Underwater thoughts - A Fascination for Fish: Adventures of an Underwater Pioneer - page 7

Primitive 1955 dive gear:
a leaky “dry” suit, a
homemade weight belt,
and a Cousteau-Gagnan
double-hose regulator.
(Photo courtesy Betty
Powell)
My first few dives were made in the summer, and I wore long
underwear for “warmth.” Maybe it helped, but not much. Thirty
minutes into the dive I was shivering: I needed some way to keep
warm. There were dry dive suits available, and I saved up for one
made by Pirelli, the Italian car tire manufacturer. It was made out
of thin, smooth rubber to keep the water away from your body,
and you wore clothing underneath it for warmth.
The name “dry suit” was a misnomer because on practically
every dive, whenever you brushed against a rock, a hole was poked
in the thin rubber. The suit took on water, and there went the in-
sulation from the cold. Climbing out of the water after a dive, I
would feel the water that had leaked in run down to the lowest
point, and my leg would balloon out as though I were su¤ering
from an advanced case of elephantiasis.
After a couple of years, closed-cell foam neoprene came on the
market and we had access to true wet suits. I couldn't a¤ord a
custom-made suit, so my wife, Betty, and her cousin Frank Parker's
wife, B.J., measured me and cut out the rubber material to fit,
and we all glued it together. I wouldn't call it the best-glued suit
in the world, but it was a huge improvement over the perpetu-
ally leaking “dry suits.”