Scuba Diving Books

This is a great book for any diver, has lots of information not found elsewhere. I am currently working on my DiveMaster training and this is a super book for studying and preparing for the test taking.

After taking the PADI Open Water certification class, my dive buddy and myself still felt we had questions that weren't addressed in the beginner class. After looking at all of the available books, this one was the only one that sufficiently answered our questions. I think it would be appropriate for the beginner on up to the advanced.

This is an excellent source of information for the beginning or experienced diver. It covers all aspects of diving from equipment to diving physics. Each page is full of interesting and sometimes challenging multiple choice questions with the complete answers on the following page. It is a must have book for anyone who wants to know more about the sport.

For those who are in the beginning stage and would like to pursue a diving career, this book of 100 or more quizzes by Dennis Graver has it all, so to speak. I'd strongly recommend this book to all beginning until instructor level divers since it serves as an excellent reviewer of all the diving skills which you may have learned in class and/or experienced while doing actual diving. I'm impressed especially with the sections on Emergencies, Rescue, Near Drowning, and the like since they are not simply quizzes anymore but serve as guides on dealing with such situations. For all divers, this is the book for us!!!

This is an outstanding and reliable resource on diving in Bali. The author writes with clarity. It is an enjoyable read even if you can get out there as often as you'd like. Worth reading!

I received my copy of Diving Bali : The Underwater Jewel of Southeast Asia (Periplus Action Guides)yesterday, and lost a good night's sleep reading it. My only regret in buying this book is that I didn't get it before going diving in Bali last summer. The pictures are outstanding and the maps are of a very high quality. I think I'll be cancelling my diving trip to the Philippines in July and returning to Bali instead!

I know that this sounds like hyperbole, but this book is so far above and beyond any other dive guide I have used that I cannot resist. The maps are works of art and acurate, to boot.

After reading this book, my dives at the Liberty, the Tulamben drop off and Batu Kelebit seemed like visits with old friends.

As a terrific bonus, you can even dive these sites with Wally Siagian (+62 363 41869, persistantly) as I did.

Best dive guide I've read about any location. Get this one if going to Bali.

After having read this book by Bob Burgess I have plans for sailing and diving in the Carribean in the near future. This is a very well written and informative book. I would even go as far as to say that it could be used as guide for some outstanding places to sail and dive in the Carribean.
I usually dive the Gulf of Mexico and local caves, but now I see that I am missing out on even better diving. If you like to dive, sail, or just have fun in the water, this is a must read book. I highly recommend it.

The content of Burgess's book is very good as you'd expect, but as a graphics/visual person I'll opin that what really makes it shine are the photos. Burgess has a great eye, especially for diver photos which really put the beautiful scenery in context. Recommended.

Informatively written by veteran diver and journalist Bob Burgess, Diving Off The Beaten Track is an engaging travelogue showcasing superb diving locations in the Bahamas, the Caymans, Belize, and Bay Islands. Full-color photographs wonderfully enhanced Burgess' engaging narration making Diving Off The Beaten Track superbly fascinating reading for armchair travelers as well as an invaluable Caribbean travel planning guide for avid divers.

For the diver looking to expand their geographical horizons. The info for the most part is very general. It's an overview of interesting and less visited dive spots. If you're serious about travelling & diving 'off the beaten path' you'll need to supplement this with a more specific guide for your destination. But a good 'idea book' for those casting about for new travel & dive destinations.

This was an excellent book. We went to the Bay to do snorkeling and used this book as a complete and comprehensive reference guide.

This guide was extremely helpful in planning several snorkeling trips to Hanauma Bay over the last three years. The ariel views of the bay and the detailed directions for the different levels of abilities were both accurate and informative. I believe this information would prove beneficial to anyone planning on visiting the park, whether they are a swimmer, begginer snorkeler, or advanced scuba diver. Although the park staff stand ready to answer any questions you may have, this book's overview of the bay definitely comes in handy. I especially liked the information on all the wildlife and marine critters that call the bay their home.

I would also suggest getting a hold of two other books to compliment this one: The O`ahu Snorkeler and Shore Divers Guide by Francisco B. DeCarvalho and Hawaii's Fishes by John P. Hoover. Both these books contain information on Hanauma Bay and its inhabitants, as well as covering many of O`ahu's other snorkel and dive sites and would make any diving/snorkeling trip to the bay a success.

Beautiful full color guide to what you will see while walking around, and swimming in Hanauma Bay. Page after page of quality photographs of the wildlife living within. Suggests several tours for walking, and various snorkeling and scuba abilities. All with appropriate safety cautions sprinkled throughout. If you need to know the differences between a moray and a tang, or even several kinds of tang, this is the book for you. It also serves as a nice momento of a day spent swimming with the fishys!

