German submarine U-869 was a Type IXC/40 U-boat of the German Navy (Kriegsmarine) during World War II; her keel was laid down 5 April 1943 by Deutsche Schiff- und Maschinenbau AG Weser of Bremen. It was commissioned on 26 January 1944 with Kapitänleutnant Hellmut Neuerburg in command. Neuerburg went down with his boat. The wreck of U-869 was discovered off the coast of New Jersey in 1991.
In underwater diving, open water is unrestricted water such as a sea, lake, river, or flooded quarry. It is a contradistinction to confined water where initial skills training takes place. Open water also means the diver has direct vertical access to the surface of the water in contact with the Earth's atmosphere. Open water diving implies that if a problem arises, the diver can directly ascend vertically to the atmosphere to breathe air. Penetration diving—involving entering caves or wrecks, or diving under ice—is therefore not "open water diving". In some contexts the lack of a decompression obligation is considered a necessary condition for classification of a dive as an open water dive, as a decompression obligation is a procedural and safety restriction on immediate ascent to the surface, but this does not affect the classification of the venue as open water.
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. Risk may be reduced via appropriate skills, knowledge, and experience. Risk can also be managed by using suitable equipment and procedures. The skills may be developed through specialized training and experience. The equipment involves breathing gases other than air or standard nitrox mixtures, and multiple gas sources.
Deep diving is underwater diving to a depth beyond the norm accepted by the associated community. In some cases this is a prescribed limit established by an authority, while in others it is associated with a level of certification or training, and it may vary depending on whether the diving is recreational, technical or commercial. Nitrogen narcosis becomes a hazard below 30 metres (98 ft) and hypoxic breathing gas is required below 60 metres (200 ft) to lessen the risk of oxygen toxicity.
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.
Sheck Exley was an American cave diver. He is widely regarded as one of the pioneers of cave diving, and he wrote two major books on the subject: Basic Cave Diving: A Blueprint for Survival and Caverns Measureless to Man. On February 6, 1974, Exley became the first chairman of the Cave Diving Section of the American National Speleological Society. During his career, he established many of the basic safety procedures used in cave and overhead diving today. Exley was also a pioneer of extreme deep scuba diving.
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.
Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II is a 2004 non-fiction book by Robert Kurson recounting of the discovery of a World War II German U-boat 60 miles (97 km) off the coast of New Jersey, United States in 1991, exploration dives, and its eventual identification as U-869 lost on 11 February 1945.
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.
Gary Gentile is an American author and pioneering technical diver.
Deon Dreyer was a South African recreational scuba diver who died in Bushman's Hole in South Africa. Cave diver David Shaw died more than 10 years later while attempting to retrieve Dreyer's body.
Walter William Nagle Jr "Bill" Nagle (1952–1993) was a pioneering American wreck diver.
"Captain" Billy Deans is a pioneering wreck and technical diver. "Captain" is the nickname which is widely applied to Billy Deans, however he is a US Coast Guard-rated captain up to 100 tons.
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.
Jon Morrow Lindbergh was an American underwater diver. He worked as a United States Navy demolition expert and as a commercial diver, and was one of the world's earliest aquanauts in the 1960s. He was also a pioneer in cave diving, and one of the children of aviators Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh.
Jochen Hasenmayer is a German speleologist and cave diver from Birkenfeld in Baden-Württemberg, whose spectacular dives have frequently made headlines.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to underwater diving:
The following index is provided as an overview of and topical guide to underwater diving:
The 1973 Mount Gambier cave diving accident was a scuba diving incident on 28 May 1973 at a flooded sinkhole known as "The Shaft" near Mount Gambier in South Australia. The incident claimed the lives of four recreational scuba divers: siblings Stephen and Christine M. Millott, Gordon G. Roberts, and John H. Bockerman. The four divers explored beyond their own planned limits, without the use of a guideline, and subsequently became lost, eventually exhausting their breathing air and drowning, with their bodies all recovered over the next year. To date, they are the only known fatalities at the site. Four other divers from the same group survived.
