Scuba Conversational - Episode #67: Dive Gear
Typically, winter is a time when divers take a break from underwater adventures and reassess their equipment, do some maintenance and maybe visit a local dive show to see what’s new.
In this episode, I share a few dive-gear-related things that have crossed my radar screen in the past few months - from the basic to the extreme - from the nice to have to the things you can’t do without.
First of all, a quick trip to the cutting edge…
Scuba diving is an equipment-intensive sport and the equipment doesn’t come cheap, but if you ever feel the pain in your wallet, spare a thought for the people who dive for Karst Underwater Research (KUR).
What it takes to dive on the edge
The other day, my attention was drawn to a KUR Facebook post. I have mentioned this organisation before in Scuba Conversational.
As the mission statement on their website says:
They collect and report valuable scientific information from underwater karst environments where scientists are unable to go, and provide this information to the public so future generations can better understand and protect our unique natural resources.
Their focus is to identify opportunities for characterising and collecting scientific information about karst systems for academic research, environmental protection and public knowledge.
They fill the crucial niche of supporting scientists and other concerned parties by pulling information from the ground – literally – that the scientists would not be able to do themselves safely.
They also help scientists plan or refine their research plans based on observation and data collection.
They are a volunteer organisation that relies on the efforts of skilled and enthusiastic volunteers with their own exploration equipment to execute their research efforts.(Note the reference to equipment there.)
In short, they do important work, deploying uniquely high levels of diving skill and technique.
The KUR Facebook post that piqued my interest was this one.
We threw out $42,000 a few weeks ago as the value of what each diver needs to conduct an advanced research dive. We will do a quick breakdown of only what they bring in and out for each dive and not the in-cave assets provided by KUR which vary by site.
Primary Rebreather: $11,000 +
Bailout Rebreather: $11,000 +
Harness/wing/etc: $500
Primary scooter/DPV: $12000
Backup scooter/DPV: $12000 (usually same as above)
Drysuit: $3500
Drysuit insulation with heat: $1500
Onboard open circuit dive gear: $1000
Personal open circuit decompression gear: $1000
Primary light: $1500
Back-up lights: $500
Misc. gear: $300
Extra batteries for heat: $700
($56,500 if two rebreathers are used). Adjusted for age of gear and other variables we arrived at $42,000. The number seemed a fair representation without exaggeration.
We readily admit that our level of participation is unusual but not unheard of and we all buy and maintain our own gear. A bit more than golf clubs but far cheaper than a boat. Hope this helps define that number for those that asked.
The currency used here is US$. You may have noted that the list doesn’t include underwater photography equipment, the sort of super-expensive technology required to create astonishing images like these.
All these images are from the Karst Underwater Research website.
You can see more pictures here and stay connected with what they are up to by following Karst Underwater Research on Facebook
I find it inspiring to learn about the incredible things that some people are doing with sport diving - often resulting in astonishing achievements that are largely unsung - and the time and personal resources that they dedicate to their efforts. Well worthy of our attention, I hope you agree.
The Rebreather Guide
It has become something of an annual ritual for InDepth magazine to produce a Holiday Rebreather Guide at this time of the year.
If you are contemplating going closed-circuit then this is an essential resource.
Even if you’re not, this one-stop shop showcasing the wide variety of rebreather units out there is likely to surprise you. This branch of the sport-diving world is growing well outside the mainstream spotlight and most divers are entirely unaware of what’s going on.
Here’s an edited clip from editor Michael Menduno’s introduction to this year’s guide to give you an idea of how, these days, sport rebreathers are certainly not “one size fits all”.
Our goal was to include all major brands of electronic and mechanical closed circuit rebreathers in back mount counterlung configurations, as well as sidemount configuration, in order to enable you to make a detailed comparison.
The original guide also included Halcyon Dive Systems’ semi-closed rebreather, the RB80, and their more recent RBK sidemount unit, which have both been used successfully as exploration tools. We subsequently added the Mares Horizon. We soon added a section for front-mounted rebreathers, which have grown in popularity and number over the last few years, and have continued to add units to this category. We also added Lombardi Undersea Research Ltd’s back-mounted oxygen rebreather with back-routed counter lungs designed for use by tech & scientific divers.
