BAD NEWS November 2025
Upcoming Events:
February 7, 2026 - Mardi Gras by the Beach sponsored by Lunarfins and BAD
August ?, 2026 - Scuba Poker at Mammoth Lake sponsored by Lunarfins and BAD
October ?, 2026 - Underwater Pumpkin Carving at Mammoth Lake sponsored by Lunarfins and BAD
Florida divers raise $1m in silver & gold coinsThe 1715 Spanish Treasure Fleet has yielded more than 1,000 coins valued at $1 million off the Florida coast this summer, according to Queens Jewels, the historic shipwreck salvage operator that owns exclusive rights to the 310-year-old remains.All but five of the coins were silver reales or pieces of eight, recovered by Captain Levin Shavers and the crew of the dive-boat Just Right from a site on Florida’s “Treasure Coast”. This stretch of the Atlantic seaboard encompasses Indian River, St Lucie and Martin counties and the cities of Jupiter, Stuart, Port St Lucie, Fort Pierce and Vero Beach. The other five coins were gold escudos, and other rare gold artefacts were also said to have been recovered during the 2025 salvage season.The coins were being transported from the New World to Spain in the name of the Spanish crown when a storm struck the fleet on the last day of July, 1715. Historians estimate that as much as $400 million-worth of gold, silver and jewels was lost in what was one of the most significant maritime disasters in the Americas.
Depths of idiocy? Coral-graffiti diver on looseAn example of underwater behaviour that seems calculated to get divers a bad name was revealed in the Philippines when a diver spotted a table coral with the words “Just Dive” carved into it.The act of underwater vandalism was discovered at Napaling Point, a popular dive-site off Panglao in south-western Bohol, at the end of October. The diver reported it to the office of Bohol’s governor Erico Aris Aumentado, who had last year set up a task force with powers of arrest intended to combat such activity. He directed Panglao’s mayor to close the dive-site temporarily and open an investigation.The local authorities are now said to be working with the Philippines Department of Environment & Natural Resources, the Bureau of Fisheries & Aquatic Resources, the Coast Guard and local dive-operators to find the culprit and restore the reef.Damaging or defacing corals is a criminal offence punishable by fines and imprisonment in the Philippines.
Drowned solo diver had ‘dangerous’ reg set-upA solo diver who died off the North Wales coast last year had no alternative air supply and was using a regulator with a makeshift mouthpiece attachment, a coroner heard at an inquest in Caernarfon this week.Imrich Magyer, 53, a Slovakian human resources assistant living in Warrington in Cheshire, was said by family-members to have been a keen underwater photographer.He went missing during a shore dive off the Llyn Peninsula on 28 November, 2024. The alarm was raised after a member of the public had spotted what appears to have been his surface-supplied diving system. Magyer’s car and personal effects were found near a shore-diving beach near Tudweiliog, an area known to present challenging conditions, especially in winter. He had been wearing a wetsuit, and had not informed anyone of his dive-plan.
Mantas get their bearings by diving deepAn international team of researchers working in New Zealand, Indonesia and Peru tagged 24 examples of Mobula birostris, the world’s biggest species of ray to learn more about their deep-diving behaviour. Their study has just been published.“We show that, far offshore, oceanic manta rays are capable of diving to depths greater than 1,200m, far deeper than previously thought,” says first author Dr Calvin Beale of Murdoch University in Australia. “These dives, which are linked with increased horizontal travel afterwards, may play an important role in helping mantas gather information about their environment and navigate across the open ocean.”The rays were tagged and observed between 2012 and 2022 at three sites: near Whangoroa in northern New Zealand, Raja Ampat in eastern Indonesia and near Tumbes off Peru’s north coast. The team recovered eight of the 24 tags, which were programmed to release after several months, and their high-frequency data was downloaded.“It is quite a challenging task, trying to spot a small grey floating object with a short antenna bobbing around in the waves with other flotsam and jetsam,” says Beale. The other 16 tags transmitted summary data via satellite.A total of 2,705 tag-days of data were recorded, and on 79 days mantas were found to dive to extreme depths, maximum 1,250m. All but eight of these dives, defined as deeper than 500m, occurred off New Zealand.
Photobombing turtles ’biggest risk’ on SSI projectDiver-training agency SSI has been working on a multi-week video project organised by Le Méridien Maldives Resort & Spa and its training centre Sub Oceanic Maldives. The idea is to refresh SSI’s library of skill demonstrations, dive sequences and lifestyle content for use across its platforms worldwide – an initiative it describes as part of a “long-term push to modernise dive education and highlight diversity in the diving community”.The 5* “eco-conscious” resort is located on Thilamaafushi Island in Lhaviyani Atoll and has 134 villas, four restaurants and two bars. Surrounded by a lagoon with a 1km-long coral reef, it offers access to more than 50 dive-sites with what are described as “vivid reefs, easy access and cinematic visibility”.SSI video project: Lagoon villas at the Maldives resortLagoon villas at the Maldives resort“Our crystal waters and thriving house reef make an inspiring setting for both professional content and for guests discovering the underwater world,” says Le Méridien Maldives general manager Thomas Schult. The dive-centre is responsible for logistics, site-selection, underwater co-ordination and safety. “Our only concern is the turtles photobombing – it’s a risk we’re happy to take!” says its head of operations Florian Gansl.
