Asian Diver (English)

Glossary

With all the technical jargon being tossed about, we’ve come up with a little guide so you can navigate our issue with ease

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1. BOMMIES: A plural form of bommie – an Australian word. Short for bombora, an Australian Aboriginal word for a shallow, isolated piece of coral reef located a distance offshore.

2. BCDS: Buoyancy compensato­r devices, or BCDs (also called a buoyancy control device, stabilisor, stab jacket, wing or ABLJ) are important types of diving gear with an inflatable bladder that is worn by divers to maintain neutral buoyancy while exploring beneath the water’s surface and positive buoyancy while on the surface, when needed. The buoyancy is controlled by adjusting the volume of air in the bladder.

3. SIDEMOUNT: Sidemount is a scuba diving equipment configurat­ion which has scuba sets mounted alongside the diver, below the shoulders and along the hips, instead of on the back of the diver. It originated as a configurat­ion for advanced cave diving, as it facilitate­s penetratio­n of tight sections of caves, allowing easy access to cylinder valves and providing easy and reliable gas redundancy while being easily removed when necessary.

4. ELUATES: In analytical and organic chemistry, the process of extracting one material from another by washing with a solvent, such as the washing of loaded ion-exchange resins to remove captured ions, is called elution. The solution of the solvent and dissolved matter resulting from the elution is known as an eluate.

5. MONOMERS: A monomer is a molecule that joins with other monomers to create a larger molecule. Like a set of beads designed to interlock together, each individual bead is an item on its own but can also snap together with another bead to form something entirely different. The term “monomer” is Greek: Mono means “one” while meros means “part”. Put together, they form “one part”.

6. POLYMER: A Greekterm, where poly means “many” while meros means “part”. Polymers can be made out of thousands of monomers. This linking up of monomers is called polymerisa­tion. A polymer is a substance that has a molecular structure built up chiefly or completely from a large number of similar units bonded together, e.g., many synthetic organic materials such as plastics and resins.

7. VULCANISAT­ION: Vulcanisat­ion is a chemical process for converting polymers into more durable materials by introducin­g cross-links. A cross-link is a bond that links one polymer chain to another and may take the form of covalent or ionic bonds. By forming cross-links (bridges) between individual polymer chains, vulcanisat­ion dramatical­ly affects the mechanical properties of a polymer.

8. BENTHIC ORGANISMS: Benthic organisms, or benthos, are organisms that live in and on the bottom of the ocean floor and include worms, clams, crabs, lobsters, sponges, mussels and other tiny organisms. Benthos is divided into two groups, filter feeders and deposit feeders. Filter feeders, such as clams, mussels and quahogs, filter their food by siphoning particles out of the water. Deposit feeders, such as snails and shrimp, ingest or sift through the sediment and consume organic matter within it.

9. BI-VALVES: Bivalvia, in previous centuries referred to as Lamellibra­nchiata and Pelecypoda, is a class of marine and freshwater molluscs that have laterally compressed bodies a enclosed by a shell consisting of two hinged parts. Bivalves as a group have no head and they lack some usual molluscan organs like the radula and the odontophor­e. They include clams, oysters, cockles, mussels, scallops and numerous other families that live in saltwater.

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