Veteran recounts her underwater adventures in a new book

Zhang Yiping recounts her underwater adventures in her new book. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Zhang Yiping tried scuba diving for the first time 10 years ago and fell in love with it.

Since then the Hangzhou native, who works as a web editor with the Zhejiang Daily media group, has dived all around the world.

In her new book, Three Thousand Meters Under the Sea - A Decade of Diving, Zhang recounts her adventures in the underwater world. The Chinese-language book was published by China Financial & Economic Publishing House in June.

How deep can one dive? Do sharks bite divers?

These questions from readers during the book launch in Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang province, last month reminded Zhang of her first dive.

"I was so nervous that I held the dive instructor's hand very tight," Zhang says of her first diving experience, in Lombok island, Indonesia, in 2005.

But Zhang says her fear faded as she saw fish swimming in the coral reefs and she spotted a sea turtle.

"I felt a sense of urgency on my way back," Zhang says to an audience who had little knowledge of the sport.

"But this was because all of a sudden the map of the world waiting for me to explore expanded - the blue ocean was added."

Recreational diving has long been a popular leisure activity in the West, but there were few people who could provide such training on the Chinese mainland a decade ago.

The author, in her 30s, says in the book that she managed to find a Hong Kong instructor on Phuket island in Thailand. She was certified as an open-water diver in 2006.

A year later, she was trained in Malaysia to become an advanced open-water diver, which allowed her to dive to depths between 30 and 40 meters.

In the book, Zhang also tells of her encounters with different types of marine life, and tries to correct public misconceptions.

"People think sharks are very dangerous. But the fact is most sharks are afraid of people, and only very few attack people when they feel danger or mistake humans for seals," Zhang writes.

Zhang says in the book that during a diving trip in the Galapagos, a Pacific archipelago 1,000 kilometers west of Ecuador, she saw hammerhead sharks.