Ultimate Guide - Sharks : One of the best shark documentaries produced. In fact, the entire "Ultimate Guide" series is excellent, and this is the one that started them out. It's another example of The Discovery Channel doing what it does best. There is rare footage throughout - the goblin shark, one of the rarest sharks, and the first footage of a live Greenland shark swimming around the camera. This video goes to great lengths to explain the diversity, anatomy and ecology of the sharks. It does an excellent job of dispelling many common misconceptions about sharks and gives us the straight info.

  Jaws - 25th Anniversary Collector's Edition: Steven Spielberg can make good movies! The story of a Long Island town whose summer tourist business is suddenly threatened by great-white-shark attacks goes straight for the jugular with beautifully crafted, crowd-pleasing sequences of action and suspense supported by a trio of terrific performances by Roy Scheider (as the local sheriff), Richard Dreyfuss (as a shark specialist), and particularly Robert Shaw (as the old fisherman who offers to hunt the shark down). The sequences on Shaw's boat are what entertaining moviemaking is all about.

  National Geographic's Ocean Drifters: Circle the globe on an underwater voyage powered by earth's great ocean currents - the incredible superhighways of marine life. Off the coast of Florida, a newborn turtle somehow makes it from his nest in the sand to this most powerful current, and viewers are introduced to his friends and foes at a party where it's "hard to distinguish guests from dinner." We meet up with a deep-sea octopus, and a big red comb jelly. At this depth, 460 species exist in a space the size of the average living room. You'll plunge into an alien world where millions of sea creatures, from tiny seahorses to enormous sharks, spend their entire lives adrift, circling the planet on current that can carry them 100 miles a day.

  Secrets of the Unknown: The Lusitania: Examine the mystery surrounding one of the deadliest marine disasters of the 20th century--the 1915 sinking of the luxury liner Lusitania. Secrets of the Unknown is an incredible showcase of the bizarre, the terrifying, and the real. With a little help from otherworldly host Edward Mulhare, travel into the eye of another mystical dimension, an arena of strange and unnatural phenomena that have previously defied explanation.

  20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: The science fiction swashbuckler movie of 1954 became one of Hollywood's great classics. The Jules Verne story of adventure under the sea was Walt Disney's magnificent debut into live-action films. A professor (Paul Lukas) seeks the truth about a legendary sea monster in the years just after the Civil War. When his ship is sunk, he, his aide (Peter Lorre), and a harpoon master (Kirk Douglas) survive to discover that the monster is actually a metal submarine run by Captain Nemo (James Mason). Along with the rollicking adventure, it's fun to see the future technology that Verne dreamed up in his novel, including diving equipment and sea farming. The Nautilus is an impressive full-scale gothic submarine complete with red carpet and pipe organ. 20,000 Leagues won Oscars for art direction and special effects.

    This is a 1997 made-for-TV version of the classic, Victorian, Jules Verne adventure. Ben Cross is a stone-cold Nemo, skulking about his steel-plated creation, the Nautilus, with a seemingly nameless and faceless crew. Into his nomadic existence comes a group of castaways, led by the sympathetic Richard Crenna as marine biologist Pierre Arronax.

    Books always make good gifts. Here are a selection of scuba diving books, and diving magazines, too — an annual subscription would make an excellent gift.