DIVE HAPPY

The US and UK both enjoy an interesting range of scuba diving magazines - but for all the interest in diving, there's been little said about diving in tsunami-affected regions a year on

This evening I was researching scuba diving magazines based in the UK and the US - I'm hoping I might get some freelance work from them in the future. I was searching for post tsunami information on their websites and, surprisingly, I found very little info about how tsunami-affected areas are doing a year later, and, of course, whether the diving is still worthwhile in those regions. It was thrown into relief by this excellent piece in Sport Diver, the official PADI magazine, which spells out just how well Thailand's dive sites have recovered and the need for tourists to return to help those local economies so badly affected by the tsunami to recover. I couldn't find a similar sort of article in any of the major UK or US magazines.

Fair enough, maybe I didn't look hard enough or maybe they didn't put those articles online - I don't have access to the print versions. So please correct me here if I'm wrong in the comments. But it bothers me a bit that the dive media isn't doing more to keep their readers posted on the post-tsunami situation. By all means tell people where it isn't safe to dive anymore, or too devastated to do so, but there are numerous dive sites that are still thriving and dive shops in need of divers to return. If there are problems, they need to be highlighted so they can be addressed, not just covered in silence.

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