>>>Defense attorney J.S. Archibald had argued in part that the judge did not adequately advise the jury on how to handle evidence from a related U.S. civil suit that was mentioned at the criminal trial.
In other words, he was guilty, but because evidence that shouldn't have been mentioned, was mentioned, he gets to go free?
From Today.MSNBC.com: US man's conviction in wife's scuba death overturned
TORTOLA, British Virgin Islands — A Rhode Island man convicted of killing his wife during a 1999 scuba diving trip was freed Thursday after the verdict was overturned.
A panel of three judges with the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court of Appeal found problems with the jury instructions read by a judge during the 2009 trial.
The appeals court also declined to order a new trial because of concerns about recalling defense witnesses given the amount of time that has passed since the death of Shelley Tyre.
"I feel elated," Swain told reporters as he walked away with his daughter, Jennifer Swain Bloom, who has long maintained her father's innocence.
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His origami is right on the money Bennett: Winehouse knew alcohol would kill her Dad's view: I wanted a boy but got a girl...thank goodness Puppy mistakes stake for steak Swain said he intends to "breathe a little free air, go for a walk, go home, pick up the pieces and go on."
Story: The Trouble At Twin Wrecks
His daughter praised the judges' decision.
"I have known the whole time he is innocent," she said. "I knew that the system would eventually agree."
Advertise | AdChoicesAdvertise | AdChoicesAdvertise | AdChoicesDavid Swain said the two intend to return to Rhode Island "sooner rather than later."
J. Renn Olenn, a lawyer representing Tyre's parents, said Thursday at a news conference in Warwick, Rhode Island, that even though the conviction had been overturned, it didn't mean Swain was exonerated.
"No judicial body has declared him innocent, and two different juries have found him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt," Olenn told reporters.
He said that the pain of Tyre's death will "never go away" for her family and that even the now-overturned conviction did not "ease the wound."
$3.5 million civil award
A jury unanimously convicted Swain in October 2009 of murdering Tyre in what authorities described as a near-perfect crime. Swain was then ordered to serve at least 25 years of a mandatory life sentence.
Defense attorney J.S. Archibald had argued in part that the judge did not adequately advise the jury on how to handle evidence from a related U.S. civil suit that was mentioned at the criminal trial.
Authorities initially ruled Tyre's drowning near an isolated shipwreck at a depth of 80 feet (24 meters) as an accident, but they later charged Swain with murder following a 2006 civil trial in Rhode Island that found him responsible for her death.
The civil jury awarded Tyre's family $3.5 million, and Swain later filed for bankruptcy.
Prosecutors in the British Virgin Islands argued that Swain killed Tyre because he was in love with another woman and wanted to obtain his wife's money.
Their case rested largely on experts who said they believed Swain attacked his wife from behind, yanked off her scuba mask and cut off her air supply.
Authorities said her mask was damaged, the mouthpiece of her snorkel was missing, and her swim fin was found embedded in a sandbar.
Friday, September 30, 2011
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Canada: Where to swim between giant whale bones
From The Globe and Mail (Canada): Where to swim between giant whale bones
What’s the deal?
Explore the remains of Canada’s whaling industry.
Where’s it at?
From the late 19th century until 1972, when a moratorium on commercial whaling was imposed, about 20,000 whales were taken for oil, meat and fertilizer in Newfoundland and Labrador. Rather than study grainy, black and white photos and artifacts in a museum, don scuba gear and dive at a former whaling station.
Head to south Dildo (yes, that’s the name) and book on a guided dive tour of the Dildo Whaling Station with Ocean Quest Adventures (oceanquestadventures.com).
As you descend into the sandy bay, the skeletons of several dozen fin, minke and sperm whales, which are still bright white decades after being submerged, will come into view. It’s an eerie experience. The tree-trunk-size vertebrae and skulls are now home for other marine life such as lobster, cunners and sculpins.
After you’ve done your dive, visit the small seaside Dildo Whaling Museum and you’ll have a better appreciation of this important part of East Coast history. You may even spot some live whales – minkes are often seen in the harbour.
Who’s it for?
Those who like their history first-hand.
What’s the deal?
Explore the remains of Canada’s whaling industry.
Where’s it at?
From the late 19th century until 1972, when a moratorium on commercial whaling was imposed, about 20,000 whales were taken for oil, meat and fertilizer in Newfoundland and Labrador. Rather than study grainy, black and white photos and artifacts in a museum, don scuba gear and dive at a former whaling station.
Head to south Dildo (yes, that’s the name) and book on a guided dive tour of the Dildo Whaling Station with Ocean Quest Adventures (oceanquestadventures.com).
As you descend into the sandy bay, the skeletons of several dozen fin, minke and sperm whales, which are still bright white decades after being submerged, will come into view. It’s an eerie experience. The tree-trunk-size vertebrae and skulls are now home for other marine life such as lobster, cunners and sculpins.
After you’ve done your dive, visit the small seaside Dildo Whaling Museum and you’ll have a better appreciation of this important part of East Coast history. You may even spot some live whales – minkes are often seen in the harbour.
Who’s it for?
Those who like their history first-hand.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Emile Gagnan
From Wikipedia
Émile Gagnan (November 1900 – 1979) was a French engineer and co-inventor (together with French Navy diver Jacques-Yves Cousteau) of the diving regulator (a.k.a. demand-valve) used for the first Scuba equipment ("Aqua-Lung") in 1943. The demand-valve, or regulator, was designed for regulating gas in gas-generator engines, but was found to be excellent for regulating air-supply under varied pressure conditions.
Gagnan was born in the French province of Burgundy in November 1900, and graduated from technical school in the early 1920s. He was employed as an engineer specializing in high-pressure pneumatic design by the large gas-supply firm Air Liquide. The first production ‘Scaphandre Autonome’ - or ‘Aqualung’ was released in France in 1946 under the identification code "CG45" ("C" for Cousteau, "G" for Gagnan and "45" for 1945, year of the patent).
A year later, in 1947, Émile Gagnan and his family emigrated to Montreal, Canada and he transferred to the employ of Canadian Liquid Air Ltd. There he set up a lab and proceeded to engineer, design, prototype and patent an incredible number of SCUBA and undersea technology firsts; including the direct ancestors of virtually every type of Scuba regulator in common use today.
Émile Gagnan (November 1900 – 1979) was a French engineer and co-inventor (together with French Navy diver Jacques-Yves Cousteau) of the diving regulator (a.k.a. demand-valve) used for the first Scuba equipment ("Aqua-Lung") in 1943. The demand-valve, or regulator, was designed for regulating gas in gas-generator engines, but was found to be excellent for regulating air-supply under varied pressure conditions.
Gagnan was born in the French province of Burgundy in November 1900, and graduated from technical school in the early 1920s. He was employed as an engineer specializing in high-pressure pneumatic design by the large gas-supply firm Air Liquide. The first production ‘Scaphandre Autonome’ - or ‘Aqualung’ was released in France in 1946 under the identification code "CG45" ("C" for Cousteau, "G" for Gagnan and "45" for 1945, year of the patent).
A year later, in 1947, Émile Gagnan and his family emigrated to Montreal, Canada and he transferred to the employ of Canadian Liquid Air Ltd. There he set up a lab and proceeded to engineer, design, prototype and patent an incredible number of SCUBA and undersea technology firsts; including the direct ancestors of virtually every type of Scuba regulator in common use today.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Jacques Cousteau - the co-inventor! of SCUBA
From Wikipedia
Jacques-Yves Cousteau (11 June 1910 – 25 June 1997) was a French naval officer, explorer, ecologist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and researcher who studied the sea and all forms of life in water. He co-developed the aqua-lung, pioneered marine conservation and was a member of the Académie française. He was also known as "le Commandant Cousteau" or "Captain Cousteau".
Life
Early life
Cousteau was born on 11 June 1910, in Saint-André-de-Cubzac, Gironde, to Daniel and Élisabeth Cousteau. He had one brother, Pierre-Antoine. Cousteau completed his preparatory studies at the prestigious Collège Stanislas in Paris. In 1930, he entered the École Navale and graduated as a gunnery officer. After an automobile accident cut short his career in naval aviation, Cousteau indulged his interest in the sea.
In Toulon, where he was serving on the Condorcet, Cousteau carried out his first underwater experiments, thanks to his friend Philippe Tailliez who in 1936 lent him some Fernez underwater goggles, predecessors of modern diving masks. Cousteau also belonged to the information service of the French Navy, and was sent on missions to Shanghai and Japan (1935–1938) and in the USSR (1939).
On 12 July 1937 he married Simone Melchior, with whom he had two sons, Jean-Michel (born 1938) and Philippe (1940–1979). His sons took part in the adventures of the Calypso. In 1991, one year after his wife Simone's death from cancer, he married Francine Triplet. They already had a daughter Diane Cousteau (born 1980) and a son Pierre-Yves Cousteau (born 1982), born during Cousteau's marriage to his first wife.
