Primary
wrekcdiving guide
G. Gentile
Wreck-diving
is a discipline as different from open-water scuba as college is from
kindergarten. The basic certification course introduces a non-diver to the
subsurface world, and provides him with the essential knowledge and skills
necessary to enable him to immerse his body in water and discover that, with
artificial devices, he can still breathe. However, a check-out dive and a C-card
do not prepare a person for the rigors of wreck-diving. Most certifying agencies
offer specialty courses designed to present the entry level diver with new
challenges, encouraging him to improve his proficiency under controlled
supervision. This step-by-step approach is good because it ensures that a diver
does not get in over his head, so to speak, by taking on more than he can
handle. What the beginner sometimes fails to realize is that dives conducted in
different environments and under a variety of conditions require an intimate
understanding of himself and his limitations, and of the water into which he is
about to plunge: the ocean is more than a pool with a larger circumference. By
increasing his skills incrementally and by gaining a gradual appreciation for
the deep, a diver can achieve his full potential safer and more rapidly
This book is a primer for one
particular and very captivating activity: diving on shipwrecks. It proposes to
offer practical information, as opposed to theoretical or mathematical; that is,
how to conduct a dive on sunken ships, not what happens to the body under
pressure. Furthermore, it intends to address the grimmer realities that are
often overlooked: entanglement, equipment flooding, seasickness, and getting
lost at sea, to name a few. To a certain extent, these unfortunate events are
overemphasized in order to make up for the fact that they are seldom addressed
in class or in popular publications: they make uncomfortable enlightenment at
best. My intention is not to scare anyone off, but to acquaint people with worst
case scenarios that may never occur, and to impart information that is otherwise
unobtainable.
The topics covered include equipment
modification, thermal protection, access to sites, current and surge, wreck
orientation and navigation, night diving, photography, pharmacology, and a
riveting rivet by rivet account of how shipwrecks got the way they are and why
they look the way they do. The text is extensively illustrated with color
photographs from the author's collection; eight illustrations demonstrate the
evolution of shipwreck collapse, from an intact hull to a field of debris.
Primary Wreck-Diving Guide is the
first of the three Wreck-Diving Guides. It is followed by the Advanced
Wreck-Diving Guide (deep air diving, decompression methods, wreck penetration,
and more), which itself is followed by the Ultimate Wreck-Diving Guide (which
introduces nitrox, mixed gas, accelerated decompression using oxygen, and other
high-tech concepts).
ISBN 0-9621453-9-4
softcover with color covers 6 x 9 vertical1
169 color photos, 9 black & white photos,
8 illustrations and 60 pages