I put together a screen saver with some of the images from my sea lion trip earlier this year. It only works on Macs, so if you’ve got a Mac and would like a sea lion screen saver, right click here to download (4.8 MB file). Just double-click the file to open and install.

One of the things that really gets to me is con artists who try to dupe innocent people by concocting some obscenely stupid story to fool people into spending money on silly (or worse, sometimes harmful) products or services. For some reason, the marine world seems to attract more than its fair share of these shysters.

One of the perpetual scams has been the notion that since sharks don’t get cancer, then ingesting shark cartilage will ward off cancer and/ or save you if you already have cancer. “Health food” stores around the world peddle the stuff, with helpful, but ignorant, sales people touting the magical healing properties of shark cartilage supplements. (See article I wrote earlier about this.)

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I communicate with my dog all the time. We make eye contact, use hand (and paw) signals, and even talk to each other.

I know it sounds silly, and many people believe that non-human animals can’t communicate the way we do, but surely anyone who’s ever had a pet dog understands what I mean?

Like most effective communication, our rapport has built-up over many years, and the vocabulary of words, gestures and facial expressions we use has become increasingly complex. We started with simple people-dog stuff like “No!” and “Sit”, and gradually progressed to the ability to communicate in sentences, and even anticipate one another’s actions.

We use some English, some Japanese, some of both together. For example, here’s a partial list of words and short commands (English and Japanese as applicable) Pasta understands:

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With all the travelling and general chaos of life, it took me a while to put together another animated slideshow/ podcast from my recent trip to the Lembeh Strait.

This one is about an octopus I came across early one morning, when a few dive guides and I went exploring relatively undived areas. Four of us spent 50 minutes seeing absolutely nothing. In fact, two of the guides were already sitting back on the boat by the time I got back around the 50-minute mark.

iPod version (20 MB)

Then, the guide I was with, Lembeh Strait veteran Wilson, spotted an octopus in a bottle. Anyone who’s been to Lembeh knows that octopuses in bottles are really common, so normally, I probably would’ve passed this one by. But after 50 minutes of zippo, I stopped for a look. And a good thing I did.

I then spent the next 50 minutes being entertained by this rather pugnacious cephalopod, who actually reached out, grabbed my dome port and tried to push me away.

I’m not an easily offended person, but this was just downright rude! Anyway, as it turned out, the octopus had a perfectly logical and rational reason for being unsociable.

Click on the video above to find out why the octopus was being so grumpy (it might take some time for your browser to download and play the file), or subscribe to my podcast via iTunes here to download the file for your iPod and automatically get updated whenever I put one of these together. Enjoy!

If you’ve been following my blog for the past month or two, you can see that I’ve stretched the limits of my coding capabilities (actually, I have none) and managed to put together a few podcasts and have them broadcast via Apple iTunes, as well as post them to my blog.

What exactly is a podcast? Not being a tech person, I’m not sure if there’s an official definition. But the way I look at it, podcasts are a way for anyone with access to the net to broadcast words, images, voice, video and any combination thereof to the rest of the world.

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This is an interview I did with a magazine called Nautica in Croatia. How cool is that?!

I don’t know how many people reading this will understand Croatian, but I had to post this anyway. Upon seeing this, one smart a** I know said, “I understand as much as I normally do of your articles.” Hah, hah. Very amusing.

Right click here to download the PDF file (232 kB). There were actually more pages just with photos, but this is the cool part with my answers in Croatian.

And by the way, there is apparently good diving in Croatia. Maybe that’s where I have to visit next…

One of the really cool things about doing what I do is having the opportunity to meet kindred spirits all over the world. By “kindred spirits”, I mean people who’ve lived unusual lives and been through extraordinary experiences, and who voluntarily do crazy things on a regular basis.

I met Mark Thorpe a few years ago in Palau, and immediately recognised him as a kindred spirit (I told him about an experience I had inside the mouth of a whale, which he thought was really cool.).

Mark is on his way for an extended trip to Lembeh and Bali, and stopped off in Singapore for a day or so. And of course we did what self-respecting crazy people always do…share a beer or two or three…and solve the world’s problems. The world is a much better place tonight for it.

Perspective is an editorial column I write regularly for FiNS Magazine. This installment is entitled “Black and White”.

Right click here to download the PDF file (104 kB).

The PDF file is also available as a download from my iTunes podcast.

Not everything I come across underwater is pleasant. On an evening dive at Batu Angus in Lembeh, my dive guide and I ran across what I can only describe as a full-blown invasion of crown-of-thorns starfish (Acanthaster planci).

As the sun set and we started to surface, I spotted first one, then two, then five, then dozens, then hundreds and hundreds of these toxic devourers of coral. I’ve certainly heard about outbreaks like this, but it’s the first time I’ve seen so many with my own eyes.

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It’s been about a month since I returned from my latest trip to the Lembeh Strait. Since then, I’ve had to travel for non-diving stuff, and I haven’t had much time to go through photos or collect my thoughts. This weekend, I made a concerted effort to catch up, so here’s a belated trip report:

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There’s a lot of stupid things in the news these days, but this story must rank in the top 1% of utterly moronic things people do.

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I woke up this morning a bit groggy, still recovering from the cumulative exhaustion of being on the road for the past two months or so without a break. Facing an unreasonable mountain of work, I did the only reasonable thing possible: procrastinate.

So I took a quick look at my website data, and stumbled upon something really cool. While I was running around the region taking photos, writing articles and making a fool of myself under the guise of work, people from all around the world visited this blog. Here’s a list of the places from which this blog received visits recently:

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