The Top Stories of 2022

Header image by InDEPTH art director SJ Alice Bennett. Two Dirty Dozen rebreather divers exploring a sunken armored tank at Chuuk Lagoon.

Greetings tekkies and mission-oriented divers,

January marks our fourth full year publishing InDEPTH, and it has arguably been our best year yet for content. In 2022, we published 113 new stories, and conducted seven surveys with our partner, The Business of Diving Institute—yes, it’s all about the data!

Rebreathers, of course, were the hot topic in 2022, particularly as helium prices continued to rise and availability was limited in some areas. In response, we offered a variety of stories on rebreather diving including in-depth looks at various units.

This burgeoning interest in rebreathers comes at a time when diving professionals from around the world will be headed to Malta this coming April for an industry, governmental and scientific symposium called Rebreather Forum 4. If you are professionally involved in rebreather diving, we encourage you to attend. 

I would like to thank our readers and subscribers, for your continuing interest and support. We want to be your number one, go-to source for serious diving content, and we will continue to work hard to win your loyalty! I also want to thank our many contributors from the global tech community, whose work and labors of love are represented here and elsewhere in InDEPTH. Thank you for your contributions! Special shout to our phenomenal, go-to picture makers and writers Jason Brown, Stratis Kas and Fan Ping! Keep your eyes on them people!

Lastly, I want to thank our illustrious sponsors, who make InDEPTH possible! Please join me in giving a big shout out to; Azoth Systems, Buddy Dive Resort, DAN Europe, Dirty Dozen Expeditions, Dive Rite, Divesoft, Extreme Exposure, Fathom Systems, Fourth Element, Halcyon Dive Systems, O’Three, OZTek, Shearwater Research, and The Human Diver. Thank you!! We hope that you will support these depth full diving brands!

In what has now become a tradition, we kick off the New Year with 10 hand-curated stories from our growing sea of content in The Top Stories of 2022. They represent some of the most read, important, intriguing and fun stories from the last year. We hope you will enjoy them!

We would appreciate it, if you would take a few minutes to complete our annual Reader’s Survey. This will help us deliver better content to your inbox. Our thanks in advance for your help!

 We have some exciting stories planned for 2023, so stay tuned!

Safe diving,
Michael Menduno/M2
Editor-in-chief

Here are the results of our 2022 surveys that we conducted with the Business of Diving Institute: InDEPTH’s 2022 Surveys .

There’s also a FREE DOWNLOAD of aquaCORPS #6 COMPUTING for you at the bottom of the page!

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Divers Helping Divers: Next Stop Ukraine

June 1, 2022

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1. Will Open Circuit Go the Way of the Dinosaur?

Closed circuit rebreathers have arguably become the platform of choice for BIG DIVES. So, does it make any sense to continue to train divers to conduct deep, open circuit mix dives? Here physiologist Neal Pollock examines both platforms from an operational and physiological perspective. The results? Deep open circuit dives may well be destined to share the fate of the Spinosaurus. Here’s why.

And if you’re wondering exactly, how many “deep” open circuit dives you’d have to conduct—you are using helium aren’t you?—to pay for a rebreather, training, and necessary experience dives, you’re in luck! Rebreather instructor and tech Instructor trainer Guy Shockey does the math in: The Economics of Choosing CCR Vs OC

Want a deeper understanding of how your rebreather’s scrubber works? Get a copy of John Clarke’s geeky new monograph, “Breakthrough: Revealing the Secrets of Rebreather Scrubber Canisters..” Dr. Clarke was the scientific director of the US Navy Experimental Diving Unit (NEDU) for 27 years.

2. The Price of Helium is Up in the Air

With helium prices on the rise, and limited or no availability in some regions, we decided to conduct a survey of global GUE instructors and dive centers to get a reading on their pain thresholds. We feel your pain—especially you OC divers! InDEPTH editor Ashley Stewart then reached out to the gas industry’s go-to helium market expert Phil Kornbluth for a prognosis. Here’s what we found out.

3. The Diving Industry Is Run By Middle Aged White Blokes. Our Future Depends on Making Them Uncomfortable.

Ahead of Women’s Dive Day, July 16, 2022 UK instructor and course director Alex Griffin examines why the industry appears to have trouble attracting and retaining divers from diverse backgrounds—and what we all can do about it. It might make you uncomfortable.

