THE FISHMEN 



water was two minutes, would have said that it was im- 

 possible for a free-swimming diver to descend a hundred 

 feet. But since his time scientists have found that the 

 human body can stand greater underwater pressures 

 than were once thought possible. 



The human body is now believed to be no more com- 

 pressible than that of a fish. Modern science tells us that 

 a mammal may even be able to survive pressure equal 

 to a depth of 450 feet, although no free-swimming diver 

 had yet attained half that distance. Far below that record 

 depth of 210 feet attained by Dumas in his Aqualung lies 

 the world's record for the greatest descent ever made in a 

 flexible diving-suit, encasing the human body : 535 feet 

 attained by Petty Officer Wilham Bolland, R.N., on 

 28th August 1948. He went down into the dark water 

 equipped with one of Siebe, Gorman and Company's 

 diving-suits and helium-oxygen apparatus, at Loch 

 Fyne, Scotland. So the skin-divers have another 315 feet 

 to go to equal the full-diving-suit limit. 



Common-sense tells us that no skin-diver will ever 

 reach such a depth. But the history of underwater ex- 

 ploration is one in which common-sense has frequently 

 retreated, overwhelmed by the advancing tide of factual 

 science. 



Cousteau and his fellow fishmen have created a new 

 realm of adventure in which almost anything can happen. 

 The world's frogmen, contributing a vast accumulation 

 of knowledge and experience to the new science of under- 

 water exploration, endured hazards during their strange 

 war-time activities which equalled the perils of their com- 

 rades far above them in the atmospheric ocean. 



But peace-time provides the fishmen with adventures 

 almost equally hazardous, and more humane — as when 

 a group of divers may go down into the shore waters 

 armed, not with explosives, but with implements for 

 severing the stinging tentacles of certain jelly-fish for 

 hospital research; or when Aqualung divers may help 



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