Truly, Viroit Cave was like a photo studio set up especially for the underwater photographer. We were in luck with the conditions of the site. We had nice weather and lots of sunshine. On top of that, there was almost no wind, which allowed the sun’s rays to easily penetrate the surface of the water. During our subsequent dives, we explored some side corridors of the deep shaft. There was a portion of the vertical shaft that sloped upwards, where there was an air space. However, there was no time to explore all these areas. The current inside the cave was not strong at all, which enabled us to swim around easily. We also got the sense that the current became less and less over the following days. Due to the constant flow, visibility in the cave was always optimal. But when we entered into the water, we had to be careful not to touch too many of the underwater plants. Any plants that were disturbed remained floating around in the water column, which was noticeable in the photos we reviewed after each dive.
Divers descending down the deep shaft of Viroit Cave, Gjirokaster, Albania. Photo by Vic Verlinden.
After our dives, we were interviewed by various Albanian television stations, which were interested in our activities. All of the people with whom we came into contact in order to complete our expedition were very helpful. In the days following our dives at Viroit Cave, we had the opportunity to see some sights and museums in the area, which were definitely worth the visit. Albania will surely become one of the hotspots in Europe for diving in the coming years! Having dived over 400 wrecks, Vic Verlinden is an avid, pioneering wreck diver, award-winning underwater photographer and dive guide from Belgium. His work has been published in dive magazines and technical diving publications in the United States, Russia, France, Germany, Belgium, United Kingdom and the Netherlands. He is the organizer of the tekDive-Europe technical dive show. Please visit: tekdive-europe.com.
Madison Blue Rocky Horror Cave Diving Raw footage
Madison Blue Rocky Horror Cave Diving Raw footage
Location:
Blue Spring is about 10 miles east of Madison on the west bank of the Withlacoochee River (on the border of Madison and Hamilton Counties). From Live Oaks, go west on Rt. 90, crossing over the Suwannee River and turn right on Old Blue Spring Highway in the little town of Lee. Follow that to Rt 6, then right, then right at park on the west side of the Withlacoochee River bridge.
From Luraville:
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go west on 51, right at County Hwy 53 to County Hwy 255, go north, crossing over I-10 to the little town of Lee, then just after crossing Rt 90, take a right onto Peachtree Drive to Old Blue Spring Highway. Follow that to Rt 6, then right, then right at park on the west side of the Withlacoochee River bridge.
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go east on 51, left at Rt 152 (to the right is Rt 252), which is the road to Charles Spring. Take the sharp right turn after a few miles onto Beulah Road (just stay on the pavement). This takes you to County Hwy 250. Take a left on 250 and you will pass through a small town, over the Suwannee River, then take a right onto County Hwy 255. Go north, crossing over I-10 to the little town of Lee, then just after crossing Rt 90, take a right onto Peachtree Drive to Old Blue Spring Highway. Follow that to Rt 6, then right, then right at park on the west side of the Withlacoochee River bridge.
Dangerous Cave Scuba Diving in Hospital Hole @ Weeki Wachee River Florida
Dangerous Cave Scuba Diving in Hospital Hole @ Weeki Wachee River Florida
Location:
Hospital Hole (aka Fish Hospital) is in a sharp bend of the Weeki Wachee River 1,000 feet upstream from State Hwy 595 bridge.
Description:
For some unknown reason, this is one of my favorite dive sites. The hole itself is in the third bend south of Roger's Park on the Weeki Wachee River. The name comes from local legend where it is told that injured fish come to this site to be healed before returning to the sea. Access is restricted from land due to private homes, but one can easily canoe or even walk upriver from the park to the dive site. Roger's Park is open year round with a boat dock and launch ramp, but there is a $2 park fee ( per vehicle) during daylight hours in the summer. The main hole is about 150 ft in diameter and reaches a depth of 135-140 feet. There are several solution tubes in the overhangs along the south and southwest wall. One of the tubes goes to the surface, but the others, while large enough for a diver to enter, are blocked at the top (around 20 ft). Water from the spring flowed through these tubes long ago before the ceiling of the cavern collapsed (now the main sink). There are a few flowing springs coming from the wall around 70 feet, just above the hydrogen sulfide layer. Between 70 and 80 feet there is a thick cloud like layer of hydrogen sulfide that blocks most light below it. Below the layer, whose depth fluctuates with the tide, visibility is usually very good. There is a small john boat on the bottom around 135 feet. There is not much of interest away from the boat until you get to the walls. Graffiti from divers over the past decade written into the walls adds to the fun of the dive. The shape of the sink itself is like a small boot with no passage or major overhangs observed yet. The ceiling gently slopes upward towards the opening. This site is great for any open water diver, although only those who are cavern certified should attempt to go below the cloud layer, even during daylight hours, as the low light, foul smell, and high silt can be challenging to those without depth experience.
