Mailing List Archive Mailing List Archive
Part 1 of 2
Well, I've been back from tek for a few days. I know some of our other
friends are still up there at DEMA, so let me be the first to give you a
report. I came back with my brain pretty full, not that that's any real trick,
and there was a lot to see, so please understand if I leave something out or
skipped a seminar you wanted to hear about.
This post is really long. It grew out of control. It's so long my
mailer wants it in two sections. I truly apologize for the length if you pay
for access; perhaps I should have sent this out only on request, but so many
people would have posted "yes, send it to me!" on techdiver that I figure it's
easier to hit delete once, now, than 10 times for all those request messages.
There is some stuff on rebreathers and other equipment toward the end,
if you just want to skip down.
Please excuse me if I mention a lot of manufacturers; I don't work for
any of them, and we are in an equipment intensive sport.
Aslo, should you find something in my humble ramblings worth further
discussion, please start a new "subject" so we can follow the thread more
clearly.
Let me get a bit of overhead out of the way now, and tell you about the
mechanics of the show. There was a small exhibition hall, with about 90
booths. There were two banks of seminar rooms, about a 10 minute walk apart,
which was kind of a problem since at any one time there were about 3 or 4
seminars I jumped between and that was a long walk. They tended to dedicate a
room to the same style of seminar, and so popular seminars in a series got
packed into some small rooms. One room, for example, was usually on
exploration reports, and it was too small for Noel Sloan on Huatala or Jim
Bowden and Ann Kristovich on Zacatun. My biggest complaint was just that there
were too damn many seminars, and I wanted to go to most of them. At any given
time, there were 5 to 8 talks. They lasted an hour each, with only half an
hour between them. It was hard to make it down to the exhibition floor at all,
and I know I wasn't the only one who skipped lunch every day. It would have
been nice to have a longer break between seminars for lunch and for the
exhibitions. You could walk the exhibition floor pretty quickly, but you could
also spend hours talking to any one vendor.
Before I go any further, I'll spoil Chris Perret's fun and tell you his
announcement: Bill Hamilton, and DCAP, are now part of Abyssmal Diving, and
DCAP will soon be a part of Abyss. I won't spoil the secret Rich Pyle's been
keeping for the last few months, since he hasn't been teasing us with it, but
by hinting at it, I guess I'm as bad as Chris now.
The only other netters I saw were Andy Cohen, David Story, John Crea,
Dennis Pierce and Kevin Neil-Klopp. It's tough to find each other. Maybe next
year in New Orleans we should have a sign, like ripping one corner off your
badge.
Crea and Pyle were often giving symposiums; on the rare occasion Pyle
wasn't behind a mike, he was working a booth, so he probably didn't get to see
many of the forums at all. His IWR forum, with TDI president Brett Gilliam,
was packed and overflowing into the hallway outside. We on techdiver have a
distinct advantage: few of the people there are as up on technology and have
discussed it as thoroughly as we have. I jumped out of a lot of forums because
for me, they were working through a lot of basic issues we've covered here.
That might have made my input particularly valuable, but there were so many
other things I wanted to see.
One other announcement: the next issue of aquaCorps is out, and they had it at
the show. It's "Wreckers." I know they've been taking a lot of flak about the
regularity of aquaCorps; I guess that they are trying very hard, and without
fanfare, to fix it. I meant to get a copy, but didn't, so I don't know much
more than that. Hopefully, it will be in our mailboxes soon.
If it sounds like I'm name dropping in the following, it's on purpose. I'm
nobody. This was the first tek I've been to. I don't even have the credentials
to get into DEMA. And yet, at tek, I met a lot of people who are big names in
diving, and who were very happy to talk@te*. That's a big part of what gave
tek it's flavor, and I'm trying to pass that along.
