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Diving Wetsuits of the Modern Era versus the Ancient Roots of Diving

By John V

Republish: EasyPublish™
Published: 25Feb2012
Word count: 586
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Modern scuba divers seem to defy the laws of nature: equipped with the most advanced diving wetsuits and underwater breathing gear, they can be immersed in depths and temperatures that seem outside the range of human abilities. But in the centuries before there was scuba diving, humans still managed to accomplish impressive feats of diving, often under nothing but their own strength and endurance.

The Greek island of Kalymnos, in the Aegean sea just off the coast of modern-day Turkey, was a major center for sea sponges from antiquity until the 1980's. Divers would reach the seafloor with the added weight of a hand-held stone, and once there they would cut the sponge loose and return it to the boat on the surface. This was all accomplished at a depth of up to 30 meters, within a 3 to 5 minute span, with little to no clothing and no breathing equipment.

Farther to the east, divers around the Indian Ocean, the Philippines, and Japan went to the depths in search of oysters bearing pearls. They would go as deep as 40 meters, often risking drowning from shallow water blackout caused by a shortage of oxygen being delivered to the brain. While this was an unfortunate but necessary evil of the trade, other dangers could be mitigated by early diving aids. For example, pearl divers would grease their bodies to retain heat, and would close their nostrils with a clip made of tortoise shell. These approaches to making diving more safe and efficient can be seen as the groundwork for the design features of modern dive wetsuits.

In modern times, diving is practiced for a wide variety of reasons: recreation, research, forensics, and rescue are just a few of the common applications of scuba diving. But a few other modern diving practices still share links with the past.

Although they use more sophisticated equipment, contemporary commercial divers are like their ancient predecessors: they practice a specialized underwater skill in order to procure rare or valuable materials. But an advantage of improved diving wetsuits and other diving technology is that they've helped protect not just divers, but also the underwater environments in which they swim. For example, scuba diving is a preferred method of acquiring red coral from the Mediterranean and Pacific, because it is more selective and gentle than the original method of dredging, which often destroyed the seafloor around the desired coral.

The form of modern diving that arguably shares the closest connection with the simple, unequipped techniques of the past is the practice of free diving. Although it has been transformed into a competitive and/or recreational activity, and although participants often wear a specialized diving wet suits, modern free diving retains the essential quality divers descending to great depths, for great lengths of time, without any mechanical assistance. Under the auspices of its two governing bodies, modern competitive free diving has driven people to achieve extraordinary records of underwater endurance. Across the various divisions of competitive free diving, participants have reached times of as much as 11 minutes, 35 seconds underwater, and have dived to depths of up to 273 meters.

Technological advances have enabled divers to constantly reach ever-greater depths, temperatures, times, and locations underwater. Using these measurements as a yardstick of human progress, one cannot help but be impressed with mankind's ability to explore the frontiers of nature. But as modern diving shows, whether with special diving equipment or unadorned, divers still share a connection with the past.

Advanced diving wetsuits are a standard part of professional and leisure underwater diving. But some forms of diving still resemble diving's ancient roots.

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