Floridacaves.com
Cave, Cavern, and Sinkhole Diving
See live mermaids daily at Weeki Wachee Springs State Park
See live mermaids daily at Weeki Wachee Springs State Park
Weeki Wachee River Spring
The river boat ride. Free with park admission at Weeki Wachee Springs State Park!
Weeki Wachee Springs & River in 4K
Weeki Wachee Springs & River in 4K
Diver and underwater photographer Alison Perkins.
Scuba diving has been one of the great joys of my life. Spluttering my way through a dive course, I fell in love with the underwater world. Below the water's surface, camera in hand, I feel challenged to capture pictures of the amazing things I observe. From my beginnings as an open ocean diver, I have progressed to a love of cave diving. New Zealand's oceans are my regular playgrounds. In her cool waters there are a myriad of wild nudibranchs, curious fish, seals, dolphins, kelp-covered reefs, plunging walls, wrecks and swim throughs telling of a volcanic past. It might be the miniscule that excites you; colourful macro opportunities abound. Or the wide-angle reefscapes crowded by schooling fish that make your heart beat faster.
I can happily spend an hour scanning a wall, searching for a nudibranch I've never seen before. Or sign up for one week swimming with sharks and be thrilled to be spending it with animals that are so widely misunderstood. I'm just excited to be there, with my underwater camera. Travels in New Zealand, Australia, USA, Mexico and the Bahamas have furnished these underwater photos. The wish list of places to explore in future grows ever longer. The more I see, the more I want to see. The world is full of breathtaking underwater locations. Capturing these places in breathtaking photos is what keeps me going back. A world below water has been my inspiration.
I hope it can be yours too.
Alison Perkins
My underwater photographs appear in these books:
Bringing Back the Birdsong by Wade and Jan Doak
Coastal Fishes of New Zealand, Identification, Biology, Behaviour by Malcolm Francis
New Zealand Coastal Marine Invertebrates 1 by Steve de C. Cook
Ocean Innovation: Biomimetics Beneath the Waves by Iain A. Anderson, Julian Vincent, John Montgomery
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Canterbury wreck
Ten years have passed since the ex-Navy frigate of the HMNZS Canterbury was scuttled in Deep Water Cove in the Bay of Islands.
Canterbury Wreck - the Bridge
Deep Water Cove in the Bay of Islands is a no fishing zone. The cove is the final resting place of the wreck of the ex-HMNZS Canterbury.
Ugly is beautiful
A mutilated jaw doesn't make this Crested blenny any less beautiful in my eyes.
Diving the HMNZS Canterbury Wreck - Engine Room Upper Plates Penetration
Diving the HMNZS Canterbury Wreck - Engine Room Upper Plates Penetration
The former Navy Frigate Canterbury F421 now rests in Deep Water Cove near Cape Brett. Upright and intact, she makes for an impressive sight in a great dive location! Divers hit the bow at about 20m and can swim through the bridge to the helicopter hanger at 27m.
The upper deck, bridge and first floor levels are easily within recreational diving range.The lower levels are for more advanced divers with the stern resting at approximately 36m. Fish are already making themselves at home aboard the Canterbury, with resident schools in the bridge and around the funnel.