This is a great book on Hanauma Bay, and one I often recommend for visitors. It is very different from the other books about Hanauma Bay, in that it is organized as to where you are and what you'll see, as opposed to a grand listing of everything. Are you planning on just walking along the beach? Going out to the deeper water? Wading? These specific ecosystems and habitats have their uniqueness, and this book points them out. Inexpensive, well organized, and with David Schrichte's superb photography (and I mean superb), this book is a great reference to obtain prior to visiting the Bay. Ironically, I also recommend that folks get a copy just for the photos, cutting out what they like for their scrapbooks. Schrichte's photos are much better than you can take with your underwater point-and-shoot camera, and the price is about the same.

I spent 10 days diving Palau in June 2001 and this book was incredibly helpful. There are so many dive sites to choose from in this region, and this book did an excellent job detailing each and every one. Since most dive operators in this region take "requests" rather than dictate where you're going, it's nice to have some information to make an informed decision, depending upon whether you want to focus on macro, big animal enounters, drift dives, wrecks, etc. Going to dive Palau without this book is simply a bad idea.

I used by no means to be a fan of diving and snorkeling. Yet, the beautiful seas of the Pacific, combined with this wonderful excellently written guidebook, introduced me to the wonderful world of this activity. The guidebook provides excellent and invaluable information and advice for divers and snorkelers - beginners and experts alike - with special focus on how great this can be in Palau. Meanwhile, the guidebook is also a wonderful travel tool for visiting Palau, whether or not you are primarily there for snorkeling and diving. All in all, it is surely a worthwhile, if not crucial, purchase, before you set off to the Pacific.

Well worth the money to purchase this book. There are LOTS of quality places to snorkel and dive in Palau, this book gives you some help picking out the best places for you. Also some (not a ton, but adequate) suggestions for dry-land activities.
And yes, I was in Palau spring 2005- the jellys in jellyfish lake are back to a healthy population after El nino!

I used by no means to be a fan of diving and snorkeling. Yet, the beautiful seas of the Pacific, combined with this wonderful excellently written guidebook, introduced me to the wonderful world of this activity. The guidebook provides excellent and invaluable information and advice for divers and snorkelers - beginners and experts alike - with special focus on how great this can be in Palau. Meanwhile, the guidebook is also a wonderful travel tool for visiting Palau, whether or not you are primarily there for snorkeling and diving. All in all, it is surely a worthwhile, if not crucial, purchase, before you set off to the Pacific.

This unique book tells the story of a bunch of intrepid and inspired men who pioneered the exploration of the last great unknown: the deeps of the sea. How would you fancy wading out under water with nothing more than an inverted coal bucket over your head? Would you agree to a fight a shark, equipped with nothing more than a knife, all so that some movie company could film the gory encounter? Inventive, adventurous, foolhardy to the point of recklessness, many of the diving pioneers were also world-famous in their own right, like the great biologist JBS Haldane, who worked out how to survive at dangerous depths. Others evolved from treasure seekers to become the first underwater archaeologists, exploring ancient shipwrecks in exotic waters, or, most interesting of all, opening our eyes to the beauty of marine habits and wildlife, including the seriously threatened coral reefs. The author, himself a marine biologist and diver, blends all this into a magical weave of fact and wonder enlivened by a mordant wit and a delightful eye for quirky detail. I would recommend it to any reader.

Trevor Norton presents us with a series of vivid portraits of the strange assortment of characters who pioneered diving. Henri Milne Edwards conducted the first expedition by a submarine biologist in 1844 off Sicily. As early as 1865, the mining engineer Benoit Rouqayrol designed a diving suit with a compressed air cylinder at the back, and a demand valve that supplied oxygen only when the diver sucked on the mouthpiece; but the idea somehow lay forgotten for eighty years.

The engineer Otis Barton designed, built and tested the first bathysphere in 1932, reaching a depth of 3000 feet. Jack Kitching was the first marine ecologist. In the 1930s, Guy Gilpatric, who held a world altitude record when he was only sixteen, invented the very idea of diving for pleasure.

John Scott Haldane worked on improving miners' safety and studied the effects of high pressure on deep-sea divers and of altitude sickness in climbers. His son, the communist and geneticist J.B.S. Haldane, was the first to map the genes on a human chromosome. He also worked on solving the problems of pressure experienced by divers and submariners.

In 1942, Jacques Cousteau's colleague Emile Gagnan re-invented the demand valve, the key to developing the self-contained underwater breathing apparatus (SCUBA). Louis Boutan and Ernest Williamson started underwater photography, popularised by those most photogenic photographers, Hans and Lotte Haas, in their 26 BBC television programmes.

