Houston's Premier Scuba and Dive Shop Oceanic Ventures Inc.

(713) 523-3483 (dive)
5808 Newcastle Drive
Houston, TX 77401

Photography

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Too Busy Diving

Open Water Sidemount Divers
Open Water Sidmount Divers

 I am not sure where the summer has gone.  We have been busy teaching new students to dive, upgrading the skills of our previous students and traveling.  It seems there are never enough hours in the day to get everything done. 

 We want to congratulate our new divers for completing their course and entering the realm ofNeptune.  Our new divers are featured in the video below as well as some of our other divers who completed classes such as Night and Limited Visibility Diving, Deep Diving, Search and Relocation, Navigation, Advanced Buoyancy Control, Technical Deep Diving, Advanced Recreational Trimix, Open Water Side-Mount, and the Principles of Technical Diving.

 Other Places We’ve Been

 Over the past few months you might have seen our divers in Grand Cayman for Inner Space (Oceanic Ventures is a continuing sponsor), Cozumel, Isla Mujares, the British Virgin Islands, St Croix, Utila, Little Cayman, the Dry Tortugas, the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador as well as our local favorites like 288 Lake, the Blue Lagoon, and Mammoth Lake.  It has been an action packed season so far and we are not finished yet!  

It is Not Too Late

It is not too late to hop into the water and become one withNeptuneunce again.  We have some fun adventures coming up and continuing education course are filling up the calendar so there is no excuse to stay dry! 

So here is our photo thank you and remembrances of our season so far.  Please tell me what you think….

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The Law of the Wild – Revised?

042701cbc8b067a818a0FA34BDBF@OwnerPC 300x136 The Law of the Wild Revised?The Law Of The Wild says kill only when you are hungry. Photographer Michel Denis-Huot, who captured these amazing pictures on safari in Kenya’s Masai Mara in October last year, said he was astounded by what he saw:
“These three brothers (cheetahs) have been living together since they left their mother at about 18 months old,’ he said. ‘On the morning we saw them, they seemed not to be hungry, walking quickly but stopping sometimes to play together. ‘At one point, they met a group of impala who ran away.. But one youngster was not quick enough and the brothers caught it easily’.”
These extraordinary scenes followed.
042701cbc8b067a818a0FA34BDBF@OwnerPC 300x136 The Law of the Wild Revised?
042601cbc8b067a7f190FA34BDBF@OwnerPC 300x235 The Law of the Wild Revised?
042501cbc8b067a7f190FA34BDBF@OwnerPC 300x168 The Law of the Wild Revised?
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The images, which ran in the Daily Mail, show the cheetahs playing with the impala and the sequence ends with the impala running away, you assume to safety and a happy ending. But that’s not the whole story. When you look at Denis-Huot’s website, he posts the entire series, which ends with the big cats eating the impala. Sorry, no Disney ending here.
The picture sequence shows how complicated the animal world really is, and how often we want to simplify it by putting our own human vision on it. Cheetahs are hunters at heart, and those in the pictures probably didn’t kill the impala right away because they weren’t so hungry, or because it was a different time of the day than when they usually hunt, or for some other reason. Many animals, though, show kindness, and even to people. There are sometimes reports of dolphins rescuing fishermen from capsized boats, and there was even one recently about a pod of dolphins helping a lost dog. Naturalists like Bernd Heinrich have written about how ravens will share food with each other in the dead of winter, and scientists Frans de Waal have studied how primates will help their sick and take care of their elders. We may have a lot in common with animals, but we also need to respect them for who they are, not for what we think they are. This is a truth that I discover, and share with you, on so many of my BigAnimals trips.
Follow me on Twitter. Look at my How I Did It series on Facebook. I tell you how I made some of my iconic photographs.
[If you would like to join Amos on one of his Big Animal Adventures, let Dive Mom know and she will take care of all of your reservations with Amos]

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Mysteries of the Artic

polar bear 300x172 Mysteries of the ArcticThe arctic is a place of great mystery, and even more so these days, when it’s never been warmer up there. Yes, that’s right. While a lot of the US is seeing snow, ice and excessive cold, the place that we think of as being the coldest on the planet is going through a warm season. Scientists are reporting the arctic just had the least amount of sea ice on record in January. Air temperature is way above normal, too, even as “down south” people are shoveling their cars out of the snow.

