COVER STORY Solmar V to San Benedicto & Socorro It's five days and 250 miles out of Cabo San Lucas on the Baja Peninsula, where the giant mantas and big creature action is supposed to be. Is the big stuff always there? Is it worth the long boat ride? How does the Solmar V stack up against other live-aboards? Our reviewer tells it like it is . . . Where the Schlock Meets the Sea Cabo San Lucas has a perennial spring-break atmosphere, one of almost-desperate festivity. Music blares from every establishment, from the big American chains like Planet Hollywood and the Hard Rock Cafe to the mom-and-pop taquerias, and at the most popular bars, like Kokomo and the Giggling Marlin, waiters with trays of Jello shooters or bandoleers of tequila shots forcefeed the fun. Half the people on the street are wandering around with drinks in hand. Check out where the alternative places to stay are, and find the best operations for land-based diving as well as the best locations for shore dives and snorkeling. Moving to the Tropics - Places Rated If you're thinking of picking up stakes and settling down in a tropical country, what should you consider besides the diving? Think about the overall quality of life: cost of living, culture and recreation, economy, freedom, health, infrastructure, and safety. Check out this list to see if your dream spot lives up to your expectations. The Weather & the Water of Cabo & La Paz What's a one-word description of Baja diving? Variable. Water temperature and visibility vary dramatically. Two divers returning from the Baja only weeks apart can give such different reports that you'll have a difficult time believing they've been to the same destination. Follow this detailed description of the seasonal changes in Baja's weather and water to plan the optimum time for your dive trip. The Equipment at DEMA Our Equipment Editor turns his trained eye to the equipment presented at this year's Diving Equipment and Marketing Association annual show. Diving straight into the depths of the show, he reports on everything from booths preaching the merits of pre-made orthotics to improve the way your feet work (I wonder if they would work with my Mares fins) to those displaying the Atomic titanium regulator and Bridgetown's (hey, they make tires don't they?) mockup/demo of a watch-sized dive computer. Check it out to see if you need to trade in your trusty dive gear for the new and improved . . . Should the Government Investigate BCs? Last fall, the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission sent a letter to all certification and training agencies expressing their concern that buoyancy compensators do not always float a diver face up on the surface and requesting their "views on how to address this potential hazard." Undercurrent reports on their findings. Undercurrent the Ombudsman When you put down a nonrefundable deposit on a trip and don't go, you usually expect to lose it. But what happens if you just want to go later? Put in a Chamber by a Jellyfish Within 20 minutes of surfacing from an 18-minute dive to 85 feet, a diver in Indonesia experienced unusual sensations "like electrical shocks." Over the next hour, the symptoms extended to involuntary muscle contractions, pins and needles in the hands and feet, and general overall pain and nausea. He was put on oxygen and transported to the nearest hyperbaric chamber, but was this treatment necessary? Find out how to tell. Don't let yourself be put into a chamber for the wrong reason. Insider's Guide to Grand Cayman - Do it right and dive your own profile - do it wrong and get blackballed I've moaned about having to surface with 2000 psi still left in my tank while diving on Grand Cayman, and from time to time I've offered a few solutions to this problem by naming a couple of operations that offer more advanced diving. But how do you find out the inside skinny on a destination that has a hundred dive operations to choose from? We found a well-traveled Cayman divemaster we trust-one who formerly lived and worked on the island-who gave us the names of some operators willing to treat experienced divers as adults. Read the full story. Weekly World News Blames Crocodiles The owners of Outer Edge, the Australian boat that left two American divers behind to die (see Undercurrent, April, 1998), will be charged in their disappearance. The divers weren't discovered missing until 48 hours later, when crew members found some of their gear still on board. While the tabloid Weekly World News claims that "scores of crocodiles ate the pair alive," this bit of information comes from a rag that also carried a story about a Georgia family that was depressed because mail order firms are going out of business (since catalog pages are their sole source of toilet paper, they're "really in a fix.") More important to divers, however, is what the Australian government is going to do about the pair's disappearance. More Insurance In this follow-up on last month's coverage of trip cancellation insurance (advising when you need it and when you don't), Undercurrent takes a look at what insuring against theft and baggage loss means to divers, including a new dive-specific equipment loss policy that covers both dive and underwater photo gear. Cayman Explosion At press time, news wire services were reporting one person killed and four others seriously injured when an air compressor exploded on Grand Cayman. Unofficial sources on Cayman told me that one of the storage tanks burst at Parrot's Landing. The employee filling the tanks was killed, and apparently others are still hospitalized, one in critical condition. Considering a similar explosion in Florida recently, might the dive industry now be old enough that aging high-pressure storage have become a growing hazard?

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