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SEVERAL STEPS BEYOND
NIGEL EATON, EDITOR
Until recently, divers who wanted to introduce a competitive or challenging edge to their sport concentrated on activities such as deep dives on air, mainstream free-diving, or various forms of technical/cave-diving.
Not any more. For things in the world of what might loosely be termed "extreme" diving seem to be taking a turn into unexpected and previously uncharted territories.
Consider the range of extreme diving activities - from the serious to the seriously strange - that are reported in this issue of Diver.
At one end of the spectrum is a familiar-sounding project to dive and film the wreck of the 120m-deep liner Britannic. But this time the scale and logistics are somewhat different. For when expedition members start their dives in September, they will, for the first time in an amateur context, be using saturation-diving techniques involving a bell and pressurised living quarters.
Elsewhere, not satisfied with diving with mako sharks in open water off New Zealand, Australian adventure-diver Marcus Fillinger recently set himself an unusual quest. His idea was to become the first person to dive solo and unassisted at the geographic North Pole - and to realise it he hauled a sledge loaded with 110kg of gear across a frozen wilderness before making what he describes as "the world's coldest dive".
Free-divers are at it as well. But this is not free-diving as we have come to know it.
The Blue Hole dive site off Dahab, Egypt, is infamous. Over the years it has claimed the lives of more than 100 divers using scuba gear. So why not make things more difficult by attempting to swim through its notorious arch on a single breath of air? Austrian free-diver Herbert Nitsch decided to do just that, and lived to tell the tale.
Meanwhile, on a less risky but more quirky note, having last year mapped the Blue Hole to help reduce the number of accidents there, Diver contributor and Editor of Divernet and Dive Girl Louise Trewavas has now challenged the site's mystique in another way. Toting an ironing board, a crumpled T-shirt and an Inspiration rebreather, Louise chose the Blue Hole for a record attempt in an underwater version of the current craze of extreme ironing.
Is this trend for extreme and unusual diving experiences set to continue? It's anyone's guess. Assuming that it does, will some of it end in tears? Almost certainly.
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