Canterbury F421
HMNZS Canterbury (F421) was one of two broad beam Leander-class frigates operated by the Royal New Zealand Navy (RNZN) from 1971 to 2005. She was built in Scotland and launched in 1970. Commissioned in 1971, Canterbury saw operational service in much of Australasia and other regions like the Persian Gulf. She undertook operations such as supporting UN sanctions against Iraq and peace-keeping in East Timor. With her sister ship HMNZS Waikato she relieved the Royal Navy frigate HMS Amazon in the Indian Ocean during the Falklands War. Early in HMNZS Canterbury's career, in 1973, she relieved the frigate HMNZS Otago at Moruroa during anti-nuclear protests. This was due to F 421 being the most effectively insulated frigate from nuclear fallout, with the Improved Broad Beam Leander steam plant, for example, being remote controlled and capable of unmanned operation and therefore the ship provided a more effective sealed citadel for operations in areas of nuclear explosions. During her time in service, she travelled about 960,000 nautical miles (44 circumnavigations of the Earth), and was temporary home for 559 officers and 3,269 ratings.
After being decommissioned in 2005, there was talk of converting her into a floating hostel. However, during a 2004 inspection, corrosion of the ship's structure had been found to be too serious for her to stay afloat in the long term without very costly maintenance. Enthusiasts at the Bay of Islands Canterbury Charitable Trust proposed the idea of scuttling her as a dive wreck at Depp Water Cove in the Bay of Islands. The New Zealand Navy ships Tui and Waikato are already lying on the ground off the Tutukaka Coast, while the Greenpeace ship "Rainbow Warrior" was scuttled off Matauri Bay. It is hoped that the wreck, in addition to becoming an artificial reef enhancing biodiversity, will also provide additional options for the regions diving tourism. It is considered that removed scrap metal and equipment (such as ship's lockers or the propeller) will bring up to NZ$400,000 to offset the NZ$650,000 costs of cleaning up and scuttling her, while the worth to the local economy could be in the millions. The ship itself had been sold to the trust for a symbolic NZ$1. Her 4.5-inch Mk V'Mk 6 gun turret was removed to become part of the exhibits at a planned new navy museum in Auckland.
Wreck of the Rainbow Warrior.
The ship was sunk by imported plastic explosives placed at 12 locations around the hull (totalling only 14 kg (31 lb) in weight). The sinking was prepared by Norman Greenall, once Chief Petty Officer (shipwright) on Canterbury, who has undertaken the scuttling of other New Zealand Navy ships (like HMNZS Wellington). Greenall has a somewhat colourful reputation in the navy as the person who has "sunk more of our navy ships than the enemy did in the whole of the Second World War" – however, the actual sinking of Canterbury was performed by UK company Cadre One, Canterbury now lies on the seabed in Deep Water Cove. The frigate offered good diving, especially with the ship being mostly intact (contrary to many similar dive wrecks which have broken up) and especially when other places such as Matauri Bay were unavailable due to weather conditions. Due to depletion of stocks at Deep Water Cove and the surrounding area a ban has been placed on fishing for the time being, though there is still access to the wreck.
Image Above - Rob Stewart
Rob Stewart (December 28, 1979 – January 31, 2017) was a Canadian photographer, filmmaker and conservationist. He was best known for making and directing the documentary films Sharkwater and Revolution. He died at the age of 37 in a scuba diving incident while in Florida filming Sharkwater Extinction. Stewart was born in 1979, in Toronto, Ontario, the son of Sandra and Brian Stewart. He began underwater photography as a teenager, and became a scuba diving trainer at eighteen years old. He attended both Lawrence Park Collegiate Institute and Crescent School in Toronto as a youth. For four years, Stewart worked as chief photographer for the Canadian Wildlife Federation's magazines, and worked as a freelace journalist. He won awards for his journalism. He held a bachelor's degree in Biology from the University of Western Ontario, and studied zoology and marine biology in Kenya and Jamaica.
REVOLUTION Documentary on Earth's Environmental Emergency
REVOLUTION Documentary on Earth's Environmental Emergency
Stewart got the idea to make the movie Sharkwater at age 22, when he found illegal longline fishing in the Galapagos Marine Reserve. He travelled through fifteen countries for the next four years, studying and filming sharks, and going undercover to confront the shark fin industry. Sharkwater went on to win more than 40 awards at top film festivals. His follow-up film, 2012's Revolution, builds on Sharkwater, examining environmental collapse. In 2013, it was the highest grossing Canadian documentary, and it received 19 awards from global film festivals. In 2012 Stewart released the book Save the Humans, a biography detailing the importance of sharks in his life and the importance of making a positive impact in the ocean. In 2016, Stewart launched a Kickstarter to fund Sharkwater: Extinction, a sequel to Sharkwater that would focus on the 80 million sharks killed per year that are unaccounted for by scientists. He was working on the film at the time of his death.
