WAY UP FROM THE BOTTOM
Kevin Gurr is famous for many things: being one of the first to bring technical training to the UK, diving the Britannic, and making the crewcut the most popular technical-diving haircut.
     He has not been noted for his writing. Perhaps I'm being unfair, but I found most of his previous articles would cure insomnia.
     So when I picked up his Technical Diving from the Bottom Up, I made sure to have a double espresso close to hand.
     To my amazement, I found the book lively, informative and interesting. How could this be? The world of technical diving is, by its nature, horrendously opinionated, and full of geeks and anoraks who delight in obscure scientific theories and shiny gadgets. Yet Gurr has managed to present a balanced view of the issues and options facing technical divers.
     Inevitably the section on equipment is the largest, but rather than trying to dictate any specific configurations, Gurr outlines some key principles and looks at the pros and cons of different systems.
     The rest of the book covers just about every imaginable area of technical diving, including physiology, decompression theory, diving disorders, skills and drills, rebreathers and gas-blending. Perhaps the only difficulty with covering so many subjects is that some areas don't get explored in depth. This is made up for by a good bibliography with lots of further reading for the enthusiastic.
     Technical Diving from the Bottom Up is an excellent book for anyone learning about this kind of diving or teaching it. Most serious divers will find something of interest. The print quality and design is basic and could be improved, but the numerous personal experiences and anecdotes add a humanity and warmth to what could otherwise be a dry subject.
     Anyone familiar with the bitter rivalries and quick-to-condemn attitudes of the technical diving community will recognise this book as both an achievement and an act of courage.
Mark Brill

HALF A CHANCE FOR DIVERS
At the end of World War Two, the Royal Navy was set to dispose of 116 surrendered U-boats by sinking them in more than 100m off the north coast of Ireland by 15 February, 1946.
     The plan was called Operation Deadlight. But the rough seas of the North Atlantic meant that exactly half of those U-boats foundered on tow on the way to the sinking grounds, or broke free and were gunned down in shallower depths.
     Without those rogue U-boats, Innes McCartney would not have been able to make his latest video. For those 58 boats sank within diving reach of the Operation Deadlight expeditions, led by McCartney and videoed by him.
     This is without doubt the best of McCartney's videos to date. He was aided by some magnificent visibility.
     At more than 75m you can see the whole length of a U-boat lying on the bottom, and at the same time watch divers in total clarity at both bow and stern. This clearer-than-gin visibility meant that the camera could pick out each submarine's special features in fine detail.
     The wide range of U-boats, nearly all in excellent condition, examined by the expedition divers and mostly identified by class and number, are shown alongside earlier German pictures of them in action. It makes first-class viewing for any diver.
     McCartney has added details from his extensive research about each U-boat dived. For example, the voiceover by Patricia McCartney, which is, incidentally, nice and clear, tells us at one point that the wartime crew of HMS Norfolk should take great interest in the sight of U2511 on the seabed, because they didn't see her when she was lining up to torpedo them.
     Only a last-minute order to the U-boat's captain to turn back to port following Germany's surrender saved the Norfolk from being one of the last ships sunk by a U-boat in the war!
Kendall McDonald

Let down by the English
No one in the UK bothered, so it took a German to produce a CD-Rom covering Britain's diving capital, Dorset. But did he do a good job?
     The author, Stefan Baehr, is an accomplished wreck-diver and photographer, as this information-packed CD demonstrates. It gives basic, and not-so-basic, details of Dorset's main dive towns and 19 of the county's most popular wreck dives, including the Kyarra, Hood, Countess of Erne, Royal Adelaide, M2 and Salsette.
     Each wreck has a good supply of accompanying images, several even have a diagram, and for all of them we are given historical details, difficulty evaluations and the expected diving conditions.
     The last point is where this sort of guide often falls over, and this is one no exception. Factors such as visibility vary so much that accurate forecasts are hard to provide, and this is a mistake that many occasional divers in UK waters make.
     Sadly, although factual errors are rare, which is good, mistakes are quite a feature of this CD-Rom. Grammatically the text is often wincingly painful, putting you in mind of nothing so much as a German talking to you in pidgin-English.
     It's a shame, because this is a commendable attempt to produce a worthwhile guide. I'm sure the CD-Rom will do very well among divers from overseas planning a visit to our shores, but for Brits the text could be just too much.
     Within the description of the Aeolian Sky, for instance, you find the sentence: "This is probably the spot where you will run out of air. I recommend to simply go on diving and then rise to the surface along the SMB and reel." Not great advice, and probably not really what the author meant.
     The layout is ruled by the text but the words appear crammed in. Instead of using a shoehorn, a smaller, more modern typeface would have helped.
     It sounds as if I hated this CD-Rom, but I did find the information accurate, the pictures are brilliant and the maps and diagrams are useful.
Gavin Parsons

SHARK INTELLIGENCE
Sharks is an interesting and well-illustrated introduction to its subject and Michael Bright uses a relaxed and open style of writing that makes for an easy and informative read. With its minimal use of scientific terminology, Sharks is suitable for any enthusiast over about 10 years old.
     The book is selectively researched and seems to contain only a few factual errors, such as the claim that shortfin mako sharks grow "12 inches per year thereafter". Bearing in mind that the text goes on to confirm that these fish can live for 25 years or more, there would be some massive makos in our oceans, whereas in fact their maximum length is 4m.
     While respecting Sharks' target audience and appreciating that the book was not written with divers specifically in mind, it would have been interesting to have included rather more information on topics such as species identification, safety tips and eco-tourism.
     Also, in terms of illustration, I would like to have seen some maps showing the locations of the ranges of the species illustrated and a summary information key for each species. No doubt it was a case of where to draw the line.
     However, Sharks provides a sound overview of the animals today, and it is particularly pleasing to see a chapter devoted to debunking the myth that they are automated man-eaters, as in Jaws.
     This book should make an appreciated present if given to anyone interested in these magnificent but vulnerable animals.
Clive James