Early 1940s:
Innovation of modern underwater diving
The years of World War II were decisive for the history of diving. After the armistice of 1940, the family of Simone and Jacques-Yves Cousteau took refuge in Megève, where he became a friend of the Ichac family who also lived there.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Marcel Ichac shared the same desire to reveal to the general public unknown and inaccessible places — for Cousteau the underwater world and for Ichac the high mountains. The two neighbors took the first ex-aequo prize of the Congress of Documentary Film in 1943, for the first French underwater film: Par dix-huit mètres de fond (18 meters deep), made without breathing apparatus the previous year in the Embiez islands (Var) with Philippe Tailliez and Frédéric Dumas, without forgetting the paramount part played, as originator of the depth-pressure-proof camera case, by the mechanical engineer Léon Vèche (engineer of Arts and Métiers and the Naval College).
In 1943, they made the film Épaves (Shipwrecks): for this occasion, they used two of the very first Aqua-Lung prototypes. Those prototypes were made in Boulogne-Billancourt by the Air Liquide company following Gagnan's and Cousteau's instructions. When making Épaves, Cousteau could not find the necessary blank reels of movie film, but had to buy hundreds of small still camera film reels the same width, intended for a make of child's camera, and cemented them together to make long reels.
Having kept bonds with the English speakers (he spent part of his childhood in the United States and usually spoke English) and with French soldiers in North Africa (under Admiral Lemonnier), Jacques-Yves Cousteau (whose villa "Baobab" at Sanary (Var) was opposite Admiral Darlan's villa "Reine"), helped the French Navy to join again with the Allies; he assembled a commando operation against the Italian espionage services in France, and received several military decorations for his deeds. At that time, he kept his distance from his brother Pierre-Antoine Cousteau, a "pen anti-semite" who wrote the collaborationist newspaper Je suis partout (I am everywhere) and who received the death sentence in 1946. However this was later commuted to a life sentence, and Pierre-Antoine was released in 1954.
During the 1940s, Cousteau is credited with improving the aqua-lung design which gave birth to the open-circuit scuba technology used today. According to his first book, The Silent World: A Story of Undersea Discovery and Adventure (1953), Cousteau started diving with Fernez goggles in 1936, and in 1939 used the self contained underwater breathing apparatus invented in 1926 by Commander Yves le Prieur.
Cousteau was not satisfied with the length of time he could spend underwater with the Le Prieur apparatus so he improved it to extend underwater duration by adding a demand regulator, invented in 1942 by Émile Gagnan.
In 1943 Cousteau tried out the first prototype aqua-lung which finally made extended underwater exploration possible.
Late 1940s: GERS and Élie Monnier
In 1946, Cousteau and Tailliez showed the film "Épaves" to Admiral Lemonnier, and the admiral gave them the responsibility of setting up the Groupement de Recherches Sous-marines (GRS) (Underwater Research Group) of the French Navy in Toulon. A little later it became the GERS (Groupe d'Études et de Recherches Sous-Marines, = Underwater Studies and Research Group), then the COMISMER ("COMmandement des Interventions Sous la MER", = "Undersea Interventions Command"), and finally more recently the CEPHISMER. In 1947, Chief Petty Officer Maurice Fargues became the first diver to die using an aqualung while attempting a new depth record with the GERS near Toulon.
In 1948, between missions of mine clearance, underwater exploration and technological and physiological tests, Cousteau undertook a first campaign in the Mediterranean on board the sloop Élie Monnier, with Philippe Tailliez, Frédéric Dumas, Jean Alinat and the scenario writer Marcel Ichac. The small team also undertook the exploration of the Roman wreck of Mahdia (Tunisia). It was the first underwater archaeology operation using autonomous diving, opening the way for scientific underwater archaeology. Cousteau and Marcel Ichac brought back from there the Carnets diving film (presented and preceded with the Cannes Film Festival 1951).
Cousteau and the Élie Monnier then took part in the rescue of Professor Jacques Piccard's bathyscaphe, the FNRS-2, during the 1949 expedition to Dakar. Thanks to this rescue, the French Navy was able to reuse the sphere of the bathyscaphe to construct the FNRS-3.
The adventures of this period are told in the two books The Silent World (1953, by Cousteau and Dumas) and Plongées sans câble (1954, by Philippe Tailliez).
1950–1970s
In 1949, Cousteau left the French Navy.
In 1950, he founded the French Oceanographic Campaigns (FOC), and leased a ship called Calypso from Thomas Loel Guinness for a symbolic one franc a year. Cousteau refitted the Calypso as a mobile laboratory for field research and as his principal vessel for diving and filming. He also carried out underwater archaeological excavations in the Mediterranean, in particular at Grand-Congloué (1952).
With the publication of his first book in 1953, The Silent World, he correctly predicted the existence of the echolocation abilities of porpoises. He reported that his research vessel, the Élie Monier, was heading to the Straits of Gibraltar and noticed a group of porpoises following them. Cousteau changed course a few degrees off the optimal course to the center of the strait, and the porpoises followed for a few minutes, then diverged toward mid-channel again. It was evident that they knew where the optimal course lay, even if the humans did not. Cousteau concluded that the cetaceans had something like sonar, which was a relatively new feature on submarines.
Cousteau won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1956 for The Silent World co-produced with Louis Malle. With the assistance of Jean Mollard, he made a "diving saucer" SP-350, an experimental underwater vehicle which could reach a depth of 350 meters. The successful experiment was quickly repeated in 1965 with two vehicles which reached 500 meters.
In 1957, he was elected as director of the Oceanographical Museum of Monaco. He directed Précontinent, about the experiments of diving in saturation (long-duration immersion, houses under the sea), and was admitted to the United States National Academy of Sciences.
In October 1960, a large amount of radioactive waste was going to be discarded in the Mediterranean Sea by the Commissariat à l'énergie atomique (CEA). The CEA argued that the dumps were experimental in nature, and that French oceanographers such as Vsevelod Romanovsky had recommended it. Romanovsky and other French scientists, including Louis Fage and Jacques Cousteau, repudiated the claim, saying that Romanovsky had in mind a much smaller amount. The CEA claimed that there was little circulation (and hence little need for concern) at the dump site between Nice and Corsica, but French public opinion sided with the oceanographers rather than with the CEA atomic energy scientists. The CEA chief, Francis Perrin, decided to postpone the dump.
Cousteau organized a publicity campaign which in less than two weeks gained wide popular support. The train carrying the waste was stopped by women and children sitting on the railway tracks, and it was sent back to its origin.
A meeting with American television companies (ABC, Métromédia, NBC) created the series The Underwater Odyssey of Commander Cousteau, with the character of the commander in the red bonnet inherited from standard diving dress) intended to give the films a "personalized adventure" style.
In 1973, along with his two sons and Frederick Hyman, he created the Cousteau Society for the Protection of Ocean Life, Frederick Hyman being its first President; it now has more than 300,000 members.
Three years after the volcano's last eruption, on 19 December 1973, the Cousteau team was filming on Deception Island, Antarctica when Michel Laval, Calypso's second in command, was struck and killed by a propeller of the helicopter that was ferrying between Calypso and the island.
In 1976, Cousteau uncovered the wreck of HMHS Britannic. He also found the wreck of La Therese in Crete island
In 1977, together with Peter Scott, he received the UN International Environment prize.
On 28 June 1979, while the Calypso was on an expedition to Portugal, his second son, Philippe, his preferred and designated successor and with whom he had co-produced all his films since 1969, died in a PBY Catalina flying boat crash in the Tagus river near Lisbon. Cousteau was deeply affected. He called his then eldest son, the architect Jean-Michel Cousteau, to his side. This collaboration lasted 14 years.
1980–1990s
In 1980, Cousteau traveled to Canada to make two films on the Saint Lawrence River and the Great Lakes, Cries from the Deep and St. Lawrence: Stairway to the Sea.
In 1985, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Ronald Reagan.
On 24 November 1988, he was elected to the French Academy, chair 17, succeeding Jean Delay. His official reception under the Cupola took place on 22 June 1989, the response to his speech of reception being given by Bertrand Poirot-Delpech. After his death, he was replaced under the Cupola by Érik Orsenna on 28 May 1998.
In June 1990, the composer Jean Michel Jarre paid homage to the commander by entitling his new album Waiting for Cousteau. He also composed the music for Cousteau's documentary "Palawan, the last refuge".
On 2 December 1990, his wife Simone Cousteau died of cancer.
