Twenty years ago I met an old French diver at the DEMA show who was displaying oil paintings of various wrecks he’d dived in Bonaire. I didn’t recognize any of them and he told me where they were to be found. They were all very deep. I asked him if he used a helium mix … Read more
before you become a rebreather diver, you’d better read this Conventional open-circuit scuba is sold as “not being rocket science.” PADI and its like have made it available to almost everyone. Scuba is fun. It’s for all the family. Once you’ve grasped Boyle’s Law and the repercussions of breathing compressed gas underwater, it’s only a … Read more
Oxygen is the most basic life support system our bodies employ, and yet also has the capacity to cause great harm. Keller (1946) has called oxygen “The Princess of Gases. She is beautiful but has to be handled with special care”. We cannot live without it, but in prolonged breathing exposures or in deep depths … Read more
Remember when you first decided to learn to scuba dive? I do! I wanted to stay underwater a little longer than I could simply by holding my breath. I learned to scuba in 1979 and those first dives were seldom deeper than 33 feet (10m) deep. My tank had a valve release that you pulled … Read more
modern diving marvels are not for everyone Closed-circuit rebreathers have become very popular with technical divers since they offer the possibility to do extreme dives without the imposition of carrying an enormous amount of gas. I was at the forefront of promoting this new way of diving as far back as 1993. In those days … Read more
