In his Scuba book series, Simon Pridmore often tells tales of diving close calls or near misses. He tries to identify the key factors and suggest what the divers might have done differently to pre-empt or better deal with what happened. All the stories are true. Some he witnessed, some were recounted by friends, and others just crossed his radar screen at some point to be filed away for future sharing. This is one of the latter.

Many marine creatures have defensive mechanisms—they may sting, have venom, sharp spines, warning colors, or bite. We asked our contributors what their favorite underwater photos of these bold and beautiful critters were, and they came back with a variety of subjects like colorful nudibranchs, cnidarians that sting, scorpionfish with sharp spines, sharks and even crocodiles with sharp teeth.

In Part One and Part Two of this series, we discussed US Northeast wrecks that sank because of collisions and war. There are also many structures that have purposely been sunk as artificial reefs off the New York and New Jersey coasts. Larry Cohen and Olga Torrey have the story.

In the far corner of Europe, in the Levant and almost wedged in-between Asia Minor, the Middle East and Northern Africa and at the crossroads of the same, Cyprus offers a nourishing mix of varied diving, culture and cuisine. Lelle Malmström and Peter Symes went to check it out.