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These amazing pictures show an epic, two-hour battle between spear fisherman Craig Clasen and a 12-foot tiger shark in the Gulf of Mexico. The life-and-death struggle took place off New Orleans when Clasen, filmmaker Ryan McInnis and two friends were hunting tuna. Suddenly McInnis found himself cut off and the shark began circling. "I positioned myself between Ryan and the shark and I tried to watch it for a second, hoping it would pass," said Clasen, 32, who was wearing a snorkel. "The shark made a roll and looked like it was going to charge us.

An American scuba diver has been charged with murdering his wife by drowning her during their honeymoon at the Great Barrier Reef. The move allows authorities to begin the process of extraditing David Gabriel Watson, of Birmingham, Alabama, to face the charges in Australia. Watson's wife, Christina Watson, drowned on October 22, 2003, while the couple was diving at a shipwreck off Queensland's coast, eleven days after their wedding. The body of Tina Watson (circled) lies on the sea bed after her husband had swum to the surface The alleged murder only came to light after a photograph showing Mrs...

Laura Wilkinson has, among other things, an Olympic gold medal, a big ball of tape and a plan. The gold medal, won eight years ago in Sydney, represents the competitive apex of her 15 years in diving, which came to a close Thursday night (Thursday morning CDT) with her ninth-place finish in the women’s 10-meter platform final. The tape ball represents the physical stresses of hurling her body off a three-story tower day after day, month after month, embodied by the miles of athletic tape Wilkinson, 30, has required over the last year to wrap her wrist and, during Thursday’s...

Diver catches giant crab   A giant crab with a shell 12in wide has been caught by an Aylesbury diver off the UK coast. The crustacean, weighing 17lb and with a claw span of 9in, was found by diver Paul Worsley during a recent diving trip in Lyme Regis, Dorset. Douglas Lanfear, who runs the dive boat Blue Turtle, said he was amazed at the size of the crab. He said: "It was truly a monster. It was the biggest crab I have ever seen in all my years and there were fishermen who have been working here for...

An American tourist was charged with murder yesterday for allegedly drowning his bride of 11 days on a scuba diving trip on the Great Barrier Reef during their honeymoon. Christina Mae Watson, 26, died while diving on a shipwreck near the northeastern Australian city of Townsville while her husband looked on. Daniel Watson, 31, of Birmingham, Alabama, had claimed during police interviews that his wife had panicked a few minutes into the dive. He said that as she thrashed around in the water, she grabbed hold of his mask and pushed it off his face. He later described seeing her,...

PROVIDENCE, R.I., Sept. 4, 2007 – A light breeze rippled over the dark water of Providence Harbor as two divers sank below the water’s surface, leaving behind a long trail of air hoses and the sound of their breathing through the radio. Navy diver Petty Officer 2nd Class William F. Stetson III, right, gives the “OK” sign to let a fellow sailor know he is receiving proper oxigen flow. The U.S. Army Vessel New Orleans is serving as a diving platform for Navy and Army divers working on raising a Russian submarine in Providence Harbor on the Rhode Island...

Despite challenges such as darkness, limited visibility and cold temperatures, the waters in and around Sweden offer unique opportunities for underwater exploration. Worlds away from the warm, clear waters of the tropics, Swedish diving is in a class of its own.

Lieutenant George Wookey, who has died aged 84, established a world record when, half a century ago, he went deeper than any helmeted diver in a flexible suit; later he brought up whisky from the ship sunk off the island of Benbecula which was the subject of the novel and the film Whisky Galore.On October 12 1956 Wookey was lowered 600 ft from a diving tender into a Norwegian fjord as part of a trial to discover the depth at which a diver could assist stranded submarine crews. While he went down with a heavy steel bench, representing the hull...

KEY LARGO -- Three divers died on Friday while diving on the Spiegel Grove ship wreck, the Monroe County Sheriff's office said. In an e-mailed statement, Becky Herrin, spokeswoman for MSO, said the three men were part of a four-man team that was diving on the popular wreck from the commercial dive boat Scuba-do. All were reportedly advanced certified divers and planned a penetration dive into the sunken wreck. That's when something apparently went wrong. ``These wrecks can be very confusing inside,'' Herrin said. ``There's a lot of places to go wrong. None of the four divers were immediately identified...

One of two Coast Guard divers who mysteriously died during a training dive in the Arctic last summer sank uncontrollably as far as 190 feet below the icy surface and suffocated, according to an autopsy summary obtained by The Associated Press on Tuesday. The divers had slipped into a patch of open water near the ship's bow and were planning to dive to a maximum depth of 20 feet, said William Hill Jr., whose daughter Lt. Jessica Hill, along with Boatswain's Mate Steven Duque, died Aug. 17, 500 miles north of Alaska. A support team supposedly held ropes attached to...

