X-Ray Mag #7

Feature articles in this issue with stand-alone pdfs

Michael Arvedlund  

Clownfish sea anemones usually live solitary lives. On many coral reefs there will normally be only one individual for each 50 to 100 meters, perhaps 10 to 20 meters of reef. But occasionally groups of up to several hundreds of clownfish sea anemones are found together within a small area in an assemblage we call anemone cities.

Gunild & Peter Symes   Gunild & Peter Symes

Dark grey!

Usually a colour associated with dull. Not here. The dark lava sand creates a perfect neutral backdrop to make all the colours of corals and critters stand out beautifully. It also dampens the often harsh and bleaching tropical sunlight into something of a less eye-squinting exercise to enjoy.

Sven Erik Jørgensen  
,
The Danish Society of Diving History  

During the first years of World War II Italian frogmen demonstrated to the world how effective a weapon a frogman could be. Hidden by the water, these frogmen mined the Allies’ ships as they were moored ‘safely’ in their own waters.

Sven Erik Jørgensen  
,
The Danish Society of Diving History  

During the first years of World War II Italian frogmen demonstrated to the world how effective a weapon a frogman could be. Hidden by the water, these frogmen mined the Allies’ ships as they were moored ‘safely’ in their own waters.

Bridget Hedderman   Eco Field Trips

Ecofieldtrips Pte Ltd is a Singapore based company which employs specialist biologists to cover the biology of rainforests, mangroves, seashores and coral reefs in the unspoilt ecosystems of Tioman Island, Sarawak and Langkawi, in Malaysia. School groups from Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Bangladesh, UK and Ireland come annually on the fieldtrips. Fieldtrips vary in length and content- from fun filled educational trips with 11/12 year olds to in-depth GCSE, A-Level and IB survey work- depending on school requirements.

Peter Symes   Peter Symes

Is it cheating? Once the conversation touches on restoring or manipulating images it seem to on something profound, namely our perception of reality. Can we trust what we see? Is a given image a truthful recording of what happened? And what is reality anyway if it depends on the eye of the beholder?

What is real and what has been artificially created is a very important discussion as photos and videos are also used as documentation f.inst. in science and in legal matters not to mention something as mundane as the passport.

Michael Portelly   Michael Portelly

I have been an underwater photographer and filmmaker for more than 25 years. I share the grave concerns of many who fear that our generation will bequeath future generations the legacy of a planet, poisoned and stripped of its assets and its beauty.

Wreck detective Miranda Krestovnikoff recently completed another series of dive programmes for the BBC. The ambitious new series, Coast, is to be aired this autumn. We take a look behind the mask...

Enrico Cappellini  

Like every grand tale of shipwreck and lost treasure, the story about the Polluce has it all. A paddlewheel steamboat shipwrecked in 1841, it is the centrepiece of a drama spanning more than one and a half centuries and has all the necessary ingredients: drama and tragedy, greed and crime, passion and politics. And it is still ongoing. Polluce is about to be excavated once more as this story goes to press.

Gary Myors   Karen Gowlette-Holmes

Tasmania’s Southwest National Park and World Heritage Area is the land that time forgot, and most of the civilized world has never heard of Bathurst Harbour. It is the home of the world’s oldest living plant, Kings Holly (Lomatatia tasmanica) discovered in 1934 by the late Deny King, an environmentalist and local legend who lived in the area most of his adult life earning his living mining tin.

On the banks of the Old River, bushwalkers able to penetrate the closely guarded secret location can admire a 10,500-year-old Huon Pine Tree. From the bird hide near the Melaleuca airstrip, you can watch the mating dance of a pair of orange bellied parrots, a species which breeds only in this region and has been saved from extinction by volunteers and the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service. Apart from the rare flora and fauna, the landscape is as rugged and spectacular as any wilderness on earth.

Michael Symes  

It would seem to be self-evident to use the adjective ‘salty’ in connection with the World’s oceans. Everybody knows that the oceans are salty. It is perhaps the first thing that comes to mind when we think of the oceans.

When divers run out of gas in open water it can only be down to two possible explanations. Either they haven’t been monitoring their pressure gauges and plainly run dry. Or they have suffered some equipment malfunction such as a regulator free flow or a split hose which are technical breakdowns that can happen even to the most conscientious, experienced and well trained diver.

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