In June 1991, in Paris, Jacques-Yves Cousteau remarried, to Francine Triplet, with whom he had (before this marriage) two children, Diane and Pierre-Yves. Francine Cousteau currently continues her husband's work as the head of the Cousteau Foundation and Cousteau Society. From that point, the relations between Jacques-Yves and his elder son worsened.
In November 1991, Cousteau gave an interview to the UNESCO courier, in which he stated that he was in favour of human population control and population decrease. The full article text can be found online.
In 1992, he was invited to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for the United Nations' International Conference on Environment and Development, and then he became a regular consultant for the UN and the World Bank.
In 1996, he sued his son who wished to open a holiday center named "Cousteau" in the Fiji Islands.
On 11 January 1996, Calypso was rammed and sunk in Singapore harbor by a barge. The Calypso was refloated and towed home to France.
DeathJacques-Yves Cousteau died on 25 June 1997 in Paris, aged 87. Despite persistent rumors, encouraged by some Islamic publications and websites, Cousteau did not convert to Islam, and when he died he was buried in a Roman Catholic Christian funeral.
He was buried in the family vault at Saint-André-de-Cubzac in France. An homage was paid to him by the city by the inauguration of a "rue du Commandant Cousteau", a street which runs out to his native house, where a commemorative plaque was affixed.
Honors
During his lifetime, Jacques-Yves Cousteau received these distinctions:
--Commandeur de la Légion d'Honneur
--Grand-Croix de l'Ordre national du Mérite
--Croix de guerre 1939–1945
--Officier de l'Ordre du Mérite Maritime
--Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
--Honorary Companion of the Order of Australia (26 January 1990)
--National Geographic Society's Special Gold Medal in 1961
Legacy
Cousteau's legacy includes more than 120 television documentaries, more than 50 books, and an environmental protection foundation with 300,000 members.
Cousteau liked to call himself an "oceanographic technician." He was, in reality, a sophisticated showman, teacher, and lover of nature. His work permitted many people to explore the resources of the oceans.
His work also created a new kind of scientific communication, criticised at the time by some academics. The so-called "divulgationism", a simple way of sharing scientific concepts, was soon employed in other disciplines and became one of the most important characteristics of modern television broadcasting.
Cousteau died on 25 June 1997. The Cousteau Society and its French counterpart, l'Équipe Cousteau, both of which Jacques-Yves Cousteau founded, are still active today. The Society is currently attempting to turn the original Calypso into a museum and it is raising funds to build a successor vessel, the Calypso II.
In his last years, after marrying again, Cousteau became involved in a legal battle with his son Jean-Michel over Jean-Michel licensing the Cousteau name for a South Pacific resort, resulting in Jean-Michel Cousteau being ordered by the court not to encourage confusion between his for-profit business and his father's non-profit endeavours.
In 2007, the International Watch Company introduced the IWC Aquatimer Chronograph "Cousteau Divers" Special Edition. The timepiece incorporated a sliver of wood from the interior of Cousteau's Calypso research vessel. Having developed the diver's watch, IWC offered support to The Cousteau Society. The proceeds from the timepieces' sales were partially donated to the non-profit organization involved into conservation of marine life and preservation of tropical coral reefs.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau (11 June 1910 – 25 June 1997) was a French naval officer, explorer, ecologist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and researcher who studied the sea and all forms of life in water. He co-developed the aqua-lung, pioneered marine conservation and was a member of the Académie française. He was also known as "le Commandant Cousteau" or "Captain Cousteau".
Life
Early life
Cousteau was born on 11 June 1910, in Saint-André-de-Cubzac, Gironde, to Daniel and Élisabeth Cousteau. He had one brother, Pierre-Antoine. Cousteau completed his preparatory studies at the prestigious Collège Stanislas in Paris. In 1930, he entered the École Navale and graduated as a gunnery officer. After an automobile accident cut short his career in naval aviation, Cousteau indulged his interest in the sea.
In Toulon, where he was serving on the Condorcet, Cousteau carried out his first underwater experiments, thanks to his friend Philippe Tailliez who in 1936 lent him some Fernez underwater goggles, predecessors of modern diving masks. Cousteau also belonged to the information service of the French Navy, and was sent on missions to Shanghai and Japan (1935–1938) and in the USSR (1939).
On 12 July 1937 he married Simone Melchior, with whom he had two sons, Jean-Michel (born 1938) and Philippe (1940–1979). His sons took part in the adventures of the Calypso. In 1991, one year after his wife Simone's death from cancer, he married Francine Triplet. They already had a daughter Diane Cousteau (born 1980) and a son Pierre-Yves Cousteau (born 1982), born during Cousteau's marriage to his first wife.
Early 1940s:
Innovation of modern underwater diving
The years of World War II were decisive for the history of diving. After the armistice of 1940, the family of Simone and Jacques-Yves Cousteau took refuge in Megève, where he became a friend of the Ichac family who also lived there.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Marcel Ichac shared the same desire to reveal to the general public unknown and inaccessible places — for Cousteau the underwater world and for Ichac the high mountains. The two neighbors took the first ex-aequo prize of the Congress of Documentary Film in 1943, for the first French underwater film: Par dix-huit mètres de fond (18 meters deep), made without breathing apparatus the previous year in the Embiez islands (Var) with Philippe Tailliez and Frédéric Dumas, without forgetting the paramount part played, as originator of the depth-pressure-proof camera case, by the mechanical engineer Léon Vèche (engineer of Arts and Métiers and the Naval College).
In 1943, they made the film Épaves (Shipwrecks): for this occasion, they used two of the very first Aqua-Lung prototypes. Those prototypes were made in Boulogne-Billancourt by the Air Liquide company following Gagnan's and Cousteau's instructions. When making Épaves, Cousteau could not find the necessary blank reels of movie film, but had to buy hundreds of small still camera film reels the same width, intended for a make of child's camera, and cemented them together to make long reels.
Having kept bonds with the English speakers (he spent part of his childhood in the United States and usually spoke English) and with French soldiers in North Africa (under Admiral Lemonnier), Jacques-Yves Cousteau (whose villa "Baobab" at Sanary (Var) was opposite Admiral Darlan's villa "Reine"), helped the French Navy to join again with the Allies; he assembled a commando operation against the Italian espionage services in France, and received several military decorations for his deeds. At that time, he kept his distance from his brother Pierre-Antoine Cousteau, a "pen anti-semite" who wrote the collaborationist newspaper Je suis partout (I am everywhere) and who received the death sentence in 1946. However this was later commuted to a life sentence, and Pierre-Antoine was released in 1954.
During the 1940s, Cousteau is credited with improving the aqua-lung design which gave birth to the open-circuit scuba technology used today. According to his first book, The Silent World: A Story of Undersea Discovery and Adventure (1953), Cousteau started diving with Fernez goggles in 1936, and in 1939 used the self contained underwater breathing apparatus invented in 1926 by Commander Yves le Prieur.
Cousteau was not satisfied with the length of time he could spend underwater with the Le Prieur apparatus so he improved it to extend underwater duration by adding a demand regulator, invented in 1942 by Émile Gagnan.
In 1943 Cousteau tried out the first prototype aqua-lung which finally made extended underwater exploration possible.
Late 1940s: GERS and Élie Monnier
In 1946, Cousteau and Tailliez showed the film "Épaves" to Admiral Lemonnier, and the admiral gave them the responsibility of setting up the Groupement de Recherches Sous-marines (GRS) (Underwater Research Group) of the French Navy in Toulon. A little later it became the GERS (Groupe d'Études et de Recherches Sous-Marines, = Underwater Studies and Research Group), then the COMISMER ("COMmandement des Interventions Sous la MER", = "Undersea Interventions Command"), and finally more recently the CEPHISMER. In 1947, Chief Petty Officer Maurice Fargues became the first diver to die using an aqualung while attempting a new depth record with the GERS near Toulon.
In 1948, between missions of mine clearance, underwater exploration and technological and physiological tests, Cousteau undertook a first campaign in the Mediterranean on board the sloop Élie Monnier, with Philippe Tailliez, Frédéric Dumas, Jean Alinat and the scenario writer Marcel Ichac. The small team also undertook the exploration of the Roman wreck of Mahdia (Tunisia). It was the first underwater archaeology operation using autonomous diving, opening the way for scientific underwater archaeology. Cousteau and Marcel Ichac brought back from there the Carnets diving film (presented and preceded with the Cannes Film Festival 1951).
Cousteau and the Élie Monnier then took part in the rescue of Professor Jacques Piccard's bathyscaphe, the FNRS-2, during the 1949 expedition to Dakar. Thanks to this rescue, the French Navy was able to reuse the sphere of the bathyscaphe to construct the FNRS-3.
The adventures of this period are told in the two books The Silent World (1953, by Cousteau and Dumas) and Plongées sans câble (1954, by Philippe Tailliez).