*********************************************************
tek.95 started with a panel discussion on the future of diving. Mike
Menduno, editor of aquaCorps, introduced panelists Phil Nuytten from Hard
Suits International (the Newtsuit); Billy Deans from Key West Diver; Tracy
Robinette, from Divematics; and a technical liason from PADI, whose name I
have forgotten. My apologies. They all had good things to say about our new
toys, but made a few points that were threads throughout the show. Robinette
and Nuytten agreed that rebreathers had been around a long time; technology
makes them more accessible, but the issues which have kept them from being
appropriate for most divers still have not been addressed: training, safety,
certification, fills, maintenance.... the infrastructure open circuit has,
that *nitrox* doesn't even have yet. Deans mentioned a few times that there
were still lots of issues to be addressed with nitrox, and he was right: I
found little mention of nitrox, or even trimix, at the show. Deans also said
not to throw away your open circuit equipment. This meshed with something I've
been thinking since reading Hard: there is no one best tool. Technical diving
comes down to getting the gear and skills you need to go the place you want to
go, and that doesn't always mean rebreather or NewtSuit. Or surface supply.
And too often, we buy the gear, but not the training. One way or another, you
pay for it.
There were a few panel discussions like this in the largest hall, that
would take place with no other forum going on. These town hall meetings had a
two-piece band that would play a short riff while there was a break in
conversation, for example, while Menduno was moving from the podium to his
seat. It gave the forum the feel of a late night talk show. Typical aquaCorps
style: it might have annoyed some people, but it gave me a smile.
I went from this forum on to Nuytten's talk on atmospheric diving
systems, which was why I actually missed the forum on Desktop Decompression,
and Chris Perret's formal announcement. I know I just said that no single tool
is always the answer, but ADS puts a big stupid grin on my face. I love this
stuff. There is something about the NewtSuit, and the light, swimming hardsuit
under development, that really attracts me.
A lot of Nuytten's talk was on the light suit. Apparently, last year
at tek he promised that he would make a suit with three hundreds: weigh less
than a hundred pounds, cost less than $100,000, and reach 100 meters. He said,
more than once, that he regretted shooting his mouth off. It's easy to make a
stronger NewtSuit to go deeper, but lighter and less expensive is difficult.
The first problem is that the suit needs to be low volume, so that it doesn't
need much weight to bring it down. Under "only" 100 meters of pressure, the
sections can be concave and scalloped for lower displacement, rather than
convex and bubbly for strength. The rotating seals in the joints are still
large, as they are defined by the human range of motion. The result is
something Batman or Dracula might wear, kind of a gothic suit of armor. I
liked it a lot. Unlike bigger suits, you won't be able to pull your arms into
the torso or head to work controls, so many controls and displays will be
outside the suit, on the arms and chest, as on a regular diver.
This suit has fingers. Each of three fingers and the thumb have rods
leading back from each joint, through seals, to rings on each joint on your
hand inside. The mechanics are pressure balanced, and since the controls are
rods, forces will travel in both directions: if the suit feels concrete, you
will feel concrete. Nuytten claimed the suit would have more sensation than
divers with thick gloves on.
Nuytten said he was also having difficulty designing a new rotating
seal; if all else failed, the NewtSuit seal could be used, but at added weight
and cost. The suit would have thrusters as an option ( I wonder about their
duration), but would be able to be propelled by fins. He showed a sketch of
the boot; it had a high, flaring cuff around the ankle shaft, like some kind
of Errol Flynn pirate boot. Tap a chin switch to make buoyancy neutral, tap
another to release some locks, and that soft, flaring section hinges down and
locks onto the toe to become a fin. Better, actually: a force fin. At this
point, I'm grinning like an idiot again. My lifestyle demands chin switches,
pirate boots, gothic armor, and James Bond Transformer cartoon technology. I'm
not the only one, either. Hall Watts, Mr. Deep Air, wanted one too, and I've
heard a lot of resorts would like to get them for people who wouldn't
otherwise dive.