SEATTLE - Five hundred miles north of Alaska, a group of shipmates from the Coast Guard cutter Healy tossed a football on the blue-and-white, diamond-hard Arctic ice. Others snapped panoramic photos and took walks during the two-hour break, stretching their legs after a month aboard the 420-foot icebreaker. Lt. Jessica Hill and Boatswain's Mate Steven Duque seized the chance for a training dive and slipped into a patch of open water near the Healy's bow. A team held ropes attached to the divers, lest they become disoriented under the ice. Several research scientists watched from the deck. But no one...

TWO American tourists are lucky to be alive after they went missing from a diving boat in northern Queensland, in what could have become a tragic repeat of the disappearance of another US couple in 1998. The man, 40, and woman, 38, who are believed to be married, were seen in the waters near Lizard Island by a Cairns rescue helicopter hours after they were reported missing from the Nimrod Explorer on Friday. Emergency services were contacted at 6.55pm after the pair failed to resurface from their fourth dive of the day. A Dive Queensland spokeswoman said the couple were...

TWO COAST GUARD MEMBERS PERISH IN DIVE OPERATION COAST GUARD ISLAND, ALAMEDA, Calif. - Two Coast Guard divers assigned to the Seattle-based Coast Guard Cutter Healy died Thursday afternoon during a routine dive operation in the Arctic Ocean approximately 500 miles north of Barrow, Alaska. Deceased are Lt. Jessica Hill, 30, of St. Augustine, Fla., and Petty Officer 2nd Class Steven Duque, 26, of Miami. The victim's next of kin have been notified and additional support services are being provided to each family, as well as Healy crewmembers. "I felt a deep sense of loss when I received the initial...

Norway's Directorate for Cultural Heritage has begun a unique program of setting up signs to highlight historical landmarks - underwater. About 30 shipwrecks in southern Norway will get the familiar preservation sign from the directorate, to help divers appreciate - and respect - some of the country's less obvious attractions. On Thursday the first sign, bearing the familiar pretzel-shaped landmark logo, will go up near a shipwreck in Vest-Agder County in southern Norway. The signs are built of acid-resistant steel and titanium to resist saltwater and other sea problems. Signs will be placed at depths of 10-30 meters (33-98 feet),...

KEY LARGO, Fla. - In the wake of Hurricane Dennis, a miscue with the largest intentionally sunk ship in the world was found Monday to have been put right. The former USS Spiegel Grove, now serving as artificial reef on the bottom in 130 feet of water off Key Largo, flipped upright as the core of the storm passed well over 200 miles to the west. It's a position project organizers wanted since the retired 510-foot Landing Ship Dock prematurely sank and rolled over May 17, 2002, leaving its upside-down bow protruding from the water. Three weeks later, a salvage...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - As he combed the murky depths of the Scioto River, Ed Schillig wondered how he would find the 21-year-old man's body. "Am I going to bump into him? Is he going to press against my mask?" said the six-year veteran of Franklin County's dive-rescue team, recalling the assignment on June 4. Eventually, Schillig's hand brushed the torso of David Roller, who had fallen out of a boat about three hours earlier. "It's a personal experience, because there's no one else there," Schillig said. Dive teams are expecially busy in the summer, when people flock to waterways throughout...

AN ARTIFICIAL gill that mimics the way fish breathe could allow divers to dispense with bulky oxygen tanks, it was claimed yesterday. The device, which has been developed by an Israeli engineer, could also be used to supply air to submarines and underwater hotels. Fish gills filter water to remove small quantities of dissolved air. The device, which was designed by Alan Bodner, consists of a lightweight cylinder containing a centrifuge. Water passing through the device is rapidly spun and thrown to the outside of the cylinder, leaving a vacuum in the middle. The drop in pressure releases dissolved air,...

SHIMODA, Shizuoka -- A man who went missing while diving for shellfish off the coast of Atami, Shizuoka Prefecture, was rescued a day later after drifting for nearly 40 kilometers in strong winds, coast guard officials said. The diver, Haruhiko Hashimoto, 40, was exhausted when a passenger boat spotted him off the coast of Chiba Prefecture at about noon on Tuesday and rescued him, but he was conscious and appears to have avoided injury. "At about 1 p.m. on Monday a strong southwest wind began blowing and I was swept away, but I thought I would be rescued if I...

Israeli inventor Alon Bodner has found a way to use the small amounts of air already in the water to provide oxygen to divers and even to submarines. Bodner's device has the potential to overcome limitations imposed on divers by oxygen tanks. The tanks limit not only the amount of time a diver can remain under water, but also affect the diver's buoyancy and they empty out over the course of a dive. Divers carefully monitor their buoyancy - the tendency to either float up toward the surface or to sink - and actually wear weight belts to be able...

- Iddo Genuth for IsraCast - An Israeli Inventor has developed a breathing apparatus that will allow breathing underwater without the assistance of oxygen tanks. This new invention will use the relatively small amounts of air that already exist in water to supply oxygen to both scuba divers and submarines. The invention has already captured the interest of most major diving manufacturers as well as the Israeli Navy. The idea of breathing underwater without cumbersome oxygen tanks has been the dream of science fiction writers for many years. In George Lucas’ movie "The Phantom Menace", Obi-Wan whips out a little...