1950–1970s
In 1949, Cousteau left the French Navy.
In 1950, he founded the French Oceanographic Campaigns (FOC), and leased a ship called Calypso from Thomas Loel Guinness for a symbolic one franc a year. Cousteau refitted the Calypso as a mobile laboratory for field research and as his principal vessel for diving and filming. He also carried out underwater archaeological excavations in the Mediterranean, in particular at Grand-Congloué (1952).
With the publication of his first book in 1953, The Silent World, he correctly predicted the existence of the echolocation abilities of porpoises. He reported that his research vessel, the Élie Monier, was heading to the Straits of Gibraltar and noticed a group of porpoises following them. Cousteau changed course a few degrees off the optimal course to the center of the strait, and the porpoises followed for a few minutes, then diverged toward mid-channel again. It was evident that they knew where the optimal course lay, even if the humans did not. Cousteau concluded that the cetaceans had something like sonar, which was a relatively new feature on submarines.
Cousteau won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1956 for The Silent World co-produced with Louis Malle. With the assistance of Jean Mollard, he made a "diving saucer" SP-350, an experimental underwater vehicle which could reach a depth of 350 meters. The successful experiment was quickly repeated in 1965 with two vehicles which reached 500 meters.
In 1957, he was elected as director of the Oceanographical Museum of Monaco. He directed Précontinent, about the experiments of diving in saturation (long-duration immersion, houses under the sea), and was admitted to the United States National Academy of Sciences.
In October 1960, a large amount of radioactive waste was going to be discarded in the Mediterranean Sea by the Commissariat à l'énergie atomique (CEA). The CEA argued that the dumps were experimental in nature, and that French oceanographers such as Vsevelod Romanovsky had recommended it. Romanovsky and other French scientists, including Louis Fage and Jacques Cousteau, repudiated the claim, saying that Romanovsky had in mind a much smaller amount. The CEA claimed that there was little circulation (and hence little need for concern) at the dump site between Nice and Corsica, but French public opinion sided with the oceanographers rather than with the CEA atomic energy scientists. The CEA chief, Francis Perrin, decided to postpone the dump.
Cousteau organized a publicity campaign which in less than two weeks gained wide popular support. The train carrying the waste was stopped by women and children sitting on the railway tracks, and it was sent back to its origin.
A meeting with American television companies (ABC, Métromédia, NBC) created the series The Underwater Odyssey of Commander Cousteau, with the character of the commander in the red bonnet inherited from standard diving dress) intended to give the films a "personalized adventure" style.
In 1973, along with his two sons and Frederick Hyman, he created the Cousteau Society for the Protection of Ocean Life, Frederick Hyman being its first President; it now has more than 300,000 members.
Three years after the volcano's last eruption, on 19 December 1973, the Cousteau team was filming on Deception Island, Antarctica when Michel Laval, Calypso's second in command, was struck and killed by a propeller of the helicopter that was ferrying between Calypso and the island.
In 1976, Cousteau uncovered the wreck of HMHS Britannic. He also found the wreck of La Therese in Crete island
In 1977, together with Peter Scott, he received the UN International Environment prize.
On 28 June 1979, while the Calypso was on an expedition to Portugal, his second son, Philippe, his preferred and designated successor and with whom he had co-produced all his films since 1969, died in a PBY Catalina flying boat crash in the Tagus river near Lisbon. Cousteau was deeply affected. He called his then eldest son, the architect Jean-Michel Cousteau, to his side. This collaboration lasted 14 years.
1980–1990s
In 1980, Cousteau traveled to Canada to make two films on the Saint Lawrence River and the Great Lakes, Cries from the Deep and St. Lawrence: Stairway to the Sea.
In 1985, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Ronald Reagan.
On 24 November 1988, he was elected to the French Academy, chair 17, succeeding Jean Delay. His official reception under the Cupola took place on 22 June 1989, the response to his speech of reception being given by Bertrand Poirot-Delpech. After his death, he was replaced under the Cupola by Érik Orsenna on 28 May 1998.
In June 1990, the composer Jean Michel Jarre paid homage to the commander by entitling his new album Waiting for Cousteau. He also composed the music for Cousteau's documentary "Palawan, the last refuge".
On 2 December 1990, his wife Simone Cousteau died of cancer.
In June 1991, in Paris, Jacques-Yves Cousteau remarried, to Francine Triplet, with whom he had (before this marriage) two children, Diane and Pierre-Yves. Francine Cousteau currently continues her husband's work as the head of the Cousteau Foundation and Cousteau Society. From that point, the relations between Jacques-Yves and his elder son worsened.
In November 1991, Cousteau gave an interview to the UNESCO courier, in which he stated that he was in favour of human population control and population decrease. The full article text can be found online.
In 1992, he was invited to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for the United Nations' International Conference on Environment and Development, and then he became a regular consultant for the UN and the World Bank.
In 1996, he sued his son who wished to open a holiday center named "Cousteau" in the Fiji Islands.
On 11 January 1996, Calypso was rammed and sunk in Singapore harbor by a barge. The Calypso was refloated and towed home to France.
DeathJacques-Yves Cousteau died on 25 June 1997 in Paris, aged 87. Despite persistent rumors, encouraged by some Islamic publications and websites, Cousteau did not convert to Islam, and when he died he was buried in a Roman Catholic Christian funeral.
He was buried in the family vault at Saint-André-de-Cubzac in France. An homage was paid to him by the city by the inauguration of a "rue du Commandant Cousteau", a street which runs out to his native house, where a commemorative plaque was affixed.
Honors
During his lifetime, Jacques-Yves Cousteau received these distinctions:
--Commandeur de la Légion d'Honneur
--Grand-Croix de l'Ordre national du Mérite
--Croix de guerre 1939–1945
--Officier de l'Ordre du Mérite Maritime
--Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
--Honorary Companion of the Order of Australia (26 January 1990)
--National Geographic Society's Special Gold Medal in 1961
Legacy
Cousteau's legacy includes more than 120 television documentaries, more than 50 books, and an environmental protection foundation with 300,000 members.
Cousteau liked to call himself an "oceanographic technician." He was, in reality, a sophisticated showman, teacher, and lover of nature. His work permitted many people to explore the resources of the oceans.
His work also created a new kind of scientific communication, criticised at the time by some academics. The so-called "divulgationism", a simple way of sharing scientific concepts, was soon employed in other disciplines and became one of the most important characteristics of modern television broadcasting.
Cousteau died on 25 June 1997. The Cousteau Society and its French counterpart, l'Équipe Cousteau, both of which Jacques-Yves Cousteau founded, are still active today. The Society is currently attempting to turn the original Calypso into a museum and it is raising funds to build a successor vessel, the Calypso II.
In his last years, after marrying again, Cousteau became involved in a legal battle with his son Jean-Michel over Jean-Michel licensing the Cousteau name for a South Pacific resort, resulting in Jean-Michel Cousteau being ordered by the court not to encourage confusion between his for-profit business and his father's non-profit endeavours.
In 2007, the International Watch Company introduced the IWC Aquatimer Chronograph "Cousteau Divers" Special Edition. The timepiece incorporated a sliver of wood from the interior of Cousteau's Calypso research vessel. Having developed the diver's watch, IWC offered support to The Cousteau Society. The proceeds from the timepieces' sales were partially donated to the non-profit organization involved into conservation of marine life and preservation of tropical coral reefs.
Athens, TX: Divers splash into underwater world at scuba park
From Chron.com: Divers splash into underwater world at scuba park
ATHENS, Texas (AP) — Scuba divers splash into the silent underwater world and commence exploring sunken objects in a Caribbean-blue lake at an unlikely site inside this East Texas town's business district.
Wearing self-contained underwater breathing apparatuses, a mask and air tanks strapped on their backs, they propel themselves through the water by kicking fins on their feet.
Just ahead are a 210-foot long, man-made cave and a surprising array of submerged wrecked vehicles to explore, including two jet airliners, two cabin cruisers, three buses, 16 speed boats, house boats, two sail boats and nine motorcycles.
"With all the stuff down there, it's kind of like an underwater amusement park for divers," Staci Murphy, a diver from Canton, said as she and her husband, Steve, prepared for an afternoon of scuba diving.
The cave and sunken objects provide "a great training facility," fun and recreation for scuba divers to experience in a safe environment, said Calvin Wilcher, developer of Athens Scuba Park.
A 35-foot-deep, eight-acre spring-fed clay pit at the park is a popular dive site and favored destination among East Texas and out-of-state scuba divers.
The lake was formed as the old Harbson-Walker brick factory, one of the area's first industries. Natural white clay was excavated for use in making refractery bricks for fire places from the late 1800s until the 1960s.
With its white clay bottom, the lake is like a clear bowl of water and affords divers good visibility.
