As Christmas rapidly approaches, what do you get for the scuba diver that has everything? Take a different route than the usual shiny dive kit and dive into a good book! Check out these great offers available from Amazon for yourself or the diver in your life.
Aquanaut: The Inside Story of the Thai Cave Rescue
The enthralling inside story of the Tham Luang cave rescue in Thailand—told by the leader of the daring underwater rescue mission.
In July 2018, twelve boys and their soccer coach disappeared into the Tham Luang Cave in Thailand.
Trapped miles beneath the surface, not even the Thai Navy SEALs had the skills to bring them to safety. With the floodwater rising rapidly, time was running out.
Any hope of survival rested on Rick Stanton, a retired British firefighter with a living room full of homemade cave-diving equipment. As unlikely as it seemed, Rick and his partner, John Volanthen, were regarded as the A-team for exactly this kind of mission.
The Thai Cave Rescue was the culmination of a lifelong obsession, requiring every ounce of skill and ingenuity accumulated by Rick over a four decade pursuit of the unknown.
While the world held its breath, Rick, John, and their assembled team raced against time in the face of near impossible odds. There was simply no precedent for what they were attempting to do. . . .
Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II
In the tradition of Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air and Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm comes a true tale of riveting adventure in which two weekend scuba divers risk everything to solve a great historical mystery–and make history themselves.
For John Chatterton and Richie Kohler, deep wreck diving was more than a sport. Testing themselves against treacherous currents, braving depths that induced hallucinatory effects, navigating through wreckage as perilous as a minefield, they pushed themselves to their limits and beyond, brushing against death more than once in the rusting hulks of sunken ships.
But in the fall of 1991, not even these courageous divers were prepared for what they found 230 feet below the surface, in the frigid Atlantic waters sixty miles off the coast of New Jersey: a World War II German U-boat, its ruined interior a macabre wasteland of twisted metal, tangled wires, and human bones–all buried under decades of accumulated sediment.
No identifying marks were visible on the submarine or the few artifacts brought to the surface. No historian, expert, or government had a clue as to which U-boat the men had found. In fact, the official records all agreed that there simply could not be a sunken U-boat and crew at that location.
Over the next six years, an elite team of divers embarked on a quest to solve the mystery. Some of them would not live to see its end. Chatterton and Kohler, at first bitter rivals, would be drawn into a friendship that deepened to an almost mystical sense of brotherhood with each other and with the drowned U-boat sailors–former enemies of their country. As the men’s marriages frayed under the pressure of a shared obsession, their dives grew more daring, and each realized that he was hunting more than the identities of a lost U-boat and its nameless crew.
Author Robert Kurson’s account of this quest is at once thrilling and emotionally complex, and it is written with a vivid sense of what divers actually experience when they meet the dangers of the ocean’s underworld. The story of Shadow Divers often seems too amazing to be true, but it all happened, two hundred thirty feet down, in the deep blue sea.
100 Dives of a Lifetime: The World’s Ultimate Underwater Destinations
Explore 100 breathtaking scuba diving sites around the world–from the cenotes of Mexico to the best wreck in Micronesia–through stunning National Geographic photography, expert tips, and cutting-edge travel advice.
Filled with more than 350 images from National Geographic, 100 Dives of a Lifetime provides the ultimate bucket list for ardent scuba divers and aspirational travelers alike. From diving with manta rays at night in Kona, Hawaii, and swimming with hammerheads of Cocos Island in Costa Rica to exploring caves in Belize’s Lighthouse Atoll and diving beneath the ice floes of Antarctica, this exquisite inspirational book is filled with beautiful imagery, marine life guides, trusted travel tips, and expert diving advice from world-famous National Geographic divers and explorers like Brian Skerry, Jessica Cramp, and David Doubilet. Organized by diving experience and certification level–from beginner open water and wreck dives to expert cold water and cave dives–each location offers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to explore the magic of our world’s oceans–from your armchair or with your scuba gear in tow.
Reef Fish Identification – Florida Caribbean Bahamas – 4th Edition (Reef Set)
The 4th edition is packed with amazing marine life photographs of 683 species and enough information to keep fish watchers busy for years. The book includes the latest information on what is known about the taxonomy and distribution of Caribbean reef fishes. The easy-to-use, quick reference format makes it a snap to identify the hundreds of fishes sighted on the reefs, sand flats, grass beds, surf zones and walls of Florida, the Caribbean and Bahamas.
