Diving Technology: Then, Now and in the Future

[emoreira]

The Newtsuit!

I would love to dive as deep as I want with no decompression.

I came across this web site and found this exosuit :

Exosuit | Nuytco Research

 

[tracydr]

I would say the biggest change is nicer computers. I just bought a Liquivison and its so easy to use. My first computer was like a digital watch. I would have to use the manual everytime I wanted to set anything because the buttons were such a hassle, plus, the buttons were difficult to push, requiring you to wet fingertips and push hard. Also, the nice LED can lights and LED backup lights with 1,000 lumens.
Also, the She-P was a tremendous improvement, although I haven't had much chance to play around with it yet.
I'd say the other improvement would be the BP/wing but they've been around a long time, I just didn't know about them. However, maybe the quality of the wing and inflator is higher? I have a Halcyon and a DSS and the quality is so nice, compared to my first BC, a Seatac, which I bought used.
Finally, I purchased a used wetsuit. I can't remember the brand but its the blue and red farmer john that's in a bunch of the older PADI manual pictures. I was so glad to finally buy a couple of nicer wetsuits, I bought a Waterproof and a Henderson. Although, these days I only use my wetsuits in very warm waters and warm topside temperatures, otherwise its my drysuit all the time.
I started diving in 1996 and used a timex watch from Walmart with a console SPG/depth guage for the longest time, computing tables. It worked fine since most of my diving was one or two dives at a time in Puget Sound, maybe 60-90 feet for fairly short bottom times, due to cold and being a novice. Not to mention my ex-husband was an air hog so that generally kept us from spending much time on the bottom. I didn't gt a computer until about 2000. Last year, I bought my second computer, which I didn't like and will be using only as a backup spare. This year, I got a Liquivision Xeo. Wow! What a difference! I figured that I deserved it after all these years. I put up with some really crappy dive gear for a long time.
Next, I'd like to get a sidemount kit but most of my money will be spent on training and hopefully some travel after I get some medical issues taken care of. Maybe an electric vest, since I can imagine that I will be getting cold when I start deco diving. I get cold diving in 70 degree water sometimes. Shoot, I was chilly in our 92 degree pool the other night because the wind picked up a little and the air was about 110 degrees!

 

[AfterDark]

Like you DCBC I started long ago and have seen too many improvements and advancements to even remember. I'd have to say one of the biggest improvements is the lower prices for dive gear then back when I started. We have more choices these days. We can spend from $200+ to over $1200 on a regulator. The same is true for other gear, computers, BCD, name it, there is low end, high end and a big mid priced range,
this has allowed more people to dive and own their gear; IMO an important part of being a "good" diver.

I'm going to say the common usage of mixed gas among sport divers. This has allowed sport divers to dive deeper and safer then when we started and air was the only gas for sport divers. I too would like to see CCR unit that is as reliable as OC. A CCR that measures the O2 and CO2 levels of the divers blood would be a giant step in CCR's. Something similar to an inductive pickup, only for the arteries

 

[tracydr]

I've been hearing about how rebreathers were going to be the next big thing in diving making open circuit obsolete. This was 20 years ago.
Open circuit's still around bigger than ever.
So are all the same regulators at least internally for the last 40 or more years with very little change.
A fin from 1965 is still the most popular fin on the market.
BP/W's are becoming bigger and bigger. They are not new. All they are is a regurgitated version of a back pack although squarer and way more uncomfortable than let's say a Voit Snug Pack or even an old blow molded plastic pack (those designs were the best) and they sandwich and air cell in there which modernizes it somewhat.
In wetsuits we've regressed. No longer can you get a suit made from Rubatex which was the best rubber ever made. The stuff these days crushes down to paper thin and after about 6 good deep dives is junk.
I suppose drysuit technology took over where wetsuits failed. But then there is a whole other layer of complexity, cost, moving parts, seals, maintenance, etc.
Steel tanks have improved significantly with the HP stuff available.

The one biggest change in diving that I see that really doesn't have much to do gear improvements or new technology, is the internet, social media and how it has blown open a once very tight and secretive industry.
This has also led to the fragmentation of the diving culture and now people are exposed to many different styles of diving. They can pick and choose the direction of their choice.

One thing I think would be cool would be a wetsuit material that doesn't compress and change buoyancy at depth and doesn't require as much or any weight to offset. I'm thinking some sort of gel filled balloons encased in the rubber instead of air pockets, and have them self heat under pressure somehow. The more pressure the more heat they develop.
I don't care for drysuits.

Maybe I'm thinking way too far into this, but why would an industry continue to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars or even millions into super high tech gadgetry for a dying sport?
Maybe instead of wishing for higher tech stuff and the "next big thing" maybe it's more prudent to try and rebuild the sport by improving training and trying to get people interested in diving again.
You have to have a base before you can have a market. Trying to create a market with higher tech toys isn't going to suddenly get new people off the street into diving. There has to be a separate primer.

