All Hail Equipment!


Planet Scuba India is now completely swamped with equipment. Make a trip down to our stores and pick out equipment from Aqualung, Mares & Intova. We have underwater cameras, shorties, BCDs, fins and much more. International brand and quality stuff at very competitive prices. Your one stop shop for all diving needs. Contact us to enquire about our full range of equipment for sale.

Do your part


24th Feb 2009 is the next PADI- Open Water Diver Course. Sign up with us now, so that your summer holidays will be a fun filled scuba diving one. But to more serious news.

One Fifth of World’s Corals Gone: Climate Change Battle to Rescue Remaining

The Status of Coral Reefs of the World: 2008, released in Washington, DC, December 2008, declares a 19 percent loss of coral reefs worldwide. 

Launched by the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (GCRMN), the report identifies which coral reefs are recovering and which are declining worldwide. The report states if current trends in carbon dioxide emissions continue, many remaining reefs may be lost over the next 20 to 40 years with alarming consequences. 

Project AWARE Foundation, partner behind the project and supporter of the launch event, is encouraged by the report that 45 percent of the world’s reefs are currently healthy. But the Foundation also recognizes a focus on climate change, now considered the leading threat to coral reefs today. Threats including increasing ocean temperatures and ocean acidification are intensified by other threats including overfishing, pollution and invasive species. 

“If nothing changes, we are looking at a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide in less than 50 years,” says Carl Gustaf Lundin, Head of the IUCN Global Marine Programme, one of the organizations behind the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network. “As this carbon is absorbed, the oceans will become more acidic, which is seriously damaging a wide range of marine life from corals to plankton communities and from lobsters to seagrasses.” 

Hope is also found in the ability of some corals to recover after major bleaching events, caused by warming waters, adapting to climate change threats. However, the report also shows the recent downward trends have not been reversed in the last four years. And corals have a higher chance of survival against climate change if other human threats are minimized. 

“The report details the strong scientific consensus that climate change must be limited to the absolute minimum. If nothing is done to substantially cut emissions, we could effectively lose coral reefs as we know them, with major coral extinctions, says Clive Wilkinson, Coordinator of the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network. 

Ten years after the world’s biggest coral bleaching event, we know that reefs can recover given the chance. Unfortunately, impacts on the scale of 1998 will reoccur in the near future, and there’s no time to lose if we want to give reefs and people a chance to suffer as little as possible,” says Dr David Obura, Chair of the IUCN Climate Change and Coral Reefs working group and Director of the Coastal Oceans Research and Development in the Indian Ocean Programme (CORDIO) in East Africa.  

The GCRMN is a network of people, governments, institutes and NGOs in more than 80 countries, with many partners, including: CORDIO, Reef Check, CARICOMP, Project AWARE Foundation and AGRRA. All reports are available through www.ReefBase.org. To read more of such articles visit ProjectAware

Drink & Dive


Drink and Dive!

Drink and Dive!

Dear Divers,
Planet Scuba India would like to invite you  for an informal
gathering to Kick off Bangalore Divers Club  to introduce ourselves and each other and also to discuss about  upcoming  2009 dive trips. The Venue and other  details are mentioned below:

Date: 21st January 2009 (Wednesday)
Time:  7.30 p.m.
Venue :Xtreme Sports Bar
          No.765, 4th Floor, 100 Feet Road,
          HAL II Stage, Indiranagar, Bangalore – 38.
          Phone No. 080-42407777/7788
          (Landmark – near to Sony World and above Raid & Taylor showroom)

We hope to see you there. Let’s have a drink and talk about diving for 2009!

The Need For Contained Water Dive Schools


Planet Scuba India offers contained water dive training in Bangalore

Scuba diving has always been associated with deep blue seas, glorious coral reefs, breathtaking underwater sceneries and psychologically, a momentary escape from the drudgeries of life above water. Not everyone can don the wet suit and take a dive in the open waters for the first time, though. It takes a lot of practice to be able to do this, apart from the required certifications. Perhaps the best way to start training for the big dive is inside a swimming pool, where the environment is controlled and there are no surprises for the novice divers.

PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) strongly recommends dive schools around the world to train students in contained waters before taking them out to open waters. One of the main reasons for this would be to combat the initial hesitation and apprehension of students about to dive for the very first time. Apart from the fact that training in a swimming pool is safer it is also easier for instructors to maintain control over the students’ equipment as well as their own.

There is also the psychological aspect of diving to consider. People’s paranoia about sharks and other undersea creatures, fueled by Hollywood, does play an important role in the speed at which a student learns the nuances of breathing and staying calm underwater.

Controlling the rate of descent and staying stable at the desired depth are two other important aspects that can be addressed in contained water dives. There are no extraneous waves and sudden currents that would affect the balance of the diver, and this makes life that much easier for the instructor in training the student.

“It’s all a matter of what’s best for the students,” says Mr. Madhava Reddy, director of Planet Scuba India, which recently launched the country’s first inland scuba divind school in Bangalore. “Our PADI 5-star swim center complimented by the dive center at the KC Reddy Swim Centre and the expertise of out trainers makes our diving school one of the safest. Contained water dives are the best way and of course, the safest way for someone to learn diving and to build the required confidence to dive in open waters,” he added.