LIVING THE PUBLISHING DREAM
The Tacketts, Denise Nielsen and Larry, have achieved something remarkable with their book Reef Life.
     Not only is the quality of the photographs consistently high, but the detailed information within the text is logical and accessible to any divers, whether they be experts in marine biology or simply curious fish-watchers.
     This American husband-and-wife team seem to have lived many divers' dream existence. Travelling the Indo-Pacific for 13 years, they would camp on a beach with their own compressor and make three dives a day, collecting sponge specimens for medical research.
     Any diver will learn from Reef Life. For example, I knew that pearlfish (Carapodidae) were those sneaky little creatures that enjoy crawling into the anus of a sea cucumber. What I did not know was that the pearlfish has located its own anus close to its head so that it can excrete without emerging fully from the cucumber's protective orifice!
     The scientific information is clear and broken down into digestible chunks, enlivened by well-annotated pictures - everything from mantis shrimps eating coral shrimps to frogfish camouflaged against cup corals. Predation, reproduction, camouflage, feeding and mimicry are all wonderfully explained.
     And, in keeping with the mood of the times, there is a final section on reefs in danger - overfishing, cyanide, pollution etc, complete with appropriate photos, including a poignant shot of an octopus trying to cover itself with a piece of broken plastic audio-cassette.
     Each chapter carries an epithet from a writer, though I'm not sure that feminist icons such as Erica Jong and Maya Angelou sit happily alongside naturalists such as Sylvia Earle or Rachel Carson. The glossary covers everything from allelopathy to zooxanthellae.
     I suspect this book will become an invaluable primer for any diver who wants to look at reefs in an intelligent way.
Tim Ecott

ON GETTING THERE FIRST
Silent Symphony by Tony Wu and William Tan might have received the International Prize for Best Book of Underwater Images at the famous Antibes underwater photography festival, but would you buy it?
     That has to be the question with "coffee-table" books - are they worth the expense? In this case I'm afraid I would have to say, I'm not sure. True, there are some stunning images of tropical marine life in this collection, but there are also more that don't really stand out.
     And for all that this book contains some brilliant pictures, so many other top photographers have compiled books featuring the same sort of thing. When producing a volume such as this, authors and publishers have to look at what has gone before and ask - have we improved on it or is it more of the same?
     Is this book, for example, better than David Doubilet's Light in the Sea? No, but perhaps that isn't a fair comparison. A better one might be with Roger Steene's Coral Seas. Both books were photographed in the same geographical area (South-east Asia), but I feel Steene's is better and, more importantly, it was published first.
     Silent Symphony contains some marvellously shot pieces, such as the marbled octopus featured on the cover and the broadclub cuttlefish on page 45, but it doesn't have that edge that would tempt me to buy it. The grey reef shark opposite the cuttlefish, for example, is really quite ordinary.
     I can imagine this doing well in the authors' homeland, Japan, and the judges at Antibes clearly loved it, but in commercial terms it has nothing new to offer on the crowded "glossy" market.
Gavin Parsons

MY RED SEA HOLIDAY
So You Want to Scuba Dive?, another video offering from the New Vision stable, is mercifully better than Dive the Reef. The producer's aim is to show how a group of divers arrive in Sharm el Sheikh and survive an Open Water course.
     The production gives an accurate idea of what it's like to go to the Red Sea for the first time - so much so that at times it felt like a real-time diary of someone's diving holiday.
     The most successful parts of this video are without doubt the short interviews with the novice divers, whose enthusiasm for the experience is clearly genuine, and rather touching.
     However, as with Dive the Reef the script again falls short of the camerawork. So You Want to Scuba Dive makes no attempt to explain how people learn to dive, or give tuition in any of the basic techniques.
     This video might encourage some non-divers to sign up for an Open Water course, but it won't tell them where or how to find one either.
Tim Ecott

A beginning, a middle and
"Both informative and interesting, Dive the Reef is designed for people at all levels of diving, from novice to expert." So runs the blurb for this the video.
     Producing any "underwater film" for divers or non-divers is fraught with difficulty. The world of commercial video is highly competitive, and there are many excellent productions on the market. Dive the Reef is not one of them.
     Try as I might, I could not imagine the sort of divers who would enjoy this overly long, visually unexciting and technically dull film. Although it attempts to cover such topics as good buoyancy control, dangerous marine organisms and wreck-diving, it lacks any overall structure.
     More seriously, the narration is peppered with nonsense: "It's little wonder as to the vast profusion of life here considering the currents present."
     The information contained within the relentless narration was repetitive, too. We are told at least three times that gorgonians are fragile. Some of the marine observations are questionable "Batfish are elusive." In what sense? I've never known a batfish not to come extremely close to divers, and for divers to have been nibbled by them on more than one occasion.
     Whatever view of fish, coral or shipwreck appeared on screen, the narrator would state the glaringly obvious. The exception came when he referred to the "breathtaking beauty of the coral reef" over a shot of the most arid, rubble-covered expanse of grey nothingness imaginable. It certainly wouldn't make me want to visit Sharm el Sheikh.
     The most interesting part of Dive the Reef is an interview with the doctor at Sharm's hyperbaric chamber. Dr Adel's view of how divers make themselves vulnerable to decompression illness is a masterly Egyptian view of why overindulgence in alcohol should be avoided.
     The final irony comes when the narrator advises underwater film-makers: "Films need a beginning, a middle and an end: this thinking needs to be applied to your movies, however basic." Having said all that, the cameraman does have a steady hand, and the shots are always in focus.
Tim Ecott