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

Out of the Black and into the Blue: Diving to Stay Alive

By David, McGuire, Shark Stewards Floating, weightless, my eyes stare down into the impenetrable like the streaks of sunlight. Above me, the weight of one hundred feet of water is the blue Pacific. Ears ticking, throat constricting, my brain screams for oxygen. It is time to return to the surface, to the land of the … Read more

Welcome to Hawaii and Your Long Awaited Dive Trip: Now Get in the Patrol Car

“Why don’t I just call the Maui police?” After 15 hours of travel with a sodden mask on my face, the words “Go ahead and call the flippin’ Maui police” were on the tip of my tongue. Fortunately, they remained unspoken. Our flight from LaGuardia to Dallas had left an hour late. When we got … 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