Navy Diver Quotes

Speak, thou vast and venerable head,” muttered Ahab, “which, though ungarnished with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers, thou hast dived the deepest. That head upon which the upper sun now gleams, has moved amid this world’s foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful water-land, there was thy most familiar home. Thou hast been where bell or diver never went; hast slept by many a sailor’s side, where sleepless mothers would give their lives to lay them down. Thou saw’st the locked lovers when leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them. Thou saw’st the murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed on unharmed — while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that would have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms. O head! thou hast seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one syllable is thine!

THE TERRORIST ATTACKS came one after another during 1985, all broadcast live on network television to tens of millions of Americans. In June two Lebanese terrorists hijacked TWA Flight 847, murdered a Navy diver on board, and negotiated while mugging for cameras on a Beirut runway. In October the Palestinian terrorist Abu Abbas hijacked the cruise ship Achille Lauro in Italy, murdered a sixty-nine-year-old Jewish-American tourist, Leon Klinghoffer, dumped his body overboard, and ultimately escaped to Baghdad with Egyptian and Italian collaboration. Just after Christmas, Palestinian gunmen with the Abu Nidal Organization opened fire on passengers lined up at El Al ticket counters in Vienna and Rome, killing nineteen people, among them five Americans. One of the American victims was an eleven-year-old girl named Natasha Simpson who died in her father’s arms after a gunman unloaded an extra round in her head just to make sure. The attackers, boyish products of Palestinian refugee camps, had been pumped full of amphetamines by their handlers just before the holiday attacks.

Speak, thou vast and venerable head," muttered Ahab, "which, though ungarnished with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers, thou hast dived the deepest. That head upon which the upper sun now gleams, has moved amid this world's foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful water-land, there was thy most familiar home.

I’ve been around the world twice, talked to everyone once, seen two whales fuck, been to three world fairs, and I even know a man in Thailand with a wooden cock. Push more peter, more sweeter and more completer than any other peter pusher around. I’m a hard bodied, hairy chested, rootin, tootin, shootin, parachutin, demolition double cap crimping, Frogman. “There ain’t nothing I can’t do, no sky too high, no sea to rough, no muff too tough. “Learnt a lot of lessons in my life, never shoot a large calibre man with a small calibre bullet. Drive all kinds of truck 2 bys, 4 bys, 6 bys, those big motherfuckers that bend and go tshhhh, tshhhh, when you step on the breaks. Anything in life worth doing, is worth overdoing, moderation is for cowards. I’m a lover, I’m a fighter, I’m a UDT Navy Seal Diver, I wine, dine, intertwine and sneak out the back door when the revealing is done. So, if you’re feeling froggy you better jump because this Frogman’s been there, done that, and is going back for more. Cheers Boys!

It was a black and hooded head; and hanging there in the midst of so intense a calm, it seemed the Sphynx’s in the desert. “Speak, thou vast and venerable head,” muttered Ahab, “which, though ungarnished with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers, thou hast dived the deepest. That head upon which the upper sun now gleams, has moved amid this world’s foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful water-land, there was thy most familiar home. Thou hast been where bell or diver never went; hast slept by many a sailor’s side, where sleepless mothers would give their lives to lay them down. Thou saw’st the locked lovers when leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them. Thou saw’st the murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed on unharmed- while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that would have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms. O head! thou has seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one syllable is thine!

It was a black and hooded head; and hanging there in the midst of so intense a calm, it seemed the Sphynx’s in the desert. “Speak, thou vast and venerable head,” muttered Ahab, “which, though ungarnished with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers, thou hast dived the deepest. That head upon which the upper sun now gleams, has moved amid this world’s foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful water-land, there was thy most familiar home. Thou hast been where bell or diver never went; hast slept by many a sailor’s side, where sleepless mothers would give their lives to lay them down. Thou saw’st the locked lovers when leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them. Thou saw’st the murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed on unharmed—while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that would have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms. O head! thou hast seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one syllable is thine!

That head upon which the upper sun now gleams, has moved amid this world's foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful water-land, there was thy most familiar home. Thou hast been where bell or diver never went; hast slept by many a sailor's side, where sleepless mothers would give their lives to lay them down. Thou saw'st the locked lovers when leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them. Thou saw'st the murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed on unharmed—while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that would have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms. O head! thou hast seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one syllable is thine!

