Just for the records, the Conshelf III was deep, but they used a recirculating Heli-ox on hoses, with a special regulator which looked like a double hose, but was highly modified. They had triple tanks with a single hose regulator for a backup.
On Conshelf II, Raymond Kientzy was authorized to dive to 100 meters on heliox, 330 feet. He actually dove to 363 feet, according to Cousteau in his book,
World Without Sun. They were diving the Spiro Mistral.
Jerry Greenbarg, in his small book
Manfish with a Camera, reports that in 1953 Hope Root tried for a record depth. Sonar traced his dive.
The sonar traced Root to the record breaking depth of 400'. At this point he seemed to be conscious. He stopped, went down another 50', paused again and then plummeted to below the 600' level like a rock. The control boats joined with a Coast Guard helicopter in a futile search. Hope Root was never seen again.
Greenberg, Jerry, Manfish with a Camera, The SeaHawk Press, Miami, Florida, 1971. pages 13-14
Root was shown wearing an U.S. Divers Overpressure regulator (their first single stage double hose regulator) for the attempt, and a twin 72 tank setup (from the photo) with a very weird cross-over (the tanks each had what looks like a K-valve with a tube between them; the regulator was on the left tank, as there was no center post).
Jacques Cousteau himself made a dive to 50 fathoms (300 feet) using the two stage Aqualung (Le Spiro's equivalent) in 1947. They were exploring the effects of nitrogen narcosis, and diving on air at this point. Maurice Fargus, one of Cousteau's divers, dove below fifty fathoms, again on air. Somewhere below 300 feet, he lost consciousness and drowned. Cousteau, in
The Silent World, pegged the extreme limit of 300 feet for diving on air. It was the breathing medium, and not the type of regulator, which limits the depth for diving.
The death of Fargues and the lessons of the summer showed that three hundred feet is the extreme boundary of compressed-air diving. Amateurs can be trained in a few days to reach one hundred and thirty feet, and there professionals, observing decmpression tables, may do almost any sort of hard work. In the next zone down to two hundred and ten feet experienced divers may perform light labor and make short explorations if rigid safety rules are followed. In the zone of rapture below only the highly skilled aqualunger may venture for a brief reconnaissance. Free divers could range considerably beyond the fifty-fathom layer by breathing oxygen mixed with lighter gases such as helium and hydrogen. While it has been proved that helium removes the causes of depth drunkensess, such dives would still require long tedious ours of decompression.
Dumas slightly improved the standing free-diving record in 1948 on a mission that had no such intent. He was called out to survey an obstacle believed to be an uncharted wreck, that had fouled the drag cables of a minesweeper. When he came aboard he learned that the depth had been sounded at three hundred and six feet. Dumas kicked up his fins and swam down in ninety seconds. The cable was snagged on a low rock. He studied the situation for a minute and returned as quickly as he had descended. He had not been subjected to enough nitrogen saturation to cause the bends.
Cousteau, J.Y., The Silent World, Harper & Brothers Publishers, New York, 19534, pages 114-179 (photos between the two pages)
In his book,
Basic Scuba Fred Roberts reports on a chamber dive he made to test a new (at that time) double hose regulator by DESCO. He dove to 380 feet, and upon ascent experienced a blackout which came without warning. Again, he was diving on air. Luckily, he had a very tight chin strap holding his mouthpiece in place.
The descent had taken eight and a half minutes from the surface and 30 seconds on the bottom for a total dive of 9 minutes duration. I remember very little of the many things that went through my mind. I was apparently "out" but I do remember having what seemed to be dreams. At first there was a total blackout. Then a vague sense of consciousness. I would never care to have the feeling of that half-world of unreality again.
MY BLACKOUT CAME WITH ABSOLUTELY NO WARNING. There was no physical unpleasantness connected with it--I was conscious one moment, and unconscious the next.
As I began to wake up I remembered two incidents which occurred during my semi-conscious state. The first may have been the factor that resulted in the death of Diving Master Maurice Fargues, a member of Captain J. Y. Cousteau's diving team, who descended to the remarable depth of 396 feet. This also may have cost a Miami attorney, Hope Root, his life on his 400 foot air dive, from which he never returned.
For some reason, all at once I could not seem to get enough air to breathe. (Footnote: Possibly the result of acute hyperventilation.) My lungs felt as though they were on fire and I had the urge to open my mouth wide and take deep breaths. Fortunately this sensation apparently did not last too long, and I had fastened my mouthpiece around my head and in my mouth so hard that the corners of my mouth were stretched over the edges, and this would not possibly allow me to open my mouth. Finally the sensation was gone and I could breathe easily again.
The body of Diving Master Maurice Fargues was recovered via a life line with "his mouthpiece hanging at his chest. Perhaps he too felt the urge to open his mouth wide and found only water to inhale. He died of drowning. No one can say what happened to Root since Sonar lost him at 400 feet in 600 feet of water.
The second urge I had was to relax completely. For a tim I weven dreamed I was home in bed. By now, howevere, the self-preservation mechanism was apparently working, because I seemed to tighten my grip on the ladder. My observer said my knuckles were white from holding on so firmly.
Thenwave afterwave of noise penetrated my consciousness. Each was similar to the Doppler effect one hears when an approaching auto blows its horn--the pitch of the sound becomes progressively louder, then fades away as the auto disappears in the distance. It was caused by the veer decreasing tank pressure and my ears periodically clearing. I now fully realized what had happened, and it was with a sigh of relief that I looked at the now welcome sight of the tank interior. THe depth was somewhere between 320 and 300 feet on the way up...
...No one con fully realize the folly in such a dive until he has just lived through one. Air is a very lethal mixture below 300 feet...
...The final results showed two things. I had experienced nitrogen narcosis at 75 feet when diving to 197 feet at Kenosha, Wisconsin in cold water (while seasick). Here the same narcosis returned at about the same depth in relatively hot water. It would seem possible that an individual has a specific tolerance for nitrogen,* and will get narcosis at the same depth no matter how he feels and regardless of the water temperature. This is naturally a personal observation; someone else could make the same combination of dives and experience a different pattern.
The second finding was that the single stage regulator under test performed very well. The ony unhappy situation which developed was that the moist heat generated by the incoming air above the water completely melted the candy bars I had saved for a decompression snack.
My primary reason for including two rather deep dives in this section is to illustrate the folly of making a dive of this nature without proper preparation. Deep dives are not for the beginner, and should not be attempted by the average diver. In other words, deep diving is not to be encouraged. The diver looking for new avenues of attack, and interested in useful accomplishments, need not tempt fate by deep diving. Many more useful applications of SCUBA are readily available.
*Or partial pressure oxygen if Hannes Keller's concept of "rapture" is correct.
Roberts, Fred M. Basic Scuba, Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus, Second Edition,D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc., Princeton, New Jersey, 1963, pgs. 427-429,
It is interesting to note that apparently the
DESCO single stage double hose regulator Fred Roberts dove was only offered for sale for about six months (see the link to a photo and writeup at Vintage Scuba Supply). There is a picture in the book of Fred Roberts with the regulator, but the body itself cannot be seen, only the hoses. The only other illustration is a drawing of him in the tank, wearing regulator in the normal position, and another on the wall apparently as a backup.
SeaRat
