UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL The SeaLife SportDiver is a basic fixed-focus 35mm camera supplied in its own submersible housing rated to 30m. It can be used alone, perhaps to take portraits of other divers, or in conjunction with the ReefMaster macro set. This includes a distance-measuring wand and two close-up lenses for 8x and 16x magnifications designed to give you big close-ups of otherwise diminutive underwater life. The camera, which can also be used at the surface, costs £89 and the Macro set costs £74.

BUBBLE? NO TROUBLE! Got a non-diving spouse? Send them on a bubble-sub trip while you go diving with the sharks on the walls of New Providence, Bahamas. Riding a bubble-sub is easy - no swimming skills are needed and, who knows, once they've seen the sort of thing you can get up to they might decide to take up scuba-diving after all. Bubble-subs are now on the menu at Stuart Cove - you can pre-book your diving there direct or book it as part of a holiday package.

FRENCH CONNECTION Scubatechbeuchat@aol.com is the address - the company which owns it says it can offer the clearance and obsolete stock of a previous Beuchat distributor at bargain prices. Beuchat might be a well-known brand of diving equipment in Europe but in Britain it has tended to hide its light under a bushel. However, things are about to change, or so says Polar Bears, which has taken over UK marketing and distribution for these French products. All Beuchat products are made in-house, including a computer designed with Comex. Coldwater regulators start at £149.

TRASH YOUR TOYS Can't afford a trip to the A-bombed wrecks in Bikini Atoll? Don't worry, now you can nuke your own. This toy battleship, 45cm long, is too big for the bath but float it in the swimming pool and aim a Toypedo missile at its underslung target, and the fun begins. A direct hit makes it explode. Hours of fun are promised, not only in trying to hit it but in looking for the pieces afterwards! Complete with Toypedo, it costs £45.

LOOSE-LEAF LOG Following EnJay Marine's successful 200-page Diving Logbook come the company's Logbook Page-Packs. Each pack has 100 dive-log pages in loose-leaf format, and fits any standard three-ring binder system. Enjay claims that it provides twice as many pages for the same price as its competitor's refills. £7.95.

SUB TURTLE Sipadan Island is the world's most renowned dive site for green-turtle encounters. You can expect to see more than two dozen on every dive! Not only that, there are barracuda, shoaling jacks, reef sharks and plenty more at this unique destination, and because they are all right outside your room, you don't waste time getting to the water. The most energetic divers manage up to six dives a day and a 10-day round trip including six days' diving with XXL Encounters costs £1699.

INDESTRUCTIBLE? Titanium is almost as corrosion-proof as gold. The high-performance Scubapro MK25 TI Titanium is titanium throughout, apart from its piston and spring, and costs £665. If you want something lighter, there's the hybrid MK25 TI Alloy, which mixes titanium and aluminium in its construction and comes with a snazzy blue coating. It costs £465. Both are matched to an S600T second stage, also with titanium parts.

GO WEST Which way is west? What's the time? What's the time in America? What's the atmospheric pressure? If you need to know these answers on a regular basis, perhaps you need this Suunto watch. Water-resistant enough for swimming, though not a diver's watch, it looks good, has an illuminated display and has enough modes to dominate the conversation in the pub for a whole evening. The Suunto Yachtsman costs £220.

HOW'S THE LIGHT? The innovative Phos Tronic underwater lamp from Mares has an illuminated display in the handle which tells you its residual burntime and adjusts that according to one of three power settings chosen. It also tells you how quickly it's charging from any input power voltage (110V to 220V) and if it feels unwell! A charge-at-any-time nickel metal hydride battery and a 50W xenon bulb completes the picture. £375.

PERFECT FIT The Jax orthodontic regulator mouthpiece is claimed to do away with jaw fatigue by being customised exactly to fit the contours of your molars. This is easily done at home and has the added advantage that no-one else will want to put your regulator into their mouth once you've fitted it! £16.50.

ONLY ONE DAY AWAY Doha-based Qatar Airways includes a three-times-a-week Airbus A300-600R service to Male, capital of the Maldives, from London's Heathrow. The connecting time at Doha is just 65 minutes, which makes the journey time from the UK to the Maldives one of the quickest services available. Leave London today and tomorrow you could be enjoying the underwater world around these islands in the centre of the Indian Ocean. For more information ask your travel agent or go to www.qatar airways.com

BIGGER AND BAREFOOT Grenada lies at the southernmost tip of the Windward Islands and besides its coral reefs is the site of the Caribbean's largest shipwreck, the Italian cruise liner the Bianca C. At 200m long and upright on the 50m seabed, it makes for a great series of dives but if you prefer something smaller there are the Veronica, the Shakem and numerous other sites. The Barefoot Traveller is offering a seven-night holiday at the Blue Horizons Cottage Hotel near Grand Anse Beach for £895, including 10-dive pack.