Submerged by Daniel Lenihan

[tracydr]

I purchased this from Amazon for my Kindle, not expecting much. It's about a group of underwater archeologists for the National Park Service. Honestly, it sat on my kindle for months because I thought it would be terribly boring.
I was wrong! This book starts at the infancy of cave diving. The author is one of the early cave divers in Florida and relates a very interesting trip to the Huatla region of Mexico with his good friend Scheck. He also does some body recoveries with Scheck, among a few other names cavers might recognize.
They go on to the South Pacific, Great Lakes wreck diving ( back when drysuits were new and scarey).
This is a fascinating book with lots of history about diving in the 70s-80s, lots of near-death stories and plenty to keep almost any type of diver entertained.
Not the dry archeology book that I was expecting, not at all. The writer is an excellent and entertaining writer. The book flows and is easy to read. Highly recommend!

 

[TSandM]

I agree! I really enjoyed this book, and there is a lot of history in it.

 

[tracydr]

I was really expecting a dry book steeped in boring history/archeology and maybe even poorly written at best. I've picked up and put down a few of these. But this book was a very pleasant surprise and I had a hard time putting it down to go to sleep a few nights.
Another book with great history and some hairy episodes is the book Descent Into Darkness. Its about Naval Divers at Pearl Harbor.

 

[Tortuga68]

I read it last year after a recommendation here on SB, and also enjoyed it

A couple of nitpicks: in the first few chapters, the stories aren't actually about diving, so it took me a while to warm up to it, but glad I persisted. Also, he does get a little preachy about conservation from time to time, but that's to be expected given his role

Definitely worth a read

 

[FinnMom]

I too have written about this book here. Enjoyed it the 1st time & have actually re-read large sections of it several times. This guy was a friend of Shech Exley and talks about decades of diving in places all over the globe. Also enjoyable because each chapter is a small, completely separate story. This makes it possible to jump in months later and read a little bit without losing the jist of the story. Liked it very much!

 

[Tortuga68]

Shech Exley

Scheck

Sorry to be a nitpicker but it's Sheck

 

[FinnMom]

Sorry to be a nitpicker but it's Sheck

That's not nitpicking, that's worth knowing. I hang my head in shame.