Scubaism

This is the amazing story of Mark Chenoweth who has been strapped to a wheelchair for 10 years because spina bafida affected both his legs. But after a dive, was able to walk temporarily.

The deeper he gets, he says, the longer he is able to walk. After the first dive to 17 metres, he was able to walk unaided for three days.

After diving to 17 metres below the surface, Mark was brought to the boat.

As the instructors pulled him on board, he felt a bizarre sensation surging through his limbs. Shakily, he stood up—totally unaided for the first time since he was 12.

“I came out and I could feel my legs like I’d never felt them before,” Mark added. “They were actually working.

“The instructor couldn’t believe it. He’d seen me arrive in my wheelchair, and now I didn’t need it. I just stood up in the boat and shouted, ‘Look at this’.”

“I’ve found if I dive to 50 metres I can walk for about eight months.”At the University Hospital of North Staffordshire, where Mark has been treated over the last decade, doctors are baffled — as are colleagues worldwide.

Their only theory is that divers take in a richer mix of oxygen from their aqualungs than at ground level. That extra oxygen in Mark’s bloodstream might be having a temporary effect on the nerve cells.

“My case could have far-reaching implications,” Mark added. “If only someone knew WHY it happened.”

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An 18 year old woman was celebrating her promotion with her fellow reservist cadet officers at the Playa del Sur Beach Resort in Barangay Calumpang, Cauayan, when she and two others were stung by box jellyfish.

She was rushed into the hospital within 5 minutes, but was pronounced dead on arrival. The hospital chief said she died from anaphylactic shock due to her allergic reaction to the toxins from the jellyfish. A sting from a jellyfish is rarely fatal.

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Emergency services are on alert after a woman who has sparked 56 sea rescues costing £1 million moved to Sussex - next to a reservoir.

Amy Dalla Mura is banned from going within 50m of the sea in Britain after jumping off piers, jetties and cliffs. She has been slapped with an Asbo for playing a “game of cat-and-mouse” with police and “causing harassment, alarm and distress”.

Now she has moved from Wales to Ardingly, near Haywards Heath, and there are fears she will head for the reservoir or the coast.

Her move east comes days after she breached a court order by causing four alerts in five days in June. A judge has banned her from going near Ardingly Reservoir. She is not allowed to move to her mother’s house in Kingsway, Hove, because it is too near the sea, so she is staying with her sister.

Since 2001 she has made scores of attempts to apparently drown herself in the Irish Sea at Aberystwyth. Emergency services believe painful hip and back problems have driven her to attempt to drown herself as a “cry for help”.

Ms Dalla Mura told The Argus the number of rescues had been exaggerated by the authorities. She said: “It is a very complicated and bitter story. I had a very active and special life which has, over the last few years, been taken away from me.”

The 45-year-old former professional golfer is on first-name terms with lifeboat crews, police, coastguards and RAF air-sea rescue helicopter crews in Wales. One PC won a bravery award in 2003 after swimming 300m out to sea to save her.

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Twenty-one years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine, fish and mushrooms in parts of Finland are still toxic due to radioactive fallout, Finnish authorities said on Monday.

The concentration of cesium-137 exceeded the EU maximum recommended level in 20 percent of fish and more than half of the mushrooms tested in 2005 by the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority and Finnish Food Safety Authority Evira.

The tests were conducted in the lakes and region around Vammala, 230 kilometers (145 miles) northwest of Helsinki in southwestern Finland — the Finnish area most affected by the fallout from the Chernobyl disaster on April 26, 1986.

Radioactivity levels reached nearly three and a half times the maximum recommended level in fish and up to nine times the maximum in mushrooms, with significant variations depending on where the tests were carried out and other factors. Seventeen percent of fish also had elevated levels of mercury.

Finnish authorities recommend consumers eat lake fish no more than once or twice a month — expectant mothers are advised to stay away from pike entirely during their pregnancy — and to wash mushrooms well before eating.

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A newly emerged “fish spa” is becoming fashionable in many hot spring resorts, and has attracted even more customers, all curious about this peculiar treatment.

At such a spa, many Garra Rufa, a type of small tropical fish, also nicknamed Chinchin Yu, nibble fish or simply doctor fish, are put in hot springs. As they can live and swim freely in at least 43-degree-hot waters, they are naturally used for the treatment of skin diseases in such spas.

When placed in the spa, these fish can feed themselves on the dead cells of the human body, since they only consume such cells, leaving the healthy skin of the human body to grow. The whole process is reportedly free of pain. It won’t hurt and the bather might feel a pleasant tingling on his or her skin.

The fish species are often found in the river basins in the Middle East, including Syria, Iraq, Iran and Turkey, and thus is also called Turkish Fish. It is legally protected from commercial exploitation in Turkey due to concerns over harvesting for export.

In 2006, the first Asian Doctor Fish spa resort opened in Hakone, Japan. These fish are used to clean the feet of the bathers at the spa. Recently, such spas become fashionable in resorts in China and South Korea.

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Unscrupulous vendors in Thailand have been selling meat of the deadly puffer fish disguised as salmon, causing the deaths of more than 15 people over the past three years, a doctor said Thursday.

Although banned since 2002, puffer fish continues to be sold in large quantities at local markets and restaurants, said Narin Hiransuthikul of Bangkok’s Chulalonkorn University Hospital.

“Some sellers dye the meat of puffer fish and make it look like salmon which is very dangerous,” Narin said. Narin said over the past three years more than 15 people have died and about 115 were hospitalized from eating the fish.

The ovaries, liver and intestines of the puffer fish contain tetrodotoxin, a poison so potent that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration says it can “produce rapid and violent death.”

