If you love scuba diving, deep dark waters, decompression procedures and mixed gas theory, you must have heard the name many times: Bret Gilliam, a revolutionary trailblazer in the dive world. Over the past few decades, he has changed the way scuba diving is practiced.
Some 80km south of Copenhagen, about one hour’s drive, in what appears to be just some ordinary and inconspicuous farm buildings surrounded by fields out in the countryside, we find JJ-CCR—manufacturer of world-renowned closed circuit rebreathers.
Molecular Products have proudly unveiled two new versions of their popular 797 sofnolime today. We gather that it has been specifically targeted at the diving market, enabling rebreather divers to purchase a flavoured sorb.
This new range has been launched with two flavours; strawberry and mint. The idea is that the taste fades as the sorb life diminishes, giving the diver an additional way to track carbon dioxide breakthrough.
I heard the strawberry is really good one. Teppo Lallukka
On the back of this news, four rebreather instructors have issued some timely advice regarding sorb.
Sally Cartwright - expedition CCR diver, and former chairman of the Sub Aqua Club - stated "Life is far too important and precious. Don't skimp on lime. People try and save money on fills and push their scrubber time. It's not worth it."
In part one of this series, which appeared in issue #103, I suggested a few commandments to consider in order to ensure, as far as possible, that your technical dives are safe and successful. These were: First commandment: Prepare paperwork; Second commandment: Nominate a supervisor; Third commandment: Deploy safety divers. In this sequel, I deliver a few more tablets of stone.
Today, technical diving is well into its fourth decade. We now have better tools, technology and systems than we did in the past and we know far more about which methods, decompression strategies and gear configurations work well and which do not.
For three decades the researchers at DAN have monitored, tracked and analyzed diving incidents and fatalities worldwide. One of the best sources of this incident data is you, the diver. When you self-report an injury or incident that you experienced or witnessed via the DAN Incident Reporting System, you offer a valuable look at real world diving incidents and injuries.
IPE is the abnormal leakage of fluid from the bloodstream into the alveoli, the microscopic air sacs in the lungs. Symptoms include shortness of breath, coughing up bloody sputum, and respiratory distress. Leakage into the alveoli results in fluid buildup in the lungs, and interrupts gas exchange, similar to drowning. It is important to note that fluid resulting from IPE comes from within the body, rather than from inhalation of surrounding water.
In the book Into Thin Air, journalist Jon Krakauer tells the story of five people who died near the summit of Mount Everest in 1996. Two were expedition leaders, one was a professional guide and two were their clients.
In September 2014, Egyptian national and technical diver Ahmed Gabr performed a deep dive off Dahab in the Egyptian Red Sea under the auspices and observation of adjudicators from The Guinness Book of Records. After the dive, Gabr was acknowledged for having reached the record depth of 332m, surpassing South African Nuno Gomes who made it to 318m in 2005, also off Dahab.
In my line of work as a dive industry professional, I attend a lot of dive shows and get to meet a lot of people, most of them nice and interesting in various ways. It was also at a dive show in Italy, many years ago, that I first met Andrea Donati and his partner, Daniela Spaziani, of Ponza Diving.