Stewart won more than 40 international awards for Sharkwater and 19 for Revolution. Sharkwater earned Stewart the Best Documentary and the Audience Favorite Award at the 2006 Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival, the People's Choice Award at the 2006 Atlantic Film Festival and a Special Jury Award at the 2006 Hawaii International Film Festival, and the film was selected by the Toronto International Film Festival Group as one of the top ten Canadian films of 2006. In 2007, his film won the Audience and Best Feature awards at the Gen Art Film festival. In 2008, he received a Genie Awards nomination for Best Documentary. He received a Genesis Award for Outstanding Documentary, and an Environmental Vision award at the 35th annual Vision awards in 2008, held in Los Angeles.
In late January 2017, Stewart was in Florida filming Sharkwater Extinction, a sequel to Sharkwater. On January 31st, he and his dive partner resurfaced from a deep wreck dive of the Queen of Nassau. His dive leader Peter Sotis fell unconscious while boarding the crew's boat, and as the ship team rushed to provide assistance, Stewart, who was still in the water, vanished. Paul Watson, a marine wildlife conservation and environmental activist and friend of Stewart's, noted that he had been using a rebreather which could have rendered him unconscious as well. A search was launched, and on February 3rd, the United States Coast Guard confirmed that Stewart's body had been located in the water approximately 200 feet (61 m) down, close to the spot on the surface from which he had disappeared. The cause of death was unclear initially. Stewart's funeral was held at Bloor Street United Church in Toronto on February 18, 2017. Released months later, the autopsy report from the Monroe County medical examiner stated that Stewart had died from drowning after succumbing to acute lack of oxygen (Hypoxia) at the surface of the ocean. In spring 2017, Stewart's family filed a wrongful death lawsuit alleging that the death was caused by the negligence of the dive operators who provided equipment that did not meet US safety standards and left Stewart in the water without a dive leader.
Rob freediving with a Caribbean reef shark (Photo: Verushka Matchett / Sharkwater.com)
Stewart was working on a sequel film, Sharkwater Extinction, at the time of his death. Using footage already shot by Stewart as well as his written comments, the movie was completed by film and story editor Nick Hector and director Sturia Gunnarsson for the Rob Stewart Foundation. It premiered at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival in September, as a "Special Event" screening that also incorporated a memorial tribute to Stewart and his legacy; the official release date was set for October 5. His mother Sandy Stewart said about the completion of the film that "[the] entire team stayed with it, everybody stepped up. We have people from all over the world – cinematographers, filmmakers, really important people – offering to help finish this, and that was really heartwarming." At the 5th Canadian Screen Awards on March 12th, 2017, the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television announced that its annual award for Science or Nature Documentary Program would be renamed the Rob Stewart Award in Stewart's memory.
Sharkwater Extinction Trailer #1 (2018) | Movieclips Indie
Sharkwater Extinction Trailer #1 (2018) | Movieclips Indie
A Rebreather is a complex instrument that regulates various gasses to create the mix while scrubbing out carbon dioxide to allow a diver to stay under water for longer and also to dive much deeper if required. Rebreather diving is used by recreational, military and scientific divers in applications where it has advantages over open circuit scuba, and surface supply of breathing gas is impracticable. The main advantages of rebreather diving are extended gas endurance, and lack of bubbles.
Rebreathers are more complex to use than open circuit scuba, and have more potential points of failure, so acceptably safe use requires a greater level of skill, attention and situational awareness, which is usually derived from understanding the systems, diligent maintenance and overlearning the practical skills of operation and fault recovery. A rebreather recirculates the exhaled gas for re-use and does not discharge it immediately to the surroundings. The inert gas and unused oxygen is kept for reuse, and the rebreather adds gas to replace the oxygen that was consumed, and removes the carbon dioxide. Thus, the gas in the rebreather's circuit remains breathable and supports life and the diver needs only carry a fraction of the gas that would be needed for an open-circuit system. The saving is proportional to the ambient pressure, so is greater for deeper dives, and is particularly significant when expensive mixtures containing helium are used as the inert gas diluent. The rebreather also adds gas to compensate for compression when depth increases, and vents gas to prevent overexpansion when depth decreases.
