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Articles de :

Ksso
CMAS 3* VDST / N4
Certifications:
PADI Ice Diver, CMAS Nitrox 1, Photography
A plongé en: Territoire de la Polynésie Française, Honduras, Jamaïque, Netherlands Antilles, États-Unis, Mexique, Portugal, Espagne, République Dominicaine, Égypte, Thaïlande, Grèce, Chypre, France, Indonésie

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Fish round up: Sea Urchin

par Ksso le 9 avril 2011

Sea urchin are a common ornament of the reefs. They can be seen about everywhere, as you can see on the map below. Those small spiky balls look harmless, but beware, they actually can be deadly !They feed on algae and move very slowly. They are hunted by many predators including humans (yummy maki-sushis), sea otters, wolf eels, triggerfish...Wikipedia states:The spines, long and sharp in some species, protect the urchin from predators. The spines inflict a painful wound when they penetrate human skin, but are not dangerous. It is not clear if the spines are venomous (unlike the pedicellariae between the spines, which are venomous). ...

Diveboard alpha : D-4

par Ksso le 4 avril 2011

It took so much more time and energy than I expected, but we're finally getting there ! Did you thing Diveboard was going to remain only a blog ? Of course not ! And while the blog remains one of the key aspects of diveboard as a way to share and feature interesting stories and interact with the community, it's time today to finally unveil the second side of Diveboard.But maybe a screenshot will help out a bit !As a scuba diver, there are gazillions of things I was missing. First things first, as a Mac geek I've been über frustrated for years to not be able to do anything useful with the dives stored in my Mares M2 - and let's be realistic the Windows software (IRIS) is a joke. On top of...

Coral Reef Spawning : Now in Australia

par Ksso le 30 mars 2011

As Wikipedia states, (in case you don't know what a coral is):Coral reefs are underwater structures made from calcium carbonate secreted by corals. Corals are colonies of tiny living animals found in marine waters that contain few nutrients. Most coral reefs are built from stony corals, and are formed by polyps that live together in groups. The polyps secrete a hard carbonate exoskeleton which provides support and protection for the body of each polyp. Reefs grow best in warm, shallow, clear, sunny and agitated waters. Also, a coral reef is a reef consisting of coral consolidated into limestone. ...

Big Women Really Are Fun

par Ksso le 27 mars 2011

Before getting in the water you need to perform a full body check with your dive buddy. This sentence "Big Women Really Are Fun" is my way of remembering how to do it properly without forgetting anything :

B(ig) - BCD : check out your buddy's BCD , how it attaches, how it works (especially in case if you need to grab him and get him to the surface safely, you'll need to be able to controle your buddy's buoyancy

W(omen) - Weight : check the weight belt, right hand release, no nested straps

R(eally) - Regulators : check the position of the safety additional regulator and ensure that nothing blocks or slows access to it ...

Fish round up : Sea Cucumbers

par Ksso le 27 mars 2011

Sea cucumbers are a common oddity in the ocean's sandy bottom. While they look like a dead dark sausage, they're actually live animals. They're even harvested for their skin and muscles to China. Alaskan sea cucumbers are also apparently more nutritionally interesting than their chinese counterparts.Sea cucumbers reproduce releasing sperm and ova in the sea - a subset of species fertilize their eggs internally. They also communicate one with another releasing hormons.Wikipedia precises that sea cucumbers have no true brain. A ring of neural tissue surrounds the oral cavity, and sends nerves to the tentacles and the pharynx. The animal is, however, quite capable of functioning and moving...

The underwater photographer

par Ksso le 22 mars 2011

I love to take underwater pictures, but let's face it, although technology got more affordable, it's awfully complicated to take decent underwater pictures. I recently got my hands on that book by Martin Edge, the Underwater Photographer, which really did help me understand better the whereabouts of underwater photography, including why it's so hard. Here are a few quotes that I'll try to keep in mind from now on :(...) the density of water is 800 times that of air. Such is the density of water, in fact, that people compare a picture taken in 0.5 m of water with a picture on land taken at 800 m away.Getting as close as possible, physically, is often all it needs to produce a marked...

Fish round up : Harlequin Shrimp

par Ksso le 19 mars 2011

Couldn't resist to share another incredible pic by Doug.Deep. Harlequin shrimp are fairly tough to spot, since the only live in the Pacific Ocean (and even there they're not ultra-common as the obis map below shows). It may actually be easier to spot them in a sea aquarium since this specie is also "cultivated" and fairly easy to buy in any aquarium shop (a quick google search shows a pair retailing 69.99USD).Contrary to what obis shows, there is also a hawaian harlequin shrimp, which differs from the pacific one by being more shy and hiding in dark spots.The appearance of the harlequin shrimp isn't the only aspect that sets them apart from other shrimp. They have a truly unique diet as...

Donate for Japan

par Ksso le 15 mars 2011

What's happening now in Japan goes beyond imaginable. Reactor meltdowns, quakes, radioactive contamination, tsunamis, thousands of deaths ... this all sounds like a bad drama.... yet this time it's real.I won't even talk about the consequences to the ecosystem, as you may remember from the last tsunami that hit Indonesia, those waves do harm the ecosystem, but the impact of a heavy dose of radiation are not well known.Anyway it's time yo support the Japanese Red Cross in their tentative of helping out the people there and donate. If you want to make sure your funds go to the Japanese red cross, you can either do a money transfer or use this form and google checkout.

Sea wonders : White christmas tree worm

par Ksso le 12 mars 2011

Like for the slugs, the worms under the sea are way cooler than their earthy counterparts. The "Sabellida" order is composed by plethora of variations around the sea worm theme. Those worms hide in a tube (like the trunk of a tree) and anchor themselves onto living coral or rocks thus being sedentary. The head is mostly concealed by feathery branchiae. As sedentary inhabitants of coral reefs, tree worms feed primarily by filter feeding.Whenever they sense unusual current or presence, they withdraw all the radioles (the feather-like tentacles) inside the tube.Most species are not hermaphrodite and produce eggs that are fertilized externally and turn into larvas that hunt for a sweet spot...

Fish round-up : the Grouper

par Ksso le 9 mars 2011

In many places, seeing a grouper is kind of a huge achievement, and the bigger the grouper the better. Groupers can size over a meter and weight over 100kg, so when bragging about the grouper you've spotted you can be pretty pushy (but remember the rule: no picture, no proof => it did not happen ! ). The "giant grouper" can even grow up to 2.7m (8.9ft) and 600kg (1300lbs), but he can only be spotted in Madagascar, Indonesia and Australia and apparently not very easily...Groupers are usually laying still near rocks, and their grey spotted skin combined to their stillness makes them actually fairly hard to spots. They don't like humans so much so as soon as they understand you've grown...