We read a lot about diving. Here are some regularly published online resources we enjoy. They
’re all downloadable in PDF files.If your local scuba diving PDF magazine isn’t up to THIS standard, then you’re better off reading these. They’re NOT full of boring articles and they have GREAT photography.Fins Online - A monthly magazine with […]
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Smelly fish skin once tossed away or sold to street vendors for cheap food has become a highly desirable product used to make designer handbags, shoes and even bikinis. Thai entrepreneurs have developed a way of processing skins of the tropical tilapia fish to make durable leather. “We tried to make something that was worth nothing into something valuable,” said Anchali Chatrakul Na Ayudyha, a businesswoman who sells tilapia skin goods on her Web site, www.angieandpenny.com.
The fish-skin bikini was unveiled at a Bangkok fashion show last month and its makers are hoping for orders from Europe and the United States for the unique product.
“It’s comfortable. The bikini can really breathe,” said Sudarat Sae-lim, modelling the scaly, cobalt-blue two-piece. “I like that it’s waterproof, it means it can dry more easily.”
Fish sellers in Petchaburi, 120 km southwest of Bangkok, used to sell the tilapia skins for just a few cents per kilo to street vendors who would fry them up as a cheap snack.
Now each skin fetches around $1.25, and is dried, treated and dyed to make products from key-rings to couches. One bikini needs 15 fish skins to make, and will go on sale for $75.
Going on a road trip to the islands for a scuba expedition. Will be back on Monday!
It will be a well-earned break. You may have noticed that for the past week and a bit more, this website has been getting some really cool stories that other marine news sites never get. Or has been getting stories a lot earlier than other marine news sites.
It’s thanks to a new and highly refined news search pattern.
So you’re always sure of finding more cool stories and more unique stories right here. See you next week!
The Fiji Fisheries Department has allowed turtle meat to be part of the delicacies offered during the Methodist Church of Fiji’s annual conference beginning on Tuesday. The Fijilive website reports that this is despite turtles being on a list of protected species.
The Director of Fisheries Sainaila Nagali says his office has received three separate requests from some members of the Methodist Church in the province seeking to harvest about several turtles for feasting during the 3-day conference.
Mr Nagali says he has taken the protected status of the turtles into account and has recommended to the Fisheries Permanent Secretary to allow the fishing for just one turtle for each application.
SHARK patrols on Adelaide’s beaches could be increased for less money using a new unmanned aircraft.
The Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) has been designed by a mechanical engineering team at the University of Adelaide, and researchers believe the vehicle could replace manned aerial flights that keep watch for sharks during summer months.
Project member and aeronautical engineering student Jonathan Bannister said the prototype has taken nine months to design and build, but said that production could be sped up to meet demand.
The vehicle, which has wings 2m in diameter, a 1.5m fuselage, and weighs just 10 kilos, can operate for up to an hour and a half on batteries. The UAV can send live streaming video from a 10km radius back to a central station, where footage can be monitored for the presence of sharks.
“We think it can operate at somewhere between $50 and $100 a day,” Mr Banister said. “You could have eight of these running, one for every one of Adelaide’s main beaches, for much less than the $1200 a day it takes for a manned flight.”
The incessant rain today did not stop Phuket City’s ethnic Chinese from turning out en masse to pay their respects to the dead on the first day of the annual “Por Tor” festival.
The festival, officially opened by Phuket Governor Niran Kalayanamit at 1 pm, saw hundreds lighting joss sticks and offering cakes in the shapes of turtles, the Chinese symbol of longevity, from 10 am to 6 pm.
Stalls selling food, snacks and handicrafts have been set up along the road, many with turtle cakes on display. The turtle cakes are not for sale, though many are given away as a way to make merit.
A large screen has been set up to show movies tomorrow evening. Although the movies are being shown to honor the dead, the living are invited to come and enjoy them too.
The festival is being held between Suriyadej Circle and Jui Tui Shrine on Ranong Rd, which is closed to traffic until Friday. The festival will conclude on Friday with a ceremony at Bang Niow Shrine on Phuket Rd, just south of Ong Sim Phai Rd.
A mandarin farmer in Karatsu, Saga Prefecture admitted Tuesday to having accidentally leaked a large amount of pesticide into a ditch, the Sankei Shimbun reports. When the prefecture inspected the nearby Tamashima river, they found some 3,000 sweetfish (ayu) and brook trout had died because of the leakage.
