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Books > Sport & Leisure > Sports & outdoor recreation > Water sports & recreations > Swimming & diving
This guide offers spectacular and diverse diving in South Africa and Mozambique.
Dive with sharks, squid and sardines, exploring cold-water kelp forests, pristine tropical reefs and poignant shipwrecks. This guide features 180 of the best dives, with first-hand descriptions and site maps. Key dive information and contact details and a comprehensive marine species identification guide.
Book chapters include
- Cape Peninsula and False Bay
- Southern Cape Coast – Gansbaai & the Garden Route
- Port Elizabeth, Port Alfred & East London
- South Coast – Aliwal Shoal, Landers & Protea Banks
- Durban & North Coast
- Sodwana Bay
- Northern Maputaland – Mabibi & Kosi Bay
- Southern Mozambique
- The Manta Coast
- Vilanculos & the Bazaruto Archipelago
- Nampula – Nacala Bay, Baixo do Pinda, Memba Bay and Ilha de Mozambique
- Northern Mozambique – Pemba & the Quirmbas Archipelago
- Inland dive sites
- Marine species Identification Guide
- Contacts
This guide will give you the information you need to be a responsible diver. Learn to care for the marine environment as well diving culture and gear you would need. This book is a must-have for any diving enthusiast.
"My name is Samantha and I’m an alcoholic. At the time of writing, I’ve been sober for 13 years, 11 months and 16 days. And yes I still count. I promised I would never speak about it publicly until my children understood what that meant, that mommy was an alcoholic. I think they may have understood long before I did."
From Whiskey To Water is the no-holds-barred memoir by one of South Africa’s most loved radio talk show hosts, Sam Cowen. Having kept her alcohol addiction well away from the public eye for over 14 years, in this tell-all tale, Sam finds the courage to talk about her struggle with her addiction to whiskey, food and finally to a passion that saved her life – marathon swimming. Told in her characteristically hilarious dead-pan style, this is one of the bravest books you’ll read this year.
"So this is a book on how I stopped drinking? No, it’s not. It’s how I stopped drinking, started eating, became clinically severely obese, stopped eating (everything that wasn’t nailed down) and swam my way to freedom. No, it’s not. It’s actually about addiction and learning and sadness and anxiety and love and drive. It’s about channelling the unchangeable into the miraculous. It’s about dragons and learning how to put them to sleep when you can’t slay them. It’s about being my own Daenarys."
‘It’s simply not human!’ a passenger proclaims loudly, aghast as to what she is witnessing.
Ryan Stramrood stands at the top of the gangway stairs that are lowered down the side of an ocean liner in one of the coldest, most hostile places on Earth – Antarctica. He wears only a small Speedo costume, goggles and a swim cap. Over a hundred passengers, wearing thick layers of insulation to protect from the bitter cold, are leaning over the ship’s railing on the upper decks, cheering and desperate to get a glimpse, in morbid fascination, of what is about to happen. What Ryan is about to attempt could potentially push boundaries beyond what humans can survive.
The water temperature a deadly -1° Celsius; the distance to swim an impossible one mile.
Only a few years earlier, Ryan was a self-proclaimed couch potato. A 30-year-old salesman and father, navigating life quite successfully, albeit neatly confined in his comfort zone. Today he is a multiple Guinness World Record holder, rated globally as one of the top 50 extreme swimming athletes in the world, and a sought-after international inspirational speaker.
This fascinating story tells the incredible tales of Ryan’s journey and spirit. The inspiration and learnings each and every one of us will take from this highly relatable book are simply invaluable. We can all learn to Push Past Impossible™.
Dave's autobiography tells how, from simple beginnings, he manages
to serve an apprenticeship in engineering, before deciding it
wasn't for him and embarking on an adventure underwater. Firstly,
with a bunch of friends salvaging scrap metal from shipwrecks,
before blagging his way into the world of offshore oilfield deep
diving. It was intended to be a short-term thing to make the
deposit on a house and turned into 40 years in the industry,
culminating in becoming the offshore manager of some major oilfield
construction projects around the world. Dave takes us through his
life's journey, near-death experience and involvement with several
major incidents. He explains how it feels to live part of your life
in the claustrophobic environment of a saturation diver, and
reflects on some of the politics and events that occurred in this
unique industry. He reflects on life's lessons as they presented
themselves. The book is interspersed with anecdotes and amusing
tales of and from the people he met along the way, characters, who
come alive with their witty asides and darkly comic humour. Away
from work, Dave and his wife, Marion, travel the world together,
and their travels are heady and packed with adventure, as they ski,
kayak and dive in idyllic locations. Whether bungee jumping in New
Zealand or cycling across Central America, Dave and Marion are
never afraid to take on a challenge.
