Where has the year gone? With all the 2010 World Cup hype going on, the annual Sodwana Shootout crept up very quietly and quickly. As is the norm for this underwater photographic spectacular, Sodwana Bay, and more specifically, Sodwana Bay Lodge, was once again host to a large number of underwater photographers, divers, partners and a few loyal Stormers supporters who travelled all the way from Cape Town.
By Nick Turner

GUPS (Gauteng Underwater Photographic Society) once again did a sterling job of organising and making this event go off without a hitch. Even the sea played along with much better conditions than last year and a lot less swell. This allowed the boats to pick a wider variety of shallower reefs to drop their divers on and so avoid the usual hustle and bustle one normally sees down there. There certainly seemed to be fewer divers surfacing with puzzled expressions on their faces as they surfaced at the marker buoy of another boat with the words ‘oh bugger’ muffled through their regulator.

Tough economic climate? Pah! It’s great to see the prize sponsors still willing to go all out and support this event event in the so called ‘harsh economic climate’. There was nearly R275 000 worth of prizes up for grabs for the winning photographs. It’s because of the support from these companies that an event like this, now into its eleventh year, can keep going and help to promote underwater photography, so please support them wherever you can.

With a noticeable absence of seahorse photographs this year, it was nice to see a slightly wider variety of subjects being photographed. This made the pre-presentation picture viewing just that little bit more interesting. And once again some divers were lucky enough to have been visited by a group of Manta rays who swam around them for nearly 35 minutes, posing for photographs, while yours truly and many others were tucking into toasted sarmies and hot coffee on the beach. Well, that’s the luck of the draw with wildlife, I suppose.

Over the years the improvement in photographic quality in the novice category is very noticeable. This is great, as next year when they move up to the compact category, which allows the use of a strobe, we’ll be seeing great things from these budding Thomas Peschak’s and Fiona Ayerst’s. The compact category also produced some fantastic images, especially in the macro section. In the Open category (mostly SLR users) the judges commented on a slight downtrend in images compared to previous years – well that’ll teach me to go and buy a new fancy camera three days before the competition and ignore the old tried and tested....RTFM!

Saturday night came at last and you could hear the nervous mutterings and mumbles from the divers as to whether their photograph was good enough to win anything, not knowing what anyone else had managed to achieve. Yet all this took a backfoot for two hours as the two best club rugby teams in the Southern hemisphere took to the turf in Soweto for the Super 14 Final. And as this isn’t a rugby magazine I’m not going to mention anything else about the game. Except that we were robbed! Go Stormers!

As you will have noticed, I live in Cape Town and still travel to Sodwana every year, specifically for the Sodwana Shootout, so for those of you who are new to diving or keen to take up underwater photography, well now you have eleven months to get practicing and come and join in the most fun-filled underwater photographic event in South Africa.

Motel do Mar is one of Ponta do Ouro’s oldest and most prominent landmarks. Situated virtually on the main beach in Ponta, it is within walking distance of the bay and launch site, as well as opposite the main tourism centre with it shops and restaurants.

2010 Simply Golf Day

On April 16, Simply Scuba and Simply Bookings held their annual industry golf day at Leeuwkop Country Club. Now in its eighth year, this event is now firmly entrenched as the diving industry’s golf day, and the number of golfers has risen steadily to 90 wannabe pro’s. Prizes this year totalled R40 000 so a grateful thanks must go to the primary sponsors, including Coco Rico Resort, Aquadivers, Scubapro, Manex & Power Marine, Boney Fish clothing, Divestyle and Solihull 4WD.

Latest PADI eLearning Programme helps reintroduce the joys of diving

Today’s demanding lifestyle can make it challenging for some divers to remain active in the sport. Those same demands can also prevent divers from refreshing their dive knowledge when they are ready to start diving again. PADI Offices have launched Scuba Tune-up Online to help ease this barrier and reconnect those seeking to rejoin the dive community with PADI Dive Centres and Resorts. Now, curious non-divers, inactive divers and divers simply seeking to refresh their dive knowledge can all review key dive information online at their convenience.

25 hour Scubaversity pool cave dive endurance record

Why you may ask? Because boys will be boys, and Bar One advocates a 25 Hour day. On March 12, Wouter Van Heerden and Jakes Van den Berg from Scubaversity Dive Club decided to push themselves, and us, the dive school staff, to their limits. They spent 25 hours in our pool cave at a depth of 5m, with a team of eight people providing diver and surface support. The divers entered the water at 9pm on the 12^th and surfaced on the 13^th at 10pm. A lot of thought and planning went into the event, which was sponsored by Blu Eye Eyewear, SCAP and Bar One. The divers set up the cave with emergency standby cylinders and regulators, ropes and extra weight belts and even a camping chair. One of the support divers described the set up of the cave as “homely.”

25 hours in the water could get a little mind-numbing, but luckily the guys had the dive school interns as support divers for entertainment, playing spider pig on the cave ceiling. Wouter and Jakes also played dominoes, and Wouter made one or two brief attempts at Sudoku, but he says his attention span under water was too short to finish a block. The plan was to try sleep to help pass the time, but the guys were a little nervous of their support divers’ awareness, not surprisingly since we were functioning on the same amount of sleep, although we had the Bar Ones on the surface and made short work of the box over the 25 hour period.