A warmer Arctic

The experts are trying to understand if these two things are related. It’s well established that a warmer arctic is a fact – and it’s been going on like that steadily in recent years, but scientists don’t know yet if some of that arctic air mneung south is a trend or a blip. Just another mystery of the arctic, I think.
Here’s another arctic mystery for you: Polar bears might be facing their own population crisis. Why? Polar bears rely on sea ice when they hunt. They use it to get to the seals – their main food. Researchers have discovered that as the arctic becomes warmer, sea levels have dropped and there are fewer newborn polar bear cubs. Pregnant polar bear mothers go into hiding in a winter den and fast during part of their eight-month term. If they haven’t eaten enough before they do, they might not be able to sustain themselves. Scientists believe that having less food makes it less likely for a mother polar bear to give birth to a surviving cub. So there’s a relationship between the polar bear mom’s ability to survive and warmer weather. Since things seem to be changing in the wilds of the arctic, it seems like there’s no time like the present to have a look around there yourself.

Experience the High Arctic of Canada

I’d like you to experience some of the mystery, in mid-April. Will you join me? I’m leading an expedition to the high arctic of Canada, where we’ll see polar bear families emerging after months in their snow dens. We’ll see polar bear cubs learning to walk and play and track them when they head out to the edge of an ice floe to hunt for seals.
The days up there are 18 hours long – perfect for wildlife photography. Put your camera to your eye and you’ll capture spectacular images of baby polar bears and their mothers, the Aurora Borealis, endless white landscapes, seals and whales. We’ll have an opportunity explore Inuit camp life, too. There are only two spaces left on this trip, so I’d ask that if you would like to join us, please book today.
[If you would like to Join Amos on his Artic Adventure, please let Dive Mom know and she will help you set the whole thing up.]

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Jules Verne

Underwater explorers like me owe a lot to the novelist Jules Verne, who was born 183 years ago. Google honored him with one of their “doodles,” but in that doodle is a clue to Verne’s greatness – it’s an image that reminds you of the electric submarine, the Nautilus, from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

google verne 300x117 Jules Verne

When Verne’s words were published in 1869, electric submarines didn’t exist – they were just something out of his imagination. As National Geographic wrote, Verne also predicted that news wouldn’t just come from newspapers, but would be “spoken to subscribers,” in the way that radio and television news happens today. He thought of that in a story that was published nearly thirty years before the first radio broadcast.
The Verne list of firsts goes on. In 1865, in From the Earth the Moon, he thought there could be such a thing as a solar-powered spacecraft, and of course he wrote about traveling to the moon long before the first astronaut got there. He even thought of skywriting, videoconferencing, the Taser, and landing a spaceship in the ocean for a “splashdown.”
The mention of water brings us back to the ocean, and the visionary thoughts of Verne make it possible for me to do what I do today – explore the hidden depths and the distant lands that I want to share with you. Verne didn’t have any engineering training at all, just a lot of imagination. That’s all you need to come along on an adventure with me. My polar bear expedition to the high arctic has an April 17 departure and there are just two spaces left. Will you join me?
[If you would like to Join Amos on one of his Big Animal adventures, you can send Dive Mom a note or contact Amos directly.  Be sure to tell him that you read about his trips here.]

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New Truk Lagoon Dive Video Debut at Club Aquarius Meeting

Photo of Wreck in Chuuk
Inside Wreck Looking Out
Drew Trent, our scheduled speaker for our monthly Club Aquarius meeting was sick.  But, don’t worry, he has agreed to reschedule his presentation later in the year.
But as they say in show business, the show must go on.  I debuted a new video compilation of his photographs from past trips to Truk Lagoon.  The video featured photographs of the ships before the blast and then ones from the bottom.  It also had photographs of a number of the people that have joined me on previous trips. 
It was a fun video to put together and was well received by the audience.  If you missed the video, I posted it so you can see it.

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Spring Break Scuba Diving Group Returns

Ann, Steve and Nigel just returned from a Spring Break week in Utila, Honduras and they cannot stop talking about it. The group had such a good time that they all want to go back! While a norther blew in and tried to dampen their spirits, they did not miss a dive and spent days basking in the sunshine and enjoying the lush tropical island that Laguna Beach promises. There were a number of photographers along, including Ann, Karen, Steve and Nigel. They all tell me they got some incredible photographs.
Ann put together a quick video for the trip. You can watch it here or  jump over to the OceanicVentures channel on You Tube.