Swimmer's Daily

  • A wildlife photographer has made a return trip to the Alaskan city of Kaktovik to capture the high number of polar bears being drawn to the area.

    David Swindler, 35, from Utah, first visited came to the city in October last year to photographer the bears going about their everyday lives on the Barrier Island.

    However, this year brought more challenges including two polar curious polar bears swimming after his boat.

    Mr Swindler shot the footage using a GoPro camera which captured the bears speeding up to the boat, going underwater and even touching the camera with their noses.

    See The Telegraph

    http://youtu.be/KvogdZWr6QE

  • Bolivian authorities say eight students have drowned during a swimming break on an end-of-term school trip.

    Local police chief Alberto Antezana says the 29 students aged 17 to 19 set out from the eastern city of Santa Cruz on a trip around part of the country. They asked the driver to stop at the Ichoa River so they could go swimming, but misjudged the force of the current.

    Rescuers recovered the last of the eight bodies on Wednesday.

    Read ABC News

    http://youtu.be/K6hthctlDqE

  • Swimmer Naoya Tomita, who was summarily indicted for stealing a camera at last month’s Asian Games in Incheon, South Korea, plans to deny committing the theft, according to an informed source.

    Tomita, 25, intends to give an explanation of what happened at a news conference on Nov. 6 in Nagoya.

    According to the indictment, he took a camera that had been left behind by a South Korean reporter at Munhak Park Tae Hwan Aquatics Center on Sept. 25. Tomita had gone there to cheer on teammates during practice.

    Tomita later admitted to the charge after being questioned by police and reached a settlement with the victim.

    Before departing for Japan from Incheon International Airport, Tomita bowed to reporters and said: “I apologize for causing so much trouble. I did not do this.”

    According to the source, Tomita now claims that someone else placed the camera inside his carrying bag.

    Read Japan Times

  • Swimming’s world governing body has defended a decision to award it highest honour to Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying it had nothing to do with politics.

    Fina has been criticised over the timing of the decision with relations between Russia and the NATO alliance under strain, but the body’s executive director Cornel Marculescu told Reuters that the award was related only to sport.

    “Our constitution is very clear,” Marculescu said. “(there is) no discrimination for the political region or anything like that.

    “Our award was only related to the sport, not with the rest.”

    Read SuperSport

    Photo by theglobalpanorama

  • Chad le Clos, one of the few men to have beaten Michael Phelps at the Olympics, has thrown down the challenge to his old rival, urging him to get back into training so they can have a rematch at Rio in 2016. […]

    “I really, really hope that he and his team decide to swim in Rio, I really believe it will be great,” Le Clos told Reuters on Friday.

    “It’s added motivation for me… with Michael back, it’s really sparked my fire, so to speak.” […]

    “I believe by Rio, I should be in peak condition,” said Le Clos, currently in Singapore for the final round of swimming’s annual World Cup series.

    “I don’t think he will be worse in Rio, I think he’ll be back where he wants to be.

    “He’s a champion in all respects but I believe I can beat him again.”

    Read Reuters

  • The selfie trend has been embraced by everyone from astronauts and fighter pilots to world leaders and the Pope.

    But Dutch conservation photographer Peter Verhoog decided to go one step further – by posing for a personal shot with a passing great white shark.

    The 59-year-old, a director of the Dutch Shark Society, leaned out of the divers’ cage to capture these spectacular frames off the coast of Guadeloupe, Mexico. […]

    Peter, who shot the startling selfies in September, said: “I began making selfies with all kinds of sharks – mostly for fun.

    “Only later I realized that they could show people what sharks are like – when behaving normally, there is no danger.

    “People are not a prey for great white sharks – they feed on fish and marine mammals like seals.

    “Furthermore, they are careful predators, and sometimes examine people by bumping into them, or taking a bite – the famous ‘mistaken identity’.

    “Then they let go – we are just not as fat and nourishing as a seal is. But a bite can be fatal.

    “We are not on the menu, but we can be in the way.”

    See The Telegraph

    http://youtu.be/uZkUiOnFipQ

  • YouTube star Jerome Jarre (previously) staged a silly prank in which he changed into a Speedo and inflatable turtle pool toy on a flight from Mexico to Miami. In a video that also shows the prank itself, Jarre says he was escorted from the plane by police and interrogated by the FBI who told him, “This is the silliest thing I’ve had to work on in my entire career.”

    See Laughing Squid

    http://youtu.be/uHa9S9GVkdA

  • Pakistan’s Anum Bandey competed in the London 2012 Olympic Games swimming in the Women’s 400m Individual Medley. Making her first Olympic appearance, aged just 15, she broke the Pakistan national record.

  • If you’ve ever used an underwater housing, you know what it feels like to dunk your several thousand dollar DSLR underwater for the very first time. You know it’s safe, you double checked everything, you probably already tested the seals, but the moment of truth still frays your nerves.

    Imagine, then, how filmmaker Chris Bryan felt when he put his $50K Phantom Flex, $45K Phantom Miro M-320S, and $140K Phantom 4K Flex inside his own custom-built underwater housings and took them out into the waves for the first time?

    See PetaPixel