Speak, thou vast and venerable head," muttered Ahab, "which, though ungarnished with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers, thou hast dived the deepest. That head upon which the upper sun now gleams, has moved amid this world's foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful water-land, there was thy most familiar home. Thou hast been where bell or diver never went; hast slept by many a sailor's side, where sleepless mothers would give their lives to lay them down. Thou saw'st the locked lovers when leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them. Thou saw'st the murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed on unharmed— while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that would have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms. O head! thou hast seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one syllable is thine!

Speak, thou vast and venerable head,” muttered Ahab, “which, though ungarnished with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers, thou hast dived the deepest. That head upon which the upper sun now gleams, has moved amid this world’s foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful water-land, there was thy most familiar home. Thou hast been where bell or diver never went; hast slept by many a sailor’s side, where sleepless mothers would give their lives to lay them down. Thou saw’st the locked lovers when leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them. Thou saw’st the murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed on unharmed — while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that would have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms. O head! thou has seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one syllable is thine!

When the pitch-blackness of the night blanketed the island, none of us ventured outside our tents. The only exception to this rule was when the call of nature was very strong. When it was necessary to sit down and answer the call, we had to walk approximately 500 feet in the darkness to the latrines. During this journey, we would be challenged by roving sentries demanding the password to identify ourselves. Our passwords changed daily and always had the letter L in them because the Japanese couldn't pronounce the "ell" sound. It always came out sounding like an R.

Three bodies were found in a completely dry storeroom. They were dressed in blue uniforms. The three had emergency rations stored at their battle station, and they had ample water, since they had removed the cover to an adjacent freshwater tank... Two of the men wore wristwatches, and one of them carried a wallet-size calendar, which had the days checked off from 7 December to 23 December. It was believed their deaths were due to lack of oxygen. The discovery of these three men in an unflooded compartment caused a profound sense of anguish among our divers. Especially shaken were Moon and Tony, who had sounded the West Virginia's hull on 12 December and reported no response from within the ship.

Help me. Oh God, help me. ... I can't feel anything. But I know I'm hurt bad. I can't move my body and I can't feel my legs. ... I'm scared. Please don't leave me. ... I wish there was some light. I hate the darkness. ... I'm getting sleepy. I don't want to fall asleep. Keep talking to me, will you?

The best pilots usually have the most unflattering nicknames. The pilots I know say they don't generally have much confidence in anyone with a call sign like Maverick or Viper. If you meet one named Outhouse or Dumpster Diver, however, it's a safe bet he's good to go.

These powers and qualities are all in all men, but in divers degrees. Some men are but the embodiment of desire; restless and acquisitive souls, who are absorbed in material quests and quarrels, who burn with lust of luxuries and show, and who rate their gains always as naught compared with their ever-receding goals: these are the men who dominate and manipulate industry. But there are others who are temples of feeling and courage, who care not so much what they fight for, as for victory “in and for itself”; they are pugnacious rather than acquisitive; their pride is in power rather than in possession, their joy is on the battle-field rather than in the mart: these are the men who make the armies and navies of the world. And last are the few whose delight is in meditation and understanding; who yearn not for goods, nor for victory, but for knowledge; who leave both market and battle-field to lose themselves in the quiet clarity of secluded thought; whose will is a light rather than a fire, whose haven is not power but truth: these are the men of wisdom, who stand aside unused by the world.

I did not know that the institute was providing dolphin trainers to a highly classified Navy research project until I was approached one day about training dolphins to kill enemy divers in Vietnam. Turns out the Vietcong were sending swimmers into Cam Ranh Bay at night to place explosives on American supply ships. The bay was full of floating debris that made it hard to pick out the swimmers from other sonar targets. The idea was that the dolphins could detect the divers and let their trainers know. The trainers would attach a spear with a gas canister on the dolphin’s nose. The creature would swim back and shove the spear into the diver’s chest, inflating his dead body so it floated. It didn’t feel right to put the animals in that position, so I politely declined to get involved.

Since 1982, the Navy has allowed survivors from the Arizona to be interred there, along with a full military service. They can either have their ashes scattered over the wreck, or they can have their ashes put in an urn that a Navy diver will place in the barbette of the No. 2 turret.

Mullen used a careful and thorough search technique designed to locate any survivors on the remaining sunken ships. Beginning at the bow of the ship, the diver was lowered twenty feet under the water. At that point he hammered on the hull three times with a five-pound hammer. He then listened for a response. If there was none, he was moved in intervals of twenty-five feet and the procedure repeated until he finally reached the stern. Upon reaching the stern, the diver was lowered an additional twenty-five feet to the mud line, at which time he repeated the same sounding procedure until he reached the bow. Then the opposite side of the ship was covered in the same fashion.

