which provides stunning views as the train tracks skirt the edge of mountains and lakes. The convicts used to arrive at the remote jail here by train, which is is no longer the case, but the jail and the line is significant to the regions development as it connected it to the world and supported trade. The train consists of steam locomotives, coaches comfortably heated and fitted with large windows. It leaves from Estación del Fin del Mundo (End of the World Station), 8km West of Ushuaia, and run about 1 hour, ending at the Estación del Parque (Park Station). There is a coffee shop and bar at the Estación del Fin del Mundo, where visitors can enjoy local cakes and hot chocolate and attractive souvenirs can be purchase.

The best time to go is the summer time allows for pleasant hikes, horseback-riding, mountain biking and sport fishing. The summer months (October to April) have 18 hours of light and mild temperatures making it the best time to visit. Been so close to the Antarctic makes the place cold and dark in the winter months, but is worth a visit if you want to experience something different.

Because of the remoteness of the region, travelling by Bus to the region is not advised, but is possible from places such as Bariloche, Puerto Madryn and El Calafate. Flights tend to fly the circuit from Buenos Aires, to Ushuaia, then El Calafate and then back to Buenos Aires.

The Daily World | Taxonomy term | 6
BY GREGG BELL The Associated Press SEATTLE — The last time Chris Johnson was in a game in Seattle, he ran into immortality. The last time Pete Carroll was in a game in Seattle, he ran into a humbling defeat — one that accelerated the end of his dynasty at Southern California.

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The Daily World | Taxonomy term | 2
SHEBOYGAN, Wis. (AP) — Tiger Woods ate breakfast three times before he teed off in the first round of the PGA Championship. It was time for dinner when his second round began Friday.

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Auburn’s Brett Hawke Featured in July Issue of Swimming World Magazine
PHOENIX, Arizona, July 7. THE July issue of Swimming World Magazine includes an awesome Michael J. Stott interview with Auburn’s Brett Hawke. Stott and Hawke also looks at how Bryan Lundquist trains….

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WORLD MARKET CENTER TO HOST TASTE OF LAS VEGAS AT MARKET
LAS VEGAS – World Market Center Las Vegas will host the second annual “Alfresco, A Taste of Las Vegas” Monday, August 2 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. on opening night of the Summer Las Vegas Market, Gift +Home and Vegas Kids.

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