Best Dive Places In Utah

February 5, 2014 | admin

Utah has plenty of activities for anyone that loves the outdoors. One outdoor activity that many people may not think of is diving. There are plenty of places to enjoy the warm water in Utah, and even practice diving for vacations out of state.

One great place to go diving is the thermally heated water at Homestead Resorts. This small cave has perfectly heated water for the ultimate diving experience. With light streaming in from the small opening in the natural rock roof, there is just enough light to explore the water. You may discover a wheel or other pioneer tools that were left behind by the former residents of this valley. The Homestead also has other activities for both summer and winter after you finish diving.

Another hot spot is in the middle of the Bonneville Salt Flats, in the heated saltwater springs termed “hot pots.” Called Bonneville SeaBase, there are three sea dives which allow you to explore the same tropical, saltwater fish that you’d see in a Cayman dive. These sea dives are appropriately termed White Rocks Bay, Habitat Bay, and Abyss. The water is a balmy 72 to 79 degrees, with depths of 60 feet and visibility around 10 feet.

If you want better visibility and don’t mind a little colder water, try the local favorite dive, Fish Lake. With visibility of 30 feet, and plenty of fish, particularly crayfish, this dive is great for those looking for a little more action.

For a more diverse dive, try Flaming Gorge. This reservoir was created on the Utah and Wyoming border when the Green River was dammed up. There are myriads of fish to swim by in this reservoir, including lake trout, crayfish, bass, and plenty of other hunting possibilities for fish and treasure. With 30 to 60 feet visibility, there is plenty to see in this dive area.

Diving Into The Clear Waters Of The Whitsunday Islands

February 5, 2014 | admin

The sea’s calming blue-green color and refreshing waves can really entice people to jump into its waters with little hesitation. However, before diving into the deep, there are a few things you need to keep in mind. These safety measures may come in handy in avoiding accidents and mishaps, especially during scuba diving activities.

In Whitsunday Islands, Queensland, professional diving instructors teach their students, whether tourists or not, the proper approach to deep-sea diving. Not only are these experts certified and authentic, but they are also highly trained and knowledgeable in first aid treatments needed during diving-related emergencies.

Scuba diving trainers oblige divers, especially beginners, to follow every detail of their instructions. Inspect each piece of diving equipment you’re going to use, to see if the equipment functions properly. Check if there are cracks on the surface of the goggles, because these can affect underwater visibility. Oxygen tanks must not have holes or leaks as well. Hoses that connect one’s breathing apparatus should be tightly attached.

Diving instructors also advise against solo Whitsunday diving. It’s always best to have a dining companion, preferably one who knows how to administer CPR and other emergency procedures. Your diving companion should also be capable of calling for help in case serious diving problems occur. Swim only in areas where the instructor can see you. Do not go deeper unless the instructor permits you to.

Scuba diving Whitsundays may be a recreational activity, but it still requires tourists to take some safety measures. Tourists who intend to scuba dive must be in good physical condition. This reduces the health-related risks of the activity. It would also help to check the weather forecast, although most diving trainers in the Whitsundays cancel or postpone diving activities during inclement weather.

Drink plenty of water before whit Sunday diving. This lowers your chances of experiencing dehydration while underwater. You should also make sure that the scuba wetsuit fits you properly. A suit that’s too tight can restrict your movement underwater, and can even affect your breathing. A suit that’s too loose, on the other hand, does not provide proper insulation and may cause hypothermia.

Bali Scuba Diving

January 30, 2014 | admin

Besides have the ultimate traditions and cultures, Bali have amazing nature, land and marine, also underwater scene. You can holiday, vacation and adventure in this paradise island. Bali some times have status best travel destinations in the world. You can look the original Bali and will go in some time a go.  Bali’s underwater treasures still kept secret, and water temperature can changing rapidly. Long renowned by marine biologists and international underwater photographers, Bali’s magnificent diving is now recognised by discerning divers as one of the “must dive” locations of the world.

