North America

Mexico's Cozumel

Coney grouper, Cozumel, Mexico. Photo by Brandi Mueller
Coney grouper, Cozumel, Mexico. Photo by Brandi Mueller

As our boat headed to the dive site, it was hard to imagine the previous year. With the island of Cozumel to my back, the 180-degree-view of water in front of me was filled with dive boats. While sometimes in the past I would be annoyed to see so many other divers, it was a relief to see all the boats, and it gave me a bit of hope for the future of the dive industry as the pandemic (hopefully) comes to an end.

California's Channel Islands: Kelp Diving on the US West Coast

A bright orange Garibaldi fish and crimson-colored California sheephead with red gorgonian at Santa Barbara Island. Photo by Frankie Grant

Due to their unique position relative to the eastern Pacific current, or the California Current, the Channel Islands off California’s coast receive an ideal amount of nutrients and water circulation for optimum growth of California giant kelp. This colonial algae forms forests over the rocky reefs and walls surrounding the islands, and act as one of the world’s most productive marine ecosystems.

Photographing Giant Manta Rays at Night in Kona Hawaii

Female reef mantas mature in eight to ten years.

Diving with giant manta rays is always an exhilarating experience. Being in the water with these large intelligent animals is always humbling. They are also spectacular subjects for photography and video. Kona Hawaii in the United States is famous for night diving and snorkeling with the local mantas. This can produce stunning images, but it does take some special techniques.

Northern California: A Dive Off the American Wild West Coast

Metridium anemone and corynactis grow on a rock while blue rockfish swim overhead, Northern California, USA. Photo by Brent Durand.

Warm rinse water sloshed in the jug as my car hugged a sharp turn on California’s Pacific Coast Highway. I looked left at the mighty Pacific Ocean, the cliffs tumbling to the sea dotted by rugged pinnacles, stretching farther up the coast than the jam band solo currently playing out of the car speakers. Deep blue, favorable conditions all week, minimal swell, no-wind forecast—only unpredictable visibility could affect the diving today.

Diving with Great White Sharks of Guadalupe Island

Great white shark, Guadalupe Island, Mexico.

“You’re crazy; I don’t get in the water with bitey things!” The announcement of my impending great white shark trip drew a variety of such responses from horrified friends. The undisputed bad boys of the shark world, great whites are the largest of all predatory sharks, reaching lengths of up to 6m and weighing in at over 2,000kg.

Sabine Kerkau, Rosemary E Lunn, Roz Lunn, award winning diving journalist, WDHOF, Women Divers Hall of Fame, XRay Mag, X-Ray Magazine, scuba diving news
Sabine Kerkau, an award-winning diving journalist

Sabine Kerkau to be inducted in WDHOF in 2019

Sabine Kerkau will be the first German female diver to be inducted in WDHOF, since it was founded almost two decades ago, in 1999.

Kerkau is a diving journalist, more specifically, a technical diving journalist. There are very few of these specialist reporters, and even fewer female techie correspondents. Kerkau is an intelligent author. She keeps the wreck or cave centre stage, and gives it maximum exposure.

Sabine Kerkau is the first German female diver to be inducted in WDHOF

Southern California's Market Squid Run

Most years, Southern California on the US west coast is the site of a special marine life aggregation, treating locals to one of the most unique dives in the world. Hundreds of thousands of market squid (Doryteuthis opalescens) swim into recreational dive depths to mate and lay an expansive canvas of egg baskets (collections of eggs) across the sandy substrate.