Divers drive long distances to dive into the warm water, which has good visibility, in contrast to many other East Texas lakes, swimming holes and quarries that have brown water.
Wilcher heard about the old Athens clay pit on North Murchison Street while looking for a good place in East Texas to scuba dive in 1987.
It was surrounded at the time by 50-foot hills built up as the clay was dug out. Standing on one of the mountains, Wilcher marveled that the water was clear enough that he could see a little boy swim all the way to the bottom after diving off an inner tube in the middle of the lake.
"It's very unusual. I went 'Wow! That's a perfect place to scuba dive. I've got to have that,'" recalls Wilcher, who learned to scuba dive in Lake Texoma while growing up in the Texas Panhandle.
He tracked down the owner and bought a 50-acre tract of downtown Athens that includes the lake/pit and surrounding land. Wilcher gave up his job as one of the developers of a cellphone company in Tyler and spent the next two years carving down the hills for easy access and setting up the beginning of what today is Athens Scuba Park.
In time, Wilcher turned the park into a resort that regularly attracts scuba divers from four states, but occasionally draws divers from many corners of the world. The popular park lures divers mostly from across Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana, although some have come from as far away as California, New York, Australia, England and Taiwan.
Attendance, which fluctuates with the temperature and weather, averages 700 to 800 people per week and totals about 25,000 in a season. The park is a major tourism draw for the community and a contributor to the local economy since divers stay in motels, eat in restaurants and shop.
They come as often as weekly or only once a month for enjoyment of the sport of scuba diving and to hone their diving skills. Experienced divers flock in, along with beginners who train here to become certified scuba divers.
People scuba dive for different reasons.
"It's a big family sport for entertainment together," Wilcher said.
In addition to recreational scuba divers, some people scuba dive because they want to learn marine biology. Others train at the park before signing up for a Seals program.
"Mostly they (scuba dive) for the excitement of seeing what's underwater — it's just spectacular," Wilcher said.
Wilcher, a master scuba diving instructor, and his team of eight instructors teach 27 levels of scuba diving, from beginner level courses through advanced and specialty diving.
"We've trained people from 10 years old to 80 years old," Wilcher said
Divers can carry over the skills and experience gained at Athens Scuba Park to explore the seas.
The park has a unique training program for public safety personnel, including police officers, firefighters and other government officials.
They learn to search for jet airliners that crash into an ocean and for buses and other vehicles that run off bridges into lakes or rivers. They train to search for survivors, for bodies, murder weapons and for remnants of vehicles. A heavy lift bag course teaches how to run straps underneath a sunken boat, fill the air bags with air and raise the boat to the surface.
There are courses in wreck diving, search and recovery, night diving and commercial salvage diving.
It's not just the park's staff that trains scuba divers here. Fifty-seven dive shops in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana that sell scuba gear bring their customers to Athens Scuba Park and train them here because of the way the park is set up.
"There's not another place in the United States that I know of that's set up like we are with all of this in one location," Wilcher said, referring to the park's amenities.
The park has a classroom, an 11-foot-deep heated swimming pool, a lake with carpeted underwater training platforms as well as coral wrecks for divers to explore, a full-service dive shop, 11 pavilions, picnic tables, docks, bathrooms and showers with soap, shampoo and crème rinse; primitive camping areas and RV hookups, a sandy volley ball court, horseshoe pit and basketball goal.
The park even has 10-by-10-foot cages under trees where divers can leave their dogs with food and water while diving.
About a dozen docks scattered around the lake's perimeter allow divers to enter and exit the water with ladders.
Similar to big road culverts, an underwater cave system is a major attraction for divers. It consists of 17 pieces of steel pipe 6 feet in diameter shaped into a "y'' and a "t'' to form maize that gives divers the sense of exploring real caverns.
Among the numerous other submerged objects for divers to explore are the first Greyhound bus that country singer Ray Price toured in, a Lockheed C-140 Jet Star plane and a space capsule.
Training starts in the classroom and with watching a home video. The average class takes about four days, although there is a fast track, two-day class available.
Basic training for first-time divers is conducted in the heated swimming pool, starting on the shallow end and progressing to the deep end.
"We give a test to make sure you understand it. That afternoon, we go to the swimming pool. You do it over and over again until it's perfect," Wil-cher said.
Divers then walk over to the lake and go through the training exercises again on the bottom from carpeted training platforms.
Scuba diving lessons cost about $400, with scuba gear furnished, except for fins and a mask, which the diver provides. Once certified, a diver can buy the gear at prices ranging from $900 to $2,000, but it will last 20 years, Wilcher said.
After a scuba diver has purchased the gear, diving is inexpensive. "You can come out and spend $15 bucks and enjoy the whole day at Athens Scuba Park," Wilcher said. The lake also can be used for snorkeling and kayaks after paying a $5 entry fee.
"I've been here 23 years and never had one accident," Wilcher said. "We have a perfect track record." He noted, though, that all of the staff is trained in first aid and as first responders in case they need to respond to a mishap.
One of the area's oldest dive shops, the scuba park's dive shop, sells, repairs and services all kinds of equipment.
"It takes a long time to get something of this size built this way," Wilcher said. "With all the gear we provide and we teach you how to use, you can safely go out in any ocean or river or lake and enjoy the underwater environment," Wilcher said. "It's spectacular to see. There's more beauty down under the water than on top."
The scuba park's lake and various sunken vehicles provide a training facility where divers can have varied underwater experiences in a safe environment and are designed to increase their diving abilities, Wilcher said.
From time to time, the park sponsors special training oriented events for divers, such as underwater scavenger hunts and underwater poker games.
For the poker games, Wilcher said, "We hide cards in the lake in baggies with rocks. You have to find them and make a hand and come up and play your hand."
For monthly treasure hunts, he explained, golf balls are hidden in the lake. You find the golf balls. They have a number on them, and the number is equal to a prize. We give away an average of $35,000 a year in dive gear."
Caribbean music floating through the air from a stage accentuates the Caribbean atmosphere. Jamaican bands come in three or four times a year from South Africa, Jamaica or Dallas.
For an annual Hawaiian luau, everybody dresses in Hawaiian garb and eats Hawaiian fixings, vegetables and fruit plates, pork and barbecue.
"It's a good environment to be in," diver Steve Murphy said. After talking to 15 scuba trainers, he and his wife chose Wilcher and Athens Scuba Park. People at the park are "great and fun to be around," he said.
Diver Jerry Wusterhaesen, of Bastrop, paused on his third trip to the park, saying that the owners are hospitable and "all the people here are cool to chat with." But what draws him back more than anything, he said, is the visibility in the water.
Chris Bluethman, of Tulsa, Okla., also cited the very clear water, along with the cave system as attractions he likes.
Bob Carnie, of Willis, north of Houston, said he likes the camaraderie among scuba fans and the many submerged objects for divers.
"There's a lot of stuff for us to look at and play on in the water," Rick Smith, of Tulsa, Okla., said.
"We do this to enjoy ourselves," Smith said, referring to fellow scuba club members from Tulsa.
On a recent weekend, 17 Boy Scouts and nine dads from Troop 514 from the Colleyville-Grapevine area descended on the park for a snorkel campout.
"The dads enjoy the fellowship of being together and spending time with our sons; the boys like being in the water and the chance to dive down and see the boats and airplanes (sunk in the lake)," Jeff Pistor, one of the troop leaders, said.
Scout David Bataldua, 13, said, "I'm enjoying camping and swimming and being with my friends and working on my camping badge."
Scout Austin Pistor, 12, said, "I like being underwater and seeing things from a different perspective."
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Scuba Diving in Pacific Ocean Attracting the Divers
From SBWIre.com: Scuba Diving in Pacific Ocean Attracting the Divers
Sri Hartamas, Kuala Lumpur -- (SBWIRE) -- 09/19/2011 -- Some experts have observed the fact that a large number of people like to go for scuba diving in Pacific Oceans. Obviously why not; it is the largest ocean in the world which covers a lot of destinations from a plenty of nations. Even some world’s most popular diving destinations such as Great Barrier Reef in Australia, are also covered under Pacific Ocean.
We can take Great Barrier Reef as an ideal instance first of all, which is named after the largest living structure of the world which is even visible from the outer space. This is a collection of a number of reefs and is also recognized as a world heritage. The diving sites of New Zealand which is the neighboring country of Australia also provide you dive in Pacific Ocean. A few diving destinations of New Zealand include The Poor Knights Islands, The Lermotov Wreck, etc.
As mentioned above also, there are a number of countries which are covered by Pacific Ocean; so you can visit Asian and American nations also in order to enjoy the diving. Indonesia, which is one of the most popular nations for scuba diving, has also the destinations located on Pacific Ocean. Lembah Strait can be taken as an example in this respect, which is an ideal spot for underwater photographers. On the other hand, some diving destinations in USA are also available which provide the fun to dive in the Pacific. Catalina Island is the best example which has gained the popularity across the globe.
