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Paul Kotik
Swing Both Ways

Posted By Paul Kotik on 19 April 2004

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In the beginning was the freediver.

The available evidence suggests that human beings, and, perhaps, our immediate phylogenetic predecessors have submerged themselves under the waters of this world since time immemorial. We’ve gone down to get dinner, certainly, and also items for adorning ourselves and making tools and utensils. It seems likely , too, that breath-hold diving found other useful applications including military tactics, tax evasion (smuggling), theft, romance and ritual.

This went on for a long, long time. So, in the context of the Big Picture, one might add that in the very long middle of this story, was the freediver.

Then, during the mid-20th century, which is to say a few hearbeats ago, Mr. Cousteau et al  brought into being a hybrid creature, part man, part machine: the Scuba Diver. Technology had made it possible for humans, finally, to swim like fish. Sort of like fish. Like airplanes realized the age-old dream of flying like birds. Sort of. Well, not really. In both cases there is a lot of clunky machinery involved, which for many is rather appealing in and of itself. People like machinery. Machinery is what people do. Other organisms are pretty much limited in their behavior by their physical infrastructure, but when we want to do something our bodies cannot do, we simply invent a machine that enables us to do it.

Scuba, then, is Chapter Two in the book of diving. And, since we generally suppose that human history is progressive, we naturally have supposed that scuba is a more advanced form of diving than the old way.  I came into this world at about the time that Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus was first becoming more-or-less generally available to adventurous consumers, and I know that it was considered by watermen to be a leading-edge, out there, sophisticated thing. One had to learn about exotic apparatus and a lot of technical lingo, too.

So, folks who still dived by taking a deep breath and dropping down were the left-behinds: “only” skin divers. One hoped that one’s finances, courage and circumstances would somebody enable one to advance from that lowly station  and become a real diver, a scuba diver.

But now, a curious thing has happened.

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