The plan was to focus on the feature sets of the various rebreathers to provide an objective means to compare various units. But features by themselves do not a rebreather make. As Pieter Decoene, Operations Manager at rEvo Rebreathers, pointed out to me early on, every rebreather is based on “a concept,” that is more than just the sum of its features. That is to say that the inventors focused on specific problems or issues they deemed important in their designs; think rEvo’s dual scrubbers, Divesoft’s redundant electronics, or integration of open and closed circuit in the case of Dive Rite’s recently launched O2ptima Chest Mount.
A couple more festive images from the guide.
On the topic of rebreathers, I am currently working on a new lecture on closed circuit sport diving to include in the Technically Speaking 2 - Strategies book that should see the light of day sometime in 2025.
Over the years, rebreathers have featured in several of my books with a full chapter on the subject in both Scuba Confidential and Scuba Exceptional and a long talk on the history of sport rebreather diving in Technically Speaking Volume 1 Genesis and Exodus.
The 5-Volume Scuba Series on Amazon
The Explorer’s Mindset
The photograph at the head of this newsletter and the three images above were kindly sent to me several years ago by dive pioneer Jill Heinerth - who features in two of the photos and took the other two - for inclusion in Scuba Confidential at a time when the would-be publishers wanted to turn it into a full-colour coffee-table book (on the basis that nobody would ever read a paperback on scuba diving for fun - what did they know!!!)
They are terrific pictures and record a time when rebreathers were still used primarily by explorers. We were on the cusp of the fun-diving rebreather era we are in now.
Jill, however, is still an explorer. I follow what she and her husband Robert McClellan are up to via their excellent Substack newsletter “The Explorer’s Mindset” and I wholeheartedly recommend it to you.
Their latest issue is headlined “If you could see the Arctic from Beneath the Ice, You’d Tremble”, and includes this stunning image.
Find the latest issue of The Explorer’s Mindset here.
The Hydrophilis
Before we leave the subject of rebreathers for this issue, I’ll take you back to InDepth magazine, which in October featured a piece on Olivier Isler and his quest to develop a unique chest-mounted closed-circuit rebreather, with which he can become one with the ocean.
The article is here. It begins…
More than fifteen years ago, I had a beautiful dream in which I was swimming peacefully among whales and dolphins. When I woke up, I told myself that, with a mini diving apparatus, I could potentially make this dream come true. The idea of the Hydrophilis was born. I successfully tested the current prototype—the third version since the first concept in 2009—in May 2023, fourteen years later! This year, I tweaked the helmet’s buoyancy and the shape of the visor to enhance the field of vision.
Looking at the picture, you would be forgiven for checking to see if the article was published in April, rather than October. But Isler is far from being a fantasist or a fraud.
He has a previous record of radical inventions.
For those of us embarking on technical diving in the 1990s, Isler was already a legend.
I write about his achievements in Technically Speaking, Volume 1 Genesis and Exodus.
Here’s a short clip.
Earlier, in 1984, Isler had completed a 3100m (10,000ft) dive there on open circuit, but he knew the cave went on much further. He just lacked the means to get there.
As he said afterwards:
“(The 1984 dive was) accomplished with an enormous back mounted aqualung (five 20 litre cylinders, or 23 cubic metres of gas—about 812 cf.) along with many more cylinders for back-up and emergency. I could have continued the push but it would have required a massive investment of energy. Very long dives would be necessary to place and retrieve the necessary stage cylinders before and after the main exploration push. These would have called for a formidable team of assistants serving a single exploration diver, much like the old Himalayas expeditions.
Instead, I wanted to bring a measure of elegance to the way La Doux De Coly and other underwater caves are explored. La Doux De Coly provided the needed impetus to develop a unique type of self-contained aqualung. I had the good fortune to meet Alain Ronjat, an electronics engineer who was fascinated by the intricacies of breathing apparatus. Between us, with just over 5,000 hours of hard labour, we designed the Ronjat Isler semi closed system, which we named the RI2000.”
In 1991, Isler reached 4,055m (13,300ft) in the Doux de Coly, which gave the cave the status of being the longest siphon in the world—at least the longest one anybody knew about at that time. In 1998, his RI2000 took him even further, 4,250m (13,940ft) into the cave, on a 12-hour dive at an average depth of 45m (150ft) just using the box on his back.
