Congratulations to Liz Rogers for winning first and second place in the 5th Underwater Festival™ 2011 Photography Competition - Freshwater Section - with photos of the Cathedral in Piccaninnie Ponds and Ewens Ponds.

http://underwaterfestival.org/photos/winners/

http://photographyunderpressure.com/publications/

The podcast interview with Craig Challen has been updated to include an interview by Radio New Zealand on the record breaking 194m dive he conducted in the Pearse Resurgence in New Zealand in 2011.

Listen to the new podcast here.

In one of the most significant Australian cave diving discoveries to be made in recent times, Paul Hosie and team have discovered an amazing new cave diving system on the Roe Plains which forms part of the Nullarbor in WA.

A small pool of water in a newly discovered karst feature, led to a small low silty passage which was pushed for 90m and then opened up into a large going passage running at least 800m away from the entrance pool with numerous side passages.

The team explored approximately 1500m of underwater passage in just three days of diving. Plans are underway for a return trip to continue exploration and mapping of this new system.

The team consisted of Paul, Alan Polini, Brian Kakuk (visiting from the Bahamas), Ken Smith, Richard Harris and Grant Pearce.

More Information | Cave Map

Update 1st November from Paul Hosie: We just got back from a return trip and have now surveyed 2100m of passage, several leads continuing. I will have a map and updated story on trimixdivers soon.

There have been some great new cave diving photo galleries added to the vision section of the site recently:

• Burnabbie Cave
• Olwolgin Cave
• Piccaninnie Ponds
• Tank Cave
• The Shaft
• Tommy Grahams Cave
• Warbla Cave

Many thanks to Liz Rogers for these. Further examples of Liz's work can be seen at her web site Photography Under Pressure.

Rebreathers have become an arrow in the quiver of leading Australian cave divers to push the boundaries of Australian cave systems. In this article some of Australia's leading cave and rebreather divers compare and contrast some of the rebreather technology currently available for cave diving.

This review of the APD, Halcyon, KISS, Megladon and Mk15.5 rebreathers has now been updated with the addition of four more models: Optima, Poseidon, rEvo, Sentinel.

Why participate in a Side Mount Course?

I commenced technical diving in twin back mounts with a manifold. Despite numerous attempts and assistance from more experienced divers, I was just never really happy with the configuration. I like to have control and the only time I felt in control was swimming face down. If I turned on my side or attempted a roll over suddenly the full weight of the twins was working against me.

At the end of the training dives our instructor, Linda Claridge, provided a short opportunity to try side mounting and I was converted immediately. It just made complete sense and for the first time in two years I was immediately comfortable wearing two cylinders in the water. The difference between twin back mounts and side mounts really is that dramatic.