Please Share Sea Hunt Memories

[almitywife]

My favorite episode called "The Roustabout" was about a guy who gets trapped when a bunch of debris falls on him. The only guy available to help Mike is a commercial diver who has a rebreather. "You know those things will kill ya" Mike says. The RB guy takes a couple of oxtox hits after diving to below 50 ft. Great stuff

i think they were talking about this on rebreatherworld as last night hubby stayed up late downloading seahunt episodes and laughing so much even i got out of bed to see what was so funny.....

 

[Couv]

Funny? AMW, how can you say Sea Hunt is funny? Why just yesterday I was watching Mike Nelson sorting out problems when he stated this gem, "what she needed was a good spanking, but I didn't have time to give it to her."

We took those shows very seriously when I was a kid....what you need...;-)

 

[james croft]

Sea Hunt and Mike Nelson is why I wear my mask on the forehead.

 

[shakeybrainsurgeon]

Wacthing some of those old episodes graciously posted on you tube --- did you notice that getting bent on Sea Hunt was something akin to having a bad cold, and that being popped into a chamber was not a big deal? Like being put into a phone booth for a few minutes and presto! good as new...

Also note the lack of spg's...he's always guessing how much air was left in some hapless victim's tank.

 

[Tom Winters]

I used to watch Sea Hunt all the time when I was a little kid, along with Lincoln Vale of the Everglades. Probably why I've been diving for 46 years and moved near the Everglades when I could have lived anywhere in the world.
The coolest thing was his little CO2 marker floats and popping magnesium flares underwater. My uncle had a set of dive gear made in 1955 so I taught myself how to dive with that and the NOAA diving manual in 1961. I never did get any of the CO2 floats though. I did get the tank and reg that I dived with all those decades ago this past summer.

 

[Couv]

...snip.....

Also note the lack of spg's...he's always guessing how much air was left in some hapless victim's tank.

No way....listen very carefully to Mike. "He has about 30 minutes of air down there." This was said often. Until I actually took diving lessons, I thought that 1 tank equated to :30 bottom time. I never made the connection with the length of the program. :11doh:

Back then, due to the unbalanced nature of the regulators, a diver could tell when he was getting low on air because the difficulty of breathing became increased as tank pressure decreased. Also, the J valve was sometimes used. In "The Female" you can see that Mike's diving companion has a J valve. Unfortunately, it is in the down position.

 

[Gary D.]

Wacthing some of those old episodes graciously posted on you tube --- did you notice that getting bent on Sea Hunt was something akin to having a bad cold, and that being popped into a chamber was not a big deal? Like being put into a phone booth for a few minutes and presto! good as new...

Also note the lack of spg's...he's always guessing how much air was left in some hapless victim's tank.

That’s not that far off. Lots of people went for rides and didn’t think much about it.

The SPG, BC, Octo and several other items had not even been invented yet. If they were they were in the development stages still in a lab somewhere.

Diving back then was basically a container of air and a way to get it into your body with not many options. One did not rely on gear as they do today.

Gary D.

 

[Luis H]

Back then, due to the unbalanced nature of the regulators, a diver could tell when he was getting low on air because the difficulty of breathing became increased as tank pressure decreased.

Actually, in an unbalanced diaphragm two stage regulator (double hose or otherwise) it gets easier to breath as the tank pressure goes down. You can still tell somewhat that the tank pressure is going down, but it is not as good of a warning as in an unbalanced piston regulator.

The same is true for most one stage regulator, but I think they mostly used two stage Voit regulators in Sea Hunt.

The high pressure valve opens up stream in most (not all) single stage double hose and all unbalanced diaphragm two stage regulators. There was at least one Voit single stage regulator that used a unique design (from Emile Gagnon) were the valve opened downstream, but I don’t know if any were used in Sea Hunt.

 

[caymaniac]

I remember watching Sea Hunt on Sat. nights with my brother, it was one of our fav. shows.
Once when I was misbehaving my Mom promised to buy me a gift if I would straighten up, I chose a sub toy that had several frogmen who could ride on it ....I played in the tub for hours with it. The dog finally chewed it up and I had to throw it away.
Then I got a mask for my birthday and a snorkel, we only lived about a mile from the beach on Lake Mich. ( the snorkel was about two foot long and had a curve at the end with a pingpong ball in it so water wouldn't go down the snorkel if you went too deep...it never worked very good). Anyway, Sea Hunt stilled ruled as I wasted myself in front of the TV, mezmerized by the adventures of Mike Nelson.
My fav. episode is one where a diver gets his foot caught in a giant clam ....HA , ha , ha, now I know this is an impossibility, but then this was serious business. Mike had to make a surface attempt and leave his tank with the diver....it's all kinda blurry after that!
After diving in Australia and PNG and seeing those beautiful giant clams I certainly realize how ludicrous that show was, but I loved it

 

[chuck e]

I recently bought one of the sets on Amazon and the quality is quite good considering. I used to watch when I was a kid and was fascinated by the underwater action. I knew nothing about scuba then, but I am constantly amazed at these shows now seen through the eyes of a diver. Along with the aforementioned rebreather episode, there was another in which the villian wants to borrow Mike's equipment using helium air (trimix?). This is 1957! Dives to 200' or more are routine. Unfortunately Mike's fish identification is rather poor. In separate episodes he refers to a spotted eagle ray and a southern stingray as manta rays!