Chinese diving and diving equipment has been around a long time...
Any one who have been around diving for a while probably recalls
"Bunns diving equipment" located in the then British Crown Colony of Hong Kong.(HK) It was established by three pioneer HK diving brothers Bunny,, Billy, and Kitty Liu, all named after individuals in their mothers favorite fairy tale. All are gone now - in the big reef in the sky
They began like all of us in that era so many years ago- spearing fish and collecting marine life but after the introduction of the bubble machine began blowing bubbles. But the British had placed a huge import duty on diving equipment making it very expensive to purchase
The answer was the club concept - In 1957 the divers of HK established the "Sea Dragons dive club." They cobinmde their resources and purchased a number of Mistral double hose single stage regulators- one of the simplest most rugged regulators ever made for members to use.
The Liu brothers disassembled the Mistral and began "revers engineering" the regulator and with in a short time began producing the Bunns Regulator in HK. It had enough changes so as not to violate patents and was a more rugged simpler regulator that could with stand the use and abuse of members of the Sea Dragons members.
Means while in 1963 the US an Italian Gus dela Valle and a Chicagoan Dick Bonin (
@Marie13-note) picked up the scraps of Healthways /SCUBA Pro in a bankruptcy sale for $1.00 and due considerations. They owned a company in name only - but had no products to sell.
Dick concentrated on establishing a dealer net work in US while Gus traveled the world looking for products to sell. One product was regulators - the Bunns regulator was a strong contender to be the flag ship double hose regulator for the up start struggling company. However after consolations with the dealers and SoCal diving leaders SCUBA Pro decided to concentrate on rebranding Healthways single hose regulators and concentrating on improving them to the demanding rugged SCUBA Pro standards.
Unfortunately Gus and Dick are in the big reef in the sky-- SCUBA Pro was sold to Johnson Wax and now all their regulators are bright and shinny-
Almost concurrently a company in the UK by the name of
"Typhoon Diving Equipment Company" was established and marketed the Bunns double hose regulator. So far as can be determined it did not last too long.
In a visit I 1988 or 2000 to HK (pays to keep a log ) I spent a entire day with Kittie (His spelling) discussing and cussing the current state of diving,
At that time the Bunns operation had migrated into wet suits and had established an number of factories in Red China (now just China) to manufacture west suits on mass production scale and named a number of internationally well known companies who were purchasing their products.
All the brothers, Bunny,, Billy, and Kitty Liu are gone now so there is no way to verify - but I strongly suspect that the company they established so many years ago in HK has some thing to do with current Chinese diving products and will have a foot in the door for many years to come.
I suspect once a toe hold is established, dealer net work is in place and some ubiquitous acceptable name is developed Chinese products wilt become a realty in all international diving markets.
Time will tell
Sam Miller, 111
