The Scuba News New Zealand

6.30am, 20th February, 2016. My Resort Manager was frantically banging at my door. Category 5 Cyclone Winston had suddenly changed track a few hours ago. We were due to miss the brunt of him but now we were in trouble as he was heading straight for us. As the dive center manager at the time, many thoughts were racing through my fuzzy morning head. Coffee?

The Canadian government has announced a ban on microbeads, and this progressive move will keep this harmful plastic pollutant out of Canada’s waterways. When products containing microbeads, such as cleansers, lotions and toothpastes, are used and rinsed down the drain, these bits of plastic — typically 1.0 millimetre or smaller in diameter — are too small to be caught by wastewater treatment facilities. Instead, they are flushed directly into lakes, rivers and streams, where they wreak havoc on wildlife. Scientists have found millions of microbeads in the Great Lakes, with the highest concentrations occurring near urban areas.

A conservation virtual running event has captured the public’s attention and turned from a solo event into a global one, with runners around the world signing up to participate.

Māui’s dolphin, a subspecies of Hector’s dolphin found off the west coast of the North Island, is the rarest marine dolphin and has approximately just 63 individuals remaining in the wild. This critically endangered dolphin needs all the help it can get to recover from fisheries bycatch.

The phrase muck diving was coined by Bob Halstead when he described diving off black sand beaches in Papua New Guinea. This unusual type of diving has gained great popularity and involves diving sites with sandy or silty bottoms, in search of the critters found there. Some of the best sites for muck diving are volcanic areas and sea grass beds.