Nicholas' Scuba Diving Blog

Sharks Bay, Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt
c Stephen P. Swinton
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Nudibranch - Ribbon Reef, Queensland, Australia
c Nicholas McLaren
Wordless Wednesday Gallery

Where would you imagine cruising around at 105 feet (33 meters) in warm (91F/33C) crystal clear tropical waters? The Bahamas or Fiji perhaps? How about Belgium? Though not in a typical tropical diving location, you can now do just that at Nemo33, a new swimming pool in Brussels, Belgium that is purpose built for scuba diving.

Containing a whopping 2.5 million liters (660,430 gallons) of spring water, and reaching a depth of 33 meters (105 feet), Nemo33 is the world's deepest swimming pool. However, it's more than just a deep swimming pool, it's a scuba diving paradise that was built with the scuba diver in mind. Nemo33 has multiple levels for training and even features tunnels with breathing air so that instructors can talk to their students without having to surface.

Located in central Brussels, Nemo33 is incredibly convenient and really is the perfect scuba training and practice facility. I'd love to see more of these spread around the world - just imagine how many new divers could fall in love with the underwater world with one of these in every major city.

How would you like to see you photos on this site? If you think you've got a quirky, funny, or beautiful image for Wordless Wednesday email it in and you may find it right here, front and center, come Wednesday.

In other Wordless Wednesday news - there is a new gallery here on the site where I'll collect all of the Wordless Wednesday images in one place.

Scuba Fire Hydrant - Solomon's Island, Maryland, USA
Flickr / User: Robbie WT

What are The Bends anyway? Besides a song by Radiohead that is. Well, The Bends is another name for Decompression Sickness, the biggest risk for scuba divers. I've just created a new article that will give you an overview of what Decompression Sickness is, along with the causes, symptoms, risk factors, prevention, and treatment. If you still have more questions or a story to tell stop by the forum.

Well I suppose octopuses actually have 8 tentacles so the question should be: Do they have a favorite tentacle? That's the question that Marine Biologists from 23 Sea Life centers across Europe are hoping to answer.

An octopus in a German zoo has been trained to open a jar and it's believed that the octopus is highly intelligent and may be capable of even greater tasks. The goal of this study is to find out whether they have a favorite tentacle much like humans have a favorite hand. During the study, the octopuses will be given a selection of toys including jars, balls, Leggo, and Rubik's Cubes to see whether they prefer one limb over another.

The results of the study will be released in autumn and I'll post them here. Now if the octopus can solve the Rubik's Cube that will really be something.

Seahorse - Utila, Honduras
Nicholas McLaren

Lawn Scuba, 1963
Flickr user: Superbomba

Saipan has just updated its Safety Diving Act to include new powers for police and tighter regulation of the diving industry. The new laws will allow police to enforce laws requiring scuba instructors and businesses to meet legal requirements. Even more interestingly, the new laws call for a governmental assessment of the level of difficulty of dive sites and consequently for restrictions to be implemented that will ensure diver safety.

Saipan is not the first jurisdiction to implement some form of governmental control of the scuba diving industry. Queensland in Australia has very tight restrictions on everything involving diving all the way down to how dives should be logged by operators and how many lights must be carried by divers in the late afternoon. Egypt regulates the experience level required by divers to dive certain protected sites, although whether these standards are properly enforced is open to debate. There are also many locations where the diving industry self regulates its activities and in most cases this works quite well.

I feel that the assessment of dive site difficulty and restriction of divers according to experience is an excellent idea and could make a real contribution to safety, but this will require local operators to act in the spirit of those regulations. What do you think? To what level should governments be involved in regulating scuba diving?