THE BIG PICTURE
NIGEL EATON, EDITOR

IN A SPORT IN WHICH POOR VIZ IS ALL TOO OFTEN A FACT OF LIFE, and underwater light levels can range from "moody" to pitch black, we divers shouldn't expect too much in the way of the visually spectacular. Or should we?

In this issue of Diver we are treated to a gallery of underwater images as striking as they are varied.

Few sights in nature can match that of a large shark going about its business in the wild, and every diver remembers his or her first encounter with this top predator. But was that vision of flesh made steel cruising the shallow reef at sunset a blacktip or a whitetip? Were those hefty forms hanging in the current at the point grey reef sharks or Caribbean reef sharks?

Based on his own experiences and illustrated with his own images, John Bantin's guide to the sharks most commonly seen by divers shows the splendours of the species, and tells us what to look for - and what to watch out for.

Awesome underwater wildlife of a very different kind is depicted by Vancouver-based diver Darryl Leniuk. Lying on the shallow bed of British Columbia's Adams River, Darryl watches as a life-and-death drama of epic proportions unfolds around him.

It's the biggest sockeye salmon run in the region for years, and soon the waters are turning red with the bodies of tens of thousands of fish returning to their place of birth to spawn, then die.

Wrecks are not always the best places to get a big picture of the underwater world, but Edmond Terakopian's photographs of Cyprus's classic Zenobia show that sometimes they can be. Edmond teams up with writer Daf Downes to record the experience of diving the sunken 10,000 ton ferry which, approached for the first time in the gloom at 40m, is likened to "coming face to face with some submerged sea monster".

Meanwhile, on a visit to the wreck of the Thistlegorm during a PADI speciality course, Chris Boardman reminds us of the overwhelming sensory impact of a descent in perfect visibility on this Red Sea giant.

Is there a supreme image of the ocean world? Diver-astronaut Mike Gernhardt - a veteran of four space shuttle missions who says that his mother had always been more worried by his work as a commercial diver - reckons that there is, and that he has seen it. Read about what Mike simply describes as "the ultimate dive".






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