THE TACKETTS HAVE NAILED IT
I've never met Denise and Larry Tackett, but I've travelled in their dust, so to speak. When I checked the acknowledgments at the back of their The Essential Underwater Photography Manual, I recognised many names I knew and places I'd been.
People at distant dive centres often ask me if they are friends of mine. They must think I would get on with them. That's unusual, because I have been known to be critical of many books on underwater photography. I don't like those which pontificate on the subject, especially when the end result, the picture, should be able to speak for itself.
So I was agreeably surprised to find that this book is written in no-nonsense plain English. I can forgive the couple their mis-spelling of "colour", as they are American. I was also agreeably surprised to find that the information contained here was equally no-nonsense. It all made good sense!
The book is sub-titled A Guide to Creative Techniques and Key Equipment, and it does what it says on the tin. The authors have approached the subject as an aft-deck inter-dive discussion. They tell you all you need to know in a straightforward and what I consider a factually correct manner.
So who are the Tacketts? All I can tell you is that they make a living from taking photographs, and in an underwater photography world dominated by dilettantes, that is unusual in itself. I believe they are icthyologists and have written books on marine life too.
The book is well-structured, and illustrated with relevant photographs. Even the chapter Film or Digital? is right on the button.
The Tacketts have used their enormous combined experience to put together a very useful guide.
My only complaint is that if you all buy it, you'll all know how to take good pictures under water, and it'll be even harder to make a living at it. John Bantin

FOR THE LOVE OF THE DRYAD
Every diver, they say, has one book in him. Henry Alexander has just produced his, after putting 30 years of his life into one shipwreck.
A lecturer in zoology in London, Alexander started diving in the 1960s, became Chairman of Croydon Underwater Club, and ran diving courses for biologists in South Devon.
On one instructional shallow sea dive, he and his students found a few iron plates and a little brass padlock amid debris at the foot of the cliffs of Start Point. He wanted to know all about the ship, dived when he could and researched in museums and libraries. He closed in on the Great Blizzard of 1891, during which the steamer Marana and three big sailing ships were lost around Start Point.
Alexander says he will never forget 8 August, 1982. In his book he describes diving down to the wreck to find a sounding lead: "I was getting low on air and a little chilly when I cast my eyes to the right... One of the stones looked too regular to be natural... I gave it a gentle tap with the hammer... pieces of concretion fell off and I could see the glint of a brassy object...
"My face creased with smiles, my mask began to leak... what I had in my hand after eight long years of searching was a steering-wheel boss, clearly engraved 'DRYAD LIVERPOOL'!"
The 1035 ton fully rigged iron barque Dryad had been built in 1874 and wrecked with the loss of all 21 hands. She hit Start Point during the blizzard on her way from the Tyne to Valparaiso, carrying coal, coke and mining equipment.
Alexander's obsession drove him to track down the great-grand-daughter of the Dryad's builder. He studied the life of Captain William Thomas and even found his great-grand-daughter.
Over the years, Alexander raised hundred of items, including the captain's watch, revolver and spare magazine. Each year a long list of finds was sent to the Receiver of Wreck. There are 110 in all.
If the title The Life and Death of the Liverpool Barque Dryad (1874-91) sounds like an obituary, that is what it is: a wreck-diver's painstakingly researched, well-dived, heavily illustrated, well-written fond farewell to a ship which has become a large part of his own life. Wreck-diving could do with more books like it.
Kendall McDonald

ABOVE THE RULES
Fatal Depth tells the tale of the deaths of five divers over the space of two summer seasons from the same Montuak dive vessel, the Seeker. These deaths occurred during dives on the Andrea Doria, one of the most challenging shipwrecks on Earth.
Written with a reporter's eye for a thumping good story (author Joe Haberstroh is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who works for a Long Island paper), there is a dreadfully fatalistic feel to each chapter as the small details of each diver's life are chronicled leading up to their final dive.
This is far more than a literary snuff movie, however, as it throws up some fascinating issues about the morality of diving these deep wrecks and the risks taken by the individual divers. The book initially presents the Andrea Doria divers as the elite of the sport, diving supermen, with one telling passage early in the book noting that "the rules (of diving), which aren't enforced by any law or regulation anyhow, don't apply to these divers."
What unfolds over the rest of the book, as divers meet their end through oxygen toxicity hits, disorientation and fatally flawed judgment driven by artefact fever, shows just how much the rules apply to every diver, regardless of qualification patches or experience.
Add some fiendishly bad luck for the Seeker as at least two of the divers seem to succumb to pre-existing medical conditions, and the results speak for themselves.
This new softback edition is a well-written account of the stuff of diving nightmares, a lonely death in the dark heart of a giant shipwreck, and is a horribly compelling read for any level of diver.
Monty Halls

