Dive Books

Ok its another quiet night here so gotta ask what books you guys and girls have read and reccommend?
My first one was The Last Dive. I read it while doing my Cav/Sink course and it made me pay attention a lot more at what i was doing and how i was doing it.
Beyond the Deep by Bill Stone is another good read. Not so much about the diving but the cave bits are awesome.
Caverns Measureless to Man by Sheck Exley
The Darkness Beckons by Martin Farr.

Thats just a few out of my collection whos got any others to post?

Matt

I read The Last Dive and thought it was really interesting. Kind've the origins and reasons for a lot of the tech diver procedures in place today. I also thought the author's own experience getting bent was super interesting, talking about being narc'd and how that led to him messing up his dive plan . . .

just started a new book: Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson
So far it's good. It's about a few recreation divers that found a German U boat off the Atlantic in the early 1990's which no one knew about.

Interesting reading about Lionel Crabb, MI6 special operations rebreather diver.

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Originally Posted by hbh2oguard

just started a new book: Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson
So far it's good. It's about a few recreation divers that found a German U boat off the Atlantic in the early 1990's which no one knew about.

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Dude! I just started reading this one too ... I am in about the middle, when Chatterton first went to the Navy Historical Library ...

Hard to believe that it wasn't that long ago that diving solo to 230' on air to penetrate a wreck was considered acceptable ... I suppose there are still some who do it! Fascinating reading, though . . .

So shhhhhhhhhhh! No spoilers!! :)

If you can avoid all the metal shavings from the axe that Gary Gentile is so ferventlly grinding, Shadow Divers Exposed does add some interesting insights into that discovery. Most of the book is aimed at discrediting Chatterton, but if you can overlook that part there are some good passages that actually talk about finding the wreck.

Seasnake I promise no spoilers.... I'm a full time student so it's on the back burner, too bad. Yea I was amazed how crazy those guys were, how did most of them survive!

I've heard of "Exposed" so I'll have to put that on the list ... Although it is all interesting general history, it's even more interesting to me as the "history" of diving, really.

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Originally Posted by seasnake

I've heard of "Exposed" so I'll have to put that on the list ... Although it is all interesting general history, it's even more interesting to me as the "history" of diving, really.

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SDE is good as long as you do not get caught up in all the finger pointing and accusations Gentile uses. He does offer some alternative views as well as some additional material that makes it worth reading.

Both "Shadow Divers" and "The Last Dive" are great reads.. Although, it's better, IMHO, if you read "Shadow Divers" first and then "The Last Dive."

"Diver Down" by Michael Ange is a good read.. Stories of dives gone wrong and how you can avoid them.

I also just finished "Hiding on the bottom" by James Rosemond. Not exactly a "diving" book, but a very good read by a member of another Scuba Forum. He's a diver and related the last few years after he met a real character of a person that's big into flounder hunting. Some funny bits and some good life lessons from "Scotty" who seems to have a really great outlook on life.

"Fatal Depth" by Joe Haberstroh is also a good book. Diving and deaths on the Andrea Doria. In fact, all the deaths that occur in that book are off the charter boat "Seeker" which is the boat Kohler and Chatterton used while diving the U-Who.

Hey, a Reading Circle! I like :)
Now enjoying Diane Ackerman’s The Moon by Whale Light. While not exactly a “diving book,” one-fourth of her nature-expedition accounts here (shorter versions of these ran in The New Yorker) centers on whales -- recounting trips to Hawaii, Argentina, and Patagonia. Towards the end, she describes swimming within two feet of a 50-foot, 50-ton Right Whale’s mouth. “I looked directly into her eye, and she looked directly back at me, as we hung in the water, studying each other.” Even more exciting, that same whale’s big-as-an-elephant calf was right there too. It’s not as macho as this may perhaps sound; There was a lot of tentativeness and sensing and respect going on.
I guess the kind of books on animals and their habitats (my diving motivation, really) that I take home are those that weave the scientific with the anecdotal; you know, journalism that’s a pleasure to read (I'm a David Quammen and Tim Cahill fan too). And Ackerman does take her time to -- as the all-too common blurb goes -- bring the reader along for the ride.

By the way, I finished reading "Shadow Divers". I give it two fins up. Very interesting read, especially if you like history. It was amazing the amount of research they duo did. The book had a lot of great elements: well written, interesting mystery, great characters, adventure, drama. Another thread said there was going to be a movie made of this book?

I was at the book store one lunch break, trying to find Shadow Divers or The Last Dive or Diver Down because the thumbs up here perked my interest but that branch didn't have any of these on their shelves. I instead ended up with Out of Eden (An Odyssey of Ecological Invasion) by Alan Burdick.

Starts with plane-hitching brown tree snakes that have been eating Guam’s birds and practically “anything that smells of blood.” Ends with -- yes, there is a marine equivalent (in dispersal rate and rapaciousness) -- the European Green Crab.

