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Leigh Bishop (born 17 April 1968) is an explorer and deep sea diver known for his deep shipwreck exploration and still underwater photography.
Born in Northamptonshire, England in 1968, he began diving at the age of twenty-one and established himself on the technical diving scene during its formative years. Utilizing mixed gas to explore deep wrecks around the British Isles since the beginning of the 1990s, his 1997 expedition to search for the lost King Edward VII-class battleship off North Scotland became the first of its kind to explore shipwrecks beyond 100 m (330 ft) depths in European waters. With little material available on the subject of deep 35 mm stills he took to photography specifically for the HMHS Britannic 1998 expedition.
His photographs have been published in magazines and national newspapers. He is known mostly for his ambient-light monochrome images of shipwrecks, which use natural light and long time exposures using a tripod to capture images of shipwrecks that are impossible to light using man-made lighting effects.
Bishop has worked with government departments in finding shipwrecks: for instance with the UK Customs & Excise Receiver of Wreck, Bishop worked with various diving teams to legally recover artefacts from deep shipwrecks that went on display in various maritime museums.
He has published hundreds of periodicals and photographs on the subject of shipwrecks globally and lectured on the subject around the world. He has researched into London archives, which led him to the identification of many unknown shipwrecks around the British Isles. During the 1990s Bishop and his dive partner Chris Hutchison are said to have explored more than 400 virgin shipwrecks.
Bishop is a professional HSE qualified diver and has worked on consultancy for several television documentaries and has been involved in the commissioning of documentaries shown on several major network channels. He has also worked as an underwater cameraman where his film footage has been cut into underwater television documentaries for National Geographic, History Channel, Discovery Channel, BBC and other major UK networks. To overcome depth and gas logistics of deep exploration he used closed circuit technology (rebreathers) from the early days of technical diving to explore deep shipwrecks. His experience with various rebreather systems led him to become a development diver for certain rebreather companies.
In 2008 he co founded EUROTEK the technical and advanced diving conference held bi-annually in Birmingham, England, a conference that attracts technical divers, explorers, professors and scientists from around the world.
During several expeditions to the RMS Lusitania he accumulated almost ten hours physically on the wreck, building the most extensive collection of images of the wreck to date. He also photographed the liner SS Transylvania, sunk in 135 m/445 ft in the north Atlantic. During 2001 along with fellow members of the deep wreck diving team 'Starfish Enterprise' he took the first images of the lost gold treasure shipwreck the SS Egypt, sunk in deep water off the edge of Biscay (Western Atlantic). Also in 2001 he made the discovery of Captain Kurt Carlsen's shipwreck Flying Enterprise , lost in 1952. He went on to be involved as a photographer in high profile expeditions, such as HMHS Britannic (Titanic's sister ship) in 1998, 2003, 2006, 2009 and 2016.
Bishop has published articles, features and photographs in many magazines globally as well as books and major newspapers published in America and England. He has written over 200 full feature articles and his creative underwater imagery has been used in many advertising campaigns for the promotion of diving manufacturers' equipment and popular publications. He has contributed to all of the UK's diving magazines, although he specifically contributes to the UK's DIVER magazine and the US-based Wreck Diving magazine. Underwater images of shipwrecks and divers taken by Bishop have appeared on covers of various magazines.
Bishop has made many public presentations about shipwreck exploration, including lectures at the Royal Geographical Society in London, the Australian technical diving conference in Sydney, and lectures at the National Exhibition Centre and London Arena.
He has spoken at the NEC DIVE show on numerous occasions, conferences in Scotland and Wales, Warwick University, Imperial College London, Birmingham University and at many UK dive clubs. In February 2003 he was invited to speak at the International Shipwreck Conference at Plymouth University and later that year made his first appearance as a speaker at the European photographic seminar 'Visions in the Sea' at King's College London.
HMHSBritannic was the third and final vessel of the White Star Line's Olympic class of steamships and the second White Star ship to bear the name Britannic. She was the youngest sister of the RMS Olympic and the RMS Titanic and was intended to enter service as a transatlantic passenger liner. She was operated as a hospital ship from 1915 until her sinking near the Greek island of Kea, in the Aegean Sea, in November 1916. At the time she was the largest hospital ship in the world.
A shipwreck is the wreckage of a ship that is located either beached on land or sunken to the bottom of a body of water. Shipwrecking may be intentional or unintentional. There were approximately three million shipwrecks worldwide as of January 1999, according to Angela Croome, a science writer and author who specialized in the history of underwater archaeology.
Technical diving is scuba diving that exceeds the agency-specified limits of recreational diving for non-professional purposes. Technical diving may expose the diver to hazards beyond those normally associated with recreational diving, and to a greater risk of serious injury or death. The risk may be reduced by appropriate skills, knowledge and experience, and by using suitable equipment and procedures. The skills may be developed through appropriate specialised training and experience. The equipment involves breathing gases other than air or standard nitrox mixtures, and multiple gas sources.
Wreck diving is recreational diving where the wreckage of ships, aircraft and other artificial structures are explored. The term is used mainly by recreational and technical divers. Professional divers, when diving on a shipwreck, generally refer to the specific task, such as salvage work, accident investigation or archaeological survey. Although most wreck dive sites are at shipwrecks, there is an increasing trend to scuttle retired ships to create artificial reef sites. Diving to crashed aircraft can also be considered wreck diving. The recreation of wreck diving makes no distinction as to how the vessel ended up on the bottom.
