Deeper Blue

Longtime Curaçao operator The Dive Bus has announced a temporary relocation from its home in Marie Pampoen as construction begins on a new apartment complex at the site. While the original facility will be torn down during development, the dive shop has secured a permanent space within the new complex, ensuring its eventual return to Marie Pampoen upon construction’s completion.

Aggressor Adventures has announced a limited-time US$700/~€607 savings on select departures aboard the Belize Aggressor V, featuring the newly launched Belize South itinerary. The offer follows the liveaboard vessel’s successful maiden voyage, which took place July 25-August 1, 2026. The Belize Aggressor V introduces guests to one of the most recently expanded regions in the Aggressor fleet, offering access to the waters of Placencia and Glover’s Reef.

The finalists for the 2026 Ocean Photographer of the Year contest have been announced, bringing together a remarkable body of work that honors the ocean in all its complexity — its wonder, its fragility and the urgent need to protect it.

Explorer Ventures Fleet announced this week it is expanding its global liveaboard portfolio with two new vessels, further strengthening its offerings in the Maldives and Indonesia. Emperor Explorer II is now sailing in the Maldives. Launched in partnership with Emperor Divers, the newly built vessel offers a refreshed onboard experience designed specifically for liveaboard diving.

Insta360 today unveiled the X6, its new flagship 8K 360 camera, marking the company’s 10-year milestone in 360 cameras. The new X6 sees more light than any X camera before it, according to the company. Custom dual Sony 1/1.1″ square sensors deliver full 1-inch equivalent 360 imaging, 33% more sensor area than the X5 and around four times the light intake per frame. This helps in low light, harsh backlight and high contrast conditions.

Recreational divers make millions of dives every year and collectively see more of the ocean than any research fleet. Almost none of what they observe is ever used. DIVR, a free dive-logging app, was built to change that: every logged dive becomes a structured data point for marine research. Divers use DIVR to log a dive in under 30 seconds, share photos with their buddies and record the species they encounter.

Unique Group is the company that successfully delivered the engineering, survey and infrastructure systems supporting Vanguard, the first open-ocean subsea human habitat deployed in United States waters in more than 40 years.

We live in an era of speed. But speed brings shortcuts — the temptation to seek the first answer, to stay in shallow waters instead of diving for something truly new. What are we sacrificing for faster outcomes? Depth in freediving and other walks of life demand the same things: focus, discipline, staying calm under mounting pressure. What happens when we slow down and let these ideas sink deeper?

A crowdfunding campaign for the AREX ONE augmented reality dive computer mask is set to begin soon. Instead of a wrist computer, the AREX shows critical information such as depth, time, gas and decompression status in the diver’s natural line of sight, so you won’t need to repeatedly look down at your wrist. When the dive is stable, AREX can reduce the interface to keep your view clear.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities have developed a first-of-its-kind artificial intelligence model that enables underwater companion robots to monitor a diver’s respiration rate in real time by analyzing exhaled bubble plumes. Published in The International Journal of Robotics Research, the project marks the first time computer vision has been deployed to track Human Respiration Rate (HRR) underwater.