Sea of Cortez in Mexico can be taken as another instance which has an abundance of brilliant marine life. There are many more diving destinations on the great Pacific Ocean, about which people can know by contacting the dive operators, or through simple internet search. So, if you wish to go for scuba diving in Pacific Ocean then you can choose any destination from the nation which is close from your abode.
For more information on Scuba Diving, Visit here – http://www.scubaplex.com/
Sri Hartamas, Kuala Lumpur -- (SBWIRE) -- 09/19/2011 -- Some experts have observed the fact that a large number of people like to go for scuba diving in Pacific Oceans. Obviously why not; it is the largest ocean in the world which covers a lot of destinations from a plenty of nations. Even some world’s most popular diving destinations such as Great Barrier Reef in Australia, are also covered under Pacific Ocean.
We can take Great Barrier Reef as an ideal instance first of all, which is named after the largest living structure of the world which is even visible from the outer space. This is a collection of a number of reefs and is also recognized as a world heritage. The diving sites of New Zealand which is the neighboring country of Australia also provide you dive in Pacific Ocean. A few diving destinations of New Zealand include The Poor Knights Islands, The Lermotov Wreck, etc.
As mentioned above also, there are a number of countries which are covered by Pacific Ocean; so you can visit Asian and American nations also in order to enjoy the diving. Indonesia, which is one of the most popular nations for scuba diving, has also the destinations located on Pacific Ocean. Lembah Strait can be taken as an example in this respect, which is an ideal spot for underwater photographers. On the other hand, some diving destinations in USA are also available which provide the fun to dive in the Pacific. Catalina Island is the best example which has gained the popularity across the globe.
Sea of Cortez in Mexico can be taken as another instance which has an abundance of brilliant marine life. There are many more diving destinations on the great Pacific Ocean, about which people can know by contacting the dive operators, or through simple internet search. So, if you wish to go for scuba diving in Pacific Ocean then you can choose any destination from the nation which is close from your abode.
For more information on Scuba Diving, Visit here – http://www.scubaplex.com/
Monday, September 19, 2011
Scuba Diving Trainees Take the Plunge
From the Caldwells Patch: Scuba Diving Trainees Take the Plunge
While Gov. Chris Christie was instructing New Jerseyans to "stay off the beaches" last Saturday, about a couple dozen people were happily scuba diving at the Caldwell Community Center.
The event culminated a weeklong instructor/buddy training for children, adults, and wounded veterans by the Diveheart Foundation in partnership with the Pristine Azul Dive Club of New Jersey.
For wounded veteran and certified advance rescue diver Ian Brown, it was a chance to get back to diving and share his passion with fiancee, Ivonne Trancon.
"To be able to participate in events with loved ones and do something on an even level is heartwarming," Brown commented. In addition to the mental benefits, physically Brown said the training helped relieve compression in spine.
A veteran of the air force, Brown suffered a lumbar injury, resulting in an incomplete paraplegic diagnosis.
"Diveheart and Pristine Azul were great, facilitating and making it safe and easy," Brown added.
While Brown has previous experience, this was Trancon's first time scuba diving. She admitted to trepidation, but quickly became comfortable in the water.
When 16-year-old participant Daniel Paterson was asked if he would try scuba diving again, his face broke into a big smile. "Oh yeah!" he exclaimed, adding, "I would do it tomorrow!"
Diveheart Organization
Diveheart founder and president Jim Elliott was inspired to start his organization after teaching his blind daughter to downhill ski, and seeing how this activity increased her confidence.
What Elliott came to realize is that his daughter's accomplishments had a ripple affect on other people. "It touches other people's lives," he said.
A certified scuba diver, Elliott realized how powerful and therapeutic scuba diving can be to people with disabilities. On a practical level, most communities have indoor pools, while skiing is a seasonal activity available only in certain geographical areas.
After retiring from a journalism career, Elliott devoted himself full-time to Diveheart, which he founded in 2001.
"My payback is to see people with severe disabilities become independent, when they come up from the water with a smile, and realize if they can do scuba diving, they can take on other challenges," Elliott said.
With the help of the International Rotary organization, Elliott took Diveheart around the world, including the Caribbean, Australia, China and Mexico.
Caldwell Community Center Dives In
When Diveheart approached the Caldwell Community Center, Director Rob Patterson said it took him "30 seconds" to agree to host Diveheart.
"How do you say 'no'?" Patterson asked, adding, "These are the things the Community Center is about. It upsets me to learn other organizations would not host them."
Caldwell Councilman Joe Norton, the Council Chairperson of Community Relations added, "This is a great day for the Borough of Caldwell and, most importantly, the participants in the event. This is something to be admired, to be able to live a full life and to see what the human mind and what individuals can do."
Diveheart Training
The Diveheart instructor/buddy training program includes classroom time for scuba instructors to learn about various disabilities and accessibility. In addition, confined water training includes diving as a paraplegic (with legs tied), and as a blind diver with a blackened mask.
All scuba divers with disabilities are partnered with a trained buddy for one-on-one scuba diving. "We have never had a problem," Elliott stated.
For Pristine AzulScuba Diving Club President Dennis Petrusovich, this was a way to "give back". A military veteran, psychotherapist and volunteer fireman in Wayne, Petrusovich has friends who are wounded.
"This is a way to give back to those people in an environment where we are all equal," Petrusovich said.
Longitme Diveheart volunteer and scuba instructor Debby Miller added, "It is awesome. Lots of smiles and 'wow, I did not think I could do this!'" Miller commented about the Diveheart participants.
Diveheart volunteer June Stahl also received her buddy training adding, "I love scuba diving, and to be able to share it with people who never thought they could is amazing."
The efforts of the trainers and Diveheart could all be seen in the bright smile on 8-year-old Daneyan of Morristown. After completing her dive, the girl said, "I went under and stayed under."
While Daneyan admitted to be nervous at first, she said, "I will do it again."
To learn more about Diveheart, visit their website, http://diveheart.org/.
While Gov. Chris Christie was instructing New Jerseyans to "stay off the beaches" last Saturday, about a couple dozen people were happily scuba diving at the Caldwell Community Center.
The event culminated a weeklong instructor/buddy training for children, adults, and wounded veterans by the Diveheart Foundation in partnership with the Pristine Azul Dive Club of New Jersey.
For wounded veteran and certified advance rescue diver Ian Brown, it was a chance to get back to diving and share his passion with fiancee, Ivonne Trancon.
"To be able to participate in events with loved ones and do something on an even level is heartwarming," Brown commented. In addition to the mental benefits, physically Brown said the training helped relieve compression in spine.
A veteran of the air force, Brown suffered a lumbar injury, resulting in an incomplete paraplegic diagnosis.
"Diveheart and Pristine Azul were great, facilitating and making it safe and easy," Brown added.
While Brown has previous experience, this was Trancon's first time scuba diving. She admitted to trepidation, but quickly became comfortable in the water.
When 16-year-old participant Daniel Paterson was asked if he would try scuba diving again, his face broke into a big smile. "Oh yeah!" he exclaimed, adding, "I would do it tomorrow!"
Diveheart Organization
Diveheart founder and president Jim Elliott was inspired to start his organization after teaching his blind daughter to downhill ski, and seeing how this activity increased her confidence.
What Elliott came to realize is that his daughter's accomplishments had a ripple affect on other people. "It touches other people's lives," he said.
A certified scuba diver, Elliott realized how powerful and therapeutic scuba diving can be to people with disabilities. On a practical level, most communities have indoor pools, while skiing is a seasonal activity available only in certain geographical areas.
After retiring from a journalism career, Elliott devoted himself full-time to Diveheart, which he founded in 2001.
"My payback is to see people with severe disabilities become independent, when they come up from the water with a smile, and realize if they can do scuba diving, they can take on other challenges," Elliott said.
With the help of the International Rotary organization, Elliott took Diveheart around the world, including the Caribbean, Australia, China and Mexico.
Caldwell Community Center Dives In
When Diveheart approached the Caldwell Community Center, Director Rob Patterson said it took him "30 seconds" to agree to host Diveheart.
"How do you say 'no'?" Patterson asked, adding, "These are the things the Community Center is about. It upsets me to learn other organizations would not host them."
Caldwell Councilman Joe Norton, the Council Chairperson of Community Relations added, "This is a great day for the Borough of Caldwell and, most importantly, the participants in the event. This is something to be admired, to be able to live a full life and to see what the human mind and what individuals can do."
Diveheart Training
The Diveheart instructor/buddy training program includes classroom time for scuba instructors to learn about various disabilities and accessibility. In addition, confined water training includes diving as a paraplegic (with legs tied), and as a blind diver with a blackened mask.