A Field Guide to Blackwater Diving in Hawaii
The world’s greatest migration of animal life occurs every evening when uncountable numbers of mostly small marine organisms rise up from the dark, chilly depths of the open ocean to its surface waters. The people who witness this nighttime migration are blackwater divers””brave divers who throw themselves off a boat in the dark of night in open ocean waters that are, for all practical purposes, bottomless. The animals that we encounter range in size from baby squids smaller than a pinky nail to forty-foot long jellyfish called siphonophores.
Kona is the birthplace and world headquarters for blackwater diving. Its proximity to deep water and favorable ocean conditions make Hawai’i the perfect place for blackwater diving. Blackwater Diving in Hawai’i is designed to satisfy the curious ocean aficionado by presenting beautiful photos and information on over 300 strange pelagic animals, most of which you won’t find in a standard field guide to reef animals.
Shark
Get closer to the beauty and power of sharks with award-winning National Geographic photographer Brian Skerry as he illustrates their remarkable evolutionary adaptations and their huge importance to marine ecosystems around the world.
For decades, acclaimed underwater photographer Brian Skerry has braved ocean depths and the jaws of predatory giants to capture the most remarkable photographs of sharks around the world. In this collection of the best of those pictures, Skerry draws on his growing personal respect for these animals to share intimate stories of their impact. Focusing on four key species—great white, whitetip, tiger, and mako sharks—Skerry’s photographs span from his early work, photographing them from cages, to his recent unencumbered scuba dives. With additional text by top National Geographic writers, Skerry’s images and stories encourage a change in attitude toward these top predators, ultimately showing how they are the keys to the healthy balance of nature underwater.
Dive Atlas of the World: An Illustrated Reference to the Best Sites (IMM Lifestyle Books) A Global Tour of Wrecks, Walls, Caves, and Blue Holes
The Dive Atlas of the World offers an inspirational tour of top dive sites around the world, based on first-hand experience, and photographed by experts.
- 300 page fully updated global guide to the world’s top dive sites
- Written by experienced dive authors, based on their first-hand experience
- Inspirational reference for divers who wish to personally or vicariously experience the best diving the planet has to offer
- Helps you select and locate the type of diving experience you are looking for
- Superb quality underwater photography shows famous wrecks, a wide range of marine habitats, and a huge diversity of species
- Appendix with lists of travel and dive information, climate, best time to go, contacts, dive operators, and emergency facilities
From the Blue Hole at Lawson Reef and the wreck of the Umbria in the Red Sea, to Michaelmas on the Great Barrier Reef, the Dive Atlas of the World offers a global tour of top dive sites, described and photographed by experts.
From well-known classics to sites that have only recently been discovered, this global selection offers the discerning diver a feast of locations to choose from, including an expanded selection of Caribbean dive sites.
Whether you favor muck diving and macro photography, wrecks, walls, reefs, caves, blue holes or the adrenaline rush of high-speed drift dive in a strong current (or all of these), you will find well-written, clearly mapped accounts of the top places where you can enjoy these dives.
This book features contributions from local experts, leading writers and award-winning photographers such as Jack Jackson and Lawson Wood.
Coral Reef Guide Red Sea
The definitive guide to the underwater life of the Red Sea region, home to the richest and most varied dive sites in the world.
Visited by over a quarter of a million divers a year the Red Sea is home to many of the world’s most popular dive sites.
Covering jellyfish, corals, nudibranchs, starfish, sea urchins, fishes and turtles, Coral Reef Guide Red Sea covers all common species of underwater life of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, you are likely to see while diving or snorkelling.
Each species is illustrated with a full-colour photograph and the text gives details of range and characteristic behaviour. Different species groups are represented by icons for easy reference and an illustration of the juvenile may also be included.
A map of good dive sites appears on the inside front cover, while the inside back cover features illustrations of a number of common species for quick and easy identification.
Camera Man: Stories of My Life and Adventures as an Underwater Filmmaker
Chuck Nicklin has loved the water ever since spending his childhood days on a Massachusetts lake. When his family moved to California in the 1940s, Chuck literally immersed himself in the emerging sports of freediving and scuba diving. He became an expert spearfisherman, but it wasn’t long before he tired of spearfishing and opted to try his hand at underwater photography.
The rest, as the say, is history. Nicklin’s book, Camera Man, chronicles his adventurous life, from his early days as owner of the Diving Locker to a career as an underwater photographer for National Geographic and as a cinematographer on major motion pictures including The Deep, Never Say Never Again and The Abyss.
In Camera Man, Nicklin revisits the dawning days of scuba diving and shares stories of how his career as an underwater cameraman unfolded, from the day he became known as “the man who rode a whale,” to his adventures traveling around the world diving with and filming majestic humpback whales and fearsome-looking great white sharks.
Included are guest essays from Nicklin’s friends who’ve traveled with him, learned from him, and shared exciting adventures with him.
