Reviewers sometimes get jaded. Too many bad movies, books, music CDs ,whatever - in my case, it's multimedia CD-ROM's - and you start wondering if any of this stuff is worthwhile. Then some unexpected little gem comes across your desk and single-handedly restores your faith in the medium. That's what happened to me recently when Complete Guide To The Undersea (about $50) arrived in the mail. I'm not even a diver. But I couldn't help admiring this title just because it's beautifully crafted and offers a generous helping of absolutely top notch - and original - images and digitized videos. I doubt I'll ever see the breathtaking scenery of Bora Bora.... But I have some notion now of what these places look like. Undersea World is from tiny Sumeria Inc. (www.sumeria.com), a quirky San Francisco publisher of travel and science CDs and videos. The firm's flagship product is the six-part OceanLife series of multimedia CD-ROMs. Don't expect to find Undersea World on the shelf at your neighborhood electronic mass merchant. You may have to search around for it a bit. But it will be worth the trouble. Sumeria titles don't try to seduce you with flashy user interfaces or gimmicky interactive activities - although they are always very easy to use and pleasant to look at. Instead, they concentrate on providing solid content, and lots of it. The core of this one is a guide in pictures and video to dive sites like and Bora Bora. Others include Fiji, Bali and Galapagos - not your every-day holiday destinations. You start at an attractive map of the world showing the sites. Click on a site and you go to the destination. For each, there is an introductory movie. These are not the stingey, amateurish 20-second clips you get on too many CD-ROM's. And many of the images here, especially in the underwater footage, are magnificient. For each destination there are also movies about the diving - summarizing both the good points and the bad - and the local marine life, as well as text and pictures on local accommodation, things to do "topside" and how-to-get-there information. It's not for everybody. But if you're a diver - or just someone whodreams of far away places - you should have this disc -- Gerry Blackwell, Toronto Star, March 1999
Product Description
The Complete Guide to the Undersea World is a travel guide to the best scuba diving and snorkeling in the world. Sumeria's goal in publishing this volume is to serve travel buffs and those readers of its OceanLife Series who are more interested in diving and snorkeling as recreational sports and less interested in the biology and ecology focus of the OceanLife series of CD ROMs and VHS videos. The Guide covers what the author has identified as the best diving and snorkeling sites in the world based upon three criterion. First, the diving and snorkeling must be among the best in the world. Second, each destination must be readily accessible through commercial airline flights. And, third each destination must have a wealth of land-based activities, not just marine recreation, available. Given these criteria the volume covers diving in Hawaii, Fiji, The Great Barrier Reef, Tahiti, Truk, Palau, Indonesia, Cabo San Lucas/The Revilla Gigedos Islands, The Galapagos Islands, and St. Lucia. The product includes three films, from three to five minutes in length apiece, for each destination. These films provide an overview of each destination, the diving, and marine life. Each destination has maps with photographs of the best dive sites, land activities, and hotels. There are also ancillary sections of the product that serve to introduce the physical principles of Diving, marine ecology and ecological associations, dangerous marine life, and diving gear.
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