Classic Diving books

[SanDiegoSidemount]

I am the type of guy that wants to know the whys of something instead of just it happens by magic. I feel I was trained by a great instructor (in my limited experience) but it was PADI, so the requirements have been watered down a bit.

I actually think the new books are way better than the old ones ever were. I wish a lot of these had been available back when I was trained off the old NOAA Diving Manual, which was SO dry and not always practical information for recreational divers. (But still good stuff, and very thorough.)

The agency Open Water textbooks are terrible. They are so "watered down" they need to ship them to you in a ziploc baggie, they're soaked!

If "not watered down" is what you're looking for, a lot of these are ridiculously comprehensive, and all of them are very up to date with the latest science and practical advice.

A few dive "textbooks" I can recommend:

The Complete Diver, by Alex Brylske. Encyclopedic and comprehensive. Take it in small doses over a longer time. The definition of "not watered down". No stone unturned here. This is the like a new NOAA manual, but way more practical information for recreational divers.

The Six Skills and Other Discussions by Steve Lewis. A classic. Also Staying Alive by Steve, focused on risk management. Again, you'll get no "watered down" answers from Steve.

Deco for Divers. Dense. The final word on deco books. If you're on your way to becoming a tech/deco diver or an instructor, you gotta know all this stuff. Good to study even if you're only going as far as no-deco and nitrox, but may be a bit TMI for recreational diving. The least "watered down" of anything you'll ever read about scuba. (Unless you are into academic journals and conference proceedings.)

Diver Down, by Michael R. Ange. A pretty standard text for AOW students and/or Rescue Divers. Accidents and how to avoid them. Read this along with Staying Alive above.

Scuba Confidential, by Simon Pridmore. Extremely practical, enjoyable and well written. A nice and relatively quicker read for advancing divers.

I have to mention Scuba Snobs' Guide to Diving Etiquette, books 1 and 2, but Debbie and Dennis Jacobson. These are funny, fun, easy quick reads filled with great advice on how to be the kind of diver that other divers want to dive with. Watered down, but with tears from laughing so much.

Diving narratives I enjoyed:

Caverns Measureless to Man, by Sheck Exley. Discover how they figured out all this deep/cave stuff in insanely risky pioneering dives.

Shadow Divers, by Robert Kurson. A well written, suspenseful book about one of the more significant wreck discoveries of the last century.

Lost Wife, Saw Barracuda, by John Kean. Read this if you intend to become an instructor some day. Scuba shenanigans in and out of the water, from a DM/instructor's point of view.

 

[PhatD1ver]

I have gotten a few books from Amazon. Though some are now out of print they still show up if you know the title. I can recommend a few that I actually use for classes and as reference for my own written musings.
US Navy Dive Manual. Do a google search and download for free.
NOAA Dive Manual.
Deco for Divers by Mark Powell
SCUBA Diving by Dennis Graver - this is the text I am using now for OW classes. Not agency specific even though it has the SEI tables in it. Best of all there IS NO ADVERTISING for take this course before you have even finished your OW class.
The Six Skills by Steve Lewis - a good read by a good friend, mentor, and instructor of mine
The New Science of Skin and Scuba Diving
Diving Physiology In Plain English

You could start with these. I also have a little item I wrote available on Amazon. Just got notice that it's now being read by someone in 22 countries. . Link is in my sig line.
One of my reviewers called it a new standard.

Jim's being a little too humble. The little items he wrote is a good guide for every diver, and even more so for diver's that may not have received a comprehensive block of training when they certified and need to have a guide for what skills to master as they continue to practice the craft of diving.

 

[Sam Miller III]

Sam,

Instruction in the Southern California area may have started in the 1950s, but when I bought my Healthways SCUBA and a 38 cf tank in 1959, from picking strawberries and beans in the summer, there was no instruction in the Salem, Oregon area. I had to wait for a course from LA County Instructor Roy France to get my C-card in 1963, after my high school group had formed a junior dive club, and we worked with the senior dive club, the Salem Aqua Club, to get an instructor up to Salem. It depended a lot on where you lived to say when formal instruction occurred.

I really like all your references above. Thanks,

SeaRat

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
John,
In 1954 Heathways published E.R Cross's 87 page well written, highly illustrated instruction book Underwater Safety.

It was one of the diving instruction standards of the industry for a number of years. I am surprised that the book was not include with your purchase of a tank & regulator.

I knew Roy France via the LA Co UW Instructors program. He was one of the best! You and yours were fortunate to have such a well trained and dedicated instructor. Certainly a rarity in todays instructor corps.

