Scuba Books

The author attempts to cover an island as large as the state of connecticut in only 21 dives. Puerto Rico is so vast that the author should return to cover it better. But he does a decent job in the few words he used. He also tells it like it is, not like much of the travel stories you read in dive magazines.

This book provided a pretty good overview of diving and snorkelling in Puerto Rico. We picked two diving sites and one snorkelling site based on it. It over-estimated the difficulty of one of the dives, and did not warn us about several factors that degraded our diving experience.

This book does have some great tips but when it comes to specific locations it falls short. When I went to several towns looking for the locations mentioned in the book, I fould many locals unaware of them. Some have never heard of them and I could never find the location. Maybe if a specific departure location was givin (city or port) instead of a bay or area, would be helpful. Great photography by the way.

A pretty complete review of the best diving sites around the island with exceptional photographs. It is really a shame that the author did not provide the GPS coordinates information which he refers to on page 9. That would make it an outstanding value!!! José Amador Aguadilla, Puerto Rico e-mail: casagra2@caribe.net

great book with excellent coverage of different dive sites all over micronesia. the only problem i have is that it has not been updated since 2000, but that is only a minor thing.

Diving Micronesia was an easy to read guide book that will not go into great detail , I certainly did not base my travel on it , I would definately recomend the lonely planet guide by Tim Rock , it is much more informative

Throughout the world of diving, there are a few Divers who are able to provide their Publishers with excellent material for their Guide Books and Eric Hanauer is one of these.

"Diving Micronesia" measures 10" x 7" and is another guide in the medium size format favoured by Aqua Quest. This is a worthy addition to a first rate series of books - throughout which, these publishers have maintained the highest standards in terms of quality of information and photography.

As with each of these guides, this book is clearly laid out with chapters on the overall subject area (complete with all the relevant information required), an overview of diving in the South Pacific and specific detail with regard to the individual countries visited (Guam, Mariana Islands, Yap, Palau, Chuuk (formerly Truk Lagoon), Pohnpei, Kosrae and the Marshall Islands (including Bikini Atoll)). Chapter 1 begins with a précis of the region's geography and history coupled with details of the present day. This is followed by a map and all that essential information such as credit cards, cuisine, currency, dress, electricity, getting there, entry/exit requirements, mail, telephone, time, post - and anything else the prospective visitor wishes to know.

Chapter 2 is an overview of the Diving in general and includes all the relevant information the diver requires - such as: facilities, water/weather conditions, visibility, flora and fauna and lots more besides.

As one might expect, there then follows a chapter dedicated to each of the aforementioned countries within the catchment area of this book. Being separate countries spread over a large area of the Pacific Ocean, these chapters contain a wealth of information on diving and non-diving topics. The diving details commences with a map of the specific island complex where all the relevant dive sites are clearly numbered and displayed. This is followed by a description of each site with adequate narrative, relevant depth and grade-of-diver information.

With everything lavishly supported by underwater and surface photography of the highest standard, the book then concludes with Appendices containing Emergency Information and what appears to be a very thorough list of local (South Pacific) diving contact details.

With a total of 92 dive sites to set the heart racing, the book also includes 3 dive sites from Bikini Atoll. Clearly the Publishers were leaving the very best to the very last by including the USS Saratoga (the only diveable Aircraft Carrier in the world), HIJMS Nagato and USS Apogon which combine to form three of the world's most important dive sites.

For me, it was nice to find a book where some of the world's most historic sites from the WW2 Pacific theatre of War were placed together - rather than allowing, say, Truk Lagoon (sorry - just can't get used to that new name.), or Bikini Atoll to dominate the book.

Altogether, a well-rounded book with everything supported by some pretty stunning and imaginative photography. For anyone considering a trip to the South Pacific, I do believe this is the only book you will require - and it is one for which I have been waiting for some time...

NM

A thorough explanation of the Micronesian islands and what to expect, both on land and under the water, on each of them. The history is fascinating. Our first visit to Micronesia, so we'll see how true the information the book presents is!

While many dive the waters of Long Island in Wet Suits, you can greatly extend your dive season to year round or at least April to December with a Dry Suit. A Dry Suit allows you to stay dry and wear heavy thermals under the suit so you stay nice and toasty even if ice diving. The techniques for use of a dry suit are different from a wet suit.
This book explains it all in detail. This book should be required reading for all new Dry Suit divers.

We found this book very informative. In addition to teaching the aspects of dry suit diving, it also tells you how to maintain your equipment properly.