Around one-third of the book dwells on marine bioinvasion and ballast ecology. Burdick says the appearance and content of entire marine ecosystems may be historically suspect. What we think is natural is really introduced over a century of maritime trade. He describes ballast water as moving aquariums infesting local waters with exotic marine pests. Sometimes the result is simply addition/absorption (new niches open up) but sometimes its disastrous subtraction -- like in the green crab’s case (not only depressing local populations, even single-handedly collapsing one city’s soft-shell industry).

Reads like a field report, fascinating in ts musing and detail. For example: If a marine biocontrol agent for the green crab would ever be attempted, a biologist proposes employing a parasitic barnacle (known to infect it in its home range). Apparently, as a gelatinous blob at the start of its life cycle, it finds a crab and, like a syringe, injects its parasitic innards. It then extends its roots throughout the crab’s body, weakening it but keeping it alive enough to go about its business -- including trying to reproduce except that instead of larval cabs, its brood is larval barnacles. “Sacculina carcini could be Alien for alien crabs, their Night of the Living Dead...Imagining itself as an organism in control of its fate and the trajectory of its offspring, in fact it is gradually fashioning a future in which it is merely a vessel for another form of life...” Good stuff :)

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Originally Posted by seasnake

By the way, I finished reading "Shadow Divers". I give it two fins up. Very interesting read, especially if you like history. It was amazing the amount of research they duo did. The book had a lot of great elements: well written, interesting mystery, great characters, adventure, drama. Another thread said there was going to be a movie made of this book?

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Yep..
You read a bit about it here..
Shadow Divers Movie

so we have a few years to wait

The original write up on IMDB had it coming out in 2008.. I guess it's taking them longer to get ready than they anticipated. I will definately add this one to my DVD collection. (If I am stupid enough to purchase "Open Water 2: Adrift," I'll purchase anything. ) :D

Lu-Anne, that plot line sounds like either Aliens, or the typical replication modl of viruses reprogramming a cell's DNA.

south east Asia fish guide :D :o

Happy to share that I finally got my hands on a copy of Shadow Diver. Boy, am I glad this thread directed me to it. It is a compelling read. I'm at the part where Chatterton, ascending on the anchor line with his goody bag of definitive china (with its eagle-and-swastika markings), caught up to Kohler. And they were either going to come to blows OR form a tentative bond. What a pleasure to read, thanks for the recommendation!

P.S. I was also fascinated by Drozd's story (how he died with a full air of tank on his back).

As well as with the contention that wreck divers plan their dives in their heads all the time even when, on the surface, they're paying their bills and other such "mundane" stuff.

Like (I think) I said below, as you get into the book and read about the work they did in researching their find ... I found that really interesting. Let us know when you are done and what your final thoughts are of the book!

Ron

I actually fell asleep last night with my copy of Shadow Divers in hand and woke up this morning (being a Saturday) simply taking up where I left off. I was done before brunch! I just gobbled it up, that’s how riveting I found it (now I understand where you guys are coming from).
Ah, yes, the painstaking research. It is a mystery. It is a protracted investigation. Best of all, every exciting bit really happened and I'm made aware too of the value of these guys’ U-boat obsession beyond, say, personal fame (there’s rewriting historical accounts for example, and informing families...).
Just as astounding I felt is author Kurson’s ability to string it all together so I'm not just bludgeoned with his mountain of data, I'm moved by the characters -- their passion (to see for themselves, to know for sure), and even their strategies (penetrating a wreck) and principles (respecting it as a war grave) drawn up along the way.
The setting-up, man, did the author do a good job, no an artful job -- from character motivation to diving physiology to equipment. With that, I know I can recommend the book to a non-diver and he’ll get it. For example, early on the book when panic proved to be Drozd’s undoing, Kurson writes:
“A great diver learns to stand down his emotions. At the moment he becomes lost or blinded or tangled or trapped, that instant when millions of years of evolution demand flight or fight and narcosis carves order from his brain, he dials down his fear and contracts into the moment until his breathing slows and his narcosis lightens and his reason returns. In this way, he overcomes his humanness and becomes something else. In this way, liberated from his instincts, he becomes a freak of nature.”
Even a purely recreational diver who doesn’t go beyond 130 feet like me appreciates that thought.
Did I say it was a pleasure to read? It's like I’m feeling my way in the dark along with Chatterton too. And I did find myself smiling here and there (the initial one-upmanship between Chatterton/Seeker and Kohler/Bielenda; and when they believed they struck it rich with mercury for a total of 12 hours). But as I got to picture the men, it hurt too -- like when the Rouse father-and-son tandem (all-smiles in their photo in the book) bolted for sunlight and to their doom; when the once great Nagle just had to cap his nth hospital discharge with drinking himself to death; when Chatterton and Kohler’s single-mindedness made casualties of their respective marriages. There’s no mincing on the costs.
The shift in place-and-time towards the end was a surprise bonus, I thought -- bringing to the fore again Kurson’s ability (like Nagle and Chatterton if you think about it) to fit the pieces to reveal a coherent whole.
OK, forcing myself to stop now. I do get carried away :)

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Originally Posted by PinayDiver

Happy to share that I finally got my hands on a copy of Shadow Diver..