Generally, the starboard sides of the ships were sounded first, since they suffered the least damage from bombs and torpedoes. We reasoned that if there were any survivors they would most likely be alive on the undamaged side. We also felt that the underwater sounds of our hammering would penetrate the ships hulls more effectively through an intact starboard hull.

Moon and his team were able to sound one battleship during each fourteen-hour day. When they returned at night they were exhausted from the grueling schedule. Moon said it was the only time that the tenders had to work harder than the diver. Holding a diver suspended at twenty feet for three hours at a time strained the muscles of even the strongest among us. We all worked together on the last two ships to give them some relief. The last ship sounded was the West Virginia. We worked the portside first, because the starboard side was partially blocked. The portside hull suffered a gasping torpedo wound three hundred feet long.

We were disappointed that we had not been able to find any survivors on the sunken ships, but after six days of sounding, we were sure no one was alive within them. While our diving crews were occupied sounding the ships and freeing the USS Tennessee, the shipyard constructed two diving barges, each one twenty feet wide and thirty feet long. Buoyancy was provided by three cylindrical pontoons. Wooden planks formed the deck, while corrugated sheet metal on the roof provided protection from the elements. A long pipe spanned the upright stanchions along the side of one barge, which provided an area to hang the divers’ rubberized canvas dresses. Along the opposite side were hangers for the four sets of lifelines and air hoses. A large workbench was situated in the middle of the barge. Installed at one end was a wooden diving ladder that led down to the water four feet below. Next to the ladder was a table that held the diving telephone equipment. Four dressing stools were neatly stacked near the table.

Our first safety measures began after my near brush with death when the yard maintenance people came out to the Arizona and removed my air compressor. We placed metal plates on the diving compressor after that which forbade anyone from touching it unless they checked with us first. As an added safety feature, we acquired a large high-pressure air flask that held enough air to allow a diver an extra twenty minutes of bottom time if the compressor failed. We also required that a standby diver be fully dressed so he could tend the working diver at the entrance to the ship. This precaution was used whenever a dive was more than one hundred feet inside the ship.

Diving operations on the Nevada began in mid-December as a joint effort with units in Pearl Harbor who had divers attached. Divers from submarine rescue vessels Widgeon and Ortolan excavated mud from under the stern and dynamited and removed sections of her bilge keel in an effort to attach a large patch over the forty-eight-foot-long, twenty-five-foot-high torpedo hole. The patch was made by the shipyard, and the bottom of the Oklahoma was used as a pattern because she was a sister ship of the Nevada. The divers from the Widgeon and Ortolan tried to secure the patch for more than a month before a halt was called to the work. After the Nevada was dry-docked, it was discovered that the torpedo blister on the side had blown outboard about two feet, which explained why the patch would not fit. Eventually, the patch was aborted and diving efforts were concentrated on isolating and making watertight all interior bulkheads contiguous to the hole. This required closing watertight doors and fittings, welding or caulking split seams, and driving wooden plugs in small holes. Our crew from the Salvage Unit was assigned this work. At the same time, Pacific Bridge civilian divers fitted and secured wood patches over bomb holes in the Nevada’s outside hull.

A second major problem appeared early in the work on the Nevada. It was the discovery of a deadly gas, generated within the ship. This poisonous gas was hydrogen sulfide. It was formed from a mixture of salt water, paper products, and other organic materials. In low concentrations it produced an odor much like rotten eggs, but in high concentrations it was odorless and highly toxic.

One morning two of the surviving crew members on the Nevada, Lt. Lawrence Gray and CPO Daniel Folsom, came aboard and opened a compartment test cap which allowed the poisonous gas to escape into an unventilated access trunk space. They were overcome by the gas and died almost immediately. Four other crew members came to their aid. They, too, were poisoned but managed to survive the dose of toxic gas. Although the Japanese planes were long since gone, the aftermath of their vicious attack was still killing American sailors.

Despite the widespread damage to the first two hundred feet of the bow section, the starboard side aft of number two turret was largely undamaged in the area where four 5-inch antiaircraft guns were located. These rifles were accessible for salvage.

The guns were in carriages, and each was secured to the deck of the Arizona by thirty-two threaded studs and nuts. Each stud was two inches in diameter. At high tide the nuts and studs were covered by six feet of water.

We borrowed a heavy-duty pneumatic impact wrench from the shipyard and started work to remove the guns. As each gun carriage was unbolted, the Maryann, a crane barge, came alongside. We rigged wire straps to the carriages, and they were hoisted aboard the barge and delivered to the yard ordnance shop for reconditioning.

