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  I wrote:-
>   As with over-rigid controls on sport diving in various countries ...
> Compare with that on the south coast of England I heard 2 years ago reports
> of naval divers on operations attacking sport divers who they found
> underwater while on operation, even though the sport divers involved were
> breaking no law or regulation.

  That message caused criticism; I pointed out in reply that these incidents
were reported to me from a good source but were local and untypical.
  On later thought I thought that perhaps the UK navy had something secret
somewhere off that coast (Dorset (England), where there are several important
armed forces bases and facilities on land and coastal). I reflected later that
perhaps the incidents were when some diving UK naval patrol-squad took the law
into their own hands and went in hard on some civilian sport divers who once
too often strayed too near something secret underwater or looked like getting
in the way of an exercise. I was not blaming any sort of naval work-diver.
  I read once of French diving sea-police who <are> allowed to dive on and
arrest diving suspects underwater (for e.g. breach of spearfishing laws, etc).
  Of various countries' attitudes towards diving, it seems that in one of the
nations where I would have most thought that scuba diving would be tightly
controlled and licenced, namely the old USSR, there was (and likely still is)
no general control, but anyone who has an aqualung (`akvalang' in Russian) can
use it. If he can afford the kit and the means of getting to a diving site
with the Russian economy like it is. If he is built like a walrus so he can
withstand cold Russian water in the thin wetsuits they have (I have seen TV
film of Russians swimming bare-skin in winter in water with thick ice on). I
fear that if Western diving gear gets into the Russian market much, native
Russian diving gear manufacture won't last long unless they take a lot of
advice from examining Western diving gear and talking to its users.

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