FathomOz

I think it was the rusty color that justified this picture.  It looks like an old dredge.  Ben Cropp went ashore to the airport and left us to look after his boat Freedom III.  Under a blazing sun we ventured out in the dinghy to look around the various ships at anchor.  This one was the most photogenic.  Bamaga is on the inside of Cape York in the Gulf of Carpentaria.   It’s not on the tourist trail.

When we began Fathom magazine in 1971 – dive shops had an attitude or sales line to  customers  quite different to today.

“There has never been a shark attack upon a scuba diver” was one line that helped sell goods.  It was true for a while but eventually the inevitable happened.  A scuba diver was ripped to pieces by a white pointer in South Australia – then more attacks on scuba divers followed.

Were the sharks being inadvertently trained?  Nobody knows.

Back in 1970 sharks featured on the cover of dive magazines was an advertising revenue taboo.

It was a rule that the Australian spear fishing magazine magazine did not adhere to, but the leading USA magazine, Skin Diver avoided shark pictures.

Sharks were not good business for the fledgling scuba diving industry.

It shows how little knowledge existed back then of these predators.

LIFE magazine began printing an Australian edition in 1967 and sharks were featured in the first two or three issues.  The above picture by Ron Taylor shows John H. (Editor of Fathom) about to fire a second .303 power head at The Big Island off Wooli, New South Wales (1965).

Fathom had a Hammerhead shark on the cover of issue #2 – which proved very popular.

Gradually Skin Diver changed it’s theme and others also realized that divers wanted as much information as possible about a creature thought to be the major hazard faced in the sea.

Today, diving with sharks (often from a cage) is a huge international money spinner.  Even diving in an aquarium with ‘stupefied’ sharks is considered a big adventure deal for novice tourist divers, and it is.

Why stupefied?  If the Grey Nurse shark looks as if it is ‘gasping for breath’ it probably is.

Sharks in captivity behave very differently to wild sharks in the sea.  Especially sharks that have seen few divers.

Is global warming effecting the sea levels at these Pacific atolls near the equator?

Nukuoro and Kapingamarangi are two true Polynesians atolls that come to mind.  (See Fathom magazine #1)

An atoll is believed to be a slowly sinking volcano.  Live coral crowing on the rim of the extinct volcano maintains the above water land.

There are no true atolls in Australia’s The Coral Sea.

Lady Musgrave Island has an lagoon which resembles that of an atoll.

Earthquake activity can cause islands to sink or rise.  Many factors to consider.