As Isler says in the In Depth piece,
It’s impossible to say whether it will become a model for the future, but it’s a pleasing exercise for its own sake, and it’s satisfying to have created an original piece of equipment from scratch.
It’s quite a story and he’s quite a guy. It’s great to see a technical diving legend still around, still active and still doing unthinkable things.
Read more and see more images of the Hydrophilis here.
From Tec to Rec
Many years ago, I was at a dive show in Singapore, meeting IANTD colleagues, hanging out with old friends and promoting a mixed gas and fixed PO2-capable dive computer, when I met a Polish guy named Tomasz Stopyra, who was just setting up a new dive gear company called Scubatech. He had some good ideas, he was involved on the technical diving side of things and we got on well, so we worked together for a while and we have kept in close touch ever since.
His company is now called Tecline, it has gone from strength to strength over the past 20 years and is now a major player not only in equipment for technical divers but also for the mainstream scuba diving community.
Tecline has long been well-known in Europe and Asia, but this year I heard that it has recently made huge strides into the US scuba diving retail market, which is terrific news.
One of Tecline’s most successful and innovative products owes its existence to the company’s technical diving background and its willingness to do things differently, come up with fresh ideas and not be constrained by historical thinking.
This is the Tecline Peanut wing and harness-style BCD.
When it first came out, I saw it exhibited at a dive show and Tomasz asked me if I would give it a try and tell him what I thought about it.
I was so impressed that instead of sending him an email, I did a magazine article.
This is what I wrote.
“With their new Peanut series, the Tecline people have come up with a radical design which captures a diver’s imagination. I noticed this at the ADEX dive show in Singapore this year when the Peanut was unveiled to the Asian market for the first time. It stopped passers-by in their tracks as they walked by the Tecline display and it wasn’t only the number of folks who paused to examine it, it was the variety of the people interested. Not only male technical divers in black tees but a lot of women were also drawn to the look of the wing and harness, and they were especially intrigued by how small it was.
Many BCD wings are much too large for divers with a smaller frame, and Tecline have recognised this. The Peanut is perfect for divers whatever their size and shape. There is even a version specially designed for children and young teenagers and this is terrific. Too many kids have to learn to dive using adult gear which is bulky and uncomfortable for them.
What made an especially huge impression on everyone though, in this region where almost everyone flies to dive, was how little the Peanut wing and harness system weighs. At under 3kgs for everything, as a travel BCD, it is almost unbeatable and it’s not as if the low weight comes at the price of a compromise on quality. The wing is double-layered, both layers are made of extremely durable material, and all the D-rings, slides and the harness buckle are premium stainless steel. This is good equipment.
There are also two cylinder bands, which is something I love. I don’t understand why all BCDs don’t have two cylinder bands. The safety benefit is enormous as with two bands it is impossible for the cylinder to drop out during a dive.
It is clear what the designers have done to bring the Peanut’s weight down and you wonder why nobody has thought of this before. The aluminium H-plate is the key. It is a revolutionary breakthrough in backplate design. It is strong where it has to be and has all the features you would want in a backplate but there is no more metal than absolutely necessary. Everything surplus to requirements has been trimmed off to reduce weight and bulk.
So I had to take the Peanut out for a couple of dives. Was it as good as it looked? Well, the short answer is yes but I’ll leave the really big news for later.
The wing is not symmetrical and has been designed so that it doesn’t restrict backward head movement, yet it still allows the corrugated hose to be attached to a point on the wing at head level. This is very clever. Also, while you are diving and there is very little air in the wing, the two side flaps curl up to each side of the cylinder and sit flat, creating minimal drag. What air is in the wing sits well in the wider section at the bottom, keeping your legs up and allowing you to get into perfect trim effortlessly. And, as you might imagine, when you are on the surface, the 21kg lift keeps your head nice and high above choppy waves.
Now here is the big news: but first a little history. When I was a young, slim, muscle-packed Hong Kong cop, I would use 2kg of weight when I dived in the sea with a single cylinder and a 3mm wetsuit.
Since then, for the past 20 years or more, I have had to use 4 kg of weight, because I am no longer so young, slim and muscle-packed, and have acquired the burden of a little “bioprene”. Although in my mind, I’m still in my twenties, my body doesn’t agree.