The main advantage of the rebreather over open circuit breathing equipment is economical use of gas. With open circuit scuba, the entire breath is expelled into the surrounding water when the diver exhales. A breath inhaled from an open circuit scuba system whose cylinders are filled with ordinary air is about 21% oxygen. When that breath is exhaled back into the surrounding environment, it has an oxygen level in the range of 15 to 16% when the diver is at atmospheric pressure. This leaves the available oxygen utilization at about 25%; the remaining 75% is lost. As the remaining 79% of the breathing gas (mostly nitrogen) is inert, the diver on open-circuit scuba only uses about 5% of his/her cylinders' contents. At depth, the advantage of a rebreather is even more marked. The diver's metabolic rate is independent of ambient pressure (i.e. depth), and thus the oxygen consumption rate does not change with depth. The production of carbon dioxide does not change either since it also depends on the metabolic rate. This is a marked difference from open circuit where the amount of gas consumed increases as depth increases since the density of the inhaled gas increases with pressure, and the volume of a breath remains almost unchanged.
When compared with open circuit scuba, rebreathers have some disadvantages, including expense, complexity of operation and maintenance, and more critical paths to failure. A malfunctioning rebreather can supply a gas mixture which contains too little oxygen to sustain life, too much oxygen which may cause convulsions, or it may allow carbon dioxide to build up to dangerous levels. Some rebreather designers try to solve these problems by monitoring the system with electronics, sensors and alarm systems. These are expensive and susceptible to failure, improper configuration and misuse. A major disadvantage of a rebreather is that, due to a failure, gas may continue to be available for breathing, but the mixture provided may not support life, and this may not be apparent to the user. With open circuit, this type of failure can only occur if the diver selects an unsuitable gas, and the most common type of open circuit failure, the lack of gas supply, is immediately obvious, and corrective steps like changing to an alternative supply would be taken immediately.
Are Rebreathers THAT Dangerous?!
Are Rebreathers THAT Dangerous?!
The bailout requirement of rebreather diving can sometimes also require a rebreather diver to carry almost as much bulk of cylinders as an open-circuit diver so the diver can complete the necessary decompression stops if the rebreather fails completely. Some rebreather divers prefer not to carry enough bailout for a safe ascent breathing open circuit, but instead rely on the rebreather, believing that an irrecoverable rebreather failure is very unlikely. This practice is known as alpinism or alpinist diving and is generally deprecated due to the perceived extremely high risk of death if the rebreather fails.
What is a Rebreather and How Does It Work Part 1 Presented By Scott's Scuba Service
A major difference between rebreather diving and open-circuit scuba diving is in controlling neutral buoyancy. When an open-circuit scuba diver inhales, a quantity of highly compressed gas from their cylinder is reduced in pressure by a regulator, and enters the lungs at a much higher volume than it occupied in the cylinder. This means that the diver has a tendency to rise slightly with each inhalation, and sink slightly with each exhalation. This does not happen to a rebreather diver, because the diver is circulating a roughly constant volume of gas between his lungs and the breathing bag. This is not specifically an advantage or disadvantage, but it requires some practice to adjust to the difference.
A basic need with a rebreather is to keep the partial pressure of oxygen (ppO2) in the mix from getting too low (causing hypoxia) or too high (causing oxygen toxicity). If not enough new oxygen is being added, the proportion of oxygen in the loop may be too low to support life. In humans, the urge to breathe is normally caused by a build-up of carbon dioxide in the blood, rather than lack of oxygen. The resulting serious hypoxia causes sudden blackout with little or no warning. This makes hypoxia a deadly problem for rebreather divers. The failure to remove carbon dioxide from the breathing gas results in a buildup of carbon dioxide leading to hypercapnia. This may occur gradually, over several minutes, with enough warning to the diver to bail out, or may happen in seconds, often associated with a sudden increase in depth which proportionately increases the partial pressure of the carbon dioxide, and when this happens the onset of symptoms may be so sudden and extreme that the diver is unable to control their breathing sufficiently to close and remove the DSV and swap it for a bailout regulator. This problem can be mitigated by using a bailout valve built into the rebreather mouthpiece which allows switch-over between the loop and open circuit without taking the mouthpiece out.