All scuba divers with disabilities are partnered with a trained buddy for one-on-one scuba diving. "We have never had a problem," Elliott stated.
For Pristine AzulScuba Diving Club President Dennis Petrusovich, this was a way to "give back". A military veteran, psychotherapist and volunteer fireman in Wayne, Petrusovich has friends who are wounded.
"This is a way to give back to those people in an environment where we are all equal," Petrusovich said.
Longitme Diveheart volunteer and scuba instructor Debby Miller added, "It is awesome. Lots of smiles and 'wow, I did not think I could do this!'" Miller commented about the Diveheart participants.
Diveheart volunteer June Stahl also received her buddy training adding, "I love scuba diving, and to be able to share it with people who never thought they could is amazing."
The efforts of the trainers and Diveheart could all be seen in the bright smile on 8-year-old Daneyan of Morristown. After completing her dive, the girl said, "I went under and stayed under."
While Daneyan admitted to be nervous at first, she said, "I will do it again."
To learn more about Diveheart, visit their website, http://diveheart.org/.
Maine's high court ruling expands scuba divers' beach rights
From Maine Sunday Telegram: Maine's high court ruling expands scuba divers' beach rights
Surfers are among those celebrating a Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruling that expands beach rights for scuba divers and leaves room for others to argue that they, too, should have greater access to the ocean.
In a 6-0 decision last week, the court upheld the right of an Eastport scuba diver to reach Passamaquoddy Bay by crossing the wet sand of beach property owned by a neighbor.
The public's right to use the intertidal zone – the land between the mean high- and low-tide marks – has long been a bone of contention in Maine, where coastal ownership law dates back to a 17th century ordinance limiting public use of the area between high and low tide to "fishing, fowling and navigation."
Adam Steinman, a lawyer who also surfs, filed a brief in the case – taken up by the court last November – on behalf of the national Surfrider Foundation.
"From the Surfriders' perspective and from the perspective of the people of Maine and getting access to a very unique resource, the ocean is not really very good if you can't get there," Steinman said. "And if the only way to get there at low tide is by crossing what arguably is private land, then you have a problem. I think this case opens that up."
Although the decision in McGarvey v. Whittredge was unanimous, justices split 3-3 on their interpretation of why a scuba diver is allowed to use the intertidal zone.
Chief Justice Leigh Saufley emphasized the ruling's narrow scope when she wrote: "Because the relevant activity here involves use of the intertidal land only to enter the sea, rather than to stand or to stay, we do not determine whether other, additional uses of the intertidal zone fall within the public trust rights, including the uses of surfing. . . . Instead, we leave the next question in the evolution of this area of common law for future determination."
Saufley and two concurring justices harkened back to the historical origins of the Massachusetts Bay Colony's Colonial Ordinance of 1647, which "allowed private ownership of intertidal lands to promote commerce by encouraging the construction of wharves at private expense."
The three justices argued for broader public rights to coastal beaches "except to the extent that those rights might interfere with the rights of the landowner to wharf out."
Three other justices, in an opinion written by Justice Jon Levy, declared allegiance to the court's 1989 ruling in a case involving Moody Beach in Wells. In a 4-3 decision, the court upheld striking down a 1986 coastal land-use law asserting the public's right to use intertidal zones for general recreation.
Only activity involving one of the three uses stated in 1647 – fishing, fowling or navigation – is lawful, according to the Moody Beach decision.
However, Levy latched on to a prior ruling describing navigation as "passing freely over and through the water without any use of the land underneath" and applied a "sympathetically generous" interpretation to declare that scuba diving fits within the realm of navigation and, thus, is permitted.
"Whether scuba diving is navigation, that was not our issue," said Sidney Thaxter, lead attorney for property owners in the Moody Beach case and also a brief filer in the Eastport dispute. "We all know this is about public recreation. That's what the state wanted and they didn't get it," he said.
Thaxter conceded that surfing would likely fit Levy's interpretation of navigation as well as scuba diving.
Again, he said, property owners generally have no problem with surfers crossing the beach to reach the water.
The original lawsuit stemmed from crowds of rude and unruly beach users causing problems.
"So it doesn't change anything, practically. . . . We consider it a big victory because the Moody Beach . . . cases are still good law," Thaxter said of the ruling.
Deputy Attorney General Paul Stern, who has been arguing the state's case for three decades, said the decision upholds a public trust doctrine for reasonable use of the intertidal zones that had been under attack over the past quarter century.
"Since the (Moody Beach decision)," Stern said, "certainly some – but not all – beachfront property owners have stated quite clearly and loudly that . . . the public uses are very narrow and need to be very narrowly constrained."
The opinions of Saufley and Levy – reached through different legal paths – expand public use, Stern said, if only – for now – for those wearing fins and snorkels and carrying air tanks.
"But certainly," he said, "one could take these opinions, either one of them, and apply them to surfing, boogie boarding or inner tubing – which is what I used to do down at the shore all the time – and one would hope the decisions would come out the same."
A broader case in the ongoing battle for access to Maine's beaches is a lawsuit involving Goose Rocks Beach property owners and the town of Kennebunkport. That lawsuit currently awaits judicial action in York County Superior Court and has yet to be heard.
Janice Parente of Scarborough, who chairs Maine's Surfrider Foundation chapter, read through last week's 49-page decision and said it felt like a door had been opened.
"It feels good to know the momentum is on our side, the side of the public," she said. "Hopefully, we can make a lot more progress over the upcoming years and make sure that we've procured public access forever."
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Business: Scuba divers find cracks responsible for water loss
From KMVT.com: Scuba divers find cracks responsible for water loss
TWIN FALLS, IDAHO (KMVT-TV) Back in July Kvmt news first told you that the city of Twin Falls is scuba diving our local waters to check for cracks.
Tonight at the city council meeting.. The city, along with Brockway Engineering, explained how things are looking.
They have been investigating the upper and lower Blue Lakes Pond.
The divers put in dye and monitored it for 48 hours.
They also ran all of their tests through a computer model to see just how big these cracks responsible for the water loss could be.
And divers say they've discovered quite a few new cracks.
Mike Trabert from the City of Twin Falls says "I think the biggest surprise we had on all of the test was finding the fissure, previously all the teat that were done it was never discovered since 71. So we did a very thorough one this time and that crack was about 55 feet long. So that was a significant find that helped further the project along."
Up next for the project will be a few more test in the lakes followed by approval of some type of plan to fix the problem.
But as of now the remedy is not yet been decided.
TWIN FALLS, IDAHO (KMVT-TV) Back in July Kvmt news first told you that the city of Twin Falls is scuba diving our local waters to check for cracks.
Tonight at the city council meeting.. The city, along with Brockway Engineering, explained how things are looking.
They have been investigating the upper and lower Blue Lakes Pond.
The divers put in dye and monitored it for 48 hours.
They also ran all of their tests through a computer model to see just how big these cracks responsible for the water loss could be.
And divers say they've discovered quite a few new cracks.
Mike Trabert from the City of Twin Falls says "I think the biggest surprise we had on all of the test was finding the fissure, previously all the teat that were done it was never discovered since 71. So we did a very thorough one this time and that crack was about 55 feet long. So that was a significant find that helped further the project along."
Up next for the project will be a few more test in the lakes followed by approval of some type of plan to fix the problem.
But as of now the remedy is not yet been decided.
Victoria filmmaker to follow diver's 50-km undersea trek
From the Times Colonist (Vancouver Island, Canada): Victoria filmmaker to follow diver's 50-km undersea trek
When Victoria filmmaker Ian Hinkle finishes shooting undersea footage of a scuba-diving marathon in southern California's Pacific waters that once teemed with blue sharks, it's safe to say his film won't be mistaken for Shark Night 3D.
Sure, there will be sharks and other ocean predators - and 3D cameras. They're part of an arsenal of equipment to be operated by Hinkle, media director for the Canadian social enterprise Global Reef, and his team of land and underwater photographers from near and far - uniting this weekend for a fascinating expedition and his documentary chronicling it.
But 30-Mile-Dive isn't Hollywood escapism. The film's "star" - Scott Cassell, veteran deep-sea explorer and U.S. counter-terrorism operative - will attempt a non-stop scuba dive at more than six metres deep for 50 kilometres, from Catalina Island's Avalon Harbor to Los Angeles, using state-of-the-art equipment to perform scientific experiments and convey a sobering message.
(You can track the dive's progress undersea starting Saturday at globalreef.com.)
The goal is to draw attention to an ocean crisis that, being underwater, is conveniently out of sight, yet frighteningly real.
