Seahunt TV show last episode aired 50 years ago today!

[D_B]

One other thing from the Sea Hunt era you might enjoy is a CD recording of the long play record of the Carlton "Hear How" series ... Hear How-to Skin Dive with Lloyd Bridges

... Hear How To Skin Dive / RARE Lloyd Bridges Sea Hunt CD!

excerpted from the first part .. Where To Start

... 20 hours of instruction - 10 hours instruction on diving principals, 10 hours practice in the pool
... You should be able to pass the following test, without using flippers or other aids
... swim 300 yards, any method
... tread water, feet only, 30 seconds
... tow an inert swimmer,40 yards
... float 15 minutes, without aids
... swim underwater 15 yards

An interesting look at diving with one of the most recognizable voices in diving, interesting too is how we now view the "dangerous creatures" we find there
I have it :cool2:

 

[tech24]

I got interested when I was a kid watching old Flipper Tv series

 

[rainbowstew]

I have a question. I just watched an episode of Sea Hunt on hulu.com. First time I had seen it since it was on TV. It was shot back in the 1950s. What I want to know is (1) did they have pressure gauges on their diving equipment back then? and (2) How did they handle bouyancy - none of them seemed to be wearing bouyancy compensators. If anyone knows I'd appreciate you sharing that information.

 

[DazedAndConfuzed]

I am not that old skool, so I don't know about the pressure gauge, etc. But it looks like the dives are planned based on depth and duration. I see them look at their watch and decide it is time to go up, or estimate how much air there is left.

As for buoyancy, they seem to have enough weights to sink themselves down. They look like they don't have enough weight on the surface to sink, so they always descent head down first, frequently almost completely head down. While they are at the bottom, you can see they don't swim at a completely horizontal position, but instead are always in a more heads up position, which propels them upward to counter the negative buoyancy. To ascend, they have to kick their fins to go up, and in emergency situations, they either drop their weight belt or blow up a balloon and hang onto it so it will bring them up.

 

[Akimbo]

I still descend swimming head-first. The current method makes no sense to me and is a major reason most divers are grossly over-weighted. It made even more sense to descent rapidly when diving tables. The bottom-time clock runs from leave-surface to leave-bottom so time wasted during descent was lost bottom time. Computers don’t penalize bottom time as much, though it reduces gas that can be used on the bottom. But then, I am old school.

As for estimating bottom time, this link helps explain some important aspects: http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/advanced-scuba-discussions/403233-learned-wrong-3.html#post6136695
(scroll to post #121 if your browser doesn't take you there)

 

[alpegmusic]

The most interesting part is all the different ways he enters the water. Either a forward flip over the handrail, or just a quick slip of the feet so he falls over....and never checking his gears before entering the water....and never hanging around the surface after entering the water, but always straight into a head down descent.

The head down descent was pretty common back then and is still used by many snorkelers and freedivers. I dove that way for 10 years (1968 to 1978) and didn't learn the feet first approach until I recertified in 2009.

 

[alpegmusic]

As for buoyancy, they seem to have enough weights to sink themselves down. They look like they don't have enough weight on the surface to sink, so they always descent head down first, frequently almost completely head down. While they are at the bottom, you can see they don't swim at a completely horizontal position, but instead are always in a more heads up position, which propels them upward to counter the negative buoyancy. To ascend, they have to kick their fins to go up, and in emergency situations, they either drop their weight belt or blow up a balloon and hang onto it so it will bring them up.

That's pretty much the way we did it. By 1968, when I got my YMCA certification, the instructors recommended having an "inflatable" - basically a life vest similar to today's snorkel vests - for additional buoyancy on the surface. They could be used for crude buoyancy adjustments at depth, but it was trickier to let the air out when ascending since the oral inflator wasn't attached to the highest point of the vest.

Sometime around 1974, when I had a few extra bucks, I bought an early New England Divers "horsecollar" BC which had a more modern oral inflator (but still no power inflator). It worked fine for me.

Mostly, we weighted ourselves a little less than is common today so we floated on the surface at the start of a dive and would kick down until our wetsuits (1/4 inch) lost enough buoyancy. In those days, the closest thing we had to a "safety stop" was a brief pause around 15 feet to check for boats and other obstacles before surfacing, so we didn't worry too much about being able to be neutral at that depth. Otherwise, we controlled our buoyancy by breathing and finning. Not a big deal when most of our dives were less than 45 feet.

Nonetheless, we did some quarry dives to 90 feet without problems. It wasn't difficult to swim up. And we lived to tell about it!

 

[alpegmusic]

Lloyd (and Courtney Brown his stunt double and diving supervisor) wore a wrist depth gauge and a diving watch. Submersible tank pressure gauges were rare. The tanks they used had "J-valves" which shut off the air at about 250-500 psi. Pulling a lever gave you the rest of your air for ascent. To fill the cylinder, the lever had to be in the "down" position. The diver had to remember to set it to "up" before going diving or the reserve feature wouldn't work. Interestingly, in most Sea Hunt footage, the reserve valve is down (off).

Lots of good information on the series can be found at:
Sea Hunt Television Series Lloyd Bridges Zale Parry Argonaut Scuba Guy Diving Bill Jones Tors Ziv TV Authorized Official