Scuba Diving

What It's Like to Watch Sea Turtles Hatch in the Wild
"I want to cheer when the little guys finally begin their mad dash across the beach—until silver gulls swoop down from above."

Sea turtles hatching
Newly-hatched sea turtles emerge from the sand.

Holly Gaskill

A few tiny flippers poke out of the middle of what looks like a miniature sand volcano. I sit in the shade of Pisonia trees, alternately checking for more action from this sea turtle nest and gazing over the ocean beyond the wide beach.

I’m spending a week on Australia’s Heron Island, a National Marine Park at the southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Protected Zone. Home to an eco-resort and a science station, the island—barely half a mile long and 300 yards across—sports a tropical forest ringed by pristine beach and a shallow reef whose distant edge is marked by crashing waves. Green sea turtles nest here from November to March, females burying as many as 100 soft, ping-pong-ball sized eggs several feet deep in the sand. All eggs in a nest hatch together, the hatchlings taking several days to work their way to the surface. Watching the tail-end of the process turns out to be several hours of the occasional twitch of sand, followed by a tumbling emergence of dozens of little hatchlings almost at once.

I enjoy the wait, given the beautiful view and sense of anticipation. I want to cheer when the little guys finally begin their mad dash across the beach—until silver gulls swoop down from above, snatching up one after another. A few other beach-goers and I begin waving our arms and yelling at the birds to fend them off, following the hatchlings to the water. There, they take off like tiny motor boats, flippers churning. But the birds don’t stop, plucking the little morsels right from the sea, so some of us wade in and continue our es**rt until the last hatchling swims away.

Sea turtle hatchling
A hatchling makes its way across the beach at Heron Island.

Holly Gaskill

All said, bird predation here is relatively minor, according to David Booth at the University of Queensland. Far more hatchlings eaten by fish, especially sharks, during their swim across the shallows. Ornithologist Graeme Cu***ng of James Cook University says historic records do not indicate gulls on Heron Island, and their presence may be partially associated with people, whose trash the birds feed on.

Hatchlings face far bigger problems than predation, Booth says, including artificial light, which disorients them at night, and rising temperatures. Sea turtles become male or female based on nest temperature, with higher temperatures producing females. As beaches around the world grow hotter, eventually there may not be enough males.

Tips for Planning an Underwater Photo Vacation
"Getaways are different for marine shutterbugs."

umeedmistry_sardines_maldives_scubadivingmagazine.septemberoctober2021
This over/under shot of schooling fish against the setting sun shows the Maldives’ wide-angle photo potential.

Umeed Mistry

In this edition of Ask a Travel Expert, dive travel writer Terry Ward tackles photo vacations, drysuit adventures and manta encounters.

Q: I’m into macro photography but my dive buddy shoots wide-angle. What destinations make for a dream trip where we can both get our photo fix?

A: So many spots deliver photogenic critters and wide-angle views on the same site or within close range, especially if you’re diving by liveaboard. But for destinations open to U.S. travelers right now, look to Caribbean locations like Bonaire, Curaçao, the Bay Islands of Honduras and Cozumel to tick both boxes, says Cammie Akins, vice president of Caradonna Dive Adventures. For divers looking to travel farther afield, she says, the Red Sea and the Maldives are both open and offer a combination of small subjects for macro lovers and big views for wide-angle shots.

Q: Where’s a good place to get drysuit certified and have a travel adventure right now?


A: At time of publication, Iceland is open to vaccinated and previously infected travelers. Unvaccinated travelers require a negative COVID test up to 72 hours before arrival. I had the chance to brush up on my drysuit diving skills in Iceland last June at Silfra, where the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates meet. Diving dry is the only way to enter a glacial fissure with water temperatures that hover just above freezing year-round.

Said to be the clearest water on earth, Silfra’s standard visibility is over 300 feet. It’s like nothing I’d ever experienced. PADI Five Star Resorts like Arctic Adventures and Dive.is both offer two- day Dry Suit Diver courses that include a dive in the fabulous fissure. “We have the best clear-water lakes, freshwater volcano cracks with easy depths and natural challenges in the topography of the sites to challenge your buoyancy control,” says Nick Reeves, of Arctic Adventures. Epic cold-water dive destinations where you can get your drysuit certification closer to home include Northern California, Alaska and Maine.

Fin Kick Techniques: Tips, Tricks and Advice for Scuba Divers

Kicking is fundamental. As our primary mode of propulsion, divers wouldn’t see much without the ­flutter, modified flutter, frog, reverse frog, sculling, scissor or those crazy ­custom styles you sometimes witness just inches from your mask. How we move our scuba diving fins is something we probably don’t spend too much time focused on when in the act, as our attention is ­typically zeroed in on the ­underwater world around us. But learning and ­perfecting a variety of time-worn ­techniques — and employing the right style at the right time and place — can have a huge effect on improving your experience and the safety of everyone and ­everything around you.

scuba kicking techniques
Fin technique is an often overlooked but crucially important part of diving — here’s how to kick efficiently underwater.

Courtesy Cressi

“Good kicking technique is ­important to facilitate relaxed, ­low-effort diving,” says underwater explorer, conservationist and photographer Jill Heinerth. “Just as ­critical, it prevents silting and protects the ­environment from damage.”

“Learning varied techniques will ­allow you to choose how to ­propel yourself when you’re faced with ­different environment issues and dragging your own weight and gear,” ­professional underwater photographer and technical diver Tanya G. Burnett ­explains.

“Proper fin technique helps ­maintain efficiency and conserves oxygen and energy,” says Kirk Krack, apnea instructor and founder of ­Performance Freediving. “That is particularly important in freediving, where divers are operating on a single breath of air, but good finning technique can help any diver, from scuba diver to snorkeler.”