How do you know you don't care for drysuits yet if you haven't even gotten certified? And, how do you know if BP/ wings are comfortable or not, if you haven't even had any dives,yet?
Or, have you just not updated your profile since April and you've dived a whole bunch of times since then and become an expert?

 

[dfx]

Two words:





split fins!

 

[tracydr]

I'd love to see smaller, less complex and less expensive rebreathers. I think its possible in the very near future. I think this is probably one of the biggest things we'll see in the next twenty years, along with changes to underwater lighting, computers, communications and navigation technology.
All of this will change the world of cave and tech diving. Imagine how much better deep and cave diving will be with smaller, more reliable rebreathers, better navigation systems and smaller, more reliable lights, not to mention a way to communicate underwater that doesn't cost an arm and a leg and maybe doesn't even involve full face masks? also, propulsion devices. I see DPVs getting much smaller and faster, as batteries get more powerful.
The other advances that I can see happening involve aerogel and electronic thermal undergarments. I think we are in the infancy of thermal undergarments. Aerogel is a very exciting material and electronic undergarments are also just getting started. With new types of batteries just being developed ( my husband says that batteries are what is stopping computer technology at the moment so I'm sure there is a ton of r&d going on into batteries). We will see some amazing new battery technology in the next 20 years.
Just look at the phones, PCs, laptops and video games from 30 years ago and the incredible progress that's been made. If that kind of progress is made again in the next 20-30 years, imagine what we could be diving! My laptop from 1989 didn't even have a hard-drive!

 

[Mustard Dave]

Two words:





split fins!

Burn him!

 

[CT-Rich]

I hope you rebreather enthusiasts are not trying to convince yourselves that it is going to be possible to make a Jet Aircraft as safe as it is a bicycle ( free from life threatening failures during operation) .... The rebreather is the jet, Open circuit is the bike....that is not going to change in this century.
My contention is that 90% of rebreather users "could" do the dives they do on OC, and if they did, it would be safer.
And if the desire is silence underwater, it is easy and inexpensive to add a sponge type filter to your open circuit exhaust, and essentially eliminate bubble noise--the safest way to be silent

This is going to be an aweful long century. If you compare 1913 with 2013, you might notice a few differences... Like commercial aviation, television, type writers to computers, hard hat diving to SCUBA and CCR, Jim Suits and dive tables (Haldane was just working the first ones to be adopted in 1915 by the Royal Navy).

If you look at the last fifty years, Data was stored on reel-to-magnetic tape, most people had black and white television with an aerial on the house if they even had that (they could watch Mike Nelson, though). Mail was only delivered on paper and computers filled rooms, music was recorded on records SPGs were not yet available and only a few people were wearing horse collar BCs (they needed to be orally inflated). And slide rules were still used by engineers.


Twenty five years ago Home computers were rare and Doctors on call might have a beeper. Music could be bought on a CD and calculators were finally widely available. Few if anyone have ever heard of the Internet, much less e-mail. wireless phones were available for cars and on trains, but still very rare. Shopping on line meant the magazine rack at the checkout. Mixed gas diving and dive computers, while both existed, were not widely used, or trusted for that matter by the diving community.

CCRs may well supplant OC for much of the dive community in 25 years and by the end of the century I could see artificial gills being used and loathed just like split fins today Dive technology is likely to evolve a lot in the future. Who knows, In 2113 you might be able to go on an underwater safari to Jupiter's moon Europa because the only things left in our oceans are Squids and Jelly fish...

 

[Sam Miller III]

"... SPGs were not yet available.."

SPGs (Submersible Pressure Gauges) were introduced to the diving world and used by Commander Le Prieur in 1926- 87 years ago. Suggest that you master French and read his 1956 book "Premier de Plongee." (First to Dive)

The American SPG appeared in 1954 produced by a long defunct company called Mar Mac, According to my Kalifornia Kalculator that is 59 years ago. An SPG has been on the American market since that date and was produced by many companies through out the years, many whom are no longer with us.


Don't you enjoy the fuzzy faced divers who loudly proclaim they were diving before the invention of the SPG?

SDM

 

[CT-Rich]

I stand corrected, SPG were available in the 50s and 60s (1963 was my period of reference), but most divers of that period were relying on J-valves to know when it was time to come up. A lot of technology existed much earlier than the dates I reference, but If they were completely unreliable, impractical, or widely known about or used they really don't count. Dive computers were available, in the 1970s, but I never saw one in real life. Looking back at the 1963 diving catalogs, I did see a reference to a regulator that had a port for a pressure gauge, and a dive computer also, but that doesn't mean they were widely used.