Scubaism

Stephen Wilson, 36, was struck and killed by lightning while diving in the Atlantic Ocean off Deerfield Beach, South Florida, on Sunday afternoon, authorities said.

The incident took place during an afternoon of severe thunderstorms that pelted the region, from Miami to West Palm Beach, with torrential rains, strong winds, pea-sized hail and hundreds of bolts of lightning.

At the time of the strike, at about 3 p.m., two divers were on a 20-foot boat and two were in the water, said Deerfield Beach Fire Division Chief Gary Fernaays.

When one of the divers in the water surfaced, “lighting struck his tank,” Fernaays said. “He was approximately 30 feet from the boat at the time.”

Wilson, who had gone into cardiac arrest, was given CPR while he was being taken North Broward Medical Center in Pompano Beach, where he was pronounced dead, authorities said.

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Members of the Shark-L list recently published an open letter to Discovery Channel condemning their Shark Week documentaries as exploitive and sensationalist, creating a “monster image” of sharks.

The Shark-L list were asked to participate in the making of the documentaries and were shocked by the result.

With documentary titles like “Ocean of Fear: Worst Shark Attack Ever”, “Deadly Stripes: Tiger Sharks”, “Top 5 Eaten Alive” and “Shark Feeding Frenzy”, it’s easy to see what Discovery Channel’s intentions were.

To create programmes that generate better ratings for their advertisers.

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More of the critically endangered Hawksbill turtles have returned to the state to lay eggs over the past decade. And more than half of those eggs have hatched.

Fisheries Department director general Datuk Junaidi Che Ayub said that in 1996, a total of 297 nestings were recorded while in 2006, the total had increased to 388.

For the corresponding period, the number of eggs recorded also increased from 36,101 in 1996 to 46,280 last year.

“A total of 24,872, or 53.74%, were successfully hatched,” said Junaidi after releasing Hawksbill turtle ‘Seri Melaka’ from the Turtle Management Centre in Padang Kemunting, Alor Gajah here yesterday.

With the release of ‘Seri Melaka’“, there are two more turtles left to be released under the Hawksbill Satellite Telemetry project this year. Seri Melaka was released into the Straits of Malacca after being attached with a Transmitter Terminal Platform to track its migration routes via satellite.

Three turtles released in June and August last year at Pulau Upeh, Tanjung Dahan and Tanjung Tuan were tracked to Singapore and the Riau Islands in Indonesia.

The project would study the migration route of the Hawksbill turtles to identify its pattern of travel after nesting in Malacca, and also its foraging habitat in the sea and land.

Junaidi said with the findings, the department, along with other agencies such as WWF-Malaysia and local universities, would help raise awareness among the local community.

“A mother turtle may die because it was caught in a net, or from pollution, or caught on purpose for commercial reasons but if it were to live another 20 to 30 years, it can produce between 500 and 600 eggs each season,” said Junaidi.

“That means by losing that turtle, we would have lost between 10,000 to 15,000 baby turtles.”

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Breast implants do not pose a problem to diving from the standpoint of gas absorption or changes in size and are not a contraindication for participation in recreational scuba diving. In one study, by Dr. Richard Vann, Vice President of Research at DAN, mammary (breast) implants were placed in the Duke University Medical Center hyperbaric chamber.

Three types were tested: silicone-, saline-, and silicone-saline-filled. In this experiment, the researchers simulated various depth/time profiles of recreational scuba diving.

Here’s what they found:

There was an insignificant increase in bubble size (one to four percent) in both saline and silicone gel implants, depending on the depth and duration of the dive. The least volume change occurred in the saline-filled implant, because nitrogen is less soluble in saline than silicone.

The silicone-saline-filled type showed the greatest volume change. Bubble formation in implants led to a small volume increase, which is not likely to damage the implants or surrounding tissue. If gas bubbles do form in the implant, they resolve over time.

Breast implants filled with saline are neutrally buoyant. Silicone implants are heavier than water, however, and they may alter buoyancy and attitude (trim) in the water, particularly if the implants are large. Appropriate training and appropriate adjustment of weights help overcome these difficulties.

DAN also dvises women with breast implants avoid buoyancy compensators with constrictive chest straps, which can put undue pressure on the seams and contribute to risk of rupture.

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Coral reefs can now be read like tree rings or glacier ice, mapping environmental change over time.

Besides climatic shifts, what emerges from these sea core samples, says Julia E. Cole, University of Arizona associate professor of Geosciences and Atmospheric Sciences, is a scientifically-deduced history of human land use practices spanning the past couple of hundred years.

Studies of coral reef systems in Australia and Western Africa indicate that western-style agricultural practices, introduced by Europeans, caused large-scale sustained stress upon reef systems that are as impactful, if not more so, than the usual suspects of over-harvesting, mining, and tourism.