Richie Kohler is an American technical wreck diver and shipwreck historian who has been diving and exploring shipwrecks since 1980. Together with John Chatterton, Kohler was one of the co-hosts of the television series Deep Sea Detectives on the History Channel and is also a consultant for the film and television industry on shipwreck and diving projects.
David A. Bright was an American underwater explorer and diver. He was the president of the Nautical Research Group, which he founded in 2003, and an avid contributor to documentaries on shipwrecks.
John Chatterton is an American wreck diver. Together with Richie Kohler, he was one of the co-hosts for the History Channel’s Deep Sea Detectives, for 57 episodes of the series. He is also a consultant to the film and television industries and has worked with 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, and CBS.
Technical Diving International (TDI) claims to be the largest technical diving certification agency in the world, and one of the first agencies to offer mixed gas and rebreather training. TDI specializes in more advanced Scuba diving techniques, particularly diving with rebreathers and use of breathing gases such as trimix and heliox.
Gary Gentile is an American author and pioneering technical diver.
Global Underwater Explorers (GUE) is a scuba diving organization that provides education within recreational, technical, and cave diving. It is a nonprofit membership organization based in High Springs, Florida, United States.
Tom Mount was an American pioneering cave diver and technical diver.
Steve Lewis is an active cave and wreck diver. Born in Peckham, New Cross London, he currently resides in Muskoka, Ontario Canada.
Michael C. Barnette is an accomplished diver, author, photographer and founder of the Association of Underwater Explorers.
Simon Mitchell is a New Zealand physician specialising in occupational medicine, hyperbaric medicine and anesthesiology. Trained in medicine, Mitchell was awarded a PhD for his work on neuroprotection from embolic brain injury. Mitchell has also published more than 45 research and review papers in the medical literature. Mitchell is an author and avid technical diver. He also wrote two chapters of the latest edition of Bennett and Elliott's Physiology and Medicine of Diving, is the co-author of the diving textbook Deeper Into Diving with John Lippmann and co-authored the chapter on Diving and Hyperbaric Medicine in Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine with Michael Bennett.
David Apperley is an Australian technical diver and cave explorer. Apperley holds instructor levels in cave diving, Deep Mixed Gas Diving and Deep Closed Circuit Rebreather Diving and was the expedition co-ordinator for the Pearse Resurgence Project 1996–2003. He was the project leader on the Royal Mail Ship Niagara 2003 Survey Project, which involved the organization and planning of putting some of the world's most experienced divers onto the 130-metre-deep Niagara wreck site, off the North Island of New Zealand.
Samir Alhafith is an Australian technical diver, cave explorer and underwater filmmaker. He is the founder and team leader of the Sydney Project - an association of technical divers involved in researching and discovering important historical wrecks in depths between 75 and 135 metres on the south coast New South Wales.
Innes McCartney is a British nautical archaeologist and historian. He is a Visiting Fellow at Bournemouth University in the UK.
Shearwater Research is a Canadian manufacturer of dive computers and rebreather electronics for technical diving.
Andy Torbet is a Scottish underwater explorer, professional cave diver, skydiver, freediver and climber, Film Maker and TV Presenter; most notably the BBC's The One Show, Coast, Operation Iceberg, Operation Cloud Lab, Britain's Ancient Capital, The People Remember,and the Children's BBC series Beyond Bionic which he also co-Produced and spawned its own computer game called Beyond Bionic-Extreme Encounters.
The history of scuba diving is closely linked with the history of the equipment. By the turn of the twentieth century, two basic architectures for underwater breathing apparatus had been pioneered; open-circuit surface supplied equipment where the diver's exhaled gas is vented directly into the water, and closed-circuit breathing apparatus where the diver's carbon dioxide is filtered from the exhaled breathing gas, which is then recirculated, and more gas added to replenish the oxygen content. Closed circuit equipment was more easily adapted to scuba in the absence of reliable, portable, and economical high pressure gas storage vessels. By the mid-twentieth century, high pressure cylinders were available and two systems for scuba had emerged: open-circuit scuba where the diver's exhaled breath is vented directly into the water, and closed-circuit scuba where the carbon dioxide is removed from the diver's exhaled breath which has oxygen added and is recirculated. Oxygen rebreathers are severely depth limited due to oxygen toxicity risk, which increases with depth, and the available systems for mixed gas rebreathers were fairly bulky and designed for use with diving helmets. The first commercially practical scuba rebreather was designed and built by the diving engineer Henry Fleuss in 1878, while working for Siebe Gorman in London. His self contained breathing apparatus consisted of a rubber mask connected to a breathing bag, with an estimated 50–60% oxygen supplied from a copper tank and carbon dioxide scrubbed by passing it through a bundle of rope yarn soaked in a solution of caustic potash. During the 1930s and all through World War II, the British, Italians and Germans developed and extensively used oxygen rebreathers to equip the first frogmen. In the U.S. Major Christian J. Lambertsen invented a free-swimming oxygen rebreather. In 1952 he patented a modification of his apparatus, this time named SCUBA, an acronym for "self-contained underwater breathing apparatus," which became the generic English word for autonomous breathing equipment for diving, and later for the activity using the equipment. After World War II, military frogmen continued to use rebreathers since they do not make bubbles which would give away the presence of the divers. The high percentage of oxygen used by these early rebreather systems limited the depth at which they could be used due to the risk of convulsions caused by acute oxygen toxicity.
