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Clipped this article for a friend who had him as a professor....

Legendary diver has a whale of a tale

BY SUSAN COCKINGKnight Ridder NewspapersMIAMI

- In more than 50 years of recreational and professional scuba diving, Ray McAllister has had more than a few extreme aquatic adventures.
The 82-year-old retired oceanography professor at Florida Atlantic University recently recounted a few of his underwater escapades at a Deerfield Beach dinner honoring him and several other South Florida diving luminaries.
McAllister told the gathering that he learned to scuba dive at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., in 1951 before the advent of standardized scuba certification classes.
After showing him how to use a tank and regulator, McAllister's colleagues told him, ``Don't hold your breath because it will kill you,' " he recalled with a laugh . "I made it to 90 feet and I was hooked for life."
The next day he ran out of air 160 feet deep and had to make a free ascent, exhaling the entire way. Undiscouraged, he continued diving and is believed to be the first U.S. civilian dive instructor.
At a Navy submarine research facility in Bermuda in the early 60s, McAllister and his colleagues worked on the Sealab program, diving more than 200 feet deep on compressed air to ready the site for the underwater habitat. Astronaut Scott Carpenter went down in Sealab, but McAllister never got to go inside. The program was scrapped a few years later after the death of a diver.
It was in Bermuda around 1960 when McAllister had what some might consider his most excellent (or outrageous) adventure. Aboard the Sir Horace Lamb, he saw a humpback whale laying tight against the ship, apparently rubbing her skin. For some reason, he got the idea to jump on the whale's back and try to ride it standing up alongside the boat.
"I decided to do a `look ma - no hands' on her back," McAllister wrote in his as-yet unpublished memoirs.
"I leaped onto her back and went down through a fetid, fishy spout as she blew. My left foot went into her left blowhole (there were two set side-by-side in a `V') about six inches beyond the ankle joint. She did what any intelligent beast would do if someone stuck a foot in her nostril: she started to roll away from Sir Horace and dive."
McAllister barely had enough time to push with his right foot and yank his left foot out of the blowhole, leaving his open-top Air Force boot in her nostril.
After the adrenaline wore off, McAllister realized his left ankle was badly sprained and asked someone to take him to a nearby Air Force hospital. But before he could go, he had to fill out a workman's compensation form.
"Where it asked how the accident happened, I wrote `I jumped on the back of a humpback whale and got my foot caught in her blowhole,' " McAllister recalled. `Where it asked what steps were being taken to prevent a recurrence of the accident, I wrote, `I won't jump on any more whales!' "
After one of the base commanders read the form and got through laughing, he made McAllister change it to say that he had jumped onto a dock and next time would use a gangplank. Then McAllister was taken to the hospital.
But the whale tale had an epilogue: a couple of months later, McAllister was perusing a publication called The Norwegian Whaling Gazette when he read about a 35-foot female humpback whale that had been taken off Bermuda with a shoe in her left blowhole.
He ran around the base, showing his colleagues the news item and later was invited to recount the tale at the Kindley Air Force Base Fishing Club. McAllister's was voted best in a contest of fishing stories, and he was supposed to win a Boston Whaler and fishing tackle. But the commanding officer, who was president of the club, disqualified his entry because "I was not a member of the club and it was a mammal story - not a fish story."
McAllister became a full professor at FAU in 1965 and taught there for 30 years until his retirement in 1995.
He lives in a waterfront home in Lighthouse Point where he lets a friend dock his dive boat. He stays busy writing, lecturing, exploring historic shipwrecks, and getting involved in all sorts of marine conservation causes.
"I've joined every nonprofit I can find that has something to do with the ocean," he said.
McAllister's biggest concern these days is what he sees as overpopulation of South Florida's coast. Following the devastation wrought by Hurricane Wilma, he says the federal government should gradually phase out reparations for homes and businesses east of U.S. 1.
"If your house is washed away, tough stuff," he said. "And that includes my house."
 
Call with any questions.


Don't know why this was on my clipboard.
 
Sooooo, let me know how this works out for you. I'm sure there will be plenty of purging beauts' aboard.... Hehehehehehe, take some cotton balls and soak them in rubbing alcohol, pass them out when people start feeling icky, as long as they are smelling the alcohol on the cotton ball, they feel better.. Weird! Maybe its a placebo effect, maybe not, whatever it is, it works..... Have a fantastic day, be safe!
-V

TODAY
EAST WINDS AROUND 20 KNOTS. SEAS SUBSIDING TO 5 TO 7
FEET. NORTH SWELL 3 FEET. INTRACOASTAL WATERS CHOPPY IN EXPOSED
AREAS. SLIGHT CHANCE OF SHOWERS.


SUNDAY
SOUTHEAST WINDS 15 TO 20 KNOTS. SEAS 4 TO 6 FEET.
INTRACOASTAL WATERS A MODERATE CHOP. SLIGHT CHANCE OF SHOWERS.



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