An Unlikely DCS Hit and Lessons to Learn

A funny thing happened on the way to Tubbataha. On May 6, I landed in Manila, Philippines, to join a dozen diving friends for five days of land-based diving at Crystal Blue dive resort; then we were to move on to Puerto Princessa to spend a week on the liveaboard Solitude One, diving one of … Read more

On Diving Deep, Breathing Air
  it’s what we did because that’s all we had

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

A Crisis Lurking Below the Surface Emergency Hyperbaric Treatment Availability

By Dan Orr (danorr@danorrconsulting.com) There are millions of recreational scuba divers in the U.S. and hundreds of thousands of traveling divers from countries around the world making tens of millions of enjoyable recreational dives each year in unique dive locations all over America. In the unlikely event that any of these divers would suffer a … Read more

Diving Dahab’s Real Blue Hole

1983: There was little or no infrastructure in the Sinai then. We traveled down the coast from the border with Israel by ancient battered Landcruiser and slept uncomfortably under the stars, battling the cold desert air with ineffective sleeping bags. Leaving the Bedouin guides on the rocky beach to build a fire for lunch, we … Read more

Considerations Of Oxygen In Diving Gas Mixtures

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