To celebrate World Oceans Day, Scuba Diver will explore the world’s most precious underwater destinations with a trip around the planet’s protected marine sites. Packed with the most beautiful photography and comprehensive info on what makes these locations so special, this record of our oceans at their best will be a must-keep edition.

This year, the quadrennial Asian Games – a massive sports event that often gets mixed up with some of its regional variants – will be hosted here in Southeast Asia. We appraise several local sports that set the Asiad’s lineup apart from its Olympic counterpart, and drop in on three unique sportspeople gearing up for August. But the 18th Games’ most interesting aspect could just be its return to Indonesia, a place where, over a half-century ago, Jakarta’s controversial hosting decisions shocked the 1960s’ worlds of sports and politics. Indonesian politics also kicks off another fascinating tale: how five Southeast Asian men managed to create the first Asian miracle of the 20th century: the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Helped by a few rounds of golf and drinks, these powerful diplomats succeeded in getting their respective countries – many with histories of bitter grudges and border invasions – to team up into a bloc that today still merits international admiration. Their surviving family and friends share memories of these master negotiators.

With the modern world developing at the dizzying pace it is, do you know what’s going on around you and how it all works? In this issue, we look at the latest in science and technology across the region, from the obvious – China’s transformation from IT copycat to technology leader – to the unexpected, like why Cambodia’s farmers are now selling bat faeces instead of rice. Go on a sparkling journey across the night sky in our exclusive story on astrotourism, an upcoming trend that’s winning the hearts of Asians young and old across the region. Read about a mysterious bridge between India and Sri Lanka that has geologists befuddled, and a hyper fast underwater levitating train – straight out of a sci-fi movie ­– that you might soon be able to buy tickets for. Are you ready to get up to speed?

In order to witness the beauty of Nature’s tiniest marine creatures in their hidden habitats, we’ve combed through the different layers that are found in the muck in this issue of Asian Diver. Whether it’s the plastic trash that has made its way into the oceans from polluted rivers that now provides shelter for critters like octopuses, the artificial tyre reefs humans have created to attract marine wildlife that may be doing more harm than good, or the diminutive marine organisms like the algae shrimp and the “Shaun the Sheep” nudibranch that live on the algae found on the seabed – we’ve pored over the minutiae of the muck and its inhabitants to understand what makes this type of diving so thrilling.

This issue, we take a peek on the softer side of Asia with some of the region’s traditional cultural practices. Carried on through generations of ancestors – parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents – these ways to dance, heal, and hunt that are even today done using the same methods as when they were invented hundreds of years ago! Others involve experimental, dangerous or plain crazy ideas that didn’t make it to modern times – for obvious reasons. How do nomads live? How was cheese made? How do you catch an eagle? We explore all these questions… and more!