The family of filmmaker Rob Stewart has expanded its lawsuit over his January 2017 scuba diving death off Islamorada in the Florida Keys. The initial suit was filed against Horizon Dive Adventures, (Add Helium) the Fort Lauderdale company whose principal, Peter Sotis, trained Stewart on using the complex diving equipment. Sotis’ wife Claudia was also sued. According to recently filed court documents, a former company Director alleges Add Helium had been selling Chinese dive tanks in the US with faked CE certificates. Even worse though, the company is alleged to have been selling kit illegally to Libyan Terrorists. In court documents filed, Add Helium was advised by US Authorities last year not to sell any hardware to a Libyan who was suspected of terrorist activity, however it would seem a sale went ahead anyway. More recently, a disgruntled shareholder withdraw a large chunk of cash from the Add Helium Bank account, forcing the company’s closure. Several of the company Directors, including Sotis himself, have since filed for bankruptcy. Peter Sotis was convicted of Armed Robbery and sentenced to 3 years in prison. On getting out of prison he gradually found his way into tech diving, and founded his company Add Helium, which specialises in Rebreathers.
Attorneys for Stewart’s family amended the complaint in late January to include two dive boat crew members, a dive industry trade association that writes certification guidelines for underwater breathing equipment and the manufacturer of the gear Stewart used on the day he died. The family amended the complaint on Jan. 28 to include rEvo, the Belgium-based company that makes the rebreathers worn by Stewart and Sotis that day, Pisces crewmen David Wilkerson and Robert Steele, and the International Association of Nitrox Divers, Inc. ( IANTD). The new complaint contends that Wilkerson and Steele, as well as Horizon, “supervised, planned, ordered, operated or controlled the subject dive and vessel.”
Parents of film maker and conservationist Rob Stewart, Sandy and Brian Stewart CREDIT: MICHELLE DAY/MICHELLE DAY
The Stewarts’ attorneys argued in the original complaint Horizon was responsible for Stewart’s death because crew members took their eyes off him long enough for him to disappear into the ocean depths. Sotis and Add Helium, the lawsuit alleges, did not properly train Stewart on his rebreather before allowing him to undertake three dangerous deep dives using a highly complex piece of dive gear. The complaint against rEvo doesn’t state the rebreather was faulty. Rather, it states the company was negligent in Stewart’s death because Sotis and Add Helium served as “agents” of the company in Florida. Likewise with IANTD. The complaint states it is “a dive certification entity and provided dive training courses and dive training certification to” [Stewart] “via its instructor trainers and instructors, which served as IANTD’s agents.”
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Horizon subsequently filed a claim alleging that Stewart’s rebreather, made by REVO, was one of the reasons for his death. Court documents filed by REVO, however, dispute this, stating that the computer data from the rebreather showed the rebreather was working just fine. One element that came to light from testimony from the boat captain was that Stewart was on the surface for 3 minutes when he then became incoherent and unresponsive with no assistance rendered from the boat crew as “it was up to the passengers to decide if they wanted to voluntarily enter the water to save a drowning man.” The captain is accused of driving the boat away from Stewart when he became unresponsive. They should have sent someone in after him, the court papers allege. The boat’s captain, David Wilkerson, said in a statement that he was repositioning the vessel to bring a tagline to Stewart: “I repositioned the boat to get the line to Rob immediately, at which time he disappeared from the surface, this took approximately 10 seconds to reposition the boat.”
Additionally, REVO’s documents allege that the charter boat company didn’t comply with U.S. occupational and safety guidelines when conducting deep dives with rebreathers. Not only that, the documents allege that the charter boat company “and its cohorts were masquerading as a dive team from the Key Largo Volunteer Fire Department,” when no such official dive team exists. When Stewart’s body was found several days later, the documents state: “Among other things, the divers tampered with evidence by using Stewart’s breathing gas in an attempt to inflate his scuba gear, and they failed to photograph the scene using either the [remotely operated vehicle] or an underwater camera.“