Infrastructure for diving is developed more perfectly. The infrastructure to provide access to some of Bali’s great dive sites has been put in place. Several first class dive operators provide excellent service and meet all international safety requirements, so divers can be assured of a wonderful diving experience. It is well worth contacting several operators and doing a little homework to ensure that the company you choose meets your expectations.  The greatest feature of scuba diving in Bali is the rich and varied sites – deep drop-offs and steep banks, coral ridges and bommies, one of the most famous wrecks in the world, volcanic outcrops and sea grass beds. With the colourful and diverse marine life, there is enough here to keep you coming back for more.

Bali, is an unmissable dive destination. Again the answer lies in the variety of its attractions. Many dive locations in the North of the Island offer sheltered diving in gentle conditions, in many cases easily accessed from the shore. In other locations the strong currents provide exhilarating and challenging opportunities for drift diving. The strong upwelling from the exceptionally deep channels around Bali provide a rich feeding ground for the marine life, which is abundant, and ranges from spectacularly beautiful and rare macro species through to the huge mola mola or oceanic sunfish.

Bali is in fact one of only two locations in the world where sunfish can be predicted to appear at certain times of the year. Seeing these giants of the ocean hanging in the current, being cleaned by shoals of Moorish Idol, is indeed a memorable sight. Very little is known about these creatures. The mola mola visiting Bali have been included in ongoing research to try to establish more information about these gentle giants. The sunfish are most frequently sighted around Nusa Lembongan, Ceningan and Penida, but can also be spotted on other dive sites around Bali.  The strong currents also provide an ideal environment for sharks, which are often sighted (and particularly so) on Bali East Coast. A variety of rays can also be seen including the largest of the rays, the manta. Nusa Penida is particularly popular with divers who wish to see the manta rays, as there is a resident group there.

Many interesting and unusual species make Bali their home. Cuttlefish and octopus can be observed at the divers leisure in some of the shallow and sheltered sights on the North East Coast. Crocodile fish, leaf scorpion fish and a fantastic array of nudibranchs abound. Stately Napoleon wrasse and groups of bumphead parrotfish are highlights, as are mantis shrimp, blue ribbon eels, pygmy seahorses and ghost pipefish.

The list of reasons to dive Bali goes on and on. The fact that it possesses one of the worlds most accessible shipwrecks – the SS Liberty is just one more. This large war victim is just meter from the shore. The ship was torpedoed in 1942 and after it was rescued it was beached. The unfortunate ship remained on a stretch of Balis beautiful coast until Gunung Agung, Balis biggest volcano, erupted in 1963. The Liberty crashed beneath the sea during the eruption and now sits on a black sand shelf that slopes from about 6m-30m. The wreck is vast, perhaps 120m long and lies parallel to the beach. It has become one of Indonesia most beautiful artificial reefs.

Diving In North Asia

January 30, 2014 | admin 1

Indonesia has been termed the “Cradle of Diversity” by marine biologists, and with good reason. A recent survey counted more than 3,000 fish species here. Crowning it all is North Sulawesi, and the jewel in that crown is the Lembeh Straits.  North Sulawesi is formed by the long, thin peninsula that juts out from Sulawesi Island into the Celebes Sea. The marine species diversity of this region is unparalleled, a fact recognized by the locals, who have set up a number of reserves, and by the divers who flock here. The careful approach to the marine environment here by local government means that 90 percent of the coral cover is alive and in good condition, a remarkable statistic considering the pressure the remainder of the Indonesian archipelago experiences from destructive fishing methods.

The Lembeh Straits is the channel between the island of Lembeh and the northern lip of Sulawesi. It is quite a shallow body of water ranging in depth front 16 ft (5 m) to 98ft (30 m) – so divers need to be aware of the large vessels that pass regularly overhead, as well as the periodic strong currents.  But while at first glance this may seem merely an unprepossessing shipping channel, closer inspection reveals a world of tiny riches.

