Reviewed by Chris Manning
From Amazon.com: “Explore an undersea world in Endless Ocean. Swim through coral reefs, explore ancient shipwrecks, meet local wildlife and search for sunken treasure on your own team with no time limits and no pressure.”

It’s safe to say that a decent amount of divers own a Wii video game system. However, how many divers are aware that there is dive-related Wii title, called “Endless Ocean”? The street price is just $29 bucks, so it’s worth a closer look. Endless Ocean was released in January of this year and I gotta tell you, it saw me through the cold weather months, especially since I don’t own a dry suit!

Endless Ocean offers players the chance to experience some of the things us divers know about first hand. You start out on a boat and interact with a crew member, who briefs you on what you need to know about the various facets of the game. There is also a message board with requests to lead dives, information about places to dive, and other useful data. Each player maintains a fish log that displays all the marine life you have interacted with as well as the ones you haven’t. The dive boat also has a boom box which has the option of playing user-provided mp3 files from the Wii’s external memory card!

You have the option of moving the dive boat to different areas with a map displaying the areas you have already explored. Different marine life exist in different areas and you can add a species to your fish log by interacting with them. Interaction is easy, as you point to a species you want to interact with, and the species is revealed along with interesting facts. If you interact with them repeatedly, you may find yourself with a new friend that follows you everywhere.

Features

• Dive in exotic locales: from tide pools to the wrecks of World War II bombers
• No set time limits and no way to fail, you’re free to relax and explore however you see fit
• Find, identify, and catalog hundreds of different types of marine life such as penguins, clownfish, dolphins, sharks and the blue whale
• Go online with Nintendo WFC and meet friends and family for an underwater sightseeing tour. Once you exchange friend codes, you and a friend can dive together on the same screen. While the two of you are exploring the ocean, you can communicate using a series of pre-set messages.
• Exploring is easy just point the Remote in the direction you want to go and hold the B Button and to examine objects, just point at them and press the A Button

Endless Ocean is not a technical diving game where you have to manage ascent rates, depth, or decompression. Rather, it is a nice change of pace and offers gamers the chance to relax, explore, and learn more about marine life. Who knows, it could inspire some people to explore the real sport of diving and we could always recruit more people, right? As a diver, I found that the best part of the game was an educational one: learning to identify different species of marine life. I may not be a better diver for having played Endless Ocean, but I am definitely a more educated one when it comes to fish identification.

DallasDiver’s video specialist, Chris Hinkle, will review the Equinox Pro8 Underwater Housing/VX2100 combination and share his experience with the parent company, WNRS. A forthcoming review will feature photos, footage, and feedback - from initial order to follow up service. Hinkle will share his experiences and thoughts regarding procuring, maintaining, and handling a professional underwater video housing. Since Chris is a professional videographer, it will be interesting to follow his work as he ventures underwater! Look for a full review sometime in March.

Written by Chris Manning

My enthusiasm for diving is becoming contagious as evidenced by my 21 year old daughter’s recent interest in the sport. Since she lives in Frisco, I called Blue Dolphin Scuba to get her enrolled in their PADI discover scuba class. Since I had already sent my son through their program, I knew Blue Dolphin Scuba was an excellent choice.

Blue Dolphin Scuba conducts their classes in The Colony at the Aquatic Center on S. Colony Blvd., another reason to choose Blue Dolphin, especially if you live in The Colony like I do. Teaching the class was David Frazier, a PADI dive master and Blue Dolphin sales associate. Frasier has been diving for over 40 years and is a certified PADI Dive Master and Discover Scuba Diving (DSD) Leader.

For a $40.00 investment, my daughter received one-on-one instruction in a large swimming pool with all equipment included. They even let me get a free tank fill and observe the course, which was cool. While at the shop, Kevin “Guppy” Guthrie, who was performing the fill on my tank, noticed that I had a faulty O-ring and promptly replaced it. Thanks Kevin! Emily was shown how to flood and clear her mask, breathe without a mask in place, equalize, and fine-tune her buoyancy to achieve that great sensation of being weightless.

All in all it was a great experience, and a great opportunity to share my love for diving with my daughter in a safe environment. Between my experience in OW certification and seeing my two older kids go through the Discover scuba program, I can highly recommend Blue Dolphin Scuba and any course they offer. It was a great experience and David Frazier equipped my daughter to take the next step and take her OW class.

Special thanks to David Frazier, Kevin “Guppy” Guthrie, and Blue Dolphin Scuba for a great day at the pool.

