ScubaGlobe Asia Pacific - PADI Dive Center on Second Life website

August 10 2008 UK Bogus bends nets Divers £250,000 A pair of divers swindled £250,000 (US$500,000) from the National Health Service for treating bogus cases of the bends. David Welsh, 49, and diving instructor Michael Brass, 43, are facing prison sentences after being found guilty of conspiracy to defraud the NHS and perverting the course of justice. Welsh ran the Fort Bovisand diving centre, which had its own recompression chamber. They paid strangers they met in pubs up to £200 to pose as divers who needed recompression treatment, they only needed only the real names, addresses, dates of birth and national insurance numbers of the supposed victims to work the fraud. Most had never been underwater and some could barely swim. Welsh billed National Health Trusts from all over the UK £6,500 a time for treating the 37 fake victims. The fraud was discovered when police investigated two cases of divers from Liverpool who were supposedly treated for the bends at the recompression chamber. Full story...

August 25 2008 HawaiiArchaeologists have located British whaler sunk by bad weather in 1837 off Kure Atoll Artefacts from the remains of a wreck believed to be of the British whaling vessel Gledstanes lost for 171 years have been found off Kure Atoll in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. The artefacts include four large anchors, cannons and cannonballs. The Gledstanes is the fourth whaling vessel found in the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, evidence of the area's significance as a 19th-century whaling area. The divers who found the shipwreck were taking part in the 2008 Maritime Heritage Expedition, sponsored by NOAA's National Marine Sanctuaries. Full story...

November 26 2008 AustraliaDivers support breast cancer dayWhen one of the members of Pro Dive Nelson Bay’s Narki Gnome Dive Club was recently diagnosed with breast cancer, the group wanted to support her and raise awareness for the Breast Cancer Network of Australia (BCNA). Diving was what brought them together, so they held an event with their own underwater twist. For the past eight years Mini-Fields of Women have been held in communities across Australia during October as part of Australia's breast cancer month, an initiative from The Breast Cancer Network of Australia (BCNA). The Mini-Fields of Women campaign places hundreds of hot pink lady silhouettes in prominent positions throughout Australia to represent women affected by breast cancer. Full story...

PADI Dive Center on Second Life website

PADI has just launched a brand new Dive Centre in the virtual reality of the famous online world, Second Life (SL).

This move makes them the very first scuba diver training organisation ever to have set up a Dive Centre that’s . . . well, out of this world. Second Life is a 3D world on the internet. It resembles a computer game, but really isn’t in the game category. It’s actually more like a 3D platform, where you can walk around and talk to others through the character you control, you can buy clothes, a car or a yacht. Second Life even has its own currency that is exchangeable into real world money, and there are loads of things to do. You can go to a night club and dance, you can go to a concert transmitted live into Second Life or – as of now – you can go diving!

The brand new PADI Centre in Second Life lets users learn about everything from scuba gear to the world’s greatest dive destinations – and of course: it lets users click right through to PADI’s Open Water Diver eLearning programme, where they can study the theory part of the course and then choose a (real life) PADI Dive centre to do the in-water training with.

The now realized plan to go into Second Life was spearheaded by PADI International’s Vice President for Sales and Marketing, Douglas Nash. The PADI Center in Second Life was then created and designed by Scotland based Second Life design company, Fusion Unity.

Nash who, in collaboration with Fusion Unity’s Managing Director, Mark Duffy, has coordinated PADI’s Second Life project, says: “We have had a wonderful time working with Fusion Unity on this, and the PADI Centre in SL is big news. One especially great thing is that it ties in so nicely with our brand new eLearning programme on padi.com. By appealing to the more than seven million current SL users, this really has the potential to get more new people from all over the world into diving! And there are already loads of beautifully designed coral, marine life and scuba kit in SL, so scuba diving will definitely appeal to the residents. So I say: Forget about surfing the internet – now you can dive it!”

Although PADI is the first scuba diver training organisation to make the move into Second Life, it is a current tendency and lots of other businesses in different fields have done it.

In the news business, the BBC, Sky News and Reuters are amongst the ones to have set up in SL. Dell and other computer manufacturers have set up too. Nash notes that: “The way we see it, Second Life isn’t a here today, gone tomorrow kind of thing. It’s great because - like no other medium - it actually provides an alternative environment for those who use it. To me, Second Life was an obvious next step for PADI. Setting up our PADI Centre in SL is good for our dive centres and instructors - and of course for showing more people how to become divers in the real world themselves.”

If you want to find out more about Second Life and the new PADI Centre – check out www.secondlife.com. You can visit the PADI Centre by creating a free avatar there, then searching for “PADI” inside Second Life and clicking “teleport”.