X-Ray Mag #15
Cave Diving theme issue. YUCATÀN - Mexico's "Riviera Maya" :: Varonya Cave in Caucasus :: How Caves are created :: Interview with pioneer Bill Stone :: Equipment and training. Shopping for Valentine's Day - New Equipment: REGULATORS: How to chose - How do the Work - Freezing & FreeFlowing - Understanding the Breathing Diagram. SCIENCE: Visibility Tech: The Lady and the president. Profile: Sue Dudas
Main features in this issue include:
Bill Stone
Caves, rebreathers, risk assessment, the meaning of life, acceptable risks, the future of diving and what it takes to be a true explorer—Bill Stone lays it all out on the table for X-RAY MAG publisher Peter Symes, who gets to hear about the dirt and glory of the birth of modern rebreathers through the eyes of the man who helped start it all with his pioneering efforts in closed-circuit systems.
X-RAY MAG: You’re a structural engineer by training. Are you driven by innovation, looking for applications or projects for your inventions – or do you find solutions for specific projects?
Eat kelp
Did you know that kelp is an ingredient in many household foods! Foods like frozen foods, cakes, puddings, salad dressings, shampoos, and toothpastes contain alginate. Alginate is an apparently safe derivative of seaweed (kelp), and is used to maintains the desired texture in many products.
Giant kelp is one of the fastest growing plants in the world. When conditions are good, kelp can grow two feet per day! Giant kelp prefers water temperature in the 50-65°F range. Kelps occurs at and below low-tide levels in cool temperate regions throughout the world.
President Coolidge
Henry Nelson. Does the name ring a bell? You’ll not find him in any history book or see any monuments to his honor. However, the thousands of scuba divers who visit Vanuatu every year should bless this name. This former French/English colony, which was named New Hebrides till 1980, was also the second most important US base in the pacific during WWII.
This huge luxury cruise liner used to travel between San Franscisco and the Pacific Rim before being transformed into a troop carrier in 1941, under the same captain, Henry Nelson, who was already 63 years of age.
Regulators
After my very first pool session, I was hooked. Every thought I had circled around diving and dive equipment. I could not wait for my next session. The instructor was a God, and what he said must be true. I was an easy target! By the end of the class, I walked out of there with an Open Water dive certificate and a great deal on a dive package.
Riviera Maya
The Yucatan Peninsula is located in the south of the contiguous Mexican states. The ground here is heated by the tropical sun—35°C makes for a hot and impassable jungle. The bogs—littered with iguanas, snakes and crocodiles—are drying up. A rare tropical storm suddenly and unexpectedly flies up from the Caribbean Sea.
The Mayans completely adapted to the conditions of their environment, with superb observations of the nature around them, learning to cultivate maize and settling throughout their lands. In homage to their Gods, they constructed temples, pyramids and observatories.
Using Filters
UR-PRO filters have been popular on compact cameras because they can be mounted to the outside of a camera housing, can be removed if not needed and can be used at the same time as an external wide angle lens. Some video camera housings have a built in filter-drawer, leaving the filter easily accessible in case it’s needed, or easily removed if the shooter chooses not to use it.
Types
Varonya Cave
The Mexican cenotes and springs in Florida may all be places of pilgrimage for technical divers. You can often watch brave men and cool-headed women laying out their guidelines as their frog-kicks take them further in through awesome arches and into this mystic realm lit only by the powerful beams of their HID torches.
