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After all the negative email in recent times over the Oztek conference and without getting into the rights and wrongs of canning JJ here is a summary of the 2 days. Oztek 2000, 8 and 9 July, 2000, Melbourne, Australia. Friday evening - piss up (drinks) on the Polly Woodside, a restored triple master - would be nice dive if moved out of the Yarra but the rigging would create an entanglement hazard - for some strange reason it was still floating. Saturday kicked off with a slight hangover and the 'sad' news that Tom Mount would not be able to make the conference. Anyway Gary Gentile and Bernie Chowdhury gave presentations on development of technical diving type things with pretty pictures - historical Scarpa, Doria etc. The next presentation was quite interesting - Chris Parrett explained basic VPM and RGBM theory and happened to make it almost understandable. He advocates a bounce dive to squash micronuclei prior to a deep diving sequence - the jury is still out on this one. He also advocates nice slow ascents from the bottom and plenty of deep stops from early on - hey, this sounds familiar. The theory is all Wienke. The drawback with Parrett was the blatant plug to spend heaps of dollars on expensive Abyss software - not at all subtle. An historical presentation on the RMS Niagara was given by one of Maynard's buddies - JM did not turn up for some reason - probably had the same bug Mount had. This was followed by David Apperley giving a presentation on diving the Niagara and the Pearce Resurgence on an Inspiration (and surviving). Sounds an awesome dive. Check this link for his story: http://www.divenewzealand.com/51niagara3.html Bernie Chowdhury's talk and photos of diving the Iceland caves was interesting for no other reason than the extreme conditions and unique geological situation in diving between the American and the European tectonic plates. Lamar Hires (Dive Rite) told us how wonderful his underwater cave rescue group was and impressed me as being terribly heroic and somewhat bombastic. He must know what he is doing just look at the gear he manufactures. Ok, Ok - toungue out of cheek mode engaged. Noel Taylor from Dive Adventures has no difficulty interesting people in travelling to Vanuatu to dive the Coolidge and caves but was stretching it to get people immediately interested in doing the Solomons to dive the amoured D9 - oh sorry it hasn't sunk yet, maybe next wet season. Saturday night featured an interesting presentation by Olivier Isler the Swiss cave diver who does long distances (4,3?? meters) in French sumps with a triple redundant rebreather solo - he obviously did not want to dive with strokes. The photos were good and even though his English is not great he has a dry sense of humour. Gary Gentile gave a very interesting presentation of his slides on the USS Monitor and told some of the story of the battle against the NOAA to dive the wreck. Great photos and fantastic vis on the wreck for at least some of the dives. Sunday was lead off by a talk on the Draeger recreational rebreathers and a look at some of the things they are doing but not selling. The Draeger 80 is for mix to 80 metres but is not available - research model only. I next attended the Inspiration talk - mostly because I had heard that the guy doing the talk on Chambers in the Pacific was dead boring - everyone else must have got the same news. Good to see that the Inspiration has fixed the problem that allowed people to recalibrate at depth. Interesting presentation which almost makes one wish they had a spare $A12,500 and then you think about some of those that did. Dr Simon Mitchell from the Brisbane Hyperbaric Unit is a Kiwi who not only professes to have heard all the sheep jokes ever told but can tell some of them quite well too. He also gave a great talk on DCI concentrating on Bubble Trouble and basically giving a little more practical slant to the theory addressed the day before by Parrett. Mind you having just done one advice and set of pleadings on a DCI case and having one more to do this week these 2 presentation made my entire weekend tax deductible - nice if you can get it. John Riley spoke about the discovery of the Tasman (off Hobart, Tasmania) and showed some of Mark Spencer's photos and someone else's video of the wreck. It was interesting - the wreck that is, and appears to have some wonderful vis if in water a little cold. Yeah I know that's why the bloody vis is good, thank the person above for dry suits. Nice photos and video. Riley approached Gerry Chia during the weekend and was a little upset that Gerry wrote an article on the Woniora (current Dive Log) which suggested that Riley sneaked back onto the Woniora after he and Gleeson found it and took the bell before they carried out their next planned dive. Funny actually but I was there when Riley told Gerry exactly that. Bernie Chowdhury spoke about Full face masks, gas blocks and comms - he had to wear one several years ago because of ear trouble - boring. Following lunch Garry Gentile gave a presentation on the Lusitania expedition led by Polly Tapson in '94 . The photos were great and the dive looks awesome - just ignore some of the gear configuration, well I did anyway. That was about it for us we missed Neil Vincent on McCavity and Nuno Gomes on Namibia because we had to jet back to Sydney. The commercial exhibits in the Boat Show were close by but not jammed on top of the conference. There was the usual assortment of vastly expensive "Tech" BCD's, lights, rebreathers, drysuits, sunglass masks, funny flat Zeagle fins with cordura and vecro attachments costing more than the Gross Domestic Product and stickers from IANTD promoting deep air. One of the rebreathers exhibited near the conference was a Halcyon one owned by Steve Mercer from NZ who conducted a session in the workshop on it. Unfortunately it was on at the same time as the Lusitania presentation and the wreck won out. Regards Steve Bliim -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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