Cole is developing geochemical records from long-lived corals, and studies the variability and impacts of large-scale climate systems throughout the tropical ocean.

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Aaron Wirsing, a researcher in the Department of Biological Sciences at Simon Fraser University, and his colleagues studied how the presence of tiger sharks specifically affected the feedings of dugongs — large aquatic herbivore mammals that somewhat resemble their manatee relatives.

The gentle herbivores prefer to eat segrass in the middle of patches. Growth is lush there and packs more of a nutritional punch due to the presence of extra organic carbon. Escaping from hungry sharks is difficult from these interior areas, however.

Wirsing and his team found that when large tiger sharks were around, dugongs instead chose to feed around seagrass meadow edges. The grass is not as tasty or nutritious at the edges, but the location allows escape to deeper water if predators are near.

By indirectly controlling where dugongs feed, tiger sharks keep the seagrass mowed down at all areas. “Dugong grazing can certainly hold seagrass growth in check,” Wirsing explained.

If left unchecked, however, the herbivores would simply eat all of the seagrass.

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Scientists studying the reproduction of scleractinian corals in tropical reefs have found that coral are spawning simultaneous to create new coral hybrids.

In highly synchronized events, up to 35 species in sympatry may spawn within two hours of each other.

Outcomes of hybridization are likely to be significant for the future resilience of reef corals by providing options for rapid response to changing environments and climatologies as well as increasing resilience to novel disease challenges.

In other words, the new hybrids could adapt to new environments, including that of warmer oceans due to global warming.

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Actually it doesn’t feature divers having nitrogen narcosis. But it is a fun video, well-edited and shot by the guys at LKWID, a photography studio in Sipadan.

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Tokyo-based Chuka Takahashi Co. has developed a line of new shark-meat products, such as shark nuggets and deep fried shark tatsuta. In all, Chuka Takahashi has seven different shark meat items, including shark croquettes.

Although Chuka Takahashi has traditionally dealt with shark fin processing and sales, it now sells 50 million yen’s worth of shark meat products each year.

Five years ago, the company launched a special team to handle shark meat. “We were beginning to feel a little guilty about handling fins only,” company official Koichi Oikawa, 62, said.

The finning practice was criticized internationally as savage and wasteful. Shark finning was first banned in the Atlantic Ocean, and a similar ban will be implemented in the mid-western Pacific Ocean next year.

Shark meat has traditionally been used as an ingredient in fish cakes, but Oikawa says that is not enough. “We have to create new demands and get shark meat traded at a certain price. That’s the only way to expand its use,” he said.

From fiscal 1996 to fiscal 2003, the Miyagi Prefectural Fisheries Processing Research Institute conducted a research project at the behest of the Fisheries Agency to find more ways to use shark meat.

The institute developed more than 20 products, including rice crackers and jellies, but none was commercialized, mainly because of the high costs.

The meat contains urea, which becomes unpleasant-smelling ammonia after the animal’s death. But shark meat contains other special characteristics that could help in its marketability.

The meat is low in calories but high in protein. It also contains collagen, a protein attracting a lot of attention for its use as a beauty aid.

Chuka Takahashi plans to expand its sales network overseas. It has already been displaying its products at exhibitions in China.

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Fishermen have caught a rare and endangered fish, the coelacanth, off the coast of the Indian Ocean archipelago of Zanzibar.

The find makes Zanzibar the third place in Tanzania where fishermen have caught the coelacanth, a heavy-bodied, many-finned fish with a three-lobed tail that was thought extinct until it was caught in 1938 off the coast of South Africa. Since then two types of coelacanth have been caught in five other countries: Comoros, Indonesia, Kenya, Madagascar and Mozambique, according to African Coelacanth Ecosystem Program.

“Fishermen informed us that they caught a strange fish in their nets. We rushed to Nungwi (the northern reaches of Zanzibar) to find it’s a coelacanth, a rare fish thought to have become extinct when it disappeared from fossil records 80 million years ago,” said Nariman Jiddawi of the Institute of Marine Sciences, which is part of the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania’s commercial capital.

Trade in the coelacanth is banned under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.

“Zanzibar will join a list of sites of having the rare fish caught in its own waters,” said Jiddawi, adding the catch weighed 27 kilograms (59.5 pounds) and measured 1.34 meters (4.4 feet).

Four fishermen caught the fish on Saturday, Jiddawi said.

Mussa Aboud Jume, director of fisheries in Zanzibar, said that the coelacanth will be preserved and put on display at the Zanzibar Museum.

A statement of the Institute of Marine Sciences said that 35 coelacanths have been caught since September 2003 in Mtwara, a southern region of Tanzania, and mostly along the coast of Tanga in Tanzania’s north.

Coelacanths are the only living animals to have a fully functional intercranial joint, a division separating the ear and brain from the nasal organs and eye, according to an Institute of Marine Sciences statement.

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