A device that lets you breathe underwater without the tanks?

[drbill]

Gills?

 

[crpntr133]

Gills?

There you go, straight from the Dr's keyboard. Gills is the answer.

 

[mongoose]

I like the gills idea, seems to work alright for fish.

I like the gills idea too, but wouldn't they have to have a massive amount of square footage to support our big sweaty warm-blooded mammal metabolism?

And, wouldn't they have to be hooked directly into our aortas? :11:

I like diving and all, but sheesh

 

[doctormike]

I like the gills idea too, but wouldn't they have to have a massive amount of square footage to support our big sweaty warm-blooded mammal metabolism?

And, wouldn't they have to be hooked directly into our aortas? :11:

I like diving and all, but sheesh

Bloodstream, yes... but not necessarily the aorta. When you use your toaster, you don't need to plug directly into the main cable coming out of the power plant...! Just like dialysis, any reasonably large vein and artery will do (patients on dialysis sometimes have a connection between a vein and artery in the forearm created for this purpose...

Gills do have a lot of square footage, but so do our lungs. And active fish like sharks, etc... use a lot of energy, even if they don't need to maintain body temperatures...

 

[DiveGolfSki]

Check this out!
http://www.isracast.com/tech_news/310505_tech.htm

No idea if it's true or not, just announced recently.

If the device extracts oxygen, I suspect the laws of physics still apply and this would mean that the device would be good only to 20 feet (PPO2 etc.).

 

[Vie]

I've seen in some movies and shows (Star Wars, Pokemon) these things that the people put in their mouth and they could breathe underwater while using them. I'm thinking that they work by filtering the oxygen from the water to you. If these exist, where can I get one?

There is no such device on the market but there is the extremely small (for such a device) Japanese EOBA rebreather:

http://www.rebreathers.de/de/modelle/o2/ouba/ouba.php
http://www.therebreathersite.nl/ulo's.htm
http://www.therebreathersite.nl/Zuurstofrebreathers/Japan/eoba.htm

This rebreather was shown at DEMA in the early ’90s and was designed to be used for ten minutes at a maximum depth of 16 feet. There is a little information and a small illustration of the EOBA on pages 20 and 22 in Steve Barsky, Mark Thurlow and Mike Ward’s The Simple Guide to Rebreather Diving, published by Best Publishing Company, Flagstaff, 1998.

 

[DiveGolfSki]

There is no such device on the market but there is the extremely small (for such a device) Japanese EOBA rebreather:

http://www.rebreathers.de/de/modelle/o2/ouba/ouba.php
http://www.therebreathersite.nl/ulo's.htm
http://www.therebreathersite.nl/Zuurstofrebreathers/Japan/eoba.htm

This was shown at DEMA in the early ’90s and was designed to be used for ten minutes at a maximum depth of 16 feet. There is a little information and a small illustration of the EOBA on pages 20 and 22 in Steve Barsky, Mark Thurlow and Mike Ward’s The Simple Guide to rebreather Diving, published by Best Publishing Company, Flagstaff, 1998.

Thanks Vie for the site. The trouble with these simplified "mini-rebreathers" is just that ... no electronics, limited depth, high risk of CO2 buildup. I still think the force feld Star Trek is the way to go.

 

[rndboulder]

Gills?

Cousteau was Convinced that gills were the future:

Homo Aquaticus-the new breed of "humanfish" that were willing to surgically alter their bodies with artificial gills to allow them to breathe under water?

Famed undersea explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau was convinced that Homo Aquaticus was next step in human evolution. "We are now moving toward an alteration of human anatomy," Cousteau told the World Congress on Underwater Activities in 1962, "to give man almost unlimited freedom underwater."



"It will happen," Captain Cousteau was saying. "Surgery will affix a set of artificial gills to man's circulatory system-- right here at the neck-- which will permit him to breathe oxygen from the water like a fish. Then the lungs will be by-passed and he will be able to live and breathe in any depth for any amount of time without harm.

"Do you realize what that will mean? He will be able to observe, train, cultivate, and exploit the seas at first-hand. Maybe the first man will be an undersea farmer, or miner, or rancher. Maybe just a scientist. At any rate, there will be no depth-time barrier, we know that. When his duties are done, he will be rehabilitated to air breathing by more surgery. It will happen, I promise you."

Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau

on Homo Aquaticus

-Ryan

 

[Chummer]

This has been very informative.
Now...what about the issue of seeing clearly without a mask?

 

[Vie]

Cousteau was Convinced that gills were the future:

Homo Aquaticus-the new breed of "humanfish" that were willing to surgically alter their bodies with artificial gills to allow them to breathe under water?

Famed undersea explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau was convinced that Homo Aquaticus was next step in human evolution. "We are now moving toward an alteration of human anatomy," Cousteau told the World Congress on Underwater Activities in 1962, "to give man almost unlimited freedom underwater."

Jacques Mayol was convinced that free diving was the future.

He explained his ideas in his book Homo Delphinus, now available from Idelson Gnocchi Publishers under the tile Homo Delphinus, The Dolphin Within Man. The term Homo Delphinus refers to individuals who are aquatic as a dolphin, share the same love of the ocean and recognize the importance of protecting it and keeping it pure. Mayol believed that people will be some day be capable of swimming at depths of 200 meters and holding their breath for up to ten minutes.

According to Mayol, “One day babies of the future will be reconnected to the aquatic evolutionary past. They will be totally in harmony with the sea and diving and playing at great depth with their marine cousins, holding the breath for a long period of time and giving birth in the sea even in the presence of dolphins. Homo Delphinus is not just a concept.”