aqualung

(Dive Travel Business News - April 23, 2012) -- The first Utila Dive Festival, to be held August 18-25, 2012, is a week-long schedule of events above and below the water with diving, dancing, dining and discovering the tiny diving Mecca of Utila, one of The Bay Islands located in the Western Caribbean just South of Belize.

Underwater highlights include themed daily dives, and specialized diving activities held throughout the week including a photography competition, advanced buoyancy workshops, reef ecology and whale shark talks, tec and sidemount try dives including closed circuit rebreathers. Topside, there are social events, opening and closing beach parties,  Taste of Utila food fair, and prize giveaways. read more »

(Dive Travel Business News - June 11, 2012 ) -- Born on June 11, 1910, in Saint-André-de-Cubzac (Gironde) in France, Jacques Yves Cousteau was a French naval officer who became one of the world's greatest explorers, ecologists, filmmakers and scientists.

Jacques-Yves Cousteau entered the naval academy in 1930, was graduated and became a gunnery officer. Then, while he was training to be a pilot, a serious car accident ended his aviation career. So it was the ocean that would win this adventurer's soul. In 1936, near the port of Toulon, he went swimming underwater with goggles. It was a breath-taking revelation.

Seeking a way to explore underwater longer and more freely, he developed, with engineer Emile Gagnan, the Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus, or scuba, in 1943. As the co-developer of the  modern "aqualung"  - the SCUBA tank and regulator - Cousteau made underwater exploration accessible to scientists and the masses alike. read more »