Nuytten mentioned another suit he is developing: a space suit. Seems
there are some scientists studying the upper atmosphere, tens of miles up, and
they will soon go there in a high-flying plane. When they are done pointing
sensors out the windows, they intend to jump out the doors. They will freefall
for 8 minutes. They will go faster than mach 1. The suit will be critical: it
must have the mobility to allow these maniacs to control their tumbling. Some
Russians tried a similar jump in thicker suits, and could not stay in control.
They spun so fast their arms and legs came off.
Nuytten's talk was the highlight of the show for me, and for others as
well (not that the rest of the weekend was dull). I talked about this seminar
with a lot of other people who had come to tek from the Association of Diving
Contractors show that had happened the week previous in Texas. These are the
hard hat, surface supplied, commercial people. Some had interest in tek, some
were even going on to DEMA. Incidentally, it was announced that next year, all
three shows will be in New Orleans, all in a row. ADC, tek, DEMA. For some of
us, ADC, tek, DEMA, detox. That's going to be a lot of fun.
Next up was Billy Dean's talk on the El Cazador project. I'm kind of
assuming you all read aquaCorps, so I won't go into too much detail on some of
this. For you new folks, aquaCorps is a quarterly magazine on technical diving
that sponsored the tek conference. There are other technical journals, often
on more specific topics, like east coast US wrecks or cave diving, but
aquaCorps brings it all together in one place. Each issue has a certain theme,
and are referred to by that name: we've had Bent, Computing, Mix, C2 (closed
circuit), Hard, and soon, Wreckers. The magazine has a certain irreverent
attitude and a lot of heavily computer-processed imagery; Rich Pyle has
referred to it as Wired Goes Diving. I'm not going to explain Wired. Anyway,
even though a few people feel that the glitz gets in the way of the diving in
the magazine, they still subscribe. Personally, I like it a lot. If you get
techdiver, you should probably get aquaCorps. 800-365-2655 or 305-294-3540 or
fax 305-293-0729, $49 / 1 year / 4 issues.
Deans ended up talking about not the El Cazador, but another salvage
project, with a similar moral: trimix did a job cheaper than surface supplied
would have. I'm still forming an opinion on this. I'm not sure where the wide
gray line is drawn between surface supply and scuba. There are tools and
techniques to be learned from both: the right tool for the right job. Scuba is
cheaper than surface supplied, partly because of the infrastructure required
on-site for a commercial, surface supplied job. Still, there is a reason the
commercial companies use that infrastructure. They learned a lot of lessons by
killing a lot of divers. Lad Handleman, one of the founders of Oceaneering,
the largest commercial dive company, is now on the aquaCorps board. I really,
really value what he says. He has a very different set of tools from what we
use, and he is often very unhappy with what we use. I am not sure we need four
point moorings on our boats, and I'm not sure he is ever going to see the
point of divers decompressing while drifting free, hanging under a liftbag. I
doubt I am ever going to have someone on the surface tending me. Just the
same, I want him in the room. He always has a different viewpoint, based on
long experience. He fights the same battles with pressure we do, but for
different reasons, and has come to different, yet valid, conclusions. He often
seems pretty impatient and dissatisfied with us and our techniques, but from
what I have read in their journals, he is very open minded compared to some
commercial contractors. Few others would be willing to spend the time he has.
There were a lot of very competent people at tek. People who go to
hundreds of feet have to be. People who teach other people to go to hundreds
of feet have to be. People who set policy for people who teach other people to
go to hundreds of feet have to be. These were the people at tek. I would have
to say, though, that two people stood out from the crowd: Billy Deans and Phil
Nuytten. They both know their shit. It's immediately obvious. Nuytten knows
how to build things, how to use them, how to get a job done, how things work
underwater. Deans knows how to run a diving operation, how to dive. Nuytten
has done a lot of heavy work underwater, and Deans runs operations that expose
a lot of people to deep water. You get the impression that their word is good,
that around them, things get done properly, with efficiency and precision. I
can't wait to use one of Nuytten's suits, or experience one of Dean's
charters.
