As Evelyn Bartram Dudas’s Nikonos III made its way toward the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean one day not too long ago, she did the only thing that made sense to her at the time. She dove after it, retrieving the camera just before it was lost amidst the twisted remains of a shipwreck on the sea floor. Her rapid descent cost her a broken eardrum.
Gary Gentile not only helped pioneer deep wreck diving, but also documented its art and craft, in addition to his finds so that others may follow in his footsteps.
I first spoke with Sheck Exley in the summer of 1991. I had begun publishing aquaCORPS: The Journal for Technical Diving, a year earlier and I was working out of the office at Capt. Billy Dean’s dive shop in Key West, Florida, the first technical diving training center in the United States. “Technical diving”, a term we had just coined to describe this new style of diving, was just in its infancy.
How can rebreather diving be made safer? That was the question at the core of the numerous presentations and discussions at Rebreather Forum 3 (RF3) held in Orlando, Florida, this May.
Breathing hyperbaric air causes a syndrome of behavioral and subjective effects called nitrogen narcosis, which limits the work efficiency of divers and is ultimately life-threatening.
