Why i think wreck diving is awesome

I love exploring underwater wrecks. In these years, i have had the opportunity to explore a few of them, and it´s one of my favorite diving activities. Although i visited a few downed ships, wrecks can be everything man made that sank, like air crafts and cars. These wrecks vary a lot in conservation, some are near mint condition, some are just plain debris by the action of the sea.

These wrecks can be put in two categories :

• intentional – wrecks sunk in purpose to create artificial reefs, or underwater attractions.
• by accident – sinkings caused by accidents like collisions with reefs or other ships, storms, or military action.

They can have both historic significance, and/or be a home to a lot of fish and corals, who seek refuge on the debris/structures. So visiting these kind of spots is always impressive :

• the magnitude of some structures are just awesome, like swimming along one ship and admiring it´s gigantic hull, or sometimes it´s propeller. I specially like to mentally reconstruct the ship as i go along;
• as it acts as shelter to underwater species, it´s also a good opportunity to view them and take some nice pictures and videos.

Diving in these kind of structures require previous training, like a wreck diving specialty, deep diving, or nitrox specialty. The first one helps the diver manage the risks associated with wreck diving, plan the dive, and know what´s the required equipment. Deep dive, and Nitrox specialties might be very useful in wreck diving, as some are deep dives. Nitrox allows for an extended bottom time, lesser surface intervals ( some wrecks are big enough to require two separate dives ), and physiological safety ( less probability of decompression sickness ).

I have had tremendous fun in ship wrecks, and i will continue to explore these man made structures. What´s the most impressive wreck i´ve dived? The SS Thistlegorm in the Red Sea. Besides being one of the top ten in Costeau´s diving spots, it´s relatively intact, with the hull and cargo still in place, and can be penetrated safely.

Have some nice wreck diving!

Atlantic Diver

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5 facts about the history of scuba diving

Breathing underwater isn't a recent achievement. There is recorded use of diving bells in ancient Greece, as far back as the 4^th century BC; later on, the first dive hardsuits, dive dresses, and rebreathers appeared around 1700´s. These apparatus where crude and rather unsafe to use, and where mainly used in military and commercial diving.

In the 1930´s, an American journalist called Guy Gilpatric wrote "The Compleat goggler", considered the first sport diving manual – about snorkeling and spearfishing. It inspired and drawn Jacques Costeau into exploring the sea´s misteries.

Recreational diving was born when Jacques Costeau and Emile Gagnan ( a compressed gas engineer ) invented the scuba regulator in the 1940´s, knonwned as the aqua-lung. Sport diving was initialy restricted to a few intrempid adventurers, and it underwent a series of transformations until the 1980´s, when it became the sport as whe know it;

The development and further perfecting of dive tables was mainly driven by the military, and commercial diving ( like oil companies). With the later popularity of the sport, these tables where adopted by recreational divers. The first electronic dive computer, the Edge, appeared in 1983, by a company named Orca.

As sport diving became more popular ( thanks to the publications of Costeau, and later on through TV shows like Lloyd Bridges Sea Hunt ), it pushed on the developmend of scuba gear, and standartization of diver training through certification agencies. The sport boomed in the 1980´s, and it continued to grow and evolve, even today!

The Atlantic Diver