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George blessed us with:
> This, from NSS"News" takes the cake:
>
> "He borrowed a Cis-Lunar rig, developed by Bill Stone
> to satisfy his cave diving requirements. Using this
> equipment he discovered a cave off the hawaiian Islands
> which he pushed to a depth of 500 feet -safely."
>
> This is what is wrong with our sport today,
> Richie. It is called BULLSHIT
I suspect that the "Richie" mentioned above is in reference to me. I
almost missed this altogether, since I've been diving much more this week
than checking email and such; and George didn't send this to me directly.
In any case, I have to admit that I am somewhat perplexed and confused by
this post. It appears to me as though George is quoting a passage from
something called "NSS News" (which, I gather, is a periodical of some sort).
In reading the passage, I am compelled to ask: who is the "He" mentioned in
the passage? Usually, when I see the pronoun "He" used without the context
of a specific person, it is in reference to the Lord Almighty. While I
wouldn't doubt for a moment that a supreme being with total omniscience would
select a Cis-Lunar rebreather as His underwater life-support equipment, my
hunch is that the "He" mentioned in the passage refers to one of us mortals.
Besides John Earle and myself, I know of seven mortals who have dived
with Cis-Lunar rebreathers in the Hawaiian Islands, and I am quite
certain that neither John, nor I, nor any of those seven other mortals
have discovered any caves 500 feet deep here in Hawaii.
John and I did discover the entrance to a HUGE cave in Papua New Guinea
using Cis-Lunar rebreathers. The roof was at a depth of about 360 feet,
and I estimated that the floor was at least 100 feet below me when I was
hovering at about 400 feet. The rebreathers did allow us to make this
dive "safely"; but Papua New Guinea is several thousand miles away from
the Hawaiian Islands, and I didn't "push" to 500 feet on that particular
dive.
This leaves two possible explanations that come to mind:
1) The "He" refers to someone other than one of the 9 people I know of who
have dived with Cis-Lunar rebreathers in Hawaii; or
2) The report in NSS news is a slightly garbled account of the work John
and I have done, mixing the cave we discovered in PNG with the dives we
have done in our home state.
Methinks number 2 is the more likely explanation; especially in light of
the extensive coverage we received both on local television stations and
in local newspapers (I understand that NSS News reprints stories of
potential interest to divers, that are gleaned from local news sources).
Now I turn to George's remark, apparently directed to me, that such reports
represent "what is wrong with our sport today", and that this "wrongness"
can be referred to as "BULLSHIT". While it is apparent that there are some
technical inaccuracies in the NSS News report, it seems to me that such
inaccuracies are more representative of what is wrong with journalism today,
rather than diving (not necessarily the fault of NSS News - more likely they
repeated an error initially reported by one of the local media features of
our work). It may, of course, be the case that by the phrase "our sport",
George was referencing Journalism, rather than diving. However, I am not
aware of "sport journalists", and this is a diving-related forum, so I
suspect not.
Ignoring the NSS News report, I really don't dispute George's insinuation
that "BULLSHIT" is the thing that is wrong with diving today. In fact,
glancing through these archives, I am confronted by more "bovine scatology"
than I encounter in any other aspect of my life. Most of it, in fact, is
coming from the "usual suspects" (who know who they are).
Aloha,
Rich
Richard Pyle
Ichthyology, Bishop Museum deepreef@bi*.bi*.ha*.or*
1525 Bernice St. PH: (808) 848-4115
Honolulu, HI 96817-0916 FAX: (808) 841-8968
"The views are those of the sender and not of Bishop Museum"
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