Secret Seas of the Channel Islands
The video seems to be vanishing FAST, and the CD-Rom was always a bit of a pain to use. But in this new world in which TVs and PCs are merging into single entertainment centres, the diving DVD is coming into its own.
     Let's start at the high-quality end of the spectrum. Sue Daly spent six years making four 25-minute films about the Channel Islands, and these are now out on DVD.
     Making use of excellent visibility at the southernmost extreme of the British Isles, she has succeeeded in showing just how colourful our native undersea life really can be.
     Creatures such as triggerfish, seahorses, white sea-fans and sunset corals might not appear that often further north, but much of the life shown here could be witnessed, albeit more murkily, on any British dive.
     The films cover Channel Islands shipwrecks (seen primarily through a marine biologists's eyes - nice footage of a broken-up Flying Fortress and of conger-feeding); the marine life off Sark, and on the fringes of Jersey; and the chronicle of changing seasons in that island's Bouley Bay.
     There isn't too much sign of divers because the camera zeros straight in on its subjects. Narration is professionally handled by John Nettles (who but Bergerac for this job?).
(£14, Sue Daly Productions, 01534 864541).

Ocean Weirdo's
John Boyle is one of our favourite underwater film-makers, and this DVD contains two 25-minute films, one produced by him and one by John McIntyre, looking at the most grotesque and outlandish ocean denizens, both within scuba-diving range and in depths only a submersible could reach.
     Central to the films is morphology, the process by which creatures evolve into bizarre shapes for their own protection.
     So we get to see the longest animal in the world (not a whale), a 12cm nudibranch with an expanding head, the indescribably ugly devil scorpionfish, rat-tails on the Titanic, electric scallops and much more. Movie connections are rife in this universe - the stomach-bursting arthropod that inspired Alien, the Darth Vader isopod, the Dumbo squid and so on. No Hollywood scriptwriter could dream up this stuff.
     The films were premiered at last year's Dive Show and demonstrate that there is no substitute for great film quality, understated music, satisfying graphics and sound effects and a good script. You'll actually want to watch this DVD more than once!
     Only one criticism - where did that rogue apostrophe come from in the title?
(£15, Shark Bay Films, www.fourthelement.com)

Jungle Blue
Another offering from John Boyle, previewed at LIDS this year, Jungle Blue details an intrepid exploration of New Britain Island in Papua New Guinea with renowned US cave-diver Jim Bowden. The objective was to find the underwater cave system at the source of a river.
     Local legend had it that the mysterious hole was haunted by spirits, and certainly there are enough setbacks along the way to make the team wonder whether there could be any truth in the tribal rumours.
     The undertaking was risky for the film-makers, too, because the outcome was so uncertain. Much of the DVD is taken up with the journey to the location, though this is one of those cases where it is sufficiently interesting a trip to justify the slow-burn approach. The cave is there, but it starts at 50m. Problems multiply.
     One scene that sticks in the memory is of a local child who has never seen a scuba diver before, watching in terror as John Boyle emerges from the river. A higher diving quotient would make this DVD better value but Jungle Blue is about genuinely adventurous diving and worth a look for that reason.
(£15, Sharkbay Films, www.fourthelement.com)

ScubaCore Transglobal Diving Quarterly DVD Journal
I pressed buttons on the 150-minute quarterly DVD until a piece about Chuuk Lagoon and the sunken Japanese fleet began to play. I honestly intended to concentrate on it, but I just kept drifting back to reading my book.
     Odd bits like the San Francisco Maru caught my eye, but ScubaCore Transglobal Diving Quarterly DVD Journal Vol 1 Issue 2 just couldn't grab and hold my attention.
     Chuuk ended, and the DVD returned to the main menu. Why couldn't it just roll through into the next item? It's like having to go back to the contents page between reading magazine articles, rather than just turning the page.
     More location reports suffered from the same tedium. It was all the sort of thing a tour operator would love to show to customers ready to sign on the dotted line, but just too cheesy and slow for the other 99.99% of us.
     Then came some interviews, some interesting, but too much of the interviewer and not enough from or about the interviewee. After the third one, the standard opening - "Hello, X, how are you?" "Hello Y. I am fine, how are you?" "I am fine..." - began to grate.
     The concept is worthy, but the execution is just too "advertorial". It reminds me of the dregs of US diving magazines. Buy a DVD and you can only compare it to much slicker TV productions.
     It needs work on the scripts, presentation - and especially the editing.
John Liddiard
($89.95pa, ScubaCore, www.scubacore.com)