WEST SCOTLAND APPETISER
Lawson Wood has to be commended for trying to cover the entire west coast of Scotland in a single guide, Dive West Scotland. He describes 127 saltwater dives and three inland sites in this book and, unlike those guides that have in the past focused on wrecks, he has included a swathe of scenic sites. All are enthused about from the perspective of an underwater photographer.
The sites are set out in six sections, in a style similar to that of previous Guides. Levels of experience required for each dive are given and sites graded in terms of difficulty.
I have dived some of the sites in the book and on these found myself in agreement with Wood's observations - except over An-t-Iasgaair where, unlike him, I noted loads of fish life. I found diving this site very intense, and experienced both up- and downcurrents there. The book mentions the strong currents and the need to get your buoyancy right at depth to enjoy this site.
Trying to cover the whole of west Scotland has left the coverage of sites thin and patchy. A few hotspots exist further north, such as the Summer Isles, but even here the excellent wreck of the Fairweather doesn't make it into this guide.
I feel that this book is fine if regarded simply as an appetiser for the immense area it attempts to cover, because it will inform you about the area or island you are considering visiting. But a few large-scale diagrams to help identify the sites would have improved it as a guide.
Mike Clark

WACKY ISLAND LIFE
Have you ever wanted to work as a dive professional on a remote island? So You Want To Live On An Island... will either confirm your desire or put you right off.
Gay Morse is a Texan who has lived and worked at the Pirates Point resort in Little Cayman in the Caribbean for many years, and she is a big-time advocate of getting away from it all. She has collected humorous anecdotes from other islanders, staff and guests, bundled them into themed chapters, added in a history of the island and launched the result onto the market.
The book is relentless in its pursuit of fun - in line with the resort's market, it is very American-folksy, peppered with exclamation marks and "how we howled with laughter"-type conclusions to each story. That alone may be enough to put you off wanting to pursue a career change of this sort, but to be fair the book also contains its share of warnings that such a life is not for everybody.
If Gay's warm-hearted and well-produced book comes over as an extended plug for Pirate's Point rather than a work of universal applicability, it's probably as good a promotional device as any one dive centre has devised. It's certainly worth a read if you're diving the Caymans.
What's more, I must admit that it did make me want to visit the resort - as much to try out the excitingly described cooking as for the diving.
Steve Weinman

STAYING ALIVE
In a current-day context, a title such as The Art of Living Under Water could easily be about underwater habitats and saturation diving. Forget that. The first edition of this book was published in the year 1734. The "art" it refers to is the fundamental art of keeping a diver alive for longer than a single breath-hold.
Marten Triewald's 1734 manuscript has been re-packaged as a limited-edition hardcover book by the Historical Diving Society, with an introduction providing a brief biography of Triewald and placing his work in context.
In 1734, the understanding of physics and chemistry we take for granted was in its infancy. It was known that air was needed for breathing, and that something in air was used up by breathing and by fire, but oxygen had yet to be discovered.
Triewald's development of diving bells was a leading edge application of the science of the time.
In its time it must have been the equivalent of the BSAC Diving Manual or the PADI Encyclopaedia of Diving, or perhaps something more military such as the US Navy Diving Manual.
Despite some excellent explanation of salvage lifting techniques, it isn't a text book now. Neither is it a coffee-table book. It's a book for collectors and students of diving history. It's a celebration of the roots of what we do - a book to own for the pure gratification of owning it.
John Liddiard