The divers layered their wetsuits, Jakes using two 5mm’s and Wouter in a skin profile with two 5mm’s – booties and gloves came off and then on again regularly. They used a total of seven heat packs, four BCD’s and regulators and 20 cylinders changing between 50 and 70 bars each time. On the last change the support divers sent down nitrox for the last stretch

A moment of frustration for Wouter happened when the O-ring on the 1^st stage of the kit he’d just changed into blew. At about four hours in, the guys fingers started getting sensitive and soft from the water and this made changing kit uncomfortable and a little painful. The last four hours were definitely the hardest for the guys, counting down the last stretch. The slates with their conversations on, floating up to the surface, described bodily functions and other ‘fascinating’ incidents were rather amusing, but we’ll leave that up to the imagination…

On exiting the water, both divers were a little dizzy and exhausted so we put them on oxygen and kept a close eye on them. All in all, the record attempt was a huge success, and even though DAN wasn’t directly involved they showed a lot of care and interest after the fact. So thank you to DAN, the sponsors, everyone involved and the supporters. Even though there was a nasty storm and some heavy rain, there was a good turn out for the divers exit, but then again maybe the crowd just turned up for the draw of the fantastic pair of sunglasses sponsored by Blu Eye Eyewear, or perhaps for the shower show at the end…

South Africa’s annual Dive Expo is occurring once again from August 13-15 at the Dome in Northgate.  This is where the divers get to meet the role players in the South African industry and rub shoulders with the who’s who in the industry. Divestyle is hosting three knowledgeable and renowned speakers who are specialists in their field.

The world’s first ever Freediving Career  Development Programme

From March 1 to April 14, 2011, world record holding freediver and extreme depth spearfisherman, Trevor Hutton, will be running the world’s first ever Freediving Career  Development Programme. This course is aimed at individuals who wish to make a career out of freediving, whether it be running a spearfishing shop, teaching freediving overseas, shooting underwater photography while freediving or competition diving.

Trevor has been freediving for 20 years and attended a Scuba Diving Pro-Course himself eighteen years ago in 1992 with ODI. He attributes a lot of his success to the great start he was given by attending that course.

The course will be conducted in Hermanus, which is where Trevor has based himself since 1994 when in South Africa. Freedivers will be taught in open ocean conditions, which will give them a superior level of diving skill that will allow them to handle conditions anywhere that freediving is practiced in the world.

A number of instructors and specialists from various fields will be utilised to teach the wide range of subjects which will be part of the course curriculum – most of them people who have worked successfully with Trevor throughout his freediving career. For more information, call 082-334-4841 or visit www.trevorhutton.co.za

Run by a brother and sister team, Timeout Scuba is passionate about everything diving. The company started in 2009 and saw that there was great demand for a home base from its clients, so it opened its doors in August 2010 in the Cresta Shopping Centre. They are a relatively new kid on the ‘diving block’, but both siblings have been diving and been involved in the industry since 1998.

Timeout Scuba is a PADI 5 star dive centre and it is very committed to providing professional service in gear sales, gear servicing, PADI courses and dive travel – one of their passions. They have courses running every month and local trips continuously on the go and are off to Malaysia and the Red Sea next year. One of its main focuses is on education and awareness of our oceans. They place an emphasis on how fragile our ocean ecosystems are and what we can do to look after them.

The Timeout Scuba shop stocks a wide range of dive gear and they are authorised dealers for Scubapro, Aqualung, Suunto and Cressi.  For more information, call 011-431-2963, email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or visit Shop U223, Cresta Shopping Centre, Beyers Naude, Randburg.

Many newly qualified divers are put off continuing with scuba diving by the relatively high cost of new equipment, as they are not yet sure whether the investment will be warranted. Buying good secondhand equipment can be considered less risky, because if the diver decides that diving is not for him/her, they can offload it for pretty much what they bought it for. As dive shops are only interested in selling new equipment, potential buyers of secondhand equipment have limited avenues to find suitable available items.

ScubaTrader.co.za has been designed by keen diver, Antonio De Saousa, with the latest webpage keyword techniques that facilitate easy indexing by search engines, giving users the widest possible audience and allowing sellers and buyers of dive equipment the opportunity to widen their search. It offers national as well as international sales.

The dilemma that most divers face when selling their diving equipment is getting a fair price for the piece of equipment they are selling. By putting more buyers in contact with sellers, Scuba Trader aims to create a fair marketplace where value and quality can be found.

Aqua Life Images, an iPad/iPhone application which has over 900 images, many with information about the species, is the result of five years of underwater photography and information collection by award winning Dutch photographer. Dray van Beeck. This is one of the most comprehensive underwater references available. The application features some of the most beautiful underwater images you will find and over 40 have been enabled so that you can use them as a wallpaper for your iPad /iPhone.  This application will be useful to marine biologists, divers, or those who wonder what goes on beneath the waves.

The Guide to Underwater Photography  is a pocket reference for taking great underwater photographs. The guide covers Equipment, Preparation of Equipment, the Mechanics of Photography and Camera Setup, Underwater  Safety, Composition and Techniques, Tips for Better Photographs, Post Dive Kit Care and Troubleshooting, along with a glossary of terms used. Following the guidelines in this application will help you take better underwater photographs and make the most of your equipment. The application includes 14 high quality underwater photographs which can be used as wallpapers for your device.Another app, the Guide to Underwater Photography Editing and Manipulations is a pocket reference for underwater photographers to get the most from their photographs. The guide covers  Adjusting White Balance and Levels, Colour Adjustments, Cropping, Spot Healing, Cloning, Shadows, Adding Objects and the Use of the Lasso Tool. Although the reference is based around using Photoshop, the guidelines will work with any image editing programme. Following the guidelines in this application will help you create better underwater photographs and make the most of your results.

These applications are now available on iTunes.