You can visit Blue Dolphin Scuba’s web site for more details or stop by and check out their store.

DallasDivers.com is not affiliated with Blue Dolphin Scuba or any other local dive shop. We exist to promote the sport of scuba diving in the Dallas area.

Written by Rob Neto of www.SouthwestScuba.com. Published by permission of the copyright holder.

An unusual dive. There are several missile silos throughout the United States which have been retired. Most of these silos have been decommissioned, the missiles removed, and the silos sold. The old silos have been salvaged for scrap metal. Some of them have had the control room converted into underground homes.

The silos, which are constructed of 4 foot thick reinforced concrete walls, are about 200 feet deep. Most of the silos near Abilene, TX have flooded with groundwater. The depth of the water makes it about 130 feet deep (conveniently the recreational dive limit). The diameter of the silo is 60 feet.

This silo was converted several years ago by the owner of Family Scuba Center, a dive shop located in Midland, TX. He has done quite a bit of work to it to make it a safe dive.

The silo has some scrap metal that was dropped during salvage efforts, so you can only get to about 110 feet. And being that this is an altitude dive, this conveniently brings you to a theoretical depth of 130 feet.

Water temperature is a constant 60 degrees year round. There are lights in the silo, but not underwater, so it also effectively makes it a “night” dive. So there are quite a few considerations when diving this place–deep, altitude, night, cold water, difficult entry.

As just mentioned, this is a difficult entry, even though it’s been made easier. This is supposedly the only divable silo in existence. The owner has set up a changing/kitting up area. Then you must walk about 100 yards to the stairs, which are fairly steep as you can see in the photos. The platform floats on the surface, so stepping on it with full cold water gear on does make it move quite a bit. Once in the water, you can descend along a line to about 95 feet. Descending along the line is suggested because it’s easy to get disoriented just looking at the concrete walls. Once at the bottom, you can swim off the line and explore the wreckage at the bottom.

Remember, after you surface, you have to get back on the floating platform and walk up the steep stairs back to the kitting area. Then you need to carry all your gear back up to your vehicle. Be prepared to work those legs.

We’ve come across some people concerned about the safety of the water being that this was an active missile silo. We arrived at the silo before the other divers and ended up talking to the owner for quite a while. He said when he bought the place, he was a little concerned about the lack of life in the silo. Because of this, he had water samples sent out to a lab and tested. It came back clean. So you’re not going to glow after this dive! This place is totally dark when it’s shut down. No light means no life. And since it’s a closed system, we’re not going to have any of the cave fish or craws migrate here (although that would be cool).

This is basically a “been there done that” dive. We’ve heard that it’s on the market though, so dive it soon before a non-diver buys it. The owner only schedules dives there through dive shops, and you must have at least 12 divers along for him to open it up. To find out more information about Dive Valhalla, check out their website: Dive Valhalla.

Editor’s note: I conducted a follow-up interview with Rob Neto and asked him five questions about his experience at Valhalla.

Q1. How many dives did you make at Valhalla?
A1. We did 2 dives at Valhalla.

Q2. What dive certifications do you possess?
A2. At the time, I believe we were divemasters already. Currently, we are both Instructors, cave trained and certified, and trimix.

Q3. Other than the unusual dive environment, how interesting was the dive?
A3. The process of getting into the water was challenging due to the stairs and the floating dock. The silo itself was pretty interesting. Lots of debris at the bottom to poke around and the control room to one side was interesting to look at.

Q4. Can you compare the dive to any others you have made?
A4. The only other dive I can compare it to is the one we made at the Blue Hole in Belize. They’re both round and dark, but you can get to the bottom of Valhalla without going into decompression.

Q5. What surprised you most about the dives?
A5. Not much to be surprised about. We did some research before booking the dives and knew what to expect.

Q6. Were there any concerns the water could be unsafe to dive in?
A6. We arrived early in the morning since we stayed in Abilene the night before. We had about an hour with the property owner and got some history on the place. When he purchased the land he had the water tested and it came back clean. He didn’t own a dive shop at the time. In fact, he wasn’t even a diver. He got certified and then did his first dive in the silo with his instructor. Somewhere along the line, he bought a dive shop and opened the silo up to diving. As a business owner, if there was any type of radiation, etc, I don’t think the state would let him operate it as a dive site. Also, there are several more silos in the area that are water filled. Some of them have been fixed up to be people’s homes, which was the intention of Valhalla’s owner when he bought it in the 80s. As for the rats and snakes, they do get in there from time to time. I didn’t see any during our trip, but it is a dark place and not air tight. It stays a constant temperature throughout the year. However, because there’s no light in there, you won’t find anything else living in there, especially in the water. I wouldn’t drink the water in the silo, but it is safe to dive in.