The magic that draws divers to this area is the extraordinary range of tiny but beautiful reef animals that can be found in the shallow coastal seas off North Sulawesi. The sheer diversity of “macro life” (small marine creatures) here, and the sometimes bizarre forms it takes, has led to the area being dubbed “God’s wastebasket.” Outlandish species like the hairy frogfish make amazing photographic subjects.

The Straits have a big name for small things-this is the finest site in the world for encountering the most exquisite, delicate, and unusual inhabitants of tropical seas. Diving in the Lembeh Straits goes by the unpromising name of “muck diving” – so called because of the dark sand that covers the seabed and the necessity to examine it closely for target species during the course of a dive. But the effort involved in diving here is well rewarded. Mimic octopus, pygmy sea horses, ghost pipefish, leaf fish, frogfish, and blue-ringed octopus can all be found here.

The Bunaken Marine Park is one of the driving forces for conservation on North Sulawesi. It surrounds five islands, on which are a few small fishing villages, and covers over 290 sq miles (750 sq km). The park offers fantastic muck diving and also some tremendous walls, the most notable of which are Lekuan II and Mandolin on Bunaken, and Panguilingan in Mahado Tua.

Paradise Archipelago in East of Indonesia

January 23, 2014 | admin

The archipelago around Sulawesi and Borneo has been described as an ecological ‘hot spot’. East of Indonesia Archipelago have much terrain varied, from walls and fringing reef to caverns, big Green Turtles (Chelonia mydas), whitetip, leopard and nurse sharks, schooling barracudas, napoleon wrasses, cuttle fish, Spanish mackerel, jacks and batfishes, and ornamentalreef fishes hang out in record densities and diversity. If the sea has a heart, it lies somewhere in the dynamic mosaic that is the Indonesian archipelago.

In this biological hot zone, there are more coral and fish species than anywhere else on Earth. The numbers are staggering: for instance, Indonesia has 83 species of angelfish and butterflyfish, while the whole of the Caribbean supports just seven of each. This diversity is celebrated in The Sulu-Sulawesi Seas, a new photo-book by German photo-journalist Jürgen Freund. Part of a conservation initiative by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the book focuses on the area around Sulawesi, Borneo and the southern Philippines – the epicentre of the hot zone. This is a world where schools of jacks group into seething tornadoes over reef drop-offs, where tiny porcelain crabs seek refuge among the swaying tentacles of a host anemone. Stray from the reefs into a mangrove swamp and you are just as likely to run into a saltwater crocodile, the mightiest of the reptiles.

This region, referred to often as the ‘coral triangle’ or the ‘East-Indies Triangle’, encompasses three nations and an area of complex oceanography. All the islands have narrow continental shelves and many are separated from each other by relatively deep waters. Surface currents flow permanently eastwards along the north coast of Sulawesi and southwards along the west coast. To the south of the island there is a strong east-flowing current during the northeast monsoon, which is reversed during the southeast monsoon. Conditions are ideal for reef development and there are fringing reefs along the shores of most of the smaller islands, and some continuous stretches running for hundreds of miles along the coastline.

It doesn’t take an expert to see that this is a special place: if you were to do a dive on a Sulawesi reef, then jet off to anywhere in, say, the tropical western Atlantic, the difference would be immediately noticeable. For years, photographers have said that the reefs of the Caribbean are like English gardens compared with the marine jungles of Southeast Asia. For divers, it’s down to the ease of finding certain exotic creatures. The highly cryptic leaf scorpionfish, for instance, can be found all over the Indo-Pacific, but in most places no one bothers to look over areas of exposed coral (their preferred habitat) for suspiciously leafy objects. When you’re in the coral triangle, it’s always worthwhile looking around for semi-disguised creatures. And if you’re observant enough to find one leaf scorpionfish, there are usually others nearby.