Too busy to blog? Fear and Pestilence next?

For many, not having a daily dose of Underwater Thrills is one of the sure signs of the oncoming Apocalypse and to you we say thanks.

You, loyal fan, are one of 27,000+ who join us each week to celebrate all things sharky. And it is because of you we have blogged from remote places, airplanes, bus depots, and even the back of camper vans in New Zealand in an effort to keep the flow of pithy shark news coming.

It's been a lot of fun knowing that because of technology we could keep doing what we do and keep you informed.

A source of pride really.

Sadly, this is one of those rare times where technology, time, and distance will prohibit us from bringing you the world of sharks, news, science and re-posts from our merry band of Blue Bloggers.

Which is where we will send you over the next many days as we get "too busy to blog". But fear not readers, we will recap all of what was missed in a stunning orgy of blogging "recapping-ness" when we get back from some of our long awaited special projects with sharks.

For your consideration while we're gone:

UnderwaterTimes.com - The Grandaddy of underwater news

Southern Fried Science - Upstart ocean science cornucopia daily, and now 30% better!

OceanicDreams - Wolf's private site for grumps, bumps, and great shark images

Deep Sea News - You like cephalopods? Well, do ya?

Outdoors, action and adventure - One mans voyage from mainstream into cool stream media

The Dorsal Fin - Shark News without the sensationalism - Sez it all right there don't it?

The Best Shark Dive in the World! - Warning, extreme, well thought views and news only

RTSea Blog: keeping an eye on Nature - What the hell? He's out too?

See you all when we get back, and stay informed.

Bull Shark Diving in Cuba - Report

From the always interesting Team Sharkbait Blog, comes a quick report from Cuba and bull shark diving adventures in Santa Lucia.

Blog readers here at UT will recognise the name and this site from several of our posts involving the cardinal rule of bull shark encounters...never wear a Speedo.

In fact Speedos are just not considered official shark diving gear at all -anywhere.

Fortunately since 2004 the Santa Lucia bull shark site has matured and Team Sharkbite had a great time:

"One of the most breath taking moments we had in the holiday was the opportunity to go scuba diving with bull-sharks. As we were down 25 meters below the surface at a location called La Boca, it was a marvel to look at the bull sharks being hand fed by the diving master. Of course it’s even better to have seen them in their natural environment, without the help of a human touch… But I think wikipedia also describes the bull sharks as dangerous to humans, so for me this was more than a good chance to see them really close. When I write really close I’m talking about within arm’s reach, but I think ‘don’t touch’ had the upper hand in my mind."

Complete Post.

Following Expedition Blogs - Mining Gems

If there's an expedition blue blog out there we're probably following it.

The facinating world of our oceans is at your desktop each and every day. You never know what will catch your interest.

This caught our interest.

From the blog Oceans Watch Expedition, this post is called Aid Meets Tradition:

Chris comments: here in Moussau the community is still very traditional. I was interested to see how the fishermen use coral stones to weight their hooks to get down to 30 m where the bigger fish are.

They tie a piece of coconut palm leaf around the stone then put the hook through the leaf. When the stone hits the bottom a sharp tug pulls the hook out of the leaf leaving an un-weighted hook on the bottom. The bait they use is a piece of condom!

The condoms are supplied to the communities free by a family planning NGO. All the fishermen we met used condoms as bait and are very grateful to the NGO for endless free lures!

Greg Davis-Smartest guy in the room

We spent the last couple of days with Greg Davis owner and coder extraordinaire of the rapidly exploding scuba board Dive Buddy. The question on the table was blogging and content. One of our major issues with eco blogging or industry blogging is cross pollination.

Let me explain. For the most part scuba boards are insular, they want to keep their communities insulated from the outside and that is how they monetize their sites. This also fosters, to a degree, "group think".

At the same time salient industry thought, eco news, local dive news, and more happens outside these communities. The only way for this content to get in is if someone brings it in and that is the crux of the matter.

In many cases community members blog outside their scuba communities and do not have the time or effort to move these posts back into the scuba board. We are losing the conversation by blocking this tide of industry thought and discussion. Enter Greg Davis.

We joined his site in 2008. What struck us at first were the divers who had been attracted to his site with it's ease of navigation and ability to communicate with others. This, as it turned out, was simply a great crowd of divers.

"If you build it, they will come" as the saying goes, and Greg built it, the scuba community.

Back to blogging. So this weekend we discussed cross pollination and Greg built a program that allows outside blogs to automatically post to Dive Buddy In a word brilliant. The blogger gets what amounts to double Google points for content, the Dive Buddy members get fresh new content to discuss, disagree with, or add to (the foundation of community) and Dive Buddy once again becomes more user friendly knocking down the oldschool scuba board paradigm of keeping members insular.

The entire program is still in Beta, but the idea is there. If you are a dive shop anywhere in the world, shark diving operation, or industry member who blogs about the industry, dive sites, eco news check out "the house that Greg built". In today's world content (good content) is king. The rise of serious online communities are driven by industry content and those few industry visionaries who capitalize on it-driving the industry conversation forward on a variety of topics.

Welcome to Dive Buddy and complete win for all.