4. How Deep is Your Library?

Technical diving requires a deep body of knowledge that must be kept current. So, it seemed appropriate to ask, what books should tekkies have on their shelves? To answer that question, we turned to DAN’s nerdy risk mitigation coordinator cum cave diver, Christine Tamburri to suss out suitable tekkie tomes. Here is what she uncovered. Feed your head!

5. The Challenge for the Technical Diving Community? Connecting Divers With the Environment

While tech diving has come a long way in terms of extending our underwater envelope, enabling tech divers to truly go where no one has gone before, environmental consultant and educator, Alex Brylske, Ph.D argues that as a community there is still room for significant improvement in connecting divers with the environment. In the process, he details the results and meaning of InDEPTH’s survey of Sustainability in the Scuba Diving Industry and offers suggestions for moving forward.

6. Celebrating Wes Skiles

We explore and celebrate the extraordinary life and work of cave diving pioneer, explorer, conservationist, and underwater cinematographer/ photographer Wesley C. Skiles with a collection of curated interviews, portraits and perspectives from Fred Garth and Bret Gilliam, Julia Hauserman, Jill Heinerth, Todd Kincaid, Emory Kristof, and Bill Stone. We also feature nine essential Skiles films, some of his National Geographic photos, and a bevy of articles and content from the National Speleological Society-Cave Diving Section (NSS-CDS).

7. The First Helium-based Mix Dives Conducted by Pre-Tech Explorers (1967-1988)

More than 20 years before the emergence of technical diving, a handful of intrepid cave divers who were perilously pushing the limits of air diving, began experimenting with helium mixes for deep diving. Some succeeded, several were injured, and one almost drowned. Though some of their tales are known, no one had produced a definitive chronology until Woodville Karst Plain Project (WKPP) board member and explorer Chris Werner set out to clarify the record. Here, for the first time, are the origins of the “mixed gas” aka “technical diving revolution” that irrevocably altered the course of sport diving.

8. When Easy Doesn’t Do It: Dual Rebreathers in Extended-Range Cave Diving

Rebreather technology has enabled cave explorers to extend their underwater envelope significantly deeper and longer. As a result, a number of teams are pushing beyond the practical limits of open circuit bailout and so have turned to bailout rebreathers. But not without challenges! Tech instructor and DAN Europe editor Tim Blömeke dives into the latest research and field experience and explains what’s happening.

 9. Can We Create A Safety Culture In Diving? Probably Not. Here’s Why.

How do we improve our safety culture in diving? Is it indeed something that we as a community of divers can affect? Human factors coach Gareth Lock argues that there is no magic bullet and, in fact, that the sports diving industry needs to make a fundamental shift in how it manages diver safety if we are to improve safety. In other words, we still have a ways to go. The retired British Royal Air Force officer explains why.

And without question, the MOST FUN story of 2022, err, it actually dropped DEC 2021—we had it in the can. Call it:

10. Shitwrecks

We teamed up with some potty-minded wreckers to explore the poop decks of shipwrecks around the world, giving a new twist to the term, “Water Sports.” We offer these heady bits.

Note that InDEPTH featured a number of new shipwreck, cave and mine exploration projects in 2022, see: InDEPTH’s EXPLORATION ARCHIVES

FREE DOWNLOAD

Download some early tech history with a digital copy of aquaCORPS #6 COMPUTING (1993) sponsored by our friends at Shearwater Research!

“Yes! I shall design this computer for you. And I shall name it also unto you. And it shall be called … the Earth.” Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy

aquaCORPS #6 COMPUTING was published in June 1993 following the magazine’s first technical diving conference, TEK.93, held in Orlando, Florida in January of that year. The issue focused on dive computing and included interviews with nitrox computer developers Randy Bohrer (Bridge), Kevin Gurr (ACE), Paul Heinmiller (Phoenix), an interview with Karl Huggins (EDGE), and a story about commercial decompression software developed by decompression engineer, JP Imbert. Note that there were no trimix diving computers at the time.

There was also a review by Dr. RW Bill Hamilton and John Crea, of four ten newly-released desktop mixed gas decompression programs. The cover of the issue shows a visualization of decompression risk that was rendered by David Story on a high-end Silicon Graphics workstation. The issue went on to envision the future of dive computing and provided a tekkie guide to the newly emerging Internet, and its implication for diving.