Dave's autobiography tells how, from simple beginnings, he manages
to serve an apprenticeship in engineering, before deciding it
wasn't for him and embarking on an adventure underwater. Firstly,
with a bunch of friends salvaging scrap metal from shipwrecks,
before blagging his way into the world of offshore oilfield deep
diving. It was intended to be a short-term thing to make the
deposit on a house and turned into 40 years in the industry,
culminating in becoming the offshore manager of some major oilfield
construction projects around the world. Dave takes us through his
life's journey, near-death experience and involvement with several
major incidents. He explains how it feels to live part of your life
in the claustrophobic environment of a saturation diver, and
reflects on some of the politics and events that occurred in this
unique industry. He reflects on life's lessons as they presented
themselves. The book is interspersed with anecdotes and amusing
tales of and from the people he met along the way, characters, who
come alive with their witty asides and darkly comic humour. Away
from work, Dave and his wife, Marion, travel the world together,
and their travels are heady and packed with adventure, as they ski,
kayak and dive in idyllic locations. Whether bungee jumping in New
Zealand or cycling across Central America, Dave and Marion are
never afraid to take on a challenge.
Sad people who sit in front of a television set wishing they could
get some adventure in their lives should take note of the contents
of this small tome as it proves beyond doubt that even in the prime
of life the rush of adrenaline can still be achieved. This is the
second volume of factual events undertaken by a group of people who
should have the wisdom of age but choose to ignore it.
The mutilated body of a diver is found in the Yucatan peninsula,
far from the coast. In Europe a deadly illness is sweeping through
the continent. When cave diving expert Mike Summers returns to
Mexico and crosses paths with maverick government agent Raphael
Rodriguez, he soon finds himself plunged into a world of intrigue
and terror. Rodriguez has been sent to monitor drug movements along
the Yucatan coastline, Mike is trying to unravel the mystery of his
friend's death, but both find their investigations linked to the
area's ancient subterranean cave systems and to events which shook
the local Maya civilisation some 500 years previously. "Steve
Turley's second adventure thriller is another polished page-turner,
written by an expert in the undersea world of sub-aqua, and an
adventurer in his own right. A classy and enjoyable read."
An exciting and thoroughly well-written adventure from Steve
Turley.. When a U-boat is sunk off the coast of Corsica in 1943, it
takes with it a mysterious cargo which was being secretly
transported under SS guard. Mike Summers, a technical diving
expert, has his life thrown into chaos when he accidentally
discovers wreckage from the U-boat and crosses swords with a
notorious Corsican nationalist leader, resulting in the death of
his friend. The race to discover the motive for the killing takes a
deadly turn when Monica, a beautiful Swiss marine archaeologist, is
kidnapped by the gang. Mike knows they are both likely to die
unless he can use his superior knowledge of deep wreck diving to
save them both and bring the perpetrators to justice. Another
quality read from CheckPoint Press..
Fully updated and revised. Award winning Deco for Divers provides a
comprehensive overview of the principles underlying decompression
theory. Mark Powell has written a book that for the first time
allows the average diver to fully understand the principles behind
this fascinating aspect of diving. This book bridges the gap
between introductory books and source scientific information. What
I wanted was an intermediate overview that went into more detail
but wasn't written for academics or researchers. When I became a
technical diving instructor I started teaching other people about
decompression theory. I tried to give an overview of decompression
theory at this intermediate level to give my students a better
understanding of what was happening during decompression dives.
This was always very popular amongst divers who, like me, had
always wanted to understand more about the concepts and models
underlying decompression theory. I was always being asked if I
could recommend a good book which covered this area but as before,
there was no such text available. Over time I started giving out
notes for the decompression theory portion of my courses and these
notes started building. Initially they were just a few pages but
the notes became more and more comprehensive and started to cover
more and more areas. Eventually they grew into this book. Eurotek
2010 - Winner Publication of Significance Award. TekDive 2014 -
Winner Media Award.
An immersive, unforgettable, and eye-opening perspective on swimming—and on human behavior itself.
We swim in freezing Arctic waters and piranha-infested rivers to test our limits. We swim for pleasure, for exercise, for healing. But humans, unlike other animals that are drawn to water, are not natural-born swimmers. We must be taught. Our evolutionary ancestors learned for survival; now, in the twenty-first century, swimming is one of the most popular activities in the world.
Why We Swim is propelled by stories of Olympic champions, a Baghdad swim club that meets in Saddam Hussein’s palace pool, modern-day Japanese samurai swimmers, and even an Icelandic fisherman who improbably survives a wintry six-hour swim after a shipwreck. New York Times contributor Bonnie Tsui, a swimmer herself, dives into the deep, from the San Francisco Bay to the South China Sea, investigating what it is about water that seduces us, despite its dangers, and why we come back to it again and again.
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