Friends of the couple’s have noticed how much Scott differs from Chris Rouse in physical type, interests, and temperament. Where Chris was excellent with anything mechanical, and with the use of his hands to fix things, Scott is not a handyman at all: He relies on his intellect to solve problems with satellites that are literally out of this world. When Sue was married to Chris, she hadn’t thought about things like changing the oil in her car. That was something that Chris handled automatically.
While she may not have deliberately sought a partner unlike her husband, Scott is well liked by Chris’s diving colleagues and the Rouses’ other acquaintances who perceive a harmony in the relationship that was not evident in Sue’s life with Chris and Chrissy. She remembers the constant contentiousness between Chris and Chrissy and says, “I always had to act as the mediator between the two of them.” She pauses, somewhat sadly, then smiles and laughs. “You know what, Bernie? I started bickering with Scott, and all he said to me—in a really gentle tone—was ‘You’re bickering with me. Hmmm, there seems to be a common element here!’ Who knows? Maybe he’s right. Maybe Chris and Chrissy bickering all the time was something I caused. I don’t know, I always thought it was just interacting, not fighting or arguing.” She trails off, lost in thought, the peacemaker who no longer has combatants she must adjudicate or separate.
Some of Sue Rouse’s friends contend that her relationship with Chris was emotionally stuck in the high school years, when they met. The teenage Sue and Chris, like all couples, probably developed a pattern of interaction early on, where Chris constantly nitpicked at Sue so as to maintain the upper hand, and Sue retorted by firing back salvos, as if the two were a TV sitcom couple entertaining each other and their audience. Sue’s friends see her new relationship with Scott as a much more mature bond, one between two grown-ups who do not have to use each other to prove themselves because they already know who they are.
The marketing and development consulting I had conducted with Inabata and its client Seiko in 1991 for the creation of new diver-carried computers resulted in new consumer products. At first, these computers calculated only air dives, and as such joined the many similar diving computers that were already on the market. Then, in 1992, after my consulting contract expired, the project resulted in the Bridge computer, the first mass-market diving computer that calculated the use of various oxygen-nitrox mixtures, including pure oxygen. I was happy with the results. I had also forecast that these production methods would serve to create a computer that could calculate mixes of helium gases, at a time when the interest in and market for mixed-gas diving were increasing. The British diver Kevin Gurr successfully brought a mixed-gas computer to market in January 2000, and Inabata and Seiko will soon release their product.
The skills I built in diving and the risks I took all encouraged me to become a diving entrepreneur not only underwater, but on land. The sense of adventure I had while diving—and even the experience of getting bent—taught me that my life was too short not to act on my aspirations. I wanted more freedom than I could ever have working on Wall Street. I wanted to do something I loved. Like Chatterton, I made some big changes in my life in the wake of my accident and then the Rouses’ deaths. But unlike Chatterton, I became more involved with diving, just as Sue Rouse had. I took inspiration from Chris and Chrissy Rouse. They had the courage to follow their dreams, and though they met a terrible fate, they lived the life they wanted, and they were fulfilled, if only for a very brief time. I knew that in order to be truly happy, I had to do the same. Just like Chris Rouse when he started Black Cloud Scuba, I cashed in my assets and took a big financial risk. With a group of other divers and investors I started immersed: the international technical diving magazine. immersed is now well into its sixth year of publication and it has become a resource I am proud of, and one that advanced, technical, military, and commercial divers, as well as government agencies and scientific institutes, look to for information, advances in the sport, advice, and adventure.
Though I continue to have my physical challenges, I have done what I can to use technology to overcome them. After my accident I organized an expedition to Iceland, during which Steve Berman and the Canadian diver Kim Martin surveyed and mapped the island nation’s most geologically significant cave. I participated in a British Army expedition to find the H.M.S. Pheasant, a World War I destroyer lost off the Orkney Islands in Scotland. We located the wreck and dived it at 280 feet. I also conducted my deepest dive, a little over 300 feet, on the German World War II wreck Blücher, in Oslo Fjord.