Frederic Dumas, Peter Throckmorton and George Bass initiated underwater archaeology. Throckmorton found lost ships all over the world, most famously a 3,200-year-old wreck at Bodrum on the Aegean coast. He was the first to realise that "it was possible to do scientific archaeology under water." He acutely observed, "What historians had missed, the sea remembered."

Trevor Norton's fascinating book is full of humorous stories and conveys masses of information in a charming and easy style.

I can't remember the last time I laughed so long and loud over a book. This is very, very amusing, laugh-out-loud funny, yet highly informative and interesting, e.g. the first recorded Dive Club had the singularly unimaginative name of 'The Bottom-Scratchers'!
The book is peppered with excerpts from many other books, but loses nothing by that, rather it shows how much research reading has been done.
We are taken on a biographical tour through the stars of underwater invention, in no particular order, but there are some early pioneers who are not mentioned, possibly because there is little information available to make interesting (and humorous) reading.
Our tour-guide extracts the minutest details for our delectation, again sprinkled with that undercurrent of wit. And our guide is no armchair chronicler either, he was there in the '50s, doing field work in the cold waters of Lough Ine.

Incidentally we find that some of our Stars worked in other fields as well; mining, surgery, explosives, writing, biology, photography, cinema, genetics - with the usual humourous anecdote, in case we were inclined to fall asleep (unlikely!).

A wonderful, refreshing read - guaranteed to liven up your lungs and your life!

This is a very rare book. It looks at brave pioneers in an honest and humorous way. You will get a sense of daredevils challenging fate from these stories about the development of undersea exploration by divers.

I called them "oddballs" in my title because most were quite unusual in their personal characteristics, as you will learn from reading the book. Families, personal possessions, and social lives were unusual in almost all cases. They remind me a lot of the barnstorming aviators who pioneered air services.

The book is a series of vignettes about those who first developed diving gear, did underwater biological research, collected samples for museums, learned how to balance gases and pressures to avoid death and injury from diving, hunted underwater with spears, farmed underwater with oysters, took photographs underwater, made movies underwater, and performed archeology on ship wrecks.

The stories are remarkable for three characteristics. First, it took a lot of guts to try these things. The gear wasn't so good, and the dangers were very great. A lot of injury and death did follow. Second, in doing research, these men usually employed themselves as guinea pigs at great personal risk. Many had their lives shortened or their health damaged as a result. Third, almost all of the pioneers ravaged and despoiled whatever area they initially studied. For example, vast reefs were dynamited to bring back samples that museums later discarded. More rare pottery was destroyed in early undersea archeology than was collected. Some of these men thought better of it later, and argued for changed methods.

Some of the people were genuises, uncovering major areas of new knowledge (like the Haldanes, father and son). Others were simply gifted tinkerers. Some were just in the right place at the right time with a yen to scratch. But they all had magnificent passions and harnessed those passions to invent methods that have important applications today.

The stories are enlivened by many drawings and photographs of the people and their work. The newer pioneers were personally known by the author, Professor Norton, and his recollections add much to the reader's enjoyment.

If you have ever marveled at sites under water that you have seen on television, in movies, or in books, you will be riveted by this book. The bulk of the developments that make these accomplishments possible are quite new, and were hard-wrought in most cases.

Professor Norton tells his tales like an old salt holding a pint of grog in a smoky tavern near a fire in a fishing harbor on the Irish Sea. You'll love them!

After you have finished enjoying this book, I encourage you to think about where else you do not know the background of some wonderful modern capability that inspires you. What about cave exploration? Many of the great beauties in caves were unknown until the last few hundred years.

Then go learn more about whatever inspiring subject it is that you do not yet know the development of. This should greatly add to you understanding of what you enjoy. It may even encourage you to employ your passion in this area in a new way!

Take a deep breath and dive right in!

This is a great book to learn some breathing techniques and become focused prior to doing any scuba diving! Not to mention there are some great yoga poses for those of you that are just into that. Plus it's a very inexpensive book, well worth it!

Knowing little to nothing about yoga or scuba diving....we read this book to learn something new and found the book to give clear, un-complicated instruction and we truly enjoyed the passion and humor of the authors.

I am a yoga teacher and scuba diver and always practice yoga before diving. I have been telling my dive friends how yoga compliments diving. The authors' knowledge of both yoga and diving are excellent and they bring it all together in this book. Highly recommended!

This is a great book. scuba and yoga make a great combination. The poses are enjoyable to perform. I especially liked the visualization and breathing exercises.

As I said when reviewing Vol. 1 of this series of book, it is always interesting to see which ones are preferred by the Dive Guides at the sharp end. Take it from me, they are all using this book and if it's good enough for them then it's more than good enough for me. Not once have I found any of the three volumes in my possession to be lacking in any way.