Diving with the Peanut for the first time. I felt unusually heavy and had to put more air into the wing at depth than I usually do.
Hmm! I thought. What’s going on here?
So, at the end of the dive, at 5 metres, with 40 bar left in the cylinder, I emptied my wing of air and sank to the seabed.
I took out a 1kg weight and laid it on the sand.
I was still heavy.
So I took out another kilo weight and put that one down on the sand too.
Now, I was perfectly neutral.
I then did a second dive with 2kg instead of 4kg and felt completely comfortable. It’s a long time since I could do that in a 3mm suit and a single ally cylinder.
Somehow, Tecline have come up with a wing and harness that not only reduces the weight of your baggage when you travel to dive, it also has less integral buoyancy in the water than most systems, (certainly any system I have previously tried), and enables you to reduce the amount of lead you carry on a dive.
It’s radical, innovative, revolutionary and life-changing. I’ll be keeping my Peanut wing and harness. Tecline are not getting it back!”
That was then. Now, both Sofie and I are diving with the Tecline Peanut and, over the years, several friends have joined us in the Peanut fan club.
I can’t wait to see what happens now Tecline is invading America.
There’s quite a selection of designs available these days, as you can see in the Tecline online catalogue here. But, as always, visiting a knowledgeable dealer and talking to them about the options is the optimal way to shop.
Have a look at their store locator to see if there’s a Tecline dealer near you.
Tecline Academy
Tecline runs what they call the Tecline Academy, the main purpose of which is to train their wholesalers and retailers in how to sell and repair Tecline dive gear. A nice feature of the Academy website is a blog consisting of dive gear tips from the Tecline technicians and designers.
A good article to start with is this one on dive masks.
It includes useful snippets such as:
Were you advised to suck in the mask to your face through your nose to check if the mask would fit you? Did you know that EVERY mask with a silicone skirt (even one that doesn’t fit you) sticks to your face quite tightly once it’s sucked in this way?
The strap is there to keep your mask in place – not to make it tight.
Most masks fog when they are new. This is caused by a very thin layer of silicone film placed on the glass to protect it from scratching during the manufacturing process. The protective coating is oily and this oily surface favours the condensation of water vapour. This makes your mask fog.
Greasy fingers can easily make the surface of your mask oily again. Keep this in mind when touching your mask after lunch or applying cream - (especially sunscreen.)
I’d like to see more straightforward tell-it-like-it-is dive gear articles like this. If you know anyone else who is doing this sort of thing, please let me know and I’ll feature them in a future issue.
Teclight
Tecline continues to develop new designs and products. This is the Teclight.
It’s a tough, light, high-powered, multi-function lamp powered by a waist-mounted battery pack. As per the usual Tecline methodology, it’s a design with its roots in technical diving history but with features that are bang up to date and a fresh design resulting from plenty of out-of-the-box thinking.
See more info and images here.
Tim Rock and I tested the Teclight in Puerto Galera in the Philippines last year, during a visit to Scandi Divers.
Click any of these images to go to Tim’s video on YouTube.
That’s a Tecline Peanut BCD I’m wearing in the video, by the way.
Magazine Articles
Over the last few months, I’ve written several equipment-related articles. Here’s an introduction to a couple of them and links to click on if you want to read further.
1. X-Ray Magazine: It’s Probably Not You – It’s the Cylinders
In X-Ray issue 128, my Scuba Confidential column looked at how the amount of weight we wear on a dive depends on what type, brand and size cylinder we are using and the fact that two aluminium cylinders can look the same at first glance, but you can’t judge by appearance alone and two apparently similar cylinders can have very different buoyancy characteristics.
The story begins…
Friends Phil and Donna passed this tale on to me, and it is an excellent topic for a Scuba Confidential column. They were living in Florida at the time and heard that one of the local boats had a couple of spare slots. So, they threw their equipment into the truck, drove down to the dock and jumped on board.
Phil takes up the story…
It was a beautiful morning. The sea was flat and calm, and the dive deck was a hive of activity, typical of the first day of a long holiday weekend, with visiting groups getting themselves back into a diving frame of mind after too many weeks spent out of the water. We watched while they busied about putting their gear together, choosing their weights and setting up their dive computers. They looked like a competent bunch, and we were looking forward to a nice, relaxing day on the ocean.
