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Coral Gardening in Fiji

par Ksso le 29 mai 2011

Check out how marine biologists work with fishermen to regrow corals and restore reefs in the Pacific. It takes as much as 2 years for the coral to get to the stage where it can be harvested and re-planted on the reefs, this is what it takes to restore the habitat of the fishes and have them come back.Source Arthur Kerns via Chuck Jones

Fish round-up: Flying Gurnard

par Ksso le 28 mai 2011

Flying gurnards are fast and sneaky. They camouflage on sandy bottom and the moment they feel they have been spotted they race their way away from you. I remember chasing one in Indonesia, Lombok at Meno Wall, and only managed to snap blurry pics after a few minutes of intense race.The Flying gurnards (Dactylopteridae) are fairly widespread as the GBIF map shows, yet they are fairly tough to spot usually (although apparently you now get a lot of those in Malta. They like to stay pretty deep (the oriental flying gurnard usually inhabits sandy bottoms at around 100m/330ft depth). The pectoral fins are normally held against the body, but when threatened the fins are expanded in to scare...

Fish round-up : the basking shark

par Ksso le 25 mai 2011

While I never actually encountered one of those, basking sharks have fascinated me since I started scuba diving and learned about them. Basking sharks are the second largest living fish on earth, just after the whale shark.Wikipedia reports that the largest accurately-measured specimen was trapped in a herring net in the Bay of Fundy, Canada in 1851. Its total length was 12.27 metres (40.3 ft), and it weighed an estimated 19 short tons (17 t). Despite the fact that the beast is huge, it's perfectly harmless to humans : it's a slow mover that feeds by filtering water to catch plankton, small fish and invertebrates, basking in the warmer waters at the surface. The teeth in the basking shark...

What's up at Diveboard : login, home page and search by fish

par Ksso le 22 mai 2011

I thought I'd drop a quick note about what's currently keeping us busy at Diveboard. There has not been a major update this week, not because we're slacking but because we're changing a few things at heart.

You've been so many complaining about the Facebook-connect-only login for the site, that we had to make the move and support the usual login/password methods. This is not an easy change since it has also big impact on the design and adds more flows (reset password, change password...) which were previously simplified by the use of Facebook connect. But we're getting there !New homepage ...

Fish round-up : the Doplhinfish

par Ksso le 20 mai 2011

Dolphinfishes are fairly big creatures (often over 1m) from the family of ray-finned fish. The family has only one genus, Coryphaena, which contains two species, the "Mahi-Mahi" and "Pompano Dolphinfish". They are unrelated to dolphins as they are no mammals.Mahi-mahi means very strong in Hawaiian. Mahi-Mahis can live up to 4 years, weight up to 18kg (40 lbs) and measure up to 2m and are usually bigger than Pompano Dolphinfishes which are often mistaken with teen Mahi-Mahis.Mahi-mahi can be found in the Caribbean Sea, on the west coast of North and South America, the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic coast of Florida, Southeast Asia, Hawaii and many other...

Fish round-up: deep-sea "Tortugas Red" jellyfish

par Ksso le 16 mai 2011

As I was researching jellyfishes, I ended up gazing on this "Tortugas red" species. As you may have realized, jellyfishes are usually transparent-ish. They can be bioluminescent, they can diffract the light creating rainbow effects... but a red jellyfish that's something really rare.The Tortugas red is part of the "Ctenophora" phylum (one of the 40 divisions of the animalia kingdom) and populates cold waters all over the globe. It lives in deep water which is probably what got it its strong pigmentation.Unfortunately, not much is know about this species that has not even been properly described. The picture above is one of the few proving its existence and dates back from 1984 in Boreal...

The Race to inner space - Triton 36000

par Ksso le 11 mai 2011

Submersibles are really trendy these days. Probably since it's the 50th anniversary of the deepest dive by the Trieste, but in a short while we've had Richard Branson announcing Virgin Oceanic and now Triton submarines announcing their "Race to Inner Space".The press release reads:The world’s most advanced submarine company, Triton Subs,and high pressure glass fabricator Rayotek Scientific, have joined forces to design a full ocean depth submersible that will revolutionize man’s relationship with the deep ocean. With a planned descent rate of 500 feet per minute, the deepest spot in the ocean, at 35,800 ft., can be reached in approximately 75 minutes. The Triton 36,000 Full Ocean Depth...

Under the spotlights : Doug Anderson

par Ksso le 9 mai 2011

Doug is better know on Flickr as "Doug.Deep". He takes some of the most incredible underwater shots I've ever seen with over 114 photos featured in Flickr's Explore.

Can you tell us a bit about who you are and how you started diving ? I am 49 years of age and have been living in Sydney, Australia, for most of my life. Eight years ago I returned to Sydney after a long period living in a small village in the northwest of New South Wales. During this period in the bush I became very accustomed to living a quiet and peaceful existence close to nature; faced with the reality of living once again in a busy, urban environment, I took up diving as a means of finding a temporary escape from the...

The deepest dive : 1960 - 10,916m

par Ksso le 7 mai 2011

In 1960 (that was 50 years ago !), the Trieste was the first and only submersible to ever reach the depth of 10,916m (38,500ft). Swiss designed, italian built, with a crew of two : Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard. The Trieste only had a tiny window to look outside, and the video below shows how crazy an adventure it must have been to get this submersible down there. This submersible is the ancestor of the new generation that Richard Branson aims at using with Virgin Oceanic.Fun fact, a prototype of the Rolex Deepsea was attached to the external structure and survived the test.

Diveboard features update : Fish, Fish and Fish (it's friday !)

par Ksso le 6 mai 2011

As we were teasing you earlier this week, we weren't happy about our Fish database, many common names were missing, it was hard and unintuitive to tag a fish, and if you don't know exactly which fish you've seen (ie. I saw a clownfish but which one !?) the system wasn't helping... So we had to rethink it a did a few major changes.A new database and improved UI

We worked with the guys and girls at Encyclopedia of Life - EOL.org to integrate their über exhaustive database through their APIs. This enables us to search through millions of scientific and common names of marine species, giving you results to your queries that actually make sense. Cherry on top, we're showing a thumbnail for the...