The next seminar I hit was given by Noel Sloan, on the Huatala
project. I am probably spelling that wrong, but trust me, I can say it. Take
my word for it. This is the caving expedition in Mexico headed by Bill Stone,
for which Stone built the Cis-Lunar rebreather. Sloan didn't have a lot of
slides; most are in the hands of National Geographic, who may one day write an
article. This is fascinating stuff: these guys are driven by something I only
have a little bit of. I'm not sure anyone can fully comprehend the difficulty
of this expedition, on so many levels, the years and the work it has taken.
I'm not even sure they can comprehend how hard this is, since they are talking
about going back this year.
In a way, I hated hitting the presentations on expedition reports; I
felt I should be in forums shaping the future of technical training, learning
things I don't know, setting rebreather standards, and saving lives, but I
just couldn't resist enjoying myself once in a while. I went to a presentation
by Marty Snyderman, and he discussed some of his u/w photo techniques and
showed some slides I'm not sure he shows most audiences. There was one of his
first shark cage, with nice big windows for the cameras, and another picture
of that same cage, with Howard Hall inside, wrestling with a five foot blue
shark, also inside. He showed a few slides of people in the chain mail shark
suits, and talked about their weight, and how difficult is was to swim in
them. He showed the usual picture of one being tested: a small shark gnawing
on someone's arm. He said, "So you think this proves the suit's effectiveness?
Nope, this does." and he showed the suit's inventor, legs spread, and a shark
fully biting down on his crotch. No shit. Enough said. That's a good suit. I'm
getting one for visiting my nephew.
On Sunday, I started off by going to a seminar I would have overlooked
but for a recommendation from Billy Deans. It was given by a "high school
chemistry teacher," on the secret service aquatics program. It became apparent
that this is one of the finest training agencies going. These guys train for
every contingency, and do more than talk about it in a classroom. Unlike many
government agencies, this group typically shares what it learns. For testing
airline evacuation slide/rafts, rather than buy the equipment, they trained
with an airline and shared the results. Deans told me that this group made a
lot of improvements to equipment we all use, and just gave it back to the
industry. I talked to the presenter later, and he said he wasn't a high-tech
guy, looking for rebreathers. He'd be happy to find a snorkel he liked.
Several people told me that he'd spent a few years designing a decent dive
bag, and the result was the dive bag from hell, large enough to kidnap several
children (odd that a secret service man would use that turn of phrase, but I
knew better than to ask too many questions....) I haven't seen one, but it's
made by Eagle Co., from Fenton, Missouri. There was a thread earlier about
harnesses: the secret service designed one for helicopter pilots that's just
what we want, fully airlift ready, with some inflatable floatation.
I'm not sure I can use the secret serviceman's name; I probably can,
since it was in the program, but something else he said makes me hesitant. In
any case, this is a guy I'd like to see interviewed in aquaCorps.
I went on to a presentation given by some hack, some fish grad student
or something, trying to tell us that since submersibles went deep and divers
stayed shallow, he was finding a profound number of new species by using mix
to explore the 200 fsw region, but I fell asleep.
Rich won't be back from DEMA for a week, so I can get away with that.
On the other hand, I probably just shot my chances of him ever letting me try
his new toy...
Rich also gave a talk with Brett Gilliam, as I mentioned, on in-water
recompression. It was really packed, so I gave up my space to others, so I'm
not sure what Gilliam had to say. There was a lot of interest, though. This is
a subject that just isn't addressed much, if at all, and a lot of people
wanted to learn about it. Perhaps it is time for another article somewhere. It
is certainly time to gather more data, and to try to design a study
(difficult, with human subjects). This should certainly be bigger at the next
tek. I'm not sure PADI OW I is ready for this, but more people should know
it's out there.