Russia accused of using shipwreck as spy baseDiving is strictly prohibited on the Estonia, as two underwater film-makers who visited the tragic Baltic ferry wreck found to their cost in 2021. But the ban has not deterred Russia from allegedly using the grave site as cover for spying against NATO countries, according to a new report.A total of 825 people died when the Tallinn-Stockholm ferry was caught in a storm 35km from the Finnish island of Utö in 1994 and sank rapidly to a depth of 80m. The calamity was blamed on the bow door coming open and letting water rush onto the car deck.Few of the bodies were recovered, so the wreck is regarded as a final resting place. In 1995 an official exclusion zone was imposed around it by Finland, Sweden and Estonia under what they termed the “Estonia Law”.Following a joint investigation, the German news outlets WDR, NDR and Süddeutsche Zeitung have now claimed that NATO has been informed of Russia’s use of the wreck as a training ground for underwater operations. They say it is possible that it has cached apparatus there to enable high-precision navigation by underwater drones.
Depths of idiocy? Coral-graffiti diver on looseAn example of underwater behaviour that seems calculated to get divers a bad name was revealed in the Philippines when a diver spotted a table coral with the words “Just Dive” carved into it.The act of underwater vandalism was discovered at Napaling Point, a popular dive-site off Panglao in south-western Bohol, at the end of October. The diver reported it to the office of Bohol’s governor Erico Aris Aumentado, who had last year set up a task force with powers of arrest intended to combat such activity. He directed Panglao’s mayor to close the dive-site temporarily and open an investigation.The local authorities are now said to be working with the Philippines Department of Environment & Natural Resources, the Bureau of Fisheries & Aquatic Resources, the Coast Guard and local dive-operators to find the culprit and restore the reef.Damaging or defacing corals is a criminal offence punishable by fines and imprisonment in the Philippines.
Drowned solo diver had ‘dangerous’ reg set-upA solo diver who died off the North Wales coast last year had no alternative air supply and was using a regulator with a makeshift mouthpiece attachment, a coroner heard at an inquest in Caernarfon this week.Imrich Magyer, 53, a Slovakian human resources assistant living in Warrington in Cheshire, was said by family-members to have been a keen underwater photographer.He went missing during a shore dive off the Llyn Peninsula on 28 November, 2024. The alarm was raised after a member of the public had spotted what appears to have been his surface-supplied diving system. Magyer’s car and personal effects were found near a shore-diving beach near Tudweiliog, an area known to present challenging conditions, especially in winter. He had been wearing a wetsuit, and had not informed anyone of his dive-plan.
Mantas get their bearings by diving deepAn international team of researchers working in New Zealand, Indonesia and Peru tagged 24 examples of Mobula birostris, the world’s biggest species of ray to learn more about their deep-diving behaviour. Their study has just been published.“We show that, far offshore, oceanic manta rays are capable of diving to depths greater than 1,200m, far deeper than previously thought,” says first author Dr Calvin Beale of Murdoch University in Australia. “These dives, which are linked with increased horizontal travel afterwards, may play an important role in helping mantas gather information about their environment and navigate across the open ocean.”The rays were tagged and observed between 2012 and 2022 at three sites: near Whangoroa in northern New Zealand, Raja Ampat in eastern Indonesia and near Tumbes off Peru’s north coast. The team recovered eight of the 24 tags, which were programmed to release after several months, and their high-frequency data was downloaded.“It is quite a challenging task, trying to spot a small grey floating object with a short antenna bobbing around in the waves with other flotsam and jetsam,” says Beale. The other 16 tags transmitted summary data via satellite.A total of 2,705 tag-days of data were recorded, and on 79 days mantas were found to dive to extreme depths, maximum 1,250m. All but eight of these dives, defined as deeper than 500m, occurred off New Zealand.
Photobombing turtles ’biggest risk’ on SSI projectDiver-training agency SSI has been working on a multi-week video project organised by Le Méridien Maldives Resort & Spa and its training centre Sub Oceanic Maldives. The idea is to refresh SSI’s library of skill demonstrations, dive sequences and lifestyle content for use across its platforms worldwide – an initiative it describes as part of a “long-term push to modernise dive education and highlight diversity in the diving community”.The 5* “eco-conscious” resort is located on Thilamaafushi Island in Lhaviyani Atoll and has 134 villas, four restaurants and two bars. Surrounded by a lagoon with a 1km-long coral reef, it offers access to more than 50 dive-sites with what are described as “vivid reefs, easy access and cinematic visibility”.SSI video project: Lagoon villas at the Maldives resortLagoon villas at the Maldives resort“Our crystal waters and thriving house reef make an inspiring setting for both professional content and for guests discovering the underwater world,” says Le Méridien Maldives general manager Thomas Schult. The dive-centre is responsible for logistics, site-selection, underwater co-ordination and safety. “Our only concern is the turtles photobombing – it’s a risk we’re happy to take!” says its head of operations Florian Gansl.
Russia accused of using shipwreck as spy baseDiving is strictly prohibited on the Estonia, as two underwater film-makers who visited the tragic Baltic ferry wreck found to their cost in 2021. But the ban has not deterred Russia from allegedly using the grave site as cover for spying against NATO countries, according to a new report.A total of 825 people died when the Tallinn-Stockholm ferry was caught in a storm 35km from the Finnish island of Utö in 1994 and sank rapidly to a depth of 80m. The calamity was blamed on the bow door coming open and letting water rush onto the car deck.Few of the bodies were recovered, so the wreck is regarded as a final resting place. In 1995 an official exclusion zone was imposed around it by Finland, Sweden and Estonia under what they termed the “Estonia Law”.Following a joint investigation, the German news outlets WDR, NDR and Süddeutsche Zeitung have now claimed that NATO has been informed of Russia’s use of the wreck as a training ground for underwater operations. They say it is possible that it has cached apparatus there to enable high-precision navigation by underwater drones.