"That's why I joined the expedition as a filmmaker," explained Hinkle, who hails from Washington state, has a BA in film from UBC and has two decades of production experience in capacities from cinematographer to producer. Specializing in socio-political and environmental issues, he has long been attracted to adventure stories. Since making his directorial debut on The Living Coast for Discovery Channel, he has worked on several documentaries with climbers and solosailors.
But 30-Mile-Dive is about more than just a good athlete and a potentially world-record dive, Hinkle, 40, says. "He's not staying underwater for 15 hours for selfish reasons. He's an endurance athlete doing something for a greater good."
Cassell, who has logged more than 13,000 hours as an underwater explorer, combat and commercial diver, is also a U.S. Navy diving supervisor and medical technician, and holds the world record for longest non-stop dive distance - 84 km.
He says he fell in love with the ocean as a boy, and found his value in life from then on.
"If we were to see the devastation that has occurred in the ocean - as if it were on land - we would be horrified," said Cassell, who is distressed by such horrors as endangered tuna populations and millions of sharks routinely killed for fins each year. "When I see people harming it, I take that personally."
Cassell, who has been researching human endurance in salt water cooler than 20 C, said his original intention was to dive for 24 hours. He's since decided it would be safer to aim for a maximum of 20.
Hinkle will be on one of the larger expedition vessels co-ordinating the shoot as Cassell and rescue and support divers head to sea for the expedition, undertaken through the Undersea Voyager Project - a non-profit ocean exploration organization.
The ocean conservation project is co-sponsored by Luminox Swiss dive watches, Bloosee.com, Bad-Elf.com, Underwater Kinetics, Ocean Defenders Alliance and Ocean Management Research Network. The film and expedition are also being funded by grassroots donations through the crowd-sourcing site indiegogo.com.
Hinkle said it's an enormous challenge technologically. "We'll have 14 cameras and [will be] managing data while we shoot, editing some of the footage live on the boat and uploading it Saturday to Global Reef, Luminox and Facebook."
The dive is scheduled to start at 4 a.m. Saturday on Catalina Island, with Cassell hopefully reaching L.A. by 7 p.m.
"Scott's going to be working a lot harder than we are, but we're going to have to stay awake," said Hinkle, laughing.
He says the story driving his film will be about a man who has led a life of military service, comes home and then wonders what he'll do from then on, ultimately choosing to raise awareness of the alarming changes he's seen in the ocean over the years.
"That's the canary in the coal mine," Hinkle said.
"The blue sharks are gone - symbols of vast changes in the oceans. And it's being replicated all over the world. All of a sudden, in our generation, they're gone and we better take notice.
The sharks are one of the things everyone's noticing, and pollution and 'ocean acidification' is another.
"We want to help get that word out and look at people like Scott and what's going on in our own backyards, and be inspired." mreid@timescolonist.com
LINKS
Official website for Canadian social enterprise Global Reef: Globalreef.org
Official website for Undersea Voyager Project: Underseavoyagerproject.org
Luminox 30-Mile-Dive minisite: www.luminox.com/diving-worldrecord/
When Victoria filmmaker Ian Hinkle finishes shooting undersea footage of a scuba-diving marathon in southern California's Pacific waters that once teemed with blue sharks, it's safe to say his film won't be mistaken for Shark Night 3D.
Sure, there will be sharks and other ocean predators - and 3D cameras. They're part of an arsenal of equipment to be operated by Hinkle, media director for the Canadian social enterprise Global Reef, and his team of land and underwater photographers from near and far - uniting this weekend for a fascinating expedition and his documentary chronicling it.
But 30-Mile-Dive isn't Hollywood escapism. The film's "star" - Scott Cassell, veteran deep-sea explorer and U.S. counter-terrorism operative - will attempt a non-stop scuba dive at more than six metres deep for 50 kilometres, from Catalina Island's Avalon Harbor to Los Angeles, using state-of-the-art equipment to perform scientific experiments and convey a sobering message.
(You can track the dive's progress undersea starting Saturday at globalreef.com.)
The goal is to draw attention to an ocean crisis that, being underwater, is conveniently out of sight, yet frighteningly real.
"That's why I joined the expedition as a filmmaker," explained Hinkle, who hails from Washington state, has a BA in film from UBC and has two decades of production experience in capacities from cinematographer to producer. Specializing in socio-political and environmental issues, he has long been attracted to adventure stories. Since making his directorial debut on The Living Coast for Discovery Channel, he has worked on several documentaries with climbers and solosailors.
But 30-Mile-Dive is about more than just a good athlete and a potentially world-record dive, Hinkle, 40, says. "He's not staying underwater for 15 hours for selfish reasons. He's an endurance athlete doing something for a greater good."
Cassell, who has logged more than 13,000 hours as an underwater explorer, combat and commercial diver, is also a U.S. Navy diving supervisor and medical technician, and holds the world record for longest non-stop dive distance - 84 km.
He says he fell in love with the ocean as a boy, and found his value in life from then on.
"If we were to see the devastation that has occurred in the ocean - as if it were on land - we would be horrified," said Cassell, who is distressed by such horrors as endangered tuna populations and millions of sharks routinely killed for fins each year. "When I see people harming it, I take that personally."
Cassell, who has been researching human endurance in salt water cooler than 20 C, said his original intention was to dive for 24 hours. He's since decided it would be safer to aim for a maximum of 20.
Hinkle will be on one of the larger expedition vessels co-ordinating the shoot as Cassell and rescue and support divers head to sea for the expedition, undertaken through the Undersea Voyager Project - a non-profit ocean exploration organization.
The ocean conservation project is co-sponsored by Luminox Swiss dive watches, Bloosee.com, Bad-Elf.com, Underwater Kinetics, Ocean Defenders Alliance and Ocean Management Research Network. The film and expedition are also being funded by grassroots donations through the crowd-sourcing site indiegogo.com.
Hinkle said it's an enormous challenge technologically. "We'll have 14 cameras and [will be] managing data while we shoot, editing some of the footage live on the boat and uploading it Saturday to Global Reef, Luminox and Facebook."
The dive is scheduled to start at 4 a.m. Saturday on Catalina Island, with Cassell hopefully reaching L.A. by 7 p.m.
"Scott's going to be working a lot harder than we are, but we're going to have to stay awake," said Hinkle, laughing.
He says the story driving his film will be about a man who has led a life of military service, comes home and then wonders what he'll do from then on, ultimately choosing to raise awareness of the alarming changes he's seen in the ocean over the years.
"That's the canary in the coal mine," Hinkle said.
"The blue sharks are gone - symbols of vast changes in the oceans. And it's being replicated all over the world. All of a sudden, in our generation, they're gone and we better take notice.
The sharks are one of the things everyone's noticing, and pollution and 'ocean acidification' is another.
"We want to help get that word out and look at people like Scott and what's going on in our own backyards, and be inspired." mreid@timescolonist.com
LINKS
Official website for Canadian social enterprise Global Reef: Globalreef.org
Official website for Undersea Voyager Project: Underseavoyagerproject.org
Luminox 30-Mile-Dive minisite: www.luminox.com/diving-worldrecord/
Monday, September 12, 2011
Michigan shipwrecks lure scuba divers to the 40-degree depths of the Great Lakes
From MLive: Michigan shipwrecks lure scuba divers to the 40-degree depths of the Great Lakes
By Kiley Kievit
Michigan waters have more than 500 shipwrecks officially logged. Local divers are determined to find more.
“The history is certainly a big draw for divers in Michigan, because there’s so much history on the bottom of the lake,” says Chuck Larsen, owner of Ocean Sands Scuba in Holland. “Everything from glacier remains to boulder fields to wrecks. There’s billions of dollars of commerce just littering the bottom of Lake Michigan.”
While Michigan divers are quick to compliment the cold waters they venture into, novices could easily be confused by the desire to plunge into one of the Great Lakes’ 40 degree depths. But this cold water is part of what makes these dives unique.
“Some of these wrecks you see, these ships went down hundreds of years ago,” says Ken Engelsman, co-owner of Michigan Diving Center in Spring Lake. “But in this cool, dark water they look like they just went down a few weeks ago. It’s just amazing how well fresh water preserves everything.”
The preservation, not to mention the abundance of wrecks in Michigan waters, is what lures divers and keeps bringing them in for more.
“I’ve got a thing for shipwrecks, and the Great Lakes have some of the best shipwreck diving in the world,” says Roger Brenner, the other co-owner of Michigan Diving Center. “And I’ve got a thing for the old wrecks, the old woodies is what I call them. And they’re just in great shape .”
These cold water dives require equipment made to withstand the cold and dark, in addition to thicker wetsuits, and the water temperature can be intimidating — 40 degrees once you go down past 100 feet. But for the dedicated, the conditions are perfect.
“Michigan is certainly my favorite dive site,” says Larsen. “Anything you can do above water you can do below water, only it’s more fun.”
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