According to the prefecture’s environmental section, a hose leading to a tank filled with mite insecticide became clogged up and came off, leading to some 300 liters of the substance ran into a nearby ditch..
Tamashima river is famous for being a good spot for sweetfish, but there has since June this year been several reports of large finds of large amounts of the fish dead. The prefecture is currently examining whether there is a link to mandarin and other farmers’ use of pesticide.
Magnificent coral reefs on Mexico’s Caribbean island of Cozumel appear to have been unscathed by Hurricane Dean, delighting dive operators and diving enthusiasts.
Dean crashed into the Yucatan Peninsula on Tuesday south of Cozumel and Cancun as a potentially catastrophic Category 5 storm, the most powerful kind of hurricane. But there were no reports of death or serious damage.
“I saw no damage. Just some extra sand on the reefs,” dive master Mario Jimenez said on Wednesday after guiding tourists on a midday dive through Palancar Gardens, a system of intricate and colorful coral formations on the southern part of the island. It was one of the first dives on the reef since operations ceased in the area on Sunday ahead of the storm’s approach.
The water, famed for its almost gin-like clarity, had taken on murky hue more akin to tequila. But that change is standard after a storm and it was expected to clear up in days.
Cozumel, considered one of the world’s top diving spots and a big draw for Mexico’s tourism industry, was badly hit in 2005 by Hurricane Wilma. The storm mauled hotels with high winds, flooded the famous beach resort of Cancun and damaged reefs. “After Wilma we saw lots of damage. We saw a bunch of dead coral and broken pieces of reef,” said Jimenez, who has been a dive master in the area for 13 years.
Underwater hockey, organised by the Stirling Underwater Hockey Club in Singapore, is often met with incredulity and hilarity by those uninitiated in the sport. But players say it is more challenging than the field game — and a lot cooler.
“Underwater hockey is really like hockey, it’s just that we play it in a pool and not on in a rink or on a field,” said Adam Chan, who plays both field and underwater hockey. “It’s probably more challenging to play in the pool because you have to learn to regulate your breathing.” he said, “I enjoy it but people are always shocked when I tell them I play underwater hockey.”
The sport involves lead pucks not too different from those used in ice hockey, sticks and gloves. But the players wear bathing suits and swimming trunks, flippers, snorkels and caps with bulging ear cups.
The sport was invented in Britain in the 1950s, where it is also called “Octopush”, by a group of divers who wanted to get a workout in the water when it was too cold to dive in the sea. It has since garnered an international following. Players keen to keep up the sport around teh world check out clubs online at “The Underwater Hockey Tourist”.
In Singapore, the sport was introduced three years ago by three expatriates who used to play in the Philippines and Australia. Their ranks have since grown to have more than 80 members, said Adele Chiew, the club’s vice president. “We wanted to introduce the sport in Singapore because it’s really a great sport played internationally,” added Joey Carpio, one of the club’s founders. “There are variations but a typical game would usually have six players per team.”
Carpio is resigned to the fact that the sport’s popularity is limited by the fact that it is not spectator-friendly. “It’s not like underwater hockey is ever going to receive much funding or endorsements. Where are you going to put the ads?” said Chan.
A man in a Revolutionary War-era submarine was cited by the U.S. Coast Guard for drifting into a security zone, and for unsafe sailing in New York’s East River near the Queen Mary 2 luxury liner, the Coast Guard and New York City Police Department said Friday.
The man in the replica vessel was identified as 35-year-old Philip “Duke” Riley of Brooklyn, N.Y., according to Coast Guard spokesman Petty Officer Seth Johnson.
Authorities said it was the second time Riley had floated the vessel in the vicinity of the cruise ship. The submarine, which reportedly did not have a mechanical propulsion system, was being towed by two other men in a rowboat.
Riley was questioned by police after a guard on the Queen Mary 2 spotted the 8-by-4-foot fiberglass and wood submarine, a replica of a 1775 model called the “Turtle,” within 200 feet of the ship. The U.S. Coast Guard also responded to the scene.
Oxygen tanks were discovered inside the vessel, but no threatening devices or materials were found onboard.
The “Turtle,” invented in Connecticut by David Bushnell, was the first combat submarine designed to plant explosives on the sides of ships, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Riley describes himself as an “artist” and “patriot,” who combines “populist myths and reinvented historical obscurities with contemporary social dilemmas.”
On his website, he writes, “Throughout my projects, I profile the space where water meets the land, traditionally marking the periphery of urban society, what lies beyond rigid moral constructs, a sense of danger and possibility.”