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Editorial by Dave Moran

Jean-Michel Cousteau - 0800 See Orca - Internet Shopping

In recent weeks I had the pleasure of spending time exchanging communications with Dr Ingrid Visser, the founder and driving force behind New Zealand’s Orca Research Trust. She has been assisting Jean-Michel Cousteau’s Ocean Adventures expedition team (which is a section within his Ocean Futures Society) in their quest to film Orca in PNG and New Zealand.

Jean-Michel Cousteau’s Ocean Adventures are in a co-production with US based PBS station, KQED to produce the seventh documentary in the series, Jean-Michel Cousteau Ocean Adventures. Ingrid and her orca research will feature within this documentary.

Sharkwater

Interview by Dave Moran with Rob Stewart, producer

It’s not often that you have a chance to meet a film producer who is, in a way, a modern day evanaligest whose religion is saving the sharks of the planet’s oceans and by doing so also saving mankind from possible extinction.

Rob Stewart is in a way a mini version of Al Gore who produced the Hollywood film, An Inconvenient Truth. Both producers have put in front of the viewing public scenes that are very disturbing. Scenes that unsettle our comfortable, sheltered lifestyle and powerfully make you feel uneasy about what mankind is capable of. You sort of know it’s going on but would rather keep it out of your mind’s eye.

Swimmers Ear

Advice about a pesky and sometimes painful problem

by Doc Vikingo (Alert Diver)

If an organ is going to be harmed by diving, odds are it’s going to be an ear. Subject to barotrauma of descent and ascent, decompression sickness, congestion, infection and other maladies, ears are a regular source of divers’ complaints.

You can best avoid damage due to barotrauma by avoiding a dive when gentle and effective equalization isn’t possible, such as those times when a cold causes head congestion. By the same token, DCS can nearly always be avoided by judicious handling of inert gas loading and conservative ascents. It’s all in the planning.

Kermadec Islands

by Pete Mesley

New Zealand’s northernmost territories have only seen a handful of divers in its millions of years of existence. This has been mainly due to its remoteness, lying 1085km NE of New Zealand and only accessible by boat.

It takes a good two and a half days of continuous steaming to reach the Kermadec Islands. In 1990 the Kermadec and outlying islands became New Zealand’s largest marine reserve, extending 12 nautical miles round each island group covering 7480km2

All the islands in the Kermadec Group have been formed by volcanic eruptions with the latest eruption occurring in March 2006. This eruption unfortunately took the life of a DOC worker (we were up there when this happened regrettably) .

Help DOC track nationally endangered southern right whales

New Zealand’s Department of Conservation (DoC) asks the public to report sightings of the endangered southern right whales). More

Convicted of taking nearly 100 crayfish

In the Gisborne Court of New Zealand an East Coast couple were fined nearly $4,000 plus court costs for taking 93 crayfish (of which 84 were undersized) from Anaura Bay. More

Jaws comes to Stewart Island

Two Dunedin men are ready to dip caged tourists into New Zealand’s Foveaux Strait so they can get close to the great white shark. More

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