| SCUBA - The Underwater World |
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| National Association of Underwater Instructor's patch with the 20 year wreath |
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Since I was a child, I have always loved the water. In Panama, a child learns to swim almost before they can walk or even crawl. As an elementary school student, I was a member of the famous Red, White and Blue Troop, a well-coached swim team, some of who's members became Olympic champions. We put on demonstrations during WW II for passing troop ships in the Panama Canal Locks all the time. The Lock Controllers would flood a chamber across from the troop ship, lane lines would be stretched across the 110' wide lock, and we would swim races while the troops heading off to war would cheer us on.
In the mid 1950's I became involved in skin diving, at that time with only a mask, fins and a snorkel. This followed many years of swimming off the shorelines of Panama in the middle of sharks and other dangers of all kinds. As a kid, we did this routinely.
When SCUBA appeared on the scene, I was one of those fortunate ones that got hooked on that right away. In the Los Angeles County area a SCUBA Instructor Training Program was initiated by the Department of Parks and Recreation of Los Angeles County to train Instructors on this new method of enjoying the ocean in order to train the rising number of individuals that were taking up this sport. I was in one of the first Instructor Training classes and ended up the number one graduate in a class full of ex-Navy divers. Because of this achievement, I was voted onto the LA County Underwater Board of Directors where I participated in the establishment of the rules and regulations for SCUBA in Southern California. I was also very involved in investigation of diving deaths to try to determine the cause of so many deaths in the early days of diving.
It wasn't long after this that a group of we instructors got together and decided that a National Program should be initiated using the LA County Program as a model. Thus the birth of the National Association of Underwater Instructors. My Instuctor number, a special number for those that originated the NAUI, is A-25. Now there are tens of thousands of instructors all over the world.
After quite a few deaths that occured because of the faulty equipment and lack of training, it soon became mandatory that in order to fill a SCUBA tank with air, the individual buying the air had to be certified through the LA County program.
I was running classes every night of the week, and on weekends spent the time either at Catalina Island or the Channel Islands off the coast of Ventura County with students, introducing them to the safe way to dive. When we couldn't get a boat to reach the islands, we entered the surf along California's many beaches.
It wasn't until years later that I acquired my own boat, a 30' Cris Craft cabin cruiser, twin screw, to take students out to the islands on my own. I had bought this boat in Houston while working there for NASA. It had been washed up on the beach in Galveston during a major hurricane, and I bought it for almost nothing. I completely rebuilt this beautiful boat and it turned out to be a real jewel in the diving business. |
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| My working clothes - I had already done a stint working as a Navy SEAL in the Navy's Dolphin Program. I also was heavily involved in SCUBA instruction. I have put thousands of students through the training required to make them safe in the water. |
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| A great hobby |
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I was a certified diving instructor and was teaching a lot of Navy people how to dive safely. But before being allowed to operate in the Navy Dolphin Program, I also had to be a certified Navy diver.
The Navy Department in1958 had decided that it wanted to know something about dolphins and whether this magnificent animal of the seas could help the Navy with some of the jobs they had humans doing.
I was picked to be in the initial group of people in 1960 that were to do this study. But before I could get into the program, I had to pass through the Navy school that produced divers. I went off to school at Coronado and successfully completed the course of instruction.
Details of that Program with the Dolphin are covered in another section of this web site.
These experiences in my early professional years allows me now to give lectures, not only on working with dolphins, but also on oceanography, a thrilling subject to lecture about to audiences on ships that are on the water at that moment. I have also been given a chance to participate in another wonderful activity, that of being an Advisor to the Manager of the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary, an effort by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to preserve those natural and national resources in our oceans. What a great opportunity this has been for me.
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These are some photos from the early days of SCUBA diving in Southern California. We didn't have good cameras, and the underwater housing for cameras had not yet made its debut, so the photos are poor, but at least it gives you and idea of the new world we were discovering. SCUBA was brand new. We were the first users in the world of this new way of exploring underwater.
Our first SCUBA regulators were terrible. We had one we called the "Widow Maker" because so many were killed using it. It was made by a local aerospace company that was making oxygen masks and other breathing equipment for fighter airplanes. They didn't quite catch on to how to build these things, but we used them anyway.
Finally Jacque Cousteau in France came up with a two hose regulator that worked. He personally gave me ten sets of regulators and tanks to use in our SCUBA classes so that people would be exposed to them and maybe buy them. They were painted a bright yellow which I thought was a little much! Then US Divers made a deal with Jacque and started building them here in So Cal.
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| Typical of the size of our lobsters in the late 50's and early 60's. Nobody told us that if we took all the big ones, there would be no lobster left in the ocean in this area. That's exactly what happened and lobster became scarce by the 1970's. Of course the commercial guys contributed in a big way to this also. |
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| I once caught a lobster that ran from my chin to my knees. I stuck him onto my wet suit in this manner and he stuck his pointed legs through my wet suit into my skin and when I took my suit off, it was full of blood. |
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| A typical day's lobster catch, most of these caught without SCUBA gear. |
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| A Black Sea Bass catch weighing in at about 395 pounds. These were shot with a huge spear gun. I had a special gun made up by the Navy machinists at Point Mugu out of 1- 1/2" stainless steel tubing that was 7' long with a 6' shaft. The point on the spear was an explosive head that would explode when striking the fish and drive the point deep into its flesh. Then we would hang onto the line attached to the spear/point for a ride until the fish got tired or went too deep for us and we would pop a float attached to the line and go back to the surface onto the boat to await the float coming to the surface. Then we would haul him in, take him to shore and show off our catch. |
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| Another Black that we took with a spear gun. This one only weighed in at about 250 pounds. |
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| A good sized meal this one lobster, but the problem was that when they got this large they were tough. But great for lobster thermador! |
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| A Black Sea Bass swimming in the kelp beds. Sometimes it took twenty to thirty minutes to finally get a shot at one of these animals. We would almost run out of air. These kelp forests off the California coast are fantastic. It's just like walking in a real forest, only you're swimming. |
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| This was a shore dive and the resultant catch of lobster. We never came home empty handed. |
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| Probably our most favorite food, the Red Abalone. These mollusks also became scarce. |
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| Diving students with their catch of abalone. |
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