Planned trips As well as a planned trip to St Abbs in September we are planning a liveaboard trip to the Southern Red Sea in November 09 (to areas in the Marine Parks, Elphinstone, Daedalus Reef and the Brothers  - regulated, limited visits and lots of marine life - well worth a trip - you will need to be at least Sports Diver with 50 logged dives or more by then).  Linda and Thomas are also investigating the possibility of a trip to do some  marine surveys in Easter 09 in the Red Sea- details to follow.   Appeal to divers visiting Wales Can you remember how much money you spent the last time you went diving in Wales?

If so, you could take part in an online survey to work out just how much divers contribute to local economies. The study is being co-ordinated by Ana Ruiz, a PhD student at Bangor University who wants to quantify the importance of diving around the Welsh coast. In the coming months, she hopes to contact as many residents and visiting divers around the Welsh coast as possible to ask them about their diving, how much it all costs and where the money goes. According to Ruiz, more needs to be known about diving in the UK as the government sets about establishing a network of protected areas under the new Marine Bill. 'The designation of these areas will be based on existing ecological, economic and social information,' Ruiz said. 'Yet very little information exists on recreational activities such as diving that might be used to inform the selection of sites for protection and recreational use. This lack of information could mean that the economic value of recreational diving may be overlooked and may receive less consideration than other activities within the marine environment.' To encourage divers to get involved, one of the participants will be picked at random to receive a £50 token for the BSAC shop. Anyone interested in contributing to the study can fill in an online questionnaire at http://www.sos.bangor.ac.uk/survey 'We don't expect you to remember every last penny spent, but the more accurate you can be, the better the quality of the data,' Ruiz said.   This study has already received the support of various Welsh diving clubs and articles promoting the study have been published in diverse dive magazines: Dive, Sports Diver and Divernet. If you are interested you can read the articles by following the links below: http://www.divemagazine.co.uk/news/article.asp?uan=4562 http://www.divernet.com/cgi-bin/articles.pl?id=7418&sc=1079&ac=d&an=7418:Wales:+what+do+divers+bring+to+the+...

July 22nd  Sea-Doo Sea Scooters - courtesy of John Camm of Alphad

We had a fantastic night ont the 22nd - 6 sea scooters to play with and we all had fun - you can see some photos in the photo gallery - we would all like to thank John very much indeed for giving us such an enjoyable evening.

John is generously helping us with airfills via the South Yorkshire Diving academy (see the FAQ page for their details).  He sells top range equipment though various dive shops - you can see what he specialises in on his website  http://www.alphad.org/