Review by Chris Hinkle

This book has something for everybody. If you are new to scuba, you will embrace this book and curse your open water certification organization for not making it mandatory reading. If you are a seasoned professional or technical diver, your experience and wisdom of the sport will be reflected in its pages. And if you’re somewhere past your open water, headed into advanced (or possibly your first resort dive), you will inhale volumes of professional safety insight with each case study.

The book begins with a chapter entitled “Scuba 101,” which presents itself as an excellent primer to the sport of scuba diving. To a new student, this chapter alone is worth the price of admission. The reader is treated to a decent length read on terminology, training agencies, the various levels of A to Z scuba training, cave and wreck diving, explanations on nitrox and trimix, what decompression diving is, exposure protection considerations, BCDs, tanks, regulators, personal dive gear, dive tables, dive computers… truly a wonderful exposure to what scuba diving is, where its at, and where its headed.

Beyond this, the book is broken down into individual case studies… real diving emergencies (with names changed to protect the innocent) illustrating how individuals handled their respective situations. Each chapter is a different story. Each story is comprised of four main components.

1. A hook paragraph, offering a glimpse of the emergency in full progression, with an invariable cliff hanger ending. This is a very compelling writing style. The full gravity of the each situation spear heads that chapter. Since self preservation is an instinct, you keep reading. Smart.

2. The full length story. What I liked… they talk about the divers involved and their backgrounds, levels of training, and mindsets (attitudes) before their accidents. This makes it very real when you read it. I went in thinking, “this can’t happen to me.” I came out thinking, “yes, it can happen to me.”

3. A summation section entitled “Strategies for Survival,” in the form of bulleted points containing an expert constructive critique on what could be done differently in each situation.

4. Technical Focus Boxes (covered in more depth below)
I really can’t say enough good things about this book. The case studies were very digestible in size, the writing is done well, and the structure is smart. You can read only the main body of each case study and glean the most important safety morals dealing with that section. However, if you want more technical information, the author has provided it in the form of focus boxes… brief, but very informative, boxed sections of text, photos, and diagrams dealing with more technically-oriented subject matter relevant to their respective case study. This speeds up the reading considerably, allowing the diver to better tailor her learning needs.

What I disliked about the book: While the stories were many and covered a wide variety of situations, the book left me wanting more… A larger format, more stories, more illustrations, color photographs, fewer filler photographs/more relevant photographs.

What I liked about the book: I truly enjoyed the formatting… light reading that fits well with today’s hectic schedules. I appreciated the range of the book. From budding beginner to pioneering rebreather, I see this book as an indispensable safety manual for any dive library.
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Shadow Divers is a book about a couple of New Jersey wreck divers who discovered a WWII era, German U-Boat in the fall of 1991. It took six years and several diver deaths to ultimately identify the wreck and rewrite history. This is a book about pushing the envelope of deep wreck diving and pursuing a dream of righting a historical error.

To most recreational divers, the names John Chatterton and Ritchie Kohler are familiar. They are the hosts of the History Channel’s “Deep Sea Detectives” and well known in the international dive community. I found both men’s backgrounds to be intriguing and thorough. Both are veterans of the Andrea Doria, the Mount Everest of wreck diving, and their experiences on the Doria are entertaining and well documented here.

One of the most fascinating chapters in the book covers the dangers of deep diving. Nitrogen narcosis and its affects such as jungle drums, tunnel vision, and sensory intoxication are documented in detail. The book also covers the deaths of several divers who perished while exploring the wreck.

Nova featured the story on one of its PBS programs as “Hitler’s Lost Sub”. It is available on amazon.com on DVD and is a two hour look into the discovery, research, and ultimate triumph of Chatterton and Kohler as they positively identify the U-boat. The DVD also features interviews with families of the doomed crew members of the u-boat.

Bottom Line: This is the best book on diving I have read - period. I am a student of history as well as a World War II buff and this book does not disappoint. The story is almost too good to be true and perfect for a big screen adaptation which is pending in 2008. This book has it all: history, perils of both deep and wreck diving, warfare, u-boats, and the U-boat crew and their families. A must read for any diver interested in wreck diving, WWII history, and u-boats.
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