Though I left active diving for a while to make sure I had grounded myself on land, the tide of my blood pulls me back toward the water. I know that with my family secure and my livelihood stabilized, I will soon heed the siren that calls me to dive again and return to the realm where I belong.
As I continue my fascination with diving, I also look upward. I have become a certified hang-glider pilot, and I am working toward my ultralight aircraft pilot’s certification. The connections between diving, flying, and even space exploration are far more numerous than people realize: The first pressurized altitude flying suits were based on dive-suit designs from the 1800s; space-suit development has also been heavily influenced by deep-diving suit development, especially the hard one-atmosphere suits that have allowed manned dives exceeding 2,000 feet in depth. The suits that astronauts wear in space in the twenty-first century may well be hard suits modified from those deep-diving suits, and workers of the future who construct space stations may well be first trained as commercial divers because of the similarity of the deep sea’s and outer space’s inherently alien environments.
Space, water, land—we humans now belong everywhere. We are drawn to explore ever more distant horizons. The knowledge that we gain from our explorations on earth will undoubtedly be applied in some form to successful space exploration. As we learn to overcome the limitations of our bodies, wherever that journey leads us, we will venture ever deeper into ourselves.
Acknowledgments
ON MAY 7, 2001, seven months after the hardcover edition of this book was released, Steve Berman’s lifeless body was found at a depth of 109 feet, in the Devil’s Cave System, Florida. Steve had accumulated over 1,500 of his 10,000-plus dives at this site, where he had taught hundreds of people about the art of cave diving. He had been working for at least ten years creating a map of the extensive system; on his last dive he conducted a solo survey of the far reaching parts of the twisting tunnel complex, the data dutifully etched in pencil marks on a white plastic slate attached to his person. He was found in perfect form, I’m told. His left thumb and forefinger formed an “OK” sign around the thin, white nylon guideline leading out of the cave, his light held securely in his right hand, his body facing toward a diver propulsion vehicle and a supplemental supply of breathing gas, both of which he had deposited during his inbound journey. The life-sustaining gas was only 150 feet away, and the cave’s exit 3,350 feet beyond.
There was no evidence that his diving gear was in disarray, no crumbled limestone rock wedged between his two back-mounted steel tanks, no hand or fin marks in the gravel, clay, and sand littering the cave’s bottom: nothing to betray entanglement, entrapment, or panic of any kind. Not even a sign of the body convulsing from drowning. Steve’s eyes were closed, his breathing regulator still in his mouth. There was no gas in either of his large gray scuba tanks. The diver who recovered him—a registered nurse—remarked that it looked as though Steve had become incapacitated, passed out, and expired. One might imagine that Berman’s death was oddly peaceful, like a sleeping man whose heart suddenly stops. The coroner’s report lends some credence to this fantasy: Steve was found to have a heart block-age—often referred to as “the widow maker.” Although Steve’s cause of death was officially listed as “drowning,” it is likely that he was incapacitated by a heart event, which could just as well have happened to him on land.
Rest in peace, my friend.
When I think of so ma
ny of my friends, like Chris and Chrissy Rouse, and other fellow divers who died while diving, I wish this were a book that never had to be written. It was in 1998, almost six years after the Rouses’ deaths, that I started writing the proposal for this book. I thought the passage of time would make it far easier, from an emotional standpoint, to write about their experiences as well as my own. I was wrong. Through the many interviews and review of various documents related to Chris’s and Chrissy’s deaths, I have relived their accident and the trauma to all of those who knew them countless times.
Although this has been a difficult book to write, I still feel as I did so many years ago when I was new to diving that divers and their world are fascinating; I am privileged to know many divers around the world, including many who are or have been on the cutting edge of the sport. My sole regret is that I have been able to include only some of these many outstanding divers and parts of their stories in this book.