Wreck Detectives
You've probably seen at least some of the episodes on TV, but here is the whole of the first series on one double DVD. HMS Pomone, the Earl of Abergavenny, Mingary Castle, HMS Lawford, the Stirling Castle, five mediaeval wrecks off Guernsey, the Swan and HMS Hazardous are represented, so it's all within relatively easy diving depths, and all but the WW2 frigate Lawford are old enough to be described as "archaeological" dives.
     Wreck Detectives proved mildly controversial among seasoned divers, who delighted in picking holes in each programme. OK, bog-standard British dives often seemed to be made out to be extraordinarily hazardous adventures, and, yes, it was surprising to see certain experts apparently baffled by "mysteries" that we all thought they had solved long before.
     Still, what really matters is that this series for the first time brought British wreck-diving to a wider public. Several million people enjoyed Wreck Detectives, and most will have been blissfully unconcerned about the finer points of diving style. Further series were commissioned as a result of its success.
     It's not easy, without a certain amount of licence, to make TV programmes that will keep viewers' itchy fingers off the zapper, and the only pity perhaps is that each of these programmes is 50 minutes long. A tighter time-slot might have reined in some of the longeurs and repetitions.
     But for 600 cherry-pickable minutes of underwater archaeology, the price makes this good value. And, at DIVER, we always have time for Miranda Krestovnikoff!
(£19.99, DD Home Entertainment, 01829 741490)

Ten of the Best - Tenerife
We move onto what is primarily a promotional film for three dive centres on the biggest of the Canary Islands. The original idea of ranking the top 10 dive sites like some sort of pop chart was presumably deemed too tricky to execute while treating each sponsor even-handedly, and we're told early on that there is little to choose between the locations anyway.
     That said, the underwater footage is pretty good, and does its job of making you think Tenerife would be worth adding to your diving holiday list (though in certain of the resorts you might consider spending as much time offshore as possible). Highlights include the "Stingray Village", where hand-feeding goes on, and eagle, butterfly, electric and even bull rays are apparently occasional visitors along with the sting rays, some of which are sizeable.
     Other locations feature everything from big shoals of amberjack, sardines and barracuda to the inevitable angel sharks and even a dolphin out in the blue. Only one wreck dive is featured - the Canaries are thin on wreckage.
     Rather than a narrator, enthusiastic presenter Paul Marley addresses us from behind his full-face mask, sharing with us each time he gets down to 50 bar or goes into deco. His style is a bit overheated, but if you're visiting the island, this 50-minute offering will come in handy for as a wildlife ID aid.
(£14.95, Ocean-Eye, www.ocean-eye-video.com)

A World Below: Malta
H20 Ocean Underwater Productions has decided to break the mould for documentary-making. For its first DVD on the wrecks of Malta, it has ditched what it perceives to be the "dull narrative", allowing you to focus on the flowing video images without distraction.
     To assist you in this process, all eight of the wrecks visited have their own funky/chill-out soundtracks. You will either warm to this new vision, or hate it and long to be told something about the wrecks as the camera pans around them.
     I found myself enjoying the excellent footage and soundtrack to the extent of departing for dreamland, though this was not down to boredom, simply that I had just had a long flight.
     I had dived some of the wrecks included, notably the Imperial Eagle, Rozi and Um El Faroud, and the images were clear and bright, allowing me to relive my own diving experiences. A nice bonus was the footage of HMS Stubborn, good enough to keep me happy until I get there on my next trip to Malta.
     A lot of the wrecks on the DVD are below 40 and sometimes 50m deep, but only a few of the close-up shots suffered slightly from fuzziness. And if you do want the history of the wrecks, you'll find a paragraph of text and a couple of still images in a separate section of the DVD.
Mike Clark
(£14.99, H20 Ocean Underwater Productions, www.h2-ocean.com)

Ottoman Odyssey
The best DVDs give the impression that the editor was spoiled for choice with the material available. With the worst, a few strands of interesting footage can appear to have been back-combed and stretched way beyond their natural limits.
     Wreck dives often seem to invite film-makers to inflate their subject, so we are required to watch the entire build-up to the dive, however uninteresting. Attempts to inject excitement - "Will the weather hold?" ... "Will they be able to locate the site?"... "Will there be enough sandwiches for lunch?" - can appear all too desperate.
     Ottoman Odyssey is a case in point. Five years ago, British diver David Oldale found the wreck of a 14th century Turkish warship off Marmaris. Great, though in reality the viewer can spend only so long looking at sand-covered ribs, a pile of concreted cannonballs and a couple of anchors.
     Before we get to the wreck itself, however, we have half an hour of scene-setting, with a disproportionate amount of food-shopping, talking heads, worries about the kit and weather etc. The most patient viewer will soon be fast-forwarding, and unlikely to want to repeat the experience.
     The solution? Don't try to turn a 10-minute dive into a 50-minute experience. Unless it is a genuine voyage of discovery, let's have a load of different dives on one DVD and get our money's worth! (£12.95, Ocean-Eye, www.ocean-eye-video.com)

reviews by Steve Weinman