Reflections and Speculations

Development of the Electrolung came about through the chance meeting of John Kanwisher and I aboard Ed Link's diving research vessel in the Bahamas in early 1968. Ed was trying out his new diver lock-out submarine Deep Diver and had invited along several researchers with relevant interests. I was there to do some deep biological collecting and John was there to do heart rate/respiration measurements on divers using some new acoustical telemetry equipment he had developed.

Lock-out dives from Deep Diver were done using hose fed OC Kirby Morgan helmets. Gas for this purpose and to pressurize the lock-out chamber was supplied from a large high pressure sphere carried by the sub. The large amount of gas required for a single dive severely limited the number of dives which could be made and involved substantial cost and logistic considerations. The need for more efficient utilization of gas was clearly apparent.

It turned out that John and I had both been considering the feasibility of a mixed gas CCRB using electronic sensors to control PPO2. We both knew in general terms what was needed but John wasn't a diver or a machinist and I didn't know that much about electronics. However, I had been diving for 15 years and had built a wide range of underwater equipment and John, in addition to being a physiologist, had invented the first polariographic oxygen sensor and held a dual appointment at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and MIT where he lectured on electronic instrument design.

When we returned to our homes John started putting together the sensors and control circuit and I started getting together the hardware and machining all of the necessary bits. Six weeks later we both had our respective parts together. John sent me the board and sensors, I installed them and it worked. The overall configuration and design was basically as described but there were, of course numerous details to clean up. The electronics for example were wire connected on a breadboard and the solenoid valve I had hand made and actuated with a solenoid scavenged from a battery operated coo-coo clock.

Although the prototype was put together quite quickly it was far from a "first thing which comes to mind" effort. Quite a few years experience and thought had led up to it so that when actual construction was began we both knew pretty clearly what needed to be done and how to do it. Later at Beckman I had the opportunity of working with a whole group of specialists on improving the same device. The outcome was some tidying up of details but no fundamental improvement. The biggest problem was to prevent the creation of problems which didn't previously exist but could be introduced through changes made by specialists who were unaware of consequences outside of the narrow area of their expertise. The experience gave me a real appreciation of both the power and the limitations of specialist expertise and the importance of systems analysis in coordinating and integrating the input of specialists.

Although development of the Electrolung was interesting, even exciting, in itself it was just an interesting incident in a bigger, far more interesting and significant picture. Like most historical events, I suppose, what was happening didn't appear to the participants at the time so remarkable as it later does in the broader perspective of hindsight. The larger perspective on what is taking place right now tends to be somewhat obscured by the ordinary events of living. Except for rare instances whatever we are doing, however interesting and exciting it may be, tends to still feel like life, not like history in the making.

In retrospect however, I have come to realize that from the mid 1950 through the mid 70's something really remarkable was taking place in diving. During that period diving grew from the obsession of a small group of generally impecunious young people mostly in FL, CA, France, and Italy to a global industry catering to well-to-do hobbyists. Remote tropical islands all over the world began to sprout airports and dive operations and diving became strongly oriented to travel to exotic locations. Though all this was in itself remarkable something truly unique was at the real heart of what was happening.

For the first time in history humans could freely enter, explore and personally experience the oldest, richest, most beautiful and exotic communities in nature, tropical coral reefs. Coral reefs are truly remarkable places. Nowhere else can one experience such an abundance and diversity of life. Nowhere else is it so colorful, exotic and so easily experienced at close range.

Diving on a reef is like a trip in a time machine to a time before humans existed and nature ruled in primeval pristine abundance. Fossils of many reef creatures from as much as 60 million years ago are essentially the same as those on reefs now. In fact some Pacific reefs have existed as reefs for that period of time.

For a biologist, being among the first to dive on reefs was an extraordinary experience. In a way it was a bit like landing on another planet. On nearly every dive you were going where no human had ever been before. The discovery of phenomena of life and strange and beautiful creatures whose existence we never even suspected was an everyday occurrence. At the time this kind of experience was so commonplace, tropic seas so vast and remote, and so few people were doing it, that it began to seem as if this was just the way things were and this kind of experience would continue on indefinitely.

Already however, this era has become history. Although there are vast amounts still to be discovered about the details and inner workings of reefs, still undiscovered species are getting harder and harder to find and remote locations are becoming less and less remote. The experience of being among the first to explore the richest realm of nature has come and gone, not to be repeated.

On reefs, one niche still remains. Actually it is a really big one. The zone below 200 feet, down to the deepest limits of what you might call part of the reef community at about 600 feet, is still largely unexplored. Although it is not so rich in life as the shallower regions it is still rich in life and is an area about which we know very little.

As far as I am aware the only person on the planet regularly exploring this zone is Rich Pyle. What he is doing is really exceptional and he is doing it essentially on his own. While discussion on the Rebreather List is largely restricted to the technology and physiology as an end in itself what Rich is doing goes well beyond this. As well as making more deep free dives than anyone ever has before he is coming back with knowledge and specimens from every dive. What he is doing is a permanent contribution to knowledge which will stand long after any of today's diving records are broken and forgotten. I have never met him personally and am commenting only out of recognition of something exceptional.

Over the past 25 or thirty years advances in diving technology have been almost entirely small and incremental. The only real exception I can think of is the development of dive computers. It appears we are up against the realities of human physiology. With every increase in depth and bottom time the cost, complexity , effort, and risk increases exponentially while the return of useful achievement remains more or less linearly related to bottom time.

The future it seems lies in other directions, especially robotics. Here the advances have been impressive and future development promises to become even more so. Already we are at a point where more and more functions previously requiring a diver can be effectively carried out by ROV’s . It is not hard to foresee that in a few years most of what we do at great effort and risk by diving can and will be done by nerds at consoles. In fact, right now in the Gulf of Mexico Shell and BP are drilling in 5000 to 6000 FSW and all work at the wellhead is done by ROV'S.

If you find this kind of scenario uncomfortable, don’t let it worry you. Long term prediction, no matter how well reasoned and seemingly inescapable, has a way of almost always being wrong. So much so that I have often wondered if beneath the facade of Newtonian certainty of our universe , somewhere in the iffy probabilistic realm of quantum mechanics, there is not a relationship which dictates that the very act of prediction sets in motion forces which generate a different outcome. So if you don’t agree with my prediction, the good news is that I may well have voided it by predicting it.

Fortunately, the real outcome is usually even more interesting than any of the predictions.