Flotsam & Jetsam

Dangerous Animals. In this new film, the leading character, Captain Tucker runs a shark-diving boat off Australia's Gold Coast, taking tourists for an underwater view of the dangerous animals. The film kicks off with an eager couple looking for an adventure, but one soon realizes the dangerous animal is indeed Captain Tucker. And how wicked he is. This fast-paced, spine-tingling horror film, well-cast and with an arthouse patina, is no conventional shark diving tale. It's a below-decks horror story, and if that's your genre, you'll be on a dive boat from hell. Rotten Tomatoes says 86 percent of the critics give it a positive rating. Dangerous Animals is streaming on Amazon Prime and elsewhere.

Blue Whales Sound the Heatwave Alarm. Scientists are sounding the alarm over an unsettling change in the oceans: blue whales, the largest animals on Earth, are going quiet. Two major studies, published in Nature, tracked blue whale calls linked to feeding and mating in two distinct locations: one in New Zealand's South Taranaki Bight between 2016 and 2018, and another in the California Current Ecosystem from 2015 to 2020. Both found stretches of reduced singing, especially during marine heatwave years when krill, the whales' primary food, became scarce. With fewer feeding opportunities, whales devoted more energy to foraging and less to reproductive calls, suggesting that climate-driven disruptions in ocean food webs are directly altering whale behavior.

California Lobster Poachers Caught. While the season has ended, four greedy divers in wetsuits didn't care and were caught exiting the water in the San Pedro neighborhood of Los Angeles, near the Royal Palm Beach. California Department of Fisheries officers caught them in the early hours, returning to their truck, which was loaded with 236 spiny lobsters, 210 of which were undersized. The divers had no fishing licenses nor any measuring devices. Most of the poached lobsters were still alive and returned to the water.

Adrift and Cold. A Russian woman diver, a Finance Ministry official from St. Petersburg, became separated from her group after her dive guide surfaced due to insufficient weight, and spent 24 hours adrift in the cold waters of the Tartar Strait, near the Sea of Japan. 63-year-old Elena Dorofeeva was sighted a day later, 12 miles from the coast, by cadets training aboard the Russian search-and-rescue vessel Otto Schmidt and given treatment for her ordeal.

Remember the Nekton Rorqual? After a career in the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Caymans, and Belize, the distinctive 75-foot liveaboard, featuring a unique no-seasickness design, alongside its sister ship, the Nekton Pilot, which operated in the Bahamas, was sunk as an artificial reef for divers and marine life alike. But in one last flourish of publicity, before it disappeared beneath the waves, 22 miles south of Destin East Pass, it got stuck under a bridge in Destin, FL, forcing traffic to be stopped while it was pulled free. Nobody was injured.

Atlantic Manta in Florida. A new species of manta ray has been confirmed in the waters off Florida. The Atlantic manta (Mobula yarae), the third species of manta, reaches an estimated width of between 16 and 20 feet and has a whip-like tail. An international team contributed photographs, specimens, and genetic data spanning the United States, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Brazil.

No Piracy in PNG. In response to comments of Rob Van der Loos who sold his popular liveaboard, the MV Chertan, a few months back, because, he told us, piracy at sea and violence on land made it impossible to run his business. Alan Raabe, skipper of the MV FeBrina, writes: "I live in the Bismarck Sea, three days steaming from Walindi in Milne Bay. I've been in PNG now for 40 years, and honestly, we've never had any hostility from the locals. Also, as far as bleaching is concerned, Kimbe Bay had a good hit earlier this year, but it's coming back strongly, and I've been diving mainly to Witus, Bainings, and Kavieng, where everything has been pristine. We certainly don't need bad press and a very unfair comment from Rob Van der Loos (Undercurrent August) tarnishing the industry in the entire country, especially after just hanging on through the three years of COVID."

Military Aircraft Wreck Identified. On August 1, technical divers from the Association of Underwater Explorers explored a site 70 miles west of Sarasota, located in 205 feet of water, known as the 33 Fathom Wreck. They believe it is the wreckage of a B-47 Stratojet. During the Cold War, the Strategic Air Command was the tip of the spear for its nuclear arsenal. During in-flight refueling over the Gulf of Mexico, it suffered an engine fire, and the B-47 broke away from its tanker aircraft and fell out of formation. The crew was given orders to bail out, but only one of them made it.

Divers Sentenced for Drug Smuggling. Two Norwegians have been sentenced to prison by an Australian court after being caught attempting to smuggle 176 pounds of cocaine into the port of Newcastle, New South Wales, in January 2023. The drugs had been hidden inside the hull of a Cypriot-registered bulk carrier, MV Stalo. The divers were recruited by an international drug syndicate and supplied with about $60,000 worth of scuba equipment, including rebreathers and scooters, but each got 12 years in jail for their pains.

Global Warming Victim. The island nation of Tuvalu in the South Pacific is made up of nine coral islands and atolls inhabited by just over 11,000 people, but the country's average altitude is just two meters above sea level, making it highly vulnerable to rising oceans, flooding, and storm surges, all exacerbated by the climate crisis. Studies project that much of its territory could be submerged in the next 25 years, forcing its inhabitants to migrate to Australia or elsewhere. Authorities are preparing to carry out the first planned migration of an entire country in response to the effects of climate change.

Boy Loses Hand to Scuba Tank Explosion. He was more than 150 feet away across a beach when a scuba tank exploded in a dive shop in Europe's 18 Montenegro, but a vacationing 14-year-old boy needed his hand amputated after it was injured by shrapnel. Two other people were also injured in the explosion on August 24, including a small child.

An Orange Nurse Shark. An amazing bright orange shark, so far the only one of its kind, was found during a fishing trip near Tortuguero National Park in Costa Rica. Its unusual color is caused by something called xanthism, a condition which researchers say is extremely rare in fish like sharks. The condition occurs when creatures lose their darker pigments. Publishing the pictures in Marine Biology, scientists say that this is the first time that a shark of this color has been found. This shark is even more unique because it also has white eyes, which researchers suggest may indicate albinism. (BBC)

Cave Diving in Downtown Budapest. Beneath the historic streets of Hungary's Budapest lies the hidden world of a vast underwater cave system. More than 200 caves of Molnár János are still alive and growing. Water rich in hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide continues to percolate through the rock, creating a mildly acidic cocktail that eats at the walls. The result is a Swiss cheese labyrinth of chambers and passages. The officially mapped network runs 3.6 miles, but new passages are found regularly. The warm waters have become a Mecca for certified European cave divers. Traveling to Hungary without equipment isn't a problem because full gear rental is available on-site.

Sexual Harassment and the Dive Professional. Recent reports of dive professionals engaging in sexual harassment following an incident in Mexico sparked a conversation on sexual harassment and motivated the local dive community to look deeper into policy, ethics, and codes of conduct. It also resulted in a petition for more concrete measures and a call for immediate action from training agencies on sexual misconduct, harassment, and abuse. A survey of more than 1,000 divers conducted in June and July revealed that 87 percent of all respondents had been harassed by a dive professional at some point, with 96 percent of the offenders being men. You can read the full report here: https://tinyurl.com/28skwt4w