For any diver, Jacques Cousteau is a hero. He perfected the open circuit breathing apparatus we all learned to dive with, and he brought the oceans and sea life into our living rooms in glorious colour.

But you may not know that:

1/ His Christian name was actually Jacques-Yves. He dropped the second part to make life easier for English speaking audiences.

2/ His famous boat Calypso was rammed and sunk in a Singapore harbour, but was eventually refloated is now being restored as a museum.

3/ He starred in 120 television documentaries and wrote 50 books during his lifetime.

4/ Despite France being occupied by Germany during the second world war, Cousteau, as a naval officer, constantly sought to help the French navy join with the allies, and he lead a commando operation against Italian spies which resulted in him receiving several decorations.

We’d made the decision to go ahead with the dive, knowing our exit was going to be tough, but manageable. What we hadn’t accounted for was that conditions would worsen while we were diving…….

Charco del Palo is a fabulous dive site, with plenty of options, caves, deep reefs and life. We dive there a lot. Entry is a giant stride from some rocks, and exit is via one of two stainless steel bathing ladders, which drop right down to the sea bed. The technique is to hold the bottom of the ladder, remove your fins, secure them, and climb back to the surface.

On this particular day, we enjoyed a reasonable dive, although visibility wasn’t great due to the rough weather. As we returned to the bay, we could see how rough it now was at the surface. I tried to make my usual 3 meter safety stop, but I was being churned all over the place.

For some, being a dive guide might seem the ultimate job. Being paid to dive every day! Here are some facts about the job:

Aussie Diver, a regular writer on this blog, told us a few weeks ago about a dive being canceled as there were loads of “Bronzies” in the water at the dive site. So I decided I should research this creature so we all know what it was he was talking about.

The Bronze whaler grows to about 3.25 meters and fully grown, weighs in at a hefty 300 KG. They are found in The Atlantic, The Pacific, The Mediterranean and The Gulf of California. They don’t often wander inshore, and are migratory, travelling north in Spring and back south in autumn.

To most swimmers, jellyfish are horrible things to be avoided, but to divers, protected from stings in our wetsuits, jellyfish are a thing of beauty as the glide through the water.

Most of the articles that I write have a bit of humour in them, this really does not, it is the most serious diving accident I have been involved in, and if I was honest I have probably have not got over it, so in a way this is a bit indulgent, and possibly a way of getting rid of demons.

It is important to understand the level of trust my buddy and I have in each other, for a number of years she and I were partners on the Regional Crime Squad, in fact we were partners on the firearms unit within that squad, our kit bag bore the label Distemper and Makeshift, (you will work it out).

This is one of those email funnies that was sent to me by Aussie Diver. It’s just so funny, we both agreed it should go on the site. With apologies for the language, but rather than edit it, I felt it added impact!

Next time you have a bad day at work think of this guy. Bob is a commercial saturation diver for Global Divers in Louisiana . He performs underwater repairs on offshore drilling rigs.

Me along with a number of guys from our local dive club arrived at Point Lookout at the Northern End of Strabroke Island and we were looking forward to a couple of drift dives, we were devastated when told that all the diving had been cancelled.

We were told that the area was being invaded by baitfish and that it would be too dangerous to dive anywhere near to them.

For blokes like me who are relatively new to the area I did not really understand the implications of this statement and not wanting to show my ignorance on the subject I just kept quiet.

Where I regularly dive, there are any number of interesting caves to visit. They range from the very small and tight “Grouper Cave” where a family of grouper live to the massive “Baldies Cave” which is the size of a church.

There’s a well known training matrix which can be applied to any learning, but which lends itself particularly well to learning to scuba dive. Essentially, everyone, in learning new skills goes through the same process, so I thought it would be interesting to explore it and relate it to the sport we love.