Is there a reason why the Cousteau team did not use modern, single-hose regulators? When did the old “Sea Hunt” double-hose regulators go out of production, and what was the last company to make them?
Also: It seems as if they don’t wear BCs. Are BCs somewhow incorporated into the backpacks? I don’t see any controls. Or did they just not use BCs?
Just out of curiosity, does anyone still use J-valves?
[sub]* By “single hose”, I mean that there is only one hose going to the mouthpiece. I’m not counting BC inflator or alternate air hoses.[/sub]
No, they didn´t use BCs of any kind.
As for the twin hoses; I don´t know, maybe it was just a style thing, as the silver wetsuits and streamlined tanks; after all, they were selling an image too.
You may have a point. U.S. Divers’ logo features the old double-hose set-up. And as a filmmaker, Cousteau was very conscious about how things looked. Note the yellow stripes on the earlier wetsuits. I think the backpacks might have had some hydrodynamic advantages, but I suspect they’re largely for looks. And yeah, the silver suits were strictly for image.
But with everything else being modern or futuristic, it strikes me as strange that they would stick to the Sea Hunt regulators. Maybe they didn’t want to have a second stage covering their faces? (Although it would have been great advertising for U.S. Divers equipment.)
Don’t forget that Jacques Cousteau invented SCUBA, which means he invented the double hose regulator.
His invention, so I can see where he would continue to use it. Now I have not done any diving in over 30 years, but back in late 60’s early 70’s a double hose regulator was easier to breathe with, even more so if you were going deep. This was due to larger diaphrams.
I have no idea what the current state of the art is with regulators, so the greater effort thing may well have been fixed by now.
Were they using rebreathers? Rebreathers have two hoses and look like backpacks; that would easily explain it. Rebreathers were available in the '80s and Cousteau would very likely have been using them.
I’ve also heard of photographers using two-hose regulators so that their bubbles are vented behind their head instead of in front where they may interfere with their shot.
Johnny, in the late 80’s and early 90’s we used double hosed rigs with twin bottles for EOD work. These rigs were low-mag. Hey, I stumbled across this site when I googled Cousteau Diving Rigs. Kinda cool…
Double hose regulators have a big advantage over single hose regulators for Cousteau’s purposes - they are better for filmmaking because the exhaust bubble leave behind the head. With single hose, the diver’s face is always obscured by bubbles, and it’s harder to use a movie camera.
Does anyone remember on Sea Hunt, the bad guy would always cut the hose on the diver’s right the hose that is used to exhale. It was no use, the diver could still breathe.
Photographers liked them because the air came out behind you. I blieve that they fell out of favor because the bigger diaphrams caused more problems. I dove with that kind of regulator several times. Stuff woud get in the diaphram and it would free-flow and you would have to cut you dive short.
Photography! We need the smackie back. Of course; photography makes perfect sense. Why no BC?
Okay, now a question about the backpacks.
I was at the dive shop yesterday, and there was a backpack similar to the ones Cousteau’s team used. This is a fiberglass shell with three small bottles inside. This one was silver instead of yellow, and the valve was on the right side instead of in the middle. The underside was black, and “U.S. DIVERS” was on each side. The guy at the shop said that in around 1990 U.S. Divers allowed dive shops to purchase two of the packs each. Actually… It looked pretty cool. Might be fun to get one of those. That one was not for sale, but the owner said that the other one might be. (He’d have to ask the guy who has it.)
But I’m sure there must be others out there Unfortunately, I don’t really know how to look for it. “U.S. Divers” and “backpack” returns thousands of hits. Anyone know the correct nomenclature for the backpack? A model number or something?
No BC? I learned to dive in 1972. Our BC’s had to be manually inflated (take the reg out of your mouth and give it a puff). We didnt’ have the low pressure air line like we do now, but we did have BC’s.
I’m sure the Cousteau guys new how much weight they needed to an ounce.
But, as you use up air in your tank(s), the tank becomes more boyant. By as much as 3 pounds or so. Certainly these guys understood that, and had some way to compensate?
Air supply came over your right shoulder, and exhausted over your left shoulder. At least it did on my Royal Aqua-master. Look at this picture. The hose shown on the left of the picture, the one that goes over the diver’s right shoulder, is closer to the tank valve. The hose shown on the right, (Left shoulder) goes to the exhaust port, visible in the picture as a series of holes along the front edge. Sea Hunt, and in James Bond movies they always cut the left hose. The actor would they exhale forcibly, or roll over on his back causing the regulator to free flow. This would cause a cascade of bubbles. The telling part is that the bubbles would be coming from the part of the hose leading to the mouthpiece, not the regulator.
Why yes I was a SCUBA geek, why do you ask?
The UDS-1 system was available straight from the U.S. Divers catalog. I know, because as a kid I used to order all the dive catalogs and salivate over them. U.S. divers and Decor had the best catalogs, and Decor would even send you a Decor Patch if you wrote to request a catalog.
**tanstaafl ** mentioned rebreathers above. Are these the same devices we were introduced to in boot camp ('64, USN)? I think they were called OBAs, and used for escape in an emercency. My memory is foggy, though.
One of their (and my) favorite demonstrations was to let water into one of these so we could watch it blow up. Some parts of boot camp were cool.
Peace,
mangeorge
mangeorge: I don’t know anything about OBAs, and I’ve never seen a rebreather IRL.
IIRC, a rebreather contains a tank of oxygen (not air, as in a SCUBA tank). Oxygen is fed into another container (a bladder?) from which the user breathes. The exhaled air goes through a “scubber” and then back to the bladder where it is rebreathed. The good thing is that there are no exhaust bubbles. The bad news is that if you don’t use it right, it can kill you.
My diving instructor once pointed out to me that actors in movies often don’t wear buoancy compensators for aesthetic reasons. The example that we were discussing at the time was Peter Benchley’s The Deep.
I agree Measure for Measure, it would have been a sin and disgrace to have put a BC on Jacqeline Bisset. It was bad enough to have a wet t-shirt. This reminds me, they used to call the old chest-style BC’s, Mae Wests.
Has anyone else ever noticed how quickly an otherwise reasonable question can be degraded to smut on the SDMD?