As I liked to tell my students when I was teaching, diving is a sport offering so many possibilities that you can grow with it over the years to whatever level of complexity you want to achieve. For those divers who wish to stay in relatively shallow water and enjoy the colorful warm-water reef environment, diving is a relaxing and reasonably safe sport, just as hiking through the mountains is reasonably safe. The edge of sports like diving—going into wrecks and caves—and mountain climbing—ascending Mount Everest or K2—will always act as a beacon for a small group of people who have the motivation to develop the skills and get the experience and equipment that are needed even to be considered for expeditions. It is at that edge that the stakes are highest and that we learn the most about ourselves, our world, and our limits, as well as how to extend those limits. There are numerous lessons to be learned at the edge by those willing to look.
I wish to thank the many people who gave so generously of their time and let me interview them, or who answered questions by correspondence. Listed alphabetically, those people are Steve Berman, Steve Bielenda, Janet Bieser, Julia Bissinger, Jim Bowden, Bob Burns, Glenn Butler, Pete Butt, John Chatterton, Sue Crane, Paul Curtin, Cathie Cush, Billy Deans, Evie Dudas, Steve Foreman, Hank Garvin, Steve Gatto, Gary Gentile, Terry German, John Griffith, Mike Gucken, Kevin Gurr, Janet Hall, M.D., Peter Hess, Karen Jensen, Ph.D., Richie Kohler, Ann Kristovich, D.D.S., Barb Lander, Leslie Leanie, Don McDevitt, Steve McDougall, Denny McLaughlin, Michael Menduno, John Moyer, Kevin O’Brien, John Reekie, Ken Reinhart, Stephanie Schwabe, Ph.D., Tim Stumpf, Lisa Teklits, John Thornton, and Denny Willis.
In addition, I would like to thank several people who spoke with me casually about incidents related to the book and whose recollections helped fill in gaps in either the story or my technical knowledge. They are Dennis Anacker, Jim Baden, John Harding, Howard Klein, Wings Stocks, and Joe “Zero” Terzuoli. Several people also reviewed parts of the manuscript related to themselves and their areas of expertise, and I would like to give them a special thanks for their time and their valuable suggestions. They are Mike Emmerman, Bill Hamilton, Ph.D., and Karl Huggins. Jennifer Hunt, Ph.D., read most of the manuscript, including several revisions, and I am grateful for her suggestions, support over the years, and behavioral and psychological insights. I would also like to thank Graciella Ramos for her insights.
I would especially like to thank Sue Rouse, without whose support this book would not have been possible.
I have learned a great deal about the craft of writing and publishing, for which I would like to thank Jenny McPhee, my favorite instructor at the Gotham Writers’ Workshop in Manhattan, and Bob Sterner, my copublisher of immersed magazine. Besides Bob, I also thank my other business partners in immersed magazine, Tom Easop, Mark Haas, Kevin O’Brien, and Harry White, for their support of the vision I approached them with many years ago, and for the insights into business and publishing that they have shared with me.
Elaine Goodman did a fast and excellent job transcribing the many interview tapes I burdened her with, and I would like to thank her for her efforts.
I would like to thank my neighbor Lloyd “Butch” Ward, who read my work in progress and gave me valuable feedback.
Many thanks to editor David Groff, for helping me adjust to a new writing style, as well as for his enthusiasm, excellent edits, and suggestions for improving the manuscript.
To my editor at HarperCollins, Trena Keating, my heartfelt thanks for believing in this story and in my ability to present it, as well as for all of her support, edits, and invaluable suggestions for improving this book.
This volume might not have happened without the efforts of my devoted agent, Andrew Stuart of Literary Group International, who went above and beyond the call of duty to make it a reality. His sharp editorial eye, enthusiasm, and support were essential to this project.
Special thanks to my parents, Benoy Chowdhury, Ph.D., and Lilli Chowdhury, for giving me so many unique and valuable life experiences, and for the curiosity about the world that those experiences ignited. I would especially like to thank my mother for teaching me German and giving me the gift of entrée into another culture that a language provides. I thank my departed grandmother Lizzi Krüger for her unconditional love and the many memorable times we shared, as well as for her gift of snorkeling equipment when I was a child.