NO WORRIES, NOTHING HAPPENS!
I bought my wife one of those stylish new iMacs for Christmas. You know the type, just a big flat screen on a pedestal. I bought myself a present, too - an Airport Extreme. That means she's no longer on my Mac when I'm trying to work, and because we are now wirelessly networked she can use hers anywhere in the house.
Her new Mac is always on and playing something. If it's music, she has animated screen displays. So I gave her another present, the CalMarine DVD.
This DVD consists of soothing underwater images with the sort of soundtrack you would expect in a dentist's reception while waiting for root canal treatment.
You know how you get tormented during the evening while on diving liveaboards, as you sit through the proudly displayed video footage of fellow-passengers? They have usually shot endless material in which nothing much happens, but the camera never stops tracking and panning, and every shot is held onto for several minutes longer than the five seconds it merits.
Well, the makers of this DVD has seamlessly cut together 90 minutes of that. It just rumbles on rather like an aquarium, only instead of the noise of the bubble-maker, it has elevator music.
The producers don't expect you to sit down and watch it from beginning to end. No, rather like an aquarium, you just glance at it from time to time. Perfect for the dentist's reception. There's no script, no form, no beginning or end. It turns the iMac into an electronic aquarium.
With footage shot in the Maldives, the Galapagos, Cocos, the Red Sea, the Caribbean and around the Great Barrier Reef, you're bound to find some of it very familiar. It's a pity that the content was sourced from low-resolution amateur video cameras. It's sharpness and colour certainly doesn't match up to what Hollywood can produce.
However, I ran it in the kitchen one evening and I noticed our goldfish starting to look anxious. Well, you all know about the accelerating cost of fish-food these days.
Brian Leeson, who came up with A Serene Marine Journey, says that it was in fact originally conceived for the dental trade, and that it was "the first digital DVD", produced in 1997. He also pledges that a minimum of 50% of the cover price of £14.99 on every copy now sold to the public will be sent to the main DEC Tsunami Earthquake appeal fund.
John Bantin

LAUGHING ROUND THE WORLD
Monty Halls' good humoured approach to expedition-leading shines through on the DVD Totally Wrecked. As much fun as it sounds to dive dozens of household-name wrecks on a continuous global trek over a couple of months, the downsides are also apparent.
Illnesses, logistical hiccups, weather, safety worries and equipment failures all play a part in making the going tough at times, and one of the team is almost a gonner late on in the trip, but the intrepid Full Circle Expeditions leader usually manages to maintains his "we'll-laugh-about-this-later" brio.
The trip gets off to a shaky start in Scapa Flow, where bad weather hampers diving, but things soon warm up in the Red Sea and the Med and it's good to watch the group, or at least some of them, gaining proficiency in wreck penetration as the trip goes on.
Their growing confidence is repaid on great wrecks such as the Japanese wartime casualties of Palau and Chuuk; the Calvin Coolidge in Vanuatu; the Yongala in Australia; the Waikato, Rainbow Warrior and Mikhail Lermentov in New Zealand; and Bianca C in Grenada. There are some interesting non-wreck dives in there too.
There are gaps - the wreck footage from Palau is disappointing and that from Scapa understandably sparse - but this is an enjoyable diving DVD and handy for reference should you be visiting any of these 10 shipwreck sites.
Steve Weinman

GREAT BRITISH SUBS
Set to the score for Wolfgang Petersen's film Das Boot, Innes McCartney's latest production explores a selection of seven Royal Navy submarine wrecks sunk around the shores of Britain between 1901 and 1951.
The wrecks, chronologically listed, range from the Holland-class vessel considered to be the world's first true submarine to the massive T-class HMS Tantivy. Tragedy surrounds many of these wrecks and some are off-limits to divers. HMS Affray is one such (lost with all hands and considered Britain's Kursk).
Others such as the Monitor-class M2 are popular dive sites, though submarines such as this are also graves and should be treated with the respect they deserve by divers.
Tantivy was sunk as a sonar target in 1947 and is an imposing wreck. Lost and found, it is now owned by Aberdeen SAC and is popular with more experienced divers.
The camera work throughout the half-hour DVD is as clear and moody as the music, though all the heavy breathing was at times distracting. Nevertheless, coupled with historical photographs and an informative narrative, this DVD will whet the appetite of those whose passion is historical wreck diving.
Alex Khachadourian