Don't get me wrong, this was a book packed with excellent information about the history of dry suit diving, maintenance requirements, and thermal properties of various configurations, but it was not the instructional text I was looking for. I found the text worthy as a guide to making repairs, but found it terribly boring to read. I was hoping to draw on the experiences of the authors to aid in my growth as a dry suit diver, but that is simply not what this text is suitable for. This makes a fine edition to my collection of texts and I will refer to it in the event a repair is required to my suit, but this text is NOT the instructional manual, packed with "how to" tips, I was searching for.

Although being an instructor and supposed to teach others how to dive, including dry suit diving, I've never had a dry suit diving course myself. Till I bought this book I've brought on my own experience - I thought I would have a guide that could break my self-taught bad habits.
Not so. This book gave me a lot about the history of the development of dry suits (which very much took place in my neighbourhood) and a lot about maintenance and caretaking of dry suits. These subjects deserve the three stars rating. But I still dive like I did before, as the useful tips of actual dry suit diving are scarce and should not be the reason for buing this book. Or, on second thoughts - isn't there more to dry suit diving than this?

This low quality spiral bound notepad of cheap drawings contains some of the most ridiculous and non-intuitive signs I've ever seen. Some of them are just plain wrong, in my opinion. The 5% of the book that is of any value is, in my experience, common knowledge from basic open water training. I expected a book of signs that makes use of common expressions that transcend spoken language, at least in the western hemisphere, and can be easily understood by a buddy team that does not have much experience diving together. The book should be called The Smiths Sign Language Manual and not Scuba Divers Sign Language Manual because I think the authors are the only ones who understand it. In summary, I feel it's a poor attempt to facilitate communication underwater and is not worth the price!

The signs are all very intuative and very useful. Only issue is that your buddy really needs to know them too.

I use this book on all of my dive trips, it has really come in handy. The signs are adapted from ASL (American Sign Language) and they work topside too!

This handbook is fun, yet very important! It is fun to practice the signs, but I've also learned many emergency signs for diving, I feel more secure knowing that my buddy understands me underwater.

There was a brief history of the French Polynesian Islands with slightly more detailed information on the individual islands. The best thing was the wonderful underwater dive site maps. I love it!

This book was useful when we visited the South Seas as to what was "under" the water. It is very well presented with drawings of fish in the area as well as routes to take when scuba diving. It is limited as to the islands it covers so one should check to see if the book covers where you will be.

It was an okay guide. I was looking more for fish species and other dive information.

It covered most of the island with greta details and information. it is a shamed that it di not cover mona Island the best dive site in PR. Also, it lacks enough info on shore dive in the island. But overall it gives you enough information to keep you wanting to go back to Puerto rico to dive.

One previous reviewer suggests that if you are on the ground (or in the water) in Puerto Rico, you won't need this book, you can just "ask around". This is surely true. The chief use of such a book is for planning a visit to Puerto Rico; that is, you use the book at home and perhaps leave it there. The pictures are enticing, the information is well-indexed and quickly comprehended, and I found nothing incorrect in the one usage I made of the guide. I had one day free in a business visit to San Juan, I used to book to decide that Fajardo should be my starting point, I snorkeled at sites around the offshore island of Palominos, and I had a superb experience. No doubt the same info could have been found elsewhere, but this book allowed me to feel confident in my choice.

My first reaction to this book was one of excitment, this came from my first perusing the pictures. I was, however, severly disappointed when I actually got into the information that the book contained. The first quarter of the book is devoted to a breif and very lacking overview of Puerto Rico. Although not that useful it didn't hurt. However, there were two things that really bothered me about the book. First was that almost all of the dive sites listed need a guide. The second was that despite the fact that it claims to be a snorkel and dive guide book there is virtually zero snorkel information and of the few sights mentioned only 3, I believe, were actually not seemingly impossible to get to. In fact, my old budget travel guide for puerto rico had over three times as many snorkelnig sites, with, as I was dismayed to see, a lot of sites that were not even included in the SNORKEL and dive guide. How a guide on underwater adventure can be outshown by a general travel guide is beyond me but it is. Do not buy this book if you are planning to mix dives with snorkel and are looking for an all inclusive, it just doesn't have the info. Also, as I said most of the dives require a guide which makes the information in the book rather pointless as the guides will know where the great sites are and a quick conversation can lead you to your next guide and site. This, it seems is probably what the guy who wrote the book did, just went from guide to guide. The main dive areas are well know on the island and you aren't really getting any information that you couldn't just by being here get yourself. My vote, Not worth it.