1963-- You age me..That was the year I proposed Instructor classifications to the LA Co program, which was rejected by LA Co, and rightfully so, then it was passed on to NAUI who also rejected it. A number of years later Dennis Graver departed NAUI HQ for the upstart PADI and who embraced the instructor classifications as a step marketing tool -- Now we have all the supper dupper patch bedecked card carrying Instructors within our mist.

And that was the way it was...(recall my dedicated column over 25 years ago in Discover Diving ?
"The way is was" I haven't used that term for a long long time..

I always enjoy your posts= So thought provoking



SDM

 

[John C. Ratliff]

Sam,

The scuba unit I bought in Salem, Oregon in 1959 was a used unit, not new. I had only about $60 to buy a unit with, as it took me all summer to pick enough strawberries (25 cents/carrier, 6 hallocks/carrier) and beans (something like 5 cents per pound) to get a bit saved up. So I didn't get any publications with it. I do have a copy of E.R. Cross' Underwater Safety, and it is an excellent booklet. It is 87 pages long, copyright 1954, 1955, 1956.

My parents were not really well off, but we were comfortable. Dad was a Forester for the State of Oregon, and Mom stayed home with us four kids (I was the oldest). We did a lot of fishing and hunting to get more food on the table. While my family was fishing, I was snorkeling in Oregon's rivers. I remember snorkeling in Detroit Reservoir, on the Santiam River, while everyone else was wetting a fishing line. I saw one trout acting very peculiar--it was circling a stump's roots about twenty feet underwater. I surface dived down and found this trout, a rainbow about a foot long, had been hooked, dove and wrapped the fisherman's line around the root. The fisherman thought he had snagged the root, and broke the line, but the trout was still wrapped around the root, tied there by the line and the hook in its mouth. Well, I looked it over a bit, then took out my dive knife and after gripping the line cut it free of the stump. I surfaced with a 12 inch trout, took it to the shore where my brother Don grabbed it and put it into his creel. About a half hour later, I found another one and in a similar manner, recovered it. I ended up with two trout while my whole family was skunked (didn't catch any fish). We had a pretty good supper that night.

I'm really happy that someone else knew Roy France. He really put us through our paces. As teens, he did some things that today's instructors might think of as a bit over-the-top, but it really prepared us for diving. Our last practical pool test involved us as a buddy pair being on the bottom, and Roy spreading a gill net over the top of us and snagging our tank valves and regulator in the net. We needed to keep our heads, take off our gear and untangle each other underwater, then make our way out from under the net. I did this with my buddy, my girlfriend Elaine McGinnins, and we actually had fun getting through this problem together. This prepared me well for going through the U.S. Navy School for Underwater Swimmers in Key West, Florida in 1967.

Since we are talking about other books that were available then, another would be Bill Barada's Let's Go Diving, 1962, published and distributed by U.S. Divers Company. This book has a diagram that I have used over and over again in explaining the different breathing characteristics of single hose verses double hose regulators.

By the way, Dennis Graver was my course director when I went through the NAUI Instructor's Training Course (ITC) in Santa Barbara, CA in 1973. Enclosed is a photo of our NAUI ITC class. I'm the one on the far right in the first row. I'm wearing a White Stage wet suit, which was a "skin-in" suit without any nylon on it. It tended to rip if I didn't put it on or take it off with care, and it needed talcum powder or corn starch to get into it. One of the things we needed to do was to actually do mouth-to-mouth artificial respiration in-water, through about two hundred yards of surf to pass our ITC. The "victim" was instructed not to breath on his or her own, and we actually did the mouth-to-mouth; it gave us a great idea of how effective this rescue technique could be in an emergency with a non-breathing diver. On my run, I had to do it with only one fin, as I lost a Jet Fin in the surf during the exercise, but we got through the surf (it wasn't Oregon-quality surf, but it was challenging).

Thanks again for the post. It brought great memories back to me.

SeaRat
NAUI #2710

 

[lostlugnut]

Thank you all for replying. I feel bad but life caught up with me, and I have not been able to respond till now. The wealth of knowledge here is amazing and has given me a lot to think about.

Sam, Miller, You have a library I would love to get a hold of and I would like you for taking the time to post all that info. I will be referencing that for some time.

I ordered several of the books that seemed to come up several times... The Sinent World, SCUBA: A Practical Guide for the New Diver, Diver Down, The Six Skills. I also picked up two copies each of The Scuba Snobs' Guide to Diving Etiquette I and II.

I read the first SCUBA Snobs and reading the second at the moment. Lots of good info in a humorous format. Wife nearly kicked me out of bed for laughing at it while she was asleep. I got the second book of each for our clubs Yankee swap Christmas party. They were a hit and both got stolen the max amount of times. Every time someone else got it they would open it up and read a passage and get a laugh.

Thank you all that pitched in. I hope that any other noobs that do a search can use this as well.

Chris