Since our arrival in Pearl Harbor on 8 December we had worked fourteen-hour days, seven days a week. The stress and strain of the job was beginning to tell on us. Pearl Harbor offered no rest and recreation facilities. There was nowhere we could go and nothing we could do to recuperate from nerves rubbed raw from the strain of facing the hidden dangers within the ships. Being surrounded by filthy conditions was a debilitating experience to endure without respite. Divers and tenders were covered with oil and slime, while the stench of decaying bodies and the putrid smell of hydrogen sulfide gas permeated the water and air.

By allowing an average of three minutes per trick, an enterprising prostitute could rack up her quota in five or six hours. This would net her about three hundred dollars a day after paying the madam her cut. By assuming a twenty-two-day work month, a hard-working girl could earn seventy or eighty thousand dollars a year, tax free. Also, every whore in Honolulu was guaranteed a full day’s work for as long as her stamina held up. The long lines of fighting men patiently waiting their turns was assurance of this. The lines started forming shortly after 7 A.M. when liberty began, and as the day wore on, the lines grew longer and longer and tempers grew shorter and shorter. The men at the end of the lines became edgy and concerned that they would not gain entrance to the house before their liberty expired at 5 P.M. This would mean five long days before they could come ashore again, if in fact they were not shipped out in the meantime. Only the vigilance of the military police kept fights from erupting.

My dive that day would be the first salvage dive inside the sunken hull. An external survey revealed what appeared to be a hole below the mud line on the after port side, presumably made by an unexploded torpedo or bomb. My mission: find the missile and attach a lock on the propeller to prevent it from arming itself and exploding. The submarine base assigned a chief torpedoman to provide technical assistance if we needed help to disarm the torpedo. No salvage work could begin until the missile was rendered safe. This is a simple task for a trained diver. But as it turned out, there was nothing simple about it.

We determined that the external hole below the mud line placed the missile in the vicinity of the general workshop located on the third-deck level. There was no visible damage to the main deck above that area, so we were confident the missile had not exploded.

With exaggerated deliberation, I climbed down the wooden ladder and entered the oil-covered water. My helmet was barely awash as I walked aft on the battleship’s main deck, skirting wreckage. The dense floating mass of oil blotted out all daylight. I was submerged in total blackness. Only a line of air bubbles that popped to the surface marked my path for topside observers as I traveled the thirty-five feet to the Arizona’s entrance.

I pulled down my coupled lifeline and air hose, coiling them at my feet. My lifeline contained a quarter-inch-diameter wire built to withstand a strain of three thousand pounds. Telephone wires were wrapped around it and encased in rubber. There was a watertight telephone connection attached to the rear of the diving helmet. Telephone wires ran inside the helmet to the transmitter-receiver located in the top of the helmet. The other end of the telephone wires and lifeline connection were attached to the telephonic transmitter-receiver box on the diving barge. The diver could transmit and receive messages. The telephone talker could receive the diver’s messages continuously. When the talker wanted to communicate with the diver he depressed a transmitter key and sent his message. The diver could not transmit until the key was released.

At three-foot intervals, the air hose was tied to the lifeline with waterproof twine, creating small loops in the air hose so that any strain in lifting and lowering the diver remained on the lifeline.

After weeks of indecision by the Navy Department, a salvage plan was approved to cut off the badly damaged bow section of the Arizona and raise the stern portion of the ship. Our orders were to seal off the interior and make it watertight.

Before we could start salvage efforts, we had to investigate a reported hole in the after port side of the hull below the mud line, presumably made by a torpedo or bomb. Since no other damage had been discovered in the area, the consensus was that it had not exploded and was armed and dangerous inside the general workshop located on the third deck.

The Pearl Harbor salvage engineers argued convincingly to Washington that the salvage efforts should be directed to raising less damaged ships first, such as California and West Virginia. Otherwise the available salvage equipment and manpower would be diluted on Arizona, Utah, and Oklahoma. Admiral Nimitz concurred with this argument.

Lieutenant Haynes then gave us our diving assignments: dynamite the concrete quays that pinned the Tennessee against the West Virginia, and sound the hulls of the sunken ships to insure that no one was trapped within them. He indicated that the rescue of any possible survivors took precedence over every other operation.