The final talk I went to Sunday was given by Mike Gernhart, astronaut
and former commercial diver and vice president of Oceaneering. This was
another sleeper talk I might have missed but for a recommendation from Rob
Ryan, former head of the Catalina Hyperbaric Chamber. Ryan is doing his own
consulting now, setting up chambers wherever needed. It seemed like everybody
you bumped into at tek was somebody, and happy to talk.
Anyway, it's clear that Oceaneering, Cis-Lunar, Hard Suits
International (Nuytten's company), and several others, are interested in
space. Technology that can handle 10 atmospheres externally is easily
adaptable to 1 atmosphere internally, or so you would think. The human body
isn't.
The space suits the US uses have an internal pressure of about 4 psi.
The low pressure is to give the heavy cloth suit and gloves some dexterity
(talk to Nuytten....). Stepping into 4 psi basically means decompressing, and
the time to decompress to 4 psi has been proven, the hard way, to be longer
than predicted by our deco models. I don't remember details of the models, but
I remember some numbers. When possible, they lower the cabin pressure in the
shuttle to 7 or 8 psi, and pre-breathe 100% O2 for three hours, With life
science experiments on board, they cannot lower cabin pressure, so the
pre-breathe is extended to 12 hours, if I remember correctly. If you go for an
EVA space walk, and use my numbers, and they are wrong, I take no
responsibility. Anyway, Gernhart's research showed that they had to go from
the pressure ratio model we use to a pressure difference model to decompress
to below 1 atmosphere. His thesis on the subject is available out there
somewhere. One interesting side effect of making a decompression dive is that
repetitive dives become safer and safer. Everything is backwards.
Remember the discussion thread we had a bit back, on decompression
stops on days with big waves? If I recall correctly, there was a commercial
diver with records that showed that these days produced statistically lower
incidence of DCI. We were discussing whether simply more care was taken on
days with less friendly environments, or whether the waves had some massaging
effect that worked bubbles out of the body more smoothly. Gernhart, in
passing, mentioned designing a deco schedule at Oceaneering. They came up with
a 4000 minute run time but that produced too high a rate of DCS, so they went
with 8000 minutes. Maybe this is why Handleman likes decompressing in
chambers. Gernhart said that by throwing spikes to depth into the schedule,
they got run time back down. That's all I know. I don't know the profile, I
don't know loading, I don't know mixes, I don't know times, frequencies, or
depths, but I know this: we need to find Gernhart's paper. He mentioned the
Umich archives.
Sunday night, the tek evening show, was finally time for everyone to
relax and be entertained. It was great to finally be able to fully enjoy a
slide show without feeling like I was missing a dozen other seminars I should
have been in.
The program began with a presentation by Howard Hall, on rebreathers
and Imax. Hall and Bob Cranston have been using the Mark 155 rebreathers, and
are very happy with it for certain applications, such as filming shy
hammerheads. Both Rich Pyle, in his presentation, and Hall, in this one,
commented on how much fish sex is going on down there that doesn't happen when
open circuit is scaring the fish. Rich said they liked mating over
prominences, and his head being a prominence, fish would come to him, an
icthyologist, to mate. Wild. Makes you feel like washing your hair, but still,
wild. Similarly, Hall said the hammerheads were mating, twisting up together
and sinking fast, and he filmed a pair as they crashed into the reef very near
Cranston.
Right tool for the right job: manta rays and whales like divers, Hall
said, and they swam around for a long time with rebreathers on, and couldn't
find any. With the noise of open circuit, they find you. There is more to
rebreathers than just silence, however: these filmmakers are usually shallower
than 100 feet, and the long bottom times the rebreathers give them is a real
advantage. Hall also said a Cis-Lunar wasn't ideal for him; he'd prefer
something more streamlined.
Hall, one of the most entertaining speakers of the weekend, also
talked about the use of the 3D Imax camera. Film comes in 25 pound rolls, and
each roll costs $25,000 with processing, and lasts 7 minutes. Rebreathers
don't make much difference in noise: the camera sounds like a chain saw. The
housing is the size of a refrigerator. Hall said if you had a friend who
didn't dive, or actually, several, you could take them in the housing.
