DIVING CONTROL BOARD - 2003-2004

The Diving Control Board met eight times and reports two Research Diving classes held during the previous year. Several more divers were certified under a waiver of the rules that recognizes prior advanced certification. For the past year, 112 scientific divers at SIO logged 2552 incident free dives spending nearly 1400 hours underwater in a wide variety of research efforts that require the ability to work underwater.

At the annual 'All Divers' meeting held June 8, 2004, Karl Huggins discussed dive computers and tables. Karl is noted for his work in decompression theory and models, which resulted in the Michigan Sea Grant (HUGI) tables and his participation in the development of the EDGE dive computer. Karl also received the American Academy of Underwater Sciences Conrad Limbaugh Award for 2004.

In June 2004, Diving Safety Officer Wayne Pawlek retired. After interviewing several candidates, Christian McDonald was selected at the new Diving Safety Officer. It should be noted that Christian is now only the fourth DSO at Scripps since the dawn of scientific diving around 50 years ago. The now vacated Diving Locker Supervisor is filled by Richard Walsh from UC Santa Cruz where he worked as a SCUBA instructor along with other duties involving marine studies and support.

Diving equipment maintenance and diving record keeping continue to be held at high standards thanks to the efforts of Wayne Pawelek, Christian McDonald, Lynn Cannella and Rich Walsh. The SIO SCUBA web page http://sioscuba.ucsd.edu/ continues to be improved for disseminating current scientific diving policies and information along with routine record keeping which includes filing dive plans and dive logs.



Respectfully submitted,
Mike Kirk, Chair