Info Old Greek documentary on coral mining (mid-1980s')

[Vicko]

There is this gem too.

Coral divers were the pioneers of accelerated deco, trimix and rebreathers in the Med, only they did not talk about it as their pay check was directly related to scarcity of red corral.
There was a guy in Siciliy diving a homemade mccr well bellow 100m back in the 90s.

 

[Antonios (Holy Diver)]

Well, knowing the Greek alphabet, but not the Greek language, I can transliterate but not translate the video title:
To kokkino koralli katadush sta 80 metra.

I'm guessing that koralli means coral and 80 metra means 80 meters. So if I knew what katadush meant, I would have the gist of iT

Well, knowing the Greek alphabet, but not the Greek language, I can transliterate but not translate the video title:
To kokkino koralli katadush sta 80 metra.

I'm guessing that koralli means coral and 80 metra means 80 meters. So if I knew what katadush meant, I would have the gist of it.

It is translated: "The red coral, dive at 80 meters". Pronounced: "To kokkino koralli, katatheesee sta ogthonta metra." (Well, I am not a linguist, so my transliteration is a bit sketchy...)

 

[Antonios (Holy Diver)]

There is this gem too.

Coral divers were the pioneers of accelerated deco, trimix and rebreathers in the Med, only they did not talk about it as their pay check was directly related to scarcity of red corral.
There was a guy in Siciliy diving a homemade mccr well bellow 100m back in the 90s.

Astounding!. There are some similarities between the two documentaries although I must admit that Dionysis (the boatman with the hat in the the greek documentary) is not as charming as Nadine (his French counterpart in Cousteau's film)...

There is this gem too.

Coral divers were the pioneers of accelerated deco, trimix and rebreathers in the Med, only they did not talk about it as their pay check was directly related to scarcity of red corral.
There was a guy in Siciliy diving a homemade mccr well bellow 100m back in the 90s.

Do we have any hint about this CCR, or their deco plans?

 

[Vicko]

Astounding!. I suspected that the Greek narrator was based a bit on Cousteau's documentary, although I must confess that Dionysis (the boatman with the hat in the the greek documentary) is not as charming as Nadine (the French girl /ex-hairdresser/ scuba diver) in Cousteau's film...

Do we have any hint about this CCR, or their deco plans?

It was a modified drager o2 unit that was fully manual, no electronics or sensors, the whole documentary was available in italian on Vimeo but it was deleted a few years ago sadly.

 

[Antonios (Holy Diver)]

Hi Antonios,

The comments in bold in my quote surprised me. Could you explain more about it or do you have any links with more information? I am just curious, I never heard about this.

Thanks


And thanks for the video. I could not understand it, but I liked the video.

It was also interesting to see the dive equipment they were using. I saw what looked like two Dacor first stages and at least one Scubapro 109 second stage. The first diver had either a Dacor second stage or a metal US Divers second stage. Mostly late 70's or early 80's dive gear.

Until 2005, Greek law prohibited all forms of recreational diving, excluding two tiny stretches of coast near Athens and in Kalymnos island, for the sake of commercial divers's training. I had a first hand experience of this prohibition in 2004. Along with some others we enrolled in an OW course in South Greece (Back then I had no idea of the prohibition, and the instructor assured us that everything was fine). End of story: each one of us was summoned to the local Coast Guard headquarters and fined 70 euros for violating the Greek law.