The book is well written and includes plenty of general information on diving, facilities, climate, sea, regulations, boats, cruise liners, resorts, hotels, flora, fauna, shipwrecks, photography and safety. The book then covers each of the Caribbean countries which form the main subject matter before concluding with a Glossary, Bibliography and Accident and Emergency Information.

If you want a book full of pretty pictures - then look elsewhere. This is a true guide which contains all the information you will require. It does not fool you by pretending to be something it is not - as is the case with far too many so-called "Guides," but instead concentrates on providing all the relevant and peripheral information that any Scuba Diver will want to know before and during a trip to any of the Caribbean destinations covered. The maps and diagrams are particularly useful - and very easy to follow.

My advice is to look at the "information" given in this series of books and don't get side-tracked by something more flashy. Do not be tempted away from this one - it is a straight forward, no nonsense guide containing everything you will want to know.

In summary, any book claiming to be "A Complete Guide" has to include an awful lot of information. This one has achieved just that and will not disappoint the purchaser.

NM

The Complete Diving Guide (2) is a must for anyone diving the Netherlands Antilles. I used it while cruising in the area on my yacht in St. Maarten and dived in Saba, Statia and Anguilla on the strength of the information in the guide book. It tells you where the best dives are and how to dive them. The maps show you where the dives are and there is a lot of general background about what the diving will be like. I was surprised how much information the authors included and there's no woffle, it's all good value for money.

I'd definitely give this guide full marks. It's without doubt the most comprehensive of the guides I looked at for the area I was travelling to(the Virgin Islands). It had everything we could have wanted to know and it definitely meant we did some better diving than we'd have done without it. We particularly liked that it gave us information about the British and US Virgin Islands and as they are less than 5 miles apart it's simple to dive both areas. They have some really different types of diving and we'd have missed out on a lot without the guide. We bought the book before we went but we took it along with us and used it all the time. One of the things we enjoyed reading was the descriptions of the dives andthe sections about the marine life. We've been diving for over 10 years and I've learnt more from this book than I have in my previous years of diving.

I have this book and almost wore it out. I shows the dive sites and rates them in 4 catagories. It tells you how much current to expect, the difficulty of the dive site in terms of novice, intermediate, and advanced diving skills, the marine life, and the coral formations. All of these 4 catagories are rated in stars, 5 being the highest. There is even a map of each site. The book is a must have!

I totally agree with LFGordon's review. This is an awsome book and truly unlike any of the others. It's work the extra bucks.

I keep trying to find it here in Amazon, hoping for a better price, but if you can't wait, buy direct from www cozumeldiveguide com.

http://www.cozumeldiveguide.com

Happy diving

This is truly one of a kind. I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the reef maps. I've never seen anything quite like them. It gave me great technical information about each of the major Cozumel reefs, the graphics are excellent. The Dive Log in the back, along with the fish chart gives me one great source of information and tracking of my frequent Cozumel dives. My novice friend found it very helpful in deciding which reefs to dive and knowing what to expect.

The book Diving Physiology In Plain English is without exaggeration the best book on diving I have ever read. Beginner, advanced, technical divers or even non-divers can all benefit from this book. My wife is a non-diver and she read this book with interest and ease. She no longer worries or is concerned about my technical diving. This book addresses the relative full gamete of physiological issues associated with scuba diving. It address issues such as; decompression tables and computers, technical diving, and considers gender related issues between men and women divers. My wife greatly appreciated the information related to decompression sickness, oxygen toxicity, diving headaches, and lung injuries. In addition, I think is also a useful book for divers who are in need of refreshing their diving academics or for divers expanding into other areas of diving. The information in this book is crucial knowledge for any diver. It goes beyond what is learned in any of the certification courses, open diver through instructor. It is an overall informative, valuable, easy to read and enjoyable book. I wish more dive shops would stock it on their shelves.

This book is absolutely packed with valuable information in an extremely readable format. I highly recommend it for both its' breadth and depth.

When I purchased my copy, I actually received it directly from Dr. Bookspan, the author. Jolie was wonderful to deal with and had a real passion for diving and writing.

I was never satisfied with the basic explanations of the effects of pressure and depth on the body doled out in the standard course of instruction on Scuba. Finding a comprehensive treatment of the subject in terms everyone can understand became a personal mission. This is the book satisfied my quest for knowledge about the physiology of Scuba. A doctor explains what we know and do not know of the liquid realm's influence on the Scuba Diver in plain, straight talk. One amazing example is that we have no clue what causes decompression sickness or "the bends". We just know that it is correlated with absorbed nitrogen and that there are a number of models that can predict its onset using this factor. The book includes an excellent explanation of the algorithms used by dive computers to help us avoid this malady, and how they were developed. You will be a much more knowledgeable and aware diver, and therefore a better diver, for having read this book. Add to cart!