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Since I plan to be buried at sea, I have been interested in benthic/abyssal geophysics and biota. I now live on the Atlantic Coast, which means that it is likely that I will end up being buried in the Atlantic Ocean. I have, therefore, been comparing the Atlantic with the Indo-Pacific. The...

I watch a lot of YouTube videos about snorkeling and freediving, and I have noticed that in several of them, the snorkeler will dive down to a group of scuba divers. Trying to understand how that works, my best guess is that those scuba divers are not going for depth, but for duration -- that...

Here are a few fishes that I also posted to iNaturalist, but the iNaturalist community has yet to figure them out. These were at the Coral Garden near Le Taha'a by Pearl Resort. I couldn't even get this one to family: Black parrotfishes? Closer view of (I think) the same kind of...

I just read the resource on "Ear Problems in Scuba Diving," but it did not address this particular detail. I recently purchased a type of earplugs designed for air travel, to alleviate pressure changes and cabin noise. (That's not what I use them for; I use them in the grocery store because the...

Google Maps is useful up to a point, but you have to know what to look for. I am trying to find a wetsuit, but I am having difficulty because the search results I am getting in the Bay Area do not tell me much about that. A number of the dive shops seem to be mostly in the instruction side of...

My M.S. in Biology is 11 years old now. I didn't do as much with it as I would have liked, because I never knew how or where to present myself in the job market. But in the course of acquiring the M.S., I learned a lot about coastal ecosystems, and did my share of hands-on ichthyology, sorting...

Sea snot has been newsworthy lately because of its proliferation around Turkey and across the Mediterranean in general; but according to Wikipedia, the first known sighting was in 1729! From what I have been reading, it seems to be yet another result of eutrophication, akin to the toxic algal...

So, the wetsuit thickness guide here: How to Choose a Wetsuit & Temperature & Thickness Chart | evo recommends a top or shorty for water 65°- 75°, and a springsuit of full suit for 62°- 68°. But when I tried to find out what the difference is, it looked like the terms shorty and springsuit are...

I saw this article on Mongabay: Countries can transform the climate crisis with ocean-based action (commentary) I was struck in particular by this paragraph: "As well as the potentially devastating impact on the ocean’s ecosystems, unabated climate change could reduce the economic potential of...

The neoprene wetsuit is a highly specialized piece of equipment, made of specialized materials with specialized tools. You're not going to be able to do this with your standard sewing machine and shears. Wetsuit manufacturers rely on selling enough suits to make up the cost of the tools and...

I admit I was intrigued when I first heard of the "bloop." But at the same time, I was skeptical; I had also seen the claim that the blue whale is not merely the largest animal that ever lived, but at the maximum possible size for a viable animal. The "bloop" theory seemed to me to fit the...

I was trying to upload a video tonight, but I noticed that the uploads only accept certain kind of files. I checked my video files, and they are .mov files, not a supported type. How do you guys deal with this?

Around 4 years ago, I posted this thread: Can anyone make this? As you can see, the thread did not go anywhere; everyone was confused about what I was saying. Well, now I have found it. The original website I tried to reference in that thread -- now archived by the Wayback Machine. Here is what...

We know that snorkelers at and near the surface can get sunburned. That got me thinking. If the red light wavelengths attenuate first (actually, probably the infrared, if it fits the same pattern), and the rest of the spectrum drops out, in order, with increasing depth, until the blue end of the...

I came across this on YouTube: What are your thoughts on it? Is this a good thing, or too risky?

Climate change is one of the big environmental issues -- I do believe it will turn out to be the biggest crisis of the 21st century. One of the ramifications of global climate change is ocean acidification, which, if what I have been reading is correct, could devastate the entire oceanic...

One problem I have while snorkeling is that I feel like I am hyperventilating. Maybe it's the increased pressure on my thorax, so I unconsciously breathe harder? But I'm talking about at the surface, with snorkel out of the water, so I wouldn't think there would be much pressure. Maybe it's the...

I got my dog after I went vegetarian, and the funny thing is, even though I fed him only premium dog food, he still subscribed to the universal doggy belief that my food was more exciting than his!

The wetsuit she is wearing looks very unusual. First question is, does anyone know who makes it? Second question is, is there any practical reason for this design, or is it purely ornamental?

On the North Coast, Dominican Republic, I have gone snorkeling right off the beach. To my dismay, I saw no fishes at all. Yet it is far from being a dead zone; I was swimming through thickets of healthy sea whip, and there were tufts of those polyps that look like mushrooms, so obviously there...