A good reference book for my dive trip to the Galapagos Is. I could find in the pictures, everything I saw underwater, with all the information a diver needs, from fish and marine invertebrates description, to the dive sites with detailed maps. The photos are very good. The reader can apreciate the efforts done by the author, in the plate drawings, creating an interest to get knowledge about whales or dolphins, for example. A really big improvement from the first edition, this new edition stands out as QUALITY! A beautiful souvenir for my "Dream come true".

Correction: the book is not 280 pages but 308 pages, does not have 240 pictures but 288 colour photos on fish and marine life.Very few people have dedicated 18 years of their life to achieve such a remarkable piece of work, in both information and photographs. Constant had published a earlier book with the same title in 1992; this one is a considerable improvement. Sure, you could also get a copy of Jack Grove's "Fishes of the Galapagos", over 800 pages and worth a few hundred dollars, with pure rock botom scientific information. Not for the average diver, though.

For my return to the Galápagos, and as a long time SCUBA diver and marine enthusiast (over 45 years), I was looking for a book that would be an all around field guide to the marine critters. Unfortunately, =this is not that book=. The layout is inconvenient, requiring one to move back and forth between a description of the animal and its photo- which often enough, turns out to be murky and not very revealing. The descriptions are brief to the point of being sketchy and forgetting some vital information, and there are some noticeable typographical errors. Though some of the information and citations are up-to-date, many are so old they verge on misinformation, and important books (Humann and DeLoach's book, for instance, are missing entirely from the non-annotated bibliography. Based on my personal experience diving with sharks and the data available during the last ten years, this book's information on sharks especially is misleading, out of date and overly alarming. Some of the island and dive site maps are crudely drawn- I have seen better drawn on white boards at dive briefings.

Unfortunately, this appears to be THE field-totable book available at the moment on this topic, and that's why I have it. Here's hoping Msr. Constant revises, adds and updates his book- it could be a blessing. I do not recommend buying this book unless you NEED it. ...

THE SNORKELING MANUAL, "SNORKELING;HERE'S HOW" IS NOW PUBLISHED BY - THE LONELY PLANET 155 FILBERT STREET SUITE 251 OAKLAND,CA 94607 PHONE (510) 893-8555 FAX (510) 893-8563 1-800 275 8555

THIS IS STILL THE ONLY SNORKELING HOW TOO MANUAL IN THE DIVE INDUSTRY.

I wanted a book to teach me how to snorkel. This book teaches you how to evaluate and purchase the equipment to snorkel, and how to wear the equipment, but not how to USE the equipment!!! I see pictures of people diving underwater while wearing a snorkel - how do they do that without the snorkel filling up with water? Oh sure, I can figure out that if I lay on the water face down and have a snorkel in my mouth I can still breath, but I wanna know how to do more... This didn't even really touch on the basics...

But in fairness - It is a very good guide on how to purchase, wear, and maintain your first set of snorkeling gear...

I just finished reading this book, and found it to be very helpful, from how to purchase snorkeling gear, to how to snorkel. It also teaches you how to take care of the gear you buy. I would recommend this book to anyone who is new to snorkeling. Now to put all this information to the test when I actually try it in Hawaii next month.

A non-stop account of a man of the sea and the adventures and dangers encountered, not only alone at times, but with other mates in the commercial diving trade, doing what most land bound men would never dream of doing. Bob Wick is a diver un-daunted by the hostile elements of tides, currents and zero visibility to complete any work assigned, being that of harvesting abalone from the clear cold waters of the "Channel Islands, off Californias West Coast, to the black polar depths of, "Cook Inlet",on Alaskas South shore and beyond for the ever growing oil exploration companies.
A, "Must Read", for those who want to recount similiar memories and for those who think they might want to follow in his undersea foot stepts.

This was an great book to read. It had some wonderful deep sea diver stories, and lots of excitment. I enjoyed the entire book.

The book was more a collection of "old sea dog" anecdotes written down than it was a book. I was interested to learn about the early abalone harvesting in California, but had to wade through too many "above-water, hell-raising" stories that, frankly, bored me. It felt a bit like being trapped next to the wrong person at a high school reunion.

I like this book because it is right on with the dives we went on. Very Accurate. They don't chum the blue hole anymore though, thank god.

This book has great information, but be aware that it doesn't even begin to cover 1/2 the Cayes in Belize. In fact it only mentioned one that we visited while sailing for 7 days. Use this guide as an accompaniment to other info.