— a remembrance of a great friend Bret Gilliam and Fred Garth were business partners from 1994 until 2004 when their publishing company was acquired by Petersen Publishing (Skin Diver, etc.). The two ran popular diving expeditions and were the first to take Draeger semi-closed rebreathers to places like Cocos Island, Palau and the Silver … 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
Sam Espinosa parked his battered pickup truck full of yellowfin grouper, snapper, and pay for essay writing a smattering of big pelagic fish in front of my office and with obvious difficulty climbed the front walk. He presented himself with progressive symptoms including limb pain, patchy areas of numbness and tingling, along with exceptional fatigue and … Read more
One of the first things that I learned as part of my military officer training was “Do not, under any circumstances, volunteer for anything”. This was especially true in January 1971 at the height of the Vietnam war. But, through a rather circuitous route of give and take between the army and navy, a short … Read more
Diving lost of one its true gentlemen and most creative filmmakers on February 3rd. My dear friend Mike deGruy was killed in a helicopter crash in Australia while working on a project for famed Hollywood director James Cameron. Also with him was Andrew Wight, another talented filmmaker who produced the feature “Sanctum” in 2010. Wight … Read more