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hehehe... where did u get ur copy?

wer u able to find "The Last Dive" and "Diver Down"? :D :p :)

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Originally Posted by santelmo

hehehe... where did u get ur copy?

wer u able to find "The Last Dive" and "Diver Down"? :D :p :)

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Found my paperback copy (P359.) at National Book Store (classified under World History), SM Megamall branch in Ortigas. Will ask about the other two titles the next time I find myself in there :)

thank u, thank u :D

Hallooo. No novel titles-trading lately? Sharing instead a short-and-sweet read (from my copy of The Complete New Yorker), published a year ago today...


DEEP
by Adam Green


In the 1953 science-fiction thriller “The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms,” a scientist is lowered into the ocean’s depths in a stylized Hollywood interpretation of a bathysphere—a self-contained diving chamber—to look for a giant prehistoric monster that has been awakened from a hundred-million-year slumber by an atomic explosion. “I feel I’m leaving a world of untold tomorrows for a world of countless yesterdays,” the scientist says, just before he and the bathysphere are devoured by the beast, which goes on to trample its way from Manhattan to Coney Island, where it expires amid the flaming wreckage of the Cyclone. The End.
To oceanography buffs, the real bathysphere, a custom-built steel ball with reinforced portholes, is the Apollo 11 of deep-sea exploration. During the early nineteen-thirties, before which no one had ventured more than a few hundred feet beneath the waves, the famous naturalist William Beebe and his young partner Otis Barton squeezed themselves into it and, attached by a long cable to a ship on the surface, descended thousands of feet to see what they could find.
A few years ago, a writer named Brad Matsen, who was working on a book about Beebe and Barton’s underwater exploits (it is called “Descent: The Heroic Discovery of the Abyss”), learned that their bathysphere had gone missing. As far as he knew, it had last been seen on display at the New York Aquarium, in Battery Park. Matsen was in Seattle, so he asked his daughter to investigate. After several phone calls and a subway ride to the end of Brooklyn, she reported back. The aquarium, which had moved to Coney Island in 1957, still had the bathysphere, in a fenced-in scrap yard under the wooden trestles of the same roller coaster where the Beast from 20,000 Fathoms had met its end.
As soon as he could, Matsen made the pilgrimage to Coney Island. “When I first saw it through the chain-link fence, I completely puddled up,” he recalled the other day. “Then I snuck inside the yard and actually ran my hands over it—holy mackerel! I was almost quivering with excitement.” After that, he said, “whenever the writing got rough, and I felt like I needed a little bit of a kick, I’d go and hang out with the thing—it has an aura.”
Matsen, a former commercial fisherman with a weathered face and a gray beard, was back in New York recently, and, on a sunny afternoon, he once again took the F train to Coney Island. Along the way, he vented his frustration with the public’s seeming indifference to an important artifact. “One day, I spent a few hours on the boardwalk watching people to see if anyone would stop to look at the bathysphere,” he said. “They all just walked right by it. I almost wanted to grab them by the shoulders, shake them, and say, ‘Look! Look! It’s like having Magellan’s ship in your back yard!’ ”
When Matsen got to the Cyclone, however, the ship had apparently sailed: the bathysphere was gone. “It was right there,” Matsen said, pointing at a pile of junk in a weedy lot. A call to the aquarium’s curator, Paul Sieswerda, revealed that the bathysphere had been moved indoors, where it was being spruced up for a gala unveiling in early June. A few minutes later, Sieswerda met Matsen in the lobby of the aquarium, in front of a large tank filled with lazily fluttering cownose rays. He led him through a parking lot to a storage room that was cluttered with maintenance equipment and nautical memorabilia. “We have the shark cage from the movie ‘Blue Water, White Death’ kicking around here somewhere,” Sieswerda said.
The bathysphere, resting on two pieces of lumber, was a little bigger than a wrecking ball, with three steel-rimmed portholes. Matsen gasped softly and ran his hand over its peeling, mottled surface. “Oh, man, it gets me every time,” he said. “It’s like some marvellous pentimento.”
As Matsen explained the provenance of each layer of paint, an onlooker decided to climb inside the bathysphere. The hatch was small. Even without the headsets, searchlight, fan, oxygen tanks, and chemical trays with which it would have been equipped during a dive, the interior felt cramped. It also smelled a little unsanitary. Still, there was something soothing—oceanic, even—about sitting alone in the dark.
The reverie was broken by Matsen, who poked his head in the hatch and said, “Mind if I join you?” After some exertion, he managed to work his head and torso inside, but that was as far as he could get. He remained wedged there for a while. “Isn’t this amazing?” he said.

Chatterton never claimed to have found the U-boat. They just spent the time and research to try to identify it (with the help of many).

Agree. That's quite clear too even if one doesn't get past reading the blurbs on the outside front cover and outside back cover :) "...the attempt to explore and identify the mystery sub..." That's the story right there.

Give "Decent into Darkness" by RADM Raymer, it is an amazing account of the salvage efforts after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

One of my favorite books on diving.

Jeff

*penning down Descent into Darkness on reading list*

I'll look it up, thanks Jeff!