Tang is good but not the one I was looking for that evolved into civilian diving. DC4BS got it. The drysuit zipper.
Almost everything everyone has mentioned here is not new but has just been improved on. Kind of like the BASF commericials. "We don't make the products, we just make them better".
Rebreathers have been around a long long time. Regulators have been improved to the point where the top of the line single hose of the 60's would cause a diving strike if introduced today.
Liqua-vent has been around roughly 40-50 years. Artificial gills were in the works before the 50's.
Maskless diving will never catch on unless you go back to 60's style training. Watch how many people out there can't breathe through the reg without holding their nose. Even if they can do it for a short period of time they wouldn't be comfortable doing it over an entire dive.
High pressure tanks? I have access to them now but they are not good for diving. New materials make them way to light so the weight belt would be a ton. 5-6000 pounders are used by fire departments already.
People already complain about food additives. I don't even want to think about the problems with injecting some Saber Tooth Nitrogen Muncher into the blood stream.
Walter is very right about the lowering of standards in the sport. It's hard realize just how much they have been lowered when you just read about the changes. When you have lived through it one can't help buy just sit back and shake your head at how the $$ can dictate how the sport evolves.
Before long one is going to need a "H2O card" to be able to identify water as the substance this sport is done in. And the Sub-catagories, Salt, Fresh, Moving salt, Moving fresh, Brackish, Contained, Non-contained, Wet, soft hard or dry.
I just looked back at the H2O card and we already have some of those.
Have fun, enjoy what you have and don't try and over think what's going on. Roll with the flow and you'll be a lot happier. Let Sigmond figure out the wierd stuff.
Gary D.
