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Dear George, You wrote: < A far better question is, "what do you use a rebreather for?"?? If you join the miltary, they will give you one, and train you properly. They will also give you guns and other things. > This has been a question we have been asking here at SUB AQUA for quite some time. In an era when most of the people who are diving probably should not be, and when the barriers to entry in scuba diving have become greater than ever before we wonder what all the houpla is about when it comes to an item that has next to no usefulness in recreational diving. Now I know that there are a handful of people that we both know that have been using the high end units for some time and they believe that they benefit from them -- Farb, Pyle, Hall etc. It also seems that other than Pyle those that are using the CCR are using military/commercial units and are conducting their operations for commercial/professional/scientific purposes. That is all fine and good. The problem as we see it is that in a time when more people should be doing basic diving, looking at pretty fishies, touring the outside of wrecks, admiring the coral reefs and developing their aqautic skills to the highest degree, they are not. They are enamoured by technology (albeit old technology) and forget why they got into diving in the first place -- its fun. I have the utmost respect for the work that your group does at WKPP. I think that developing a team of people who you can depend on is critical to your work and as a result the techniques DO filter down to the "regular divers" where they can learn something. The rebreathers, well, I have played with them in pools and in open water with the NAVY -- they have everything our tax dollars can buy and the training and all of the support facilites necessary for those units -- they do it well and better than anyone else. Its what they do. However I still have 12 sets of doubles and a whole lot of singles for regular diving. It will be quite sometime before the scuba industry will ever have enough money to support the widespread use of rebreather equipment. The average guy doesnt stay diving long enough to warrant it and the group that would use them are just to small to make it economicaly feasable to where companies can invest in the R&D, marketing, training, promotion, safety aspects and maintenance without going bankrupt. The scuba industry is small. Its less than a Quarter Billion Dollars. Thats squatola. The kitty litter business is bigger. In a time when dive boats are half filled, young men and women are still dying under the water, and smoke filled training classes are more abundant than Carter has liver pills I think that the rebreather is best kept in the Military and specialized application areas and SCUBA should stay as SCUBA. I would like to see more people diving and less of them talking about diving. Then maybe we can have some substance again in the world of recreational diving. Billy Deans, in and interview we did with him prompts every diver to ask themselves "How many dives have I done in the last 4 weeks?" If they aint diving their just plain full of it. I know George that you are diving and your team is diving and I am diving and all of our writers are diving but I challenge the rest of the soapbox group to answer that very simple question. "How many dives have you done in the past 4 weeks." And more importanly did you have fun and are you excited about doing it again? Joel Silverstein, Publisher SUB AQUA MAGAZINE
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