A device that lets you breathe underwater without the tanks?

[Don Burke]

If this reaaly exists, it could be the ticket.

http://www.isracast.com/tech_news/310505_tech.htm

My first reaction to this is to not react at all.

 

[crpntr133]

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

That is way too easy. A type of contact lens that allows you to see underwater.

Well, it looks like gills were my idea and now the Aquacontact.

 

[Vie]

That is way too easy. A type of contact lens that allows you to see underwater.

They do exist—they are larger than contact lenses; they are more like swimmimg goggle lens that you stick on your eyes—there’s a picture of Jacques Mayol wearing them in his book Homo delphinus, on page 201. They are referred to as “underwater scleral lenses” and were designed for Mayol by a Dr. P. Mosse in 1970.

http://forums.deeperblue.net/archive/index.php/t-1038.html

http://www.otticarocchi.com/inglese/lentiapnea_uk.htm

 

[DiveGolfSki]

chicnstu see what you started! This is getting way out there. Homo Fishius, Jedi divers, human gills ....

The real reason why nothing has been invented is simple ... we divers like a lot of toys. Tanks, computer, snorkel, masks, regs, rebreathers ... bring them on!

 

[rndboulder]

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

Cousteau also addressed this issue with reguards to his Homo Aquaticus vision:

"Corrective lenses would be added for improved water vision. . . " JYC about 1955

-Ryan

 

[Charlie99]

http://www.isracast.com/tech_news/310505_tech.htm

Cool! Mechanical gills. If his calculations of 1kg lithium battery being good enough for 1 hour dive, and if the weight/size of the centrifuge is reasonable, then it could actually be a practical system.

 

[liberato]

Shouldn't that mechanical gill inventor Alon Bodner show up on a Google search, though? I get nothing, not even the original Israeli article. What's up with that?

 

[H2Andy]

the article shows up on the Google search, but nothing else.

also, it says he has a patent pending in the US. i searched under his name
and found nothing. also did some searches under a number of terms (tankless,
breathing, diver) and found nothing.

of course, this doesn't mean anything. they might not have updated their
database yet or something.

 

[Don Burke]

On an email list, SeaJay did some computations on how much water would need to pass through this thing. It would have to be a bunch.

As a rough figure, if seawater is .1% air by volume, then 500 liters would need to be processed every minute to come up with a half liter of air per minute. That would be quite a pump and battery on your back.

The amount of air in seawater is actually much less than that, so the amount of water would have to be much more.

The death blow is the question "Why do submarines use electrolytic oxygen generators if this thing works?"

 

[Web Monkey]

I saw one on the cover of Popular Science in the 70's and the thing was huge. It looked like 100 feet of plastic floor mat floating on the ocean.

Terry

On an email list, SeaJay did some computations on how much water would need to pass through this thing. It would have to be a bunch.

As a rough figure, if seawater is .1% air by volume, then 500 liters would need to be processed every minute to come up with a half liter of air per minute. That would be quite a pump and battery on your back.

The amount of air in seawater is actually much less than that, so the amount of water would have to be much more.

The death blow is the question "Why do submarines use electrolytic oxygen generators if this thing works?"