Take a few hints from these three highly specialized divers who ­excel at using their fins to take them to ­amazing places.

As kids, most of us learned the ­basic flutter kick in swimming lessons, and that’s still a diver’s go-to style for most underwater applications. ­However, mastering a variety of kicking styles will increase your repertoire and make you better-prepared for any ­given situation.

As an underwater photographer, Burnett has found ways to compensate for dragging along a ­cumbersome camera rig by switching her kick style to ­react to the job at hand. “Your ­approach to photographing anything underwater, be it a pygmy seahorse, whale or reef scene, requires a different technique to move with finesse,” she says. “For reef dives with minimal current, I use a modified flutter kick or a slow frog kick to move forward slowly while I look for photo opportunities. When I need to move quickly to catch up with an animal or into a current, I use a full flutter kick, with big strokes from my hips. And for muck dives, I want to keep my fins high with a bent-knee flutter kick or modified frog kick.”

Heinerth’s cave and deep-diving missions require her not only to propel a heavy load of gear, but also to operate with optimal control and care to minimize fatigue and potential for disastrous silt-out. “A ­modified frog kick with bent knees keeps the thrust from impacting the cave floor or sea bottom. Good trim and ­relaxed finning will improve your air-­consumption rate overall,” she says.

My Escape from Reality—Diving the Shores of Bonaire Divers’ first island getaway since COVID delivers wrecks, frogfish turtles and a soulful refresh in this shore diving paradise.

5 Tips for the Best Safety Stop

Every dive should end with a safety stop. But being close to the surface makes buoyancy a challenge, and without the right technique, you might find yourself ascending unintentionally. Here are five tips for making safety stops look easy.

1. SLOW ASCENT Keep an eye on your computer or depth gauge to make sure you ascend no faster than 30 feet per minute. Remember to vent expanding air from your BC as you go, and always send up a surface marker if you’re ascending away from your boat.

2. PROPER POSITIONING Once at 15 feet, position yourself head-up and keep your depth gauge at chest level so your torso stays at the right depth.

3. STEADY AS SHE GOES If you’re holding a down line attached to boat, grab the line loosely with one hand, with your arm outstretched to prevent the line from pulling you up and down.

4. TIME IT Every diver should time his or her own safety stop — don’t rely on another diver.

5. SWIM SLOWLY Divers sometimes think once the safety stop is over, they can fin to the boat as fast as they want. But the final 15 feet are the most dangerous part of the water column for lung-overexpansion injuries. Ascend the final 15 feet at the same, slow 30-feet-per-minute rate.

5 Diving Tips for Saving Air

Diving Tips: Saving Air
Do you breathe your tank down faster than your buddy? Here are 5 diving tips to help conserve your oxygen and extend your bottom time.

1. Fix the small leaks
Even a tiny stream of bubbles from an O-ring or an inflator swivel adds up over 40 minutes, and may be a sign of more serious trouble ahead anyway. A mask that doesn't seal is another kind of leak in that you have to constantly blow air into it to clear out the water. It's also a source of stress, which needlessly elevates your breathing rate and thereby reduces your breathing efficiency. Does your octo free-flow easily? That can dump a lot of air quickly. Detune it or mount it carefully so the mouthpiece points downward.

2. Dive More
Inexperienced divers are famous for burning through their air supply at a furious rate, so one of the best diving tips for saving air is to simply dive more often. You may not be a new diver, but unless you dive almost every week it's still an unnatural activity. By diving more, your body will get used to the idea, and you'll breathe less.

3. Swim Slowly
The energy cost of speed is even more than you might think: Swim half as fast as you do now, and you'll use less air.

4. Stay Shallow
Because your regulator has to deliver air at the same pressure as the water, a lungful at 33 feet (two atmospheres) takes twice as much out of your tank as does the same breath at the surface. At 99 feet (four atmospheres) it takes twice as much as at 33 feet. There's absolutely nothing you can do about that except to avoid being deeper than you have to be. If you're making a transit over an uninteresting sand flat to get to the edge of the drop-off, do it at 15 feet instead of at 40 feet, and you'll save air.

5. Minimize the Lead
If you're overweighted, you have to put more air into your BC to float it and be neutral. The inflated BC is larger and requires more energy and oxygen to push it through the water. An extra eight pounds of lead means your BC is one gallon bigger when inflated enough to make you neutral.

Where to Dive in the St. Lawrence River
Explore Thousand Islands from New York’s shoreline on this expansive waterway.

Jennifer Idol | Scuba Diving Magazine | August 2021
Famed underwater photographer David Doubilet examines a propeller on the General Hancock ferry.

Jennifer Idol

The St. Lawrence River straddles New York’s border with Canada like an emerald zipper dotted with islands and wrecks. The river proper begins at the outflow of Lake Ontario near Cape Vincent. It becomes an estuary beyond Quebec before finally spilling into the Atlantic Ocean. The St. Lawrence is the main drainage outflow for the Great Lakes Basin as well as a major trade artery for freighters going as far as Lake Superior.

At the turn of the 20th century, towns along the shore in the Thousand Islands area became vacation destinations for New York City high society. Some purchased islands and built grandiose homes along the river. Today, visitors can tour landmarks such as Boldt and Singer castles, which were commissioned by wealthy businessmen in the 1900s and have since become important historically registered tourist attractions.

More than 1,800 islands form the Thousand Islands archipelago, spanning both sides of the border. Wrecks are the primary dive sites in the area, with plentiful destinations on the Canadian side of the river. A few significant wrecks foundered on the American side and can be reached through local charters such as Hunts Dive Shop in Clayton, New York, established in 1953.

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