Devonian David Eynon has been living and diving in the Falklands on and off (mostly on)
for 40 years now, so his knowledge of the dive sites must be unparalleled. He has even set up a Marine Exploration and Research Centre on the islands.
David tells me that there are no more than 18 active local sport divers in the Falklands, plus the military's high-turnover diving club, and because of the cost of travel, few divers come to visit. Some 55,000 cruise-vessel passengers step ashore each year, but rarely long enough to dive.
So who will buy what is very much a diving guide-book? "If you don't take the risk, then wouldn't it be dull?" says David, and he's right.
I reckon he has written this book because he had accumulated so much diving data that he had almost no choice but to get it off his chest, and, I would hope, he wrote it because it was fun.
Reading it, you get the sense of a diver who has relished having these islands as a personal underwater playground, and this is the sort of guidebook I like, full of personal references to dives he has done and experiences he has had.
I'll probably never go the Falklands, but it was still interesting to read the sections on the many wrecks and hulks around the islands (nearly 220 are listed here, from old whalers to victims of the 1914 Battle of the Falklands and the more recent conflict with Argentina), and on the marine life that thrives in these cold waters.
There may be few fish but the slower-moving life will be broadly familiar to British divers and seals seem to appear on many of the wreck dives - dolphins and sea-lions are also around, increasingly fin whales too.
David Eynon's photos are mostly good, and Admiralty charts make the geography of the dive-site section clear.
This book is a must if you're visiting (in fact David is probably the guy to contact), but it's an intriguing window on a world even if you're not.
Steve Weinman
South Atlantic Publications
ISBN 9780956391209
Softback, 198pp, £19.95
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