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New World Record!
I was in the Bahama Islands in the late 1960’s. I had just awakened my mania for Scuba and decided that Going Diving was I wanted to do with my life. I was glowing with the excitement of self-discovery when I was confronted with the shocking news that two local divers had died trying to break the World Depth Record for Scuba Diving on Air. I seem to remember they were diving out of Small Hope Bay on Andros Island. The team of three had successfully completed previous practice dives to record depths and were ready for the officially sanctioned Record Dive to make them the World Record holders. Just hearing of the attempt got me thinking weird thoughts. I had just been studying partial pressures of gasses, and learned that their medical effect changed as the partial pressures increased. Nitrogen became narcotic and produced “Rapture of the Deep” – Nitrogen Narcosis. Oxygen at a high enough partial pressure became toxic and could produce out-of-control muscular spasms. The gases in air become poisonous with increasing depth. It seemed to me that what these divers were actually doing was equivalent to seeing how much Arsenic they could take before they would die. Pretty stupid, I thought, what is the point? And more than that, what organisation could possibly sanction such a record. Would it qualify for the Guinness Book of Records? But these divers claimed they had developed special techniques that prevented them from getting poisoned, something to do with ice packs and... More »
Pain in the Bass
A few years ago I surveyed several fisher persons with the question "Do fish feel pain?". The response was a unanimous "NO WAY"! I then decided to pose the same question to my ichthyologist friends and the responses varied from "probably not" to "maybe" and "just a little" and even "you're so smart, Halstead, why don't you ask them" - which latter remark I thought was perhaps an attempt to mock me. So it was interesting, recently, to read the headline "Scottish Scientists Prove Fish Feel Pain". It could have just been press hype but, whatever; it provoked immediate suspicion since real scientists do not go around claiming that they have proved things. They might say, for example, "We have discovered evidence that suggests that ...." but rarely would they claim an absolute truth, after all, the whole history of science consists of excellent theories found to be less excellent as scientists proudly discover more stuff. Global Warming for example. The "scientists" that do go around saying that they have proved things are generally those that work for advertising agencies or creationist religions and who wear white lab coats. They claim proof that brand X soap washes brightest, and that Darwin was a Dickhead. Perhaps the only thing they do actually prove is that people who believe them are on the double-digit side of the IQ bell curve. Then the "Scottish" bit peaked my interest. Perhaps they only budgeted for a few experiments? Perhaps they wore kilts instead of white lab coats? This was a bit of a puzzle until a later news item made everything clear. These people, or their mates, were trying to get a ban placed on fishing for Scottish salmon. Fish feel pain, they argued, therefore fishing is cruel, thus fishing for Scottish salmon should be made illegal. This... More »
Helpful Diving Tips & Observations
I started diving in 1959, so I had my 50th anniversary last year. That's not as bad as it sounds since my father, a senior naval officer, indulged my fascination with scuba after watching the first episode of Sea Hunt with me the year before. We then moved to a distant outpost called Key West and my future career unfolded from the first day in snorkeling gear. I was only eight years old when I did my first dive in Garrison Bight under the watchful eye of an "instructor" who never left the comfort of his deck chair on the pier as I blundered through mask clearing and other exercises and occasionally surfaced to see if I was doing things okay. "Yeah, you're making great progress," he assured me while opening another cold beer. "Now go under the boat and scrape the barnacles off the props and rudder." I guess that was probably the first edition of modern "specialty" courses. But I managed to survive over 18,000 dives to date and have developed a certain perspective over the years that might be useful to other divers. Here are a few tips: 1.You can usually learn more by watching a diver unpack and assemble his gear than from reading his logbook. 2. A diver's experience and skill is more often inversely proportionate to the number of patches on his jacket or c-cards in his bulging wallet. 3. The best insurance policy to make sure the boat captain picks you up after a drift dive is to borrow $50 from him prior to stepping off the dive platform. 4. Never exceed the depth of your ability and training. 5. To get in shape to look your best in a figure-hugging Lycra dive skin, forget the conventional weight loss programs. Try the Ultimate Motivational Diet: You can eat anything you want... More »
Lost in Translation
The diving experience is made up of a number of things. Just getting there at times involves days of transit via airplanes (some of dubious provenance), overnights in bizarre accommodations definitely not in the Travel & Leisure Top Ten, equally questionable local taxis or buses, and occasionally watercraft making the last connection that evokes memories of a distant past era that makes the African Queen with Bogie at the helm look cutting edge. But having once arrived at your destination, I always try to soak up as much of the local culture as I can to complement the diving. "Local culture" can vary widely... from the primitive villages of the Solomons or lost-in-time places like the Banda Islands in Indonesia to camel-tending nomadic tribal fire circles in the Sinai. In such situations, you tend to expect the "unexpected". But some of my most memorable times have occurred in quasi-civilized waypoints while still en route to the boonies. Take Costa Rica. I love Costa Rica... reasonably civilized with normal air flights, phones that mostly work, short flying distance from the U.S., great food, nice ancient culture, beaches, rain forests, mountains, wonderful craftsmen and artists, and a generally affable Spanish-speaking population that also does a good job of indulging foreigners with English, if necessary. But in the early 1990s, getting around the woeful road system if you were trying to get to Puntarenas or Guanacaste or down the Caribbean coast was an exercise in frustration of biblical proportions. Seemingly endless periods trapped in uncomfortable vehicles with no air conditioning and barely any suspension left you feeling every pothole and usually every raindrop that sneaked in through the roof. [caption id="attachment_832" align="alignleft" width="188" caption="Cathryn Castle during photo shoot for Draeger rebreathers in 1995"][/caption] In early 1995 I was hired as a consultant for a new resort... More »
Isn’t Diving Wonderful?
What's the most interesting animal you've met while diving? Is it the whale shark or the pigmy seahorse? Is it the octopus of the leopard seal? I'll tell you my favourite and it's one of the most difficult, if nigh on impossible to predict creatures you'll ever come across. It's the human being. I recently went on a liveaboard safari that hosted a week's photography course. In order to illustrate the feature I was writing I needed pictures of the participants at work. It proved very difficult to second-guess what each might do next; You simply cannot tell what is going on in someone's mind once the power of speech is lost underwater. That said, I have met an immeasurably wide range of people while on diving trips and from all over the world. I have shared cabins with divers of all nationalities, of all ages, all sexual inclinations and of all income-ranges. With the common interest that diving presents, they have all proved interesting and worthwhile companions to spend time with. In fact our activity of diving is a great leveler. It proves very difficult to assess someone's income or standard of living once they are deprived of the trappings of their wealth. Take my friend John. He lived in Switzerland. He had formerly worked in the film business (like me) and had a young wife (like me) and a young girl child (like me). He invited me to stay if ever I was in his country so one day I did. I have a nice house in London. It's not spectacularly nice but it'll do. When I saw it, I calculated that John's house was 26-times bigger, with an Olympic-size... More »
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