I remain indebted to the dedicated professionals of the U.S. Coast Guard, and in particular those who took part in the helicopter evacuation after my accident in 1991, for their efforts. I would also like to thank Dennis Anacker, Dan Crowell, Dave Dannenburg, John Harding, Dr. Ignaccio Mendagurin, the late Captain Bill Nagel, Kevin O’Brien, Peter Thompson, and the doctor who treated me in the recompression chamber for their efforts on my behalf.
Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Diana, and our son, Gil, for their patience, support, and love.
I regret that all those who have had a hand in creating this book do not have their names on the cover. Of course, any errors are solely my responsibility.
Photographic Inserts
Father and son working as a team on their first hobby—their beloved airplane.
Courtesy of Sue Rouse
Dive Training
During his certification dives at Dutch Springs Quarry, Chris Rouse (waving, on left) was relaxed after instructor Denny McLaughlin separated him from his son, Chrissy, to stop their incessant bickering
Courtesy of Sue Rouse
Sue Rouse (right) during her basic cave-diving certification at Peacock Springs, Florida.
Courtesy of Sue Rouse
The Rouses prepare to dive Devil’s Ear Cave, Ginnie Springs, Florida. Note the clear water that affords excellent visibility, which is in sharp contrast to cold-water ocean wreck-diving environments.
Courtesy of Sue Rouse
Cave Diving
An opening in the ocean floor leading to Lothoren Blue Hole, a cave system off East End, Grand Bahama Island.
Copyright © by Stephanie Schwabe, Blue Holes Foundation
A diver swinging among limestone columns, known as speleotherms, in East End Cave, Grand Bahama Island. Note that the diver is wearing tanks on his side rather than on his back. This allows penetration into areas of the cave with very low ceilings.
Copyright © by Stephanie Schwabe, Blue Holes Foundation
Warning signs like this one inside the entrances to cave systems bluntly wave off untrained cave divers from proceeding to their doom.
National Speleological Society, Cave Diving Section
Chris Rouse pushes his diver propulsion vehicle ahead of him as he crawls through the restriction known as “the lips” in the Devil’s Cave System, Ginnie Springs, Florida.
Courtesy of Sue Rouse
Chris (left) and Sue Rouse pose inside the Devil’s Cave System.
Courtesy of Sue Rouse
Off the coast of New Jersey, Chrissy Rouse proudly shows off his first lobster. In the northeastern United States, by law, divers are permitted to catch lobsters only by hand.
Courtesy of Sue Rous
e
Wreck Diving
The Italian luxury liner Andrea Doria prior to its 1956 sinking. The Grande Dame of the Sea sank in 240 feet of water and became known as the Mount Everest of scuba diving.
Copyright © by UPI/Corbis-Bettmann Archive
A diver examines the Andrea Doria’s stern cargo boom on an especially clear day. The rope in the background is the Wahoo’s anchor line.
Copyright © by Bradley Sheard
The Wahoo
The dive charter boat Wahoo, here anchored over the Andrea Doria site on a calm day.
Copyright © by Bradley Sheard
Inside the Andrea Doria wreck. Broken bits of china and other debris provide furnishings for an eel’s home. Note the white clumps above the eel; these are anemones, which look like plants but are actually animals.
Copyright © by Bradley Sheard
Inside the Andrea Doria, a huge mound of second-class china plates scattered next to a stairwell. This china, considered a great dive trophy, has since made its way into diver’s homes.
Copyright © by Bradley Sheard
With a mesh goodie bag filled with trophies, divers stop on an anchor line to decompress after a dive to the Andrea Doria.
Copyright © by Bradley Sheard
Back on the Wahoo after an exciting dive to the Andrea Doria, Ed Sollner (left) and Pat Rooney display their haul. Sollner died on a wreck dive a year later.
The Last Dive Page 43
