Basic HTML Version
Features
CONTENTS
WINTER 2012
The Magazine of Divers Alert Network
AlertDiver.com / WINTER 2012
DIVERS NOT WELCOME: THE STARTLING STATE OF CHAMBERS
BRIAN SKERRY
THE ART OF CONSERVATION
+
DISCOVERING
PAPUA
NEW GUINEA
WILD COCOS
DIVE FATALITIES
UNDERSTANDING
THE TRIGGERS
THE PHARMACY
OF THE SEA
Ocean sunfish, or mola molas, develop their truncated, bulletlike shape because the back fin, which they are born with, simply never grow
Instead, it folds into itself as the enormous creature matures, creating a rounded rudder called a clavus. Photo by Daniel Botel
Brian Skerry photographed
this 18-day-old harp seal pup
swimming in an ice lead in the
pack ice of Canada’s Gulf of
St. Lawrence. He used a Nikon
F5 with Subal housing and
two Sea & Sea YS-350 strobes
on half power, shooting
Kodachrome 64 with a 24mm
lens set at f/11 @ 1/125 sec.
62 SKETCHES OF PAPUA NEW GUINEA
Twenty years of discovery
TEXT AND PHOTOS BY MICHELE WESTMORLAND
After two decades of journeys, Michele Westmorland has
begun to feel at home in remarkable Papua New Guinea.
70 COCOS ISLAND
The pelagic crossroads
TEXT BY ANDY SALLMON AND ALLISON VITSKY
PHOTOS BY ANDY SALLMON
It’s megafauna madness off the rugged shores of Cocos,
a remote speck in the eastern Pacific.
76 PHARMACY OF THE SEA
Coral reefs hold the promise of new drugs.
BY HILLARY VIDERS, PH.D.
The search for new drugs has gone beneath the waves.
Learn what this research frontier may hold.
4
|
WINTER 2012
82 DIVE SAFETY: IT’S NO ACCIDENT
Understanding the triggers of dive fatalities
BY DAN ORR
DAN’s president presents the facts about diver
deaths. There are crucial lessons to be learned
from these terrible tragedies.
86 DIVERS LOSING ACCESS TO
EMERGENCY CARE
A crisis in the making
BY DICK CLARKE, CHT
Hyperbaric chamber access is critical to diver
safety. See why that access is in jeopardy and what
may be done.
4-6_TOC_Winter2012.indd 4
1/11/12