I am not sure where there are 3D Imax theaters. I love Imax. I'll
watch anything in Imax. I'll go see a film on grass growing. I will go well
out of my way to see Hall's new film. He said the camera was great for things
like sea lions and bat rays, but its greatest strength was for macro work. He
filmed a surf shark being born, coming out of its case. The shark was a foot
long, a foot and a half from Hall's mask. In the theater, suspended a foot and
a half in front of you, you will see a foot long shark being born, just as
Hall saw it. Hall has shown us wonderful things in 2D. He's awfully excited
about showing us this.
The next presentation was a plug for wreck preservation, given by the
National Park Service. They have made some public service announcement
television spots, and will soon be running them in markets with high exposure
to wreck divers. I guess this is one of those equal time rules, but I found it
a bit strange, given that the new aquaCorps is called "Wreckers" and that the
next presenter was Gary Gentile. I have not read Wreckers, so I don't know how
the topic is discussed, and I'm also not sure how I feel about it myself. On
the one hand, I dream of diving on a really big wreck, like the Doria, and
getting to see the little things that show proof of human habitation, but on
the other, I'll confess that part of me really wants to take a souvenir. I
have lusted in my heart.
Gentile's talk was on the Lusitania, and he as much as said that part
of the thrill of the expedition was seeing a lot of great artifacts that had
not been taken by an earlier French team. For example, they found the bridge
telegraph. Gentile always does great research; he always tells a fascinating
story detailing the history of a wreck. Now, he told that the tragedy of the
Lusitania was worsened when, after torpedoed by a German sub, the Captain
called for engines to be reversed to stop the ship to safely lower lifeboats.
The engines never reversed, and lifeboats were tossed as they hit the water.
Here was the telegraph showing engines still ahead: the engine room never
acknowledged the order to reverse.
Gentile also detailed the techniques used to reach the wreck. Gentile
himself had previously called the wreck unreachable; it's in 310 feet of
strong tidal current. The divers had 45 minutes of slack tide to get down; 5
pairs went down, 1 pair tended the surface. Each diver checked his name off a
slate at 50 feet on the way down and on the way up; the last diver up cut a
line to cast a suspended decompression stage adrift in the current, giving the
divers an easier hang. Bottom vis was as little as 10 or 20 feet, and it took
some time to orient themselves on the wreck. The wreck itself was somewhat
intact, although the wooden decks had collapsed onto each other in an
accordion effect.
The first half of the presentation ended with a tribute to Sheck
Exley, given by his longtime friend Ned Deloach. Deloach told of how he had
met Sheck, while trying to write a book detailing caves in Florida. He was
getting little support from others; they wanted to keep the areas secret to
prevent accidents. Sheck sided with Deloach, backed him against the
opposition, and gave him a book of detailed notes on the caves. Sheck went on
to spread a lot more information about caves and cave diving, and made it a
lot safer. Finally, Billy Deans, winner of the 1994 tekkie award, presented
this year's award posthumously to Sheck.
The second half of the presentation was given by Emory Kristof, of
National Geographic, on his exploration of the Titanic. What can I say? He
teamed with some Russians for the use of two submersibles, went down with a
lot of bright lights, and came back up with an Imax film. The slides he showed
were taken with 400 and 1600 ASA print film, using only the video lighting, to
give you an idea of its strength. I was surprised to see that he used print,
rather than slide film; in fact, the images were transferred to PhotoCD, then
onto the slides he was showing us, without much loss of quality. None, really.
I've never really liked print film, and I have no experience with photoCD. I
didn't expect it to be that good, but it was great.
#----------------------------------------------------#
Roger Carlson H 310-frogger
Somewhere off Hermosa Beach, CA W 310-813-0858
Roger_Carlson@at*.sp*.tr*.co* F 310-812-1363
#----------------------------------------------------#
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