Bosun Calhoun then launched into an account of the attack the day before and reviewed the damage suffered by the sunken battleships. He said the USS Nevada was berthed astern of the Arizona when she was struck by a torpedo in her bow. She managed to get under way with her guns blazing, the only battleship able to do so. As she rounded the southern tip of Ford Island, she was smashed with an avalanche of bombs, which started intense fires. When the thick, pungent smoke from the fires poured into the machinery spaces, the black gang, or engineers, headed for topside and fresh air. This forced abandonment left the pumping machinery inoperative. The forward ammunition magazines were purposely flooded to prevent explosions from the fires, but the after magazines were also flooded by mistake, which caused the ship to sink lower and lower in the water. In addition, ballast tanks were flooded on the starboard side to correct a port list. As more water entered the ship, many fittings that passed through watertight bulkheads began to leak, flooding all machinery spaces and causing loss of all electrical and mechanical power. Nevada was sinking in the ship channel.

Admiral William R. Furlong, senior officer afloat, ordered tugs to take her in tow and beach her before she sank and bottled up the only entrance and exit to Pearl Harbor. She was grounded with her stern near the shore and her bow in deep water. The Nevada’s wounds alone were not serious enough to sink her; rather it was the loss of her watertight integrity, combined with progressive flooding, that doomed her.

Haynes explained that the officials of Honolulu requested that the U.S. Army provide them with additional antiaircraft protection. Since neither the army nor the navy had any spare AA rifles available, the Navy Department offered to loan the Arizona’s guns to the army. The guns were scheduled for installation around Pearl Harbor and Honolulu.

Ben rolled the two-thousand-pound shell out of the freezer, and we used a chainfall to lift it aboard the diving barge. It was a fifteen-inch shell that at one time had been used by old U.S. coastal guns, long since obsolete. The U.S. imprint was clearly visible stamped into the base of the shell. Stabilizing fins had been welded to its base in order to give it the characteristics of a spiraling bomb. The old shell had been sold to Japan years before as scrap iron, and it had been returned to the U.S.A. with a vengeance. Ordnance experts came out, retrieved the shell, and sent it back to the Bureau of Ordnance in Washington, D.C., for analysis.

Within a few months after the attack, the navy was pressured by Congress and the White House to bring up the bodies of the men who died on the Arizona. They felt it was imperative that they be given a proper burial. The navy argued long and hard behind the scenes against this proposal. Their primary objection was that none of the bodies, up to that point, had ever been recovered with heads or even finger flesh intact. Individual dog tags that had been worn around the neck for identification had fallen off in the murky water and been lost. Based on this, it seemed impossible to positively identify any of the bodies. It also would have been heartless and cruel to describe the condition of the bodies to their families. There was no kind way to explain that scavenger crabs had devoured the exposed body parts.

The fact that bones placed in a hero’s grave could be those of any one of the 1,177 killed on the Arizona seemed not to be a consideration. Rational arguments were ignored, and as Congress became more and more pressed by grieving constituents to bury their boys in an honorable fashion, nothing could deter them. They were determined to comply with their wishes. The army, responsible for burying the dead heroes, sided with Congress.

There were now three options open to the navy. The first was to sever the forward section of the ship using dynamite. This would take months to accomplish, but would allow the after section of the ship to be floated and probably salvaged. The second was to flatten the ship with dynamite and drive her deeper into the mud. This would clear the quay, allowing other ships to use it. This second option was never seriously considered because the graves of the crew would be desecrated. The third option was chosen. The plan was to cut off the superstructure above water and construct a memorial in tribute to those who lost their lives on 7 December. When the decision was finalized, diving work was suspended on the Arizona. The two barges were moved, and we soon began work on the USS California.

Arizona is the only sunken ship that remains a commissioned vessel of the U.S. Navy. It honors all those who died during the attack on 7 December 1941. Passing honors are rendered to her as warships sail past.

These were no ordinary dolphins; they were Alpha Team bottlenose dolphins, the pride of the US Navy SEALs. During the Vietnam War, their primary mission was to provide security for US combat ships, docking facilities, and fuel storage tanks containing millions of gallons of marine diesel fuel – each an attractive target for NVA sapper divers.

That day, after barely resurfacing from a seventy-two meter warm up dive into the Blue Hole, Mevoli went into cardiac arrest and died. This time, he wasn’t able to bring himself back. When asked to comment on the accident, Natalia Molchanova, regarded by many as the greatest freehold breath diver in the world, said, “the biggest problem with freedivers . . . [is] now they go too deep too fast.” Less than two years later, off the coast of Spain, Molchanova took a quick recreational dive of her own. She deliberately ran though her usual set of breathing exercises, attached a light weight to her belt to help her descend, and swam downward, alone. It was supposed to be a head-clearing reset. But, Molchanova didn’t come back either. And that’s the problem that free diving shares with many other state-shifting techniques: return too soon, and you’ll always wonder if you could have gone deeper. Go too far, and you might not make it back.