We were having a lovely time, but as the morning progressed, we overheard several remarks that, individually, might have seemed insignificant, but together, they set a train of thought rolling through our minds.
Here are a few examples of the sort of thing we were hearing.
“On dive one, I used the same amount of weight I usually wear, but I was way too heavy. So, I took a couple of pounds off. Then, on dive two, I couldn’t even get down, and the divemaster had to give me one of his weights. I was so embarrassed. It was like I’d forgotten how to dive.”
“For me, it was the opposite. I was too light on dive one, so I bobbed to the surface during my safety stop. I couldn’t stay down. Talk about embarrassing! Then, before dive two, I added another weight to my belt, and I was way too heavy all the way through the dive.”
“I had to adjust my cylinder band to put the BCD on my dive-two cylinder. It had fitted just fine on dive one. I must have done something to it when I took it off.”
“It’s strange. I must have been breathing harder than usual. My tank had 3000psi in it when I started, but after half an hour I was already low on air.”
“Really? I came up with way more air than usual on the last dive. And it wasn’t because I was relaxed. Quite the opposite: I felt clumsy and unbalanced throughout.”
A few other comments ran along similar lines, and our suspicions were aroused. After we docked, all the dive gear was unloaded, and we had a closer look at the cylinders the divers had been using…
Continue reading here
Or download the whole online magazine for free here
2. DiVELOG Australasia: Will Smartwatch dive computers change the way we dive? (pp68-69)
Over the past few years, a minor revolution has occurred in the Taiwan scuba diving market, which is youthful, open-minded, and highly accepting of innovation.
The current trend among mainstream Taiwanese divers is to choose dive computers that do much more than track their dives. They are buying smartwatches that you can use both underwater and on land. Taiwanese companies Atmos and Crest, along with Garmin, a company with a factory in Taiwan, manufacture smart fitness watches which have full dive computer functionality - or, to put it the other way round, dive computers with many smart fitness watch features - and these brands are now responsible for an estimated 75% of the dive computer market in Taiwan.
They not only track your decompression status while you dive - and even your air supply in some cases – they also monitor aspects of your physiological status whenever you are wearing them, on dives and between dives. The idea is that you never take them off.
At a higher price level, the Apple Watch Ultra – with the Oceanic scuba diving App - and the Huawei Ultimate do the same thing, and legendary Finland-based diving computer manufacturer Suunto, now owned by a Chinese electronics company, is revamping its product line to catch up with this new trend.
These companies are propelling dive computer technology into the future. We now have access to cutting-edge equipment to track our underwater adventures, unlike in the past, when dive computer technology lagged behind mobile phones by a decade or more.
This could have a major impact on recruiting and training divers. Soon, many people who sign up for beginners’ courses will already own a smartwatch with an inbuilt scuba diving computer. This means that, right from dive one, they will be tracking their dive activity and status using a device they are already used to working with. This may even mark the end of learning to use dive tables!
But the biggest news is that this generation of smartwatches may eventually lead to a huge leap forward in terms of dive safety. Let me explain.
Continue reading here
Or just read the full article, and the rest of the magazine here.
Last, but certainly not least
Finally, I thought I’d share with you details of a dive equipment company who are doing something revolutionary, which really shouldn’t need to be revolutionary at all and that is - they are actually making wetsuits and other dive wear specifically for women!
The company is Bolde and their mission statement says it all.
Wetsuits designed for female DIVERS just like you
Founder of BOLDE, Amanda Elizabeth couldn’t find a wetsuit that she was excited to wear. So she made one.
As a shark biologist and avid diver, Amanda knows how a wetsuit should fit. While trying to find a suitable wetsuit for herself, she saw the need for something that was bright and bold, and that celebrated the female form.
Wetsuits don’t have to be boring.
BOLDE combines high-quality materials and impeccable design to deliver springsuits, steamers, and jackets that help you to feel confident in the water.
The site looks fantastic. The suits look fantastic. The company is new to me. It may not be new to some of you. I would love to hear from anyone who has a Bolde suit, so I can do a feature in a future newsletter telling readers all about it. Please let me know.
See You Next Time
That’s all for this issue of Scuba Conversational. I hope you enjoyed it.
Sofie and I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
See you again for issue #68 next month - NEXT YEAR even!
Safe diving!
