Quote: (Originally Posted by
teksimple)
Interesting, Dave.
An old Harbor Branch brochure shows what looks to be a CCR-1000 at depth with the caption:
Diver/Scientist at 500' with Closed Circuit Harbor Branch/Bio-Marine Rebreather and Modified Kirby-Morgan Helmet.
I wish I would have owned my Mk 15.5 back when I worked at Harbor Branch. Those guys were (are?) certainly pioneers of deep diving. They had a lot of cool stuff in the day. Now liability is so ridiculous no one is allowed to enter the water from a research vessel without a ream of paperwork. Tim Askew was in charge of operations (including sub ops) at HBOI when I left, and according to HBOI's web site, still is. Anyone talk to him recently about the CCR-1000 origins? Gene Melton from HS Eng would probably know something about that, too.
And there's the key phrase I was looking for" "Harbor Branch/Biomarine Rebreather", with the inherant statement that Harbor Branch was part and parcel of the design team. That fits perfectly with what I speculated was true. I'll dig up photos later, I have pics of the helmet and rig combination from 1978 when we first got to play with them.
When were you there? Jeez... Tim must be an old bugger now, as I knew him there as early as 1978. Did you know my classmate Steve Hall? He was a sub pilot there in the early 80's. Jim Goldsby? Another classmate who was a sub tech there (electronics guy). FIT/Jensen Beach and HBOI were pretty closely linked when I went to school, we were up there fairly regularly for field trips, workshops, and "hands on the hardware" days. They hired a load of our graduates right out of school.
Ed Link was THE man for starting deep diving in the USA. That inflatable habitat that he built was WAY ahead of it's time. The early mini-sat systems were cutting edge. The RV Johnson with the sat system under the deck and the JSL able to lock the diver lockout chamber to the sat chamber was a magic carpet ride for the reseaqrch diver: What fabuous capability, now all removed.. I remember walking around the RVJ in awe. Is she even still afloat, or has the Seward J fuly replaced her?
Dave