The fish is called fugu in Japan, where it is consumed by thrill-seeking Japanese gourmets for whom the risk of poisoning adds piquancy. Every year, there are reports of people dying or falling sick in Asia from eating puffer fish. Eating the fish can cause paralysis, vomiting, heart failure and death.

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Twenty hours after he was reported missing, off Tanjung Tembeling here, a Japanese national was found alive in the sea off the port here, with his diving suit on. A group of fishermen hauled him into their boat, after spotting him at about 8am yesterday.

Yosshindri Miyazawa, 32, a factory manager at the Gebeng industrial area, was brought to Pengkalan Besar in Beserah and then sent to the Tengku Ampuan Afzan Hospital. Hospital director Dr Ardi Awang said Yosshindri would have to be warded for observation as he had been in the water for more than 10 hours. The Japanese is in stable condition.

Yosshindri’s wife, Joann Chong Siaw Wei, 28, was seen pushing him in a wheelchair to a ward. Their German friend, Ernst Turnwald, 54, accompanied her. Turnwald, his 13-year-old son and Yosshindri had gone on a diving trip together on Sunday.

Turnwald made a police report later that day that Yosshindri had gone missing at 1pm while diving some eight nautical miles north east of Tanjung Tembeling. A search and rescue operation involving the police, the civil defence corps and the navy was mounted at 3pm. However, it was close to 20 hours before the fishermen found him.

Turnwald said he was happy that Yosshindri had been found and that he was safe. “Yosshindri called his wife to inform her that he had been saved by the fishermen and we immediately came here to see him,” he added.

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A Dutch scuba diver became the surprise catch of the day for a 13-year-old boy fishing in the Netherlands when his hook got caught in the man’s lip.“I heard a sound on my head and immediately I felt a jerk on my lip,” Wim van Huffelen, who had been swimming in the North Sea, was quoted as saying by Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf. The daily ran a picture of the diver with the hook embedded in his lower lip.

The diver had been swimming close to the shore near the southern Dutch town of Zierikzee. A doctor managed to free him from the hook.

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Time.com has a story about technical divers involved in the recovery of bodies from the Interstate 35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis.

In the days after the Interstate 35W bridge collapse claimed the lives of at least five people and injured more than 100, rescue divers are taking every precaution to make sure they don’t join the tally of victims of the greatest disaster in modern Minnesota history. Shattered glass, gasoline from vehicles, and concrete and reinforcement bars from the fallen bridge provide a host of hazards for divers. And with visibility extending no more than six inches at times, the chances of divers’ snagging and skewering themselves on the wreckage is high. On Saturday, rain was added to the mix.

But with the range of vision so poor, the divers have to use what one rescue official referred to as the “Braille method” of search, physically feeling their way through the water. Capt. Bill Chandler of the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Department supervises the rescue divers, a group of 20 people from several locales, working in groups of three: one person in the water while the other two provide backup. The divers, he said, use sonar to identify potential submerged vehicles. They then carefully make their way to the target and identify what it is.

Capt. John Grant, a member of the Dakota County (Minn.) Sheriff Department’s dive team has participated in missions farther south in the Mississippi River, but he said this one is different. “The visibility is probably worse than it’s ever been,” he said. “It’s very easy to become disoriented.” Grant has had 15 years of rescue and recovery experience, yet he says that finding bodies is no less surreal. “It’s quiet down below the surface, you don’t have the elements of noise from above,” he says. So, he adds, “When you find a dead body below the water, it’s a little nerve-racking but you know you have a job to do and you have to recover that body.” The last official estimate had eight people still missing. But on Saturday authorities were hesistant to address that figure.

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Doctors recommend a good dose of salmon or tuna in the diet because of its benefits to the heart. But is it good for the environment? Conservationists point out that while global fish stocks were getting hammered long before sushi became chic, health trends could add pressure to already vulnerable fisheries.

“The FAO (U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization) estimates that by 2030 average annual per capita global consumption of fish will increase by 1.5 kgs (3.4 pounds) and some of it will be driven by health-related demand,” said Jason Clay, vice president of markets at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

When it comes to omega-3 fatty acids, not all fish are equal. Fatty fish such as trout, salmon, mackerel and Alaska pollock are rich in this crucial group of nutrients. Tuna are, too, but few wild tuna fisheries are regarded by conservationists as sustainable.

“It depends on your source … Omega-3s are very high in wild salmon and the Alaskan salmon fishery is well-managed,” said Phil Kline, an ocean campaigner with Greenpeace.

Alaska salmon are among the fisheries that have been certified as sustainable by the British-based Marine Stewardship Council. It uses stringent criteria for a fishery to get its seal of approval and the right to bear its eco-label.

It has not yet given its blessing to any tuna fishery but is assessing the sustainability of the U.S. Pacific coast albacore tuna industry.

Demand for salmon has certainly been soaring. The species also went from being America’s sixth most popular fish to eat to its third over the same period of time. In a well-managed situation, such demand can lead to conservation: it’s in no one’s interest to deplete something of value.

“In the long run, the more valuable wild salmon are the better they are likely to be protected,” said Gunnar Knapp, a professor of economics at the University of Alaska’s Institute of Social and Economic Research.

He said high demand and prices gave people an incentive to protect vital salmon habitat such as spawning grounds in rivers from other industries such as logging and mining.

“In Alaska, even if the price of salmon were to quadruple it would not lead to too many fish being caught because the limiting factor is not the price but how much the managers allow the fishermen to catch, and they make that assessment purely on biological grounds,” Knapp said.

But he said Russia’s salmon fishery, for example, was not so well managed and could suffer overfishing as prices rise.

For conservationists, the question is whether the latest health trend will result in salmon and other species going the same way as eastern Canada’s cod fishery, once one of the world’s richest which utterly collapsed last decade.

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