Diving Enthusiasts Take the Plunge

Human beings are not "designed" for aquatic life. This means that diving, whether for sport or as part of one's occupation, involves certain health risks as well as a host of potential life-threatening situations. Two new start-up companies, established by Israeli diving enthusiasts, have chosen to meet the challenge of making the marine environment a bit healthier and a bit safer - head on.

The result of several years of research and development are two independently developed diving accessories. One fits over the ears, protecting them from dysfunction and infection, while enhancing hearing underwater - an important safety measure on waterways shared by fast-moving surface craft. The other acts as the diver's "eyes", enhancing safety parameters and providing a means of quickly locating a diver in distress.

Human ears, like human lungs, are not constructed for lengthy submergence in water. When water penetrates the inner cavities of the ear, hearing becomes impaired, and often the balance system is affected, causing vertigo, dizziness and loss of coordination, all of which can be more dangerous if they occur under water.

A common complaint is "diver's ear" - discomfort, from slight to acute and even permanent damage to hearing, stemming from the inability of the outer and middle ear to equalize pressure fast enough as the diver descends. To overcome this problem, divers "pump" their ears - they equalize pressure by pinching their noses and closing their mouths, expelling air from their lungs into the mouth cavity, and forcing it through the narrow Eustachian tubes to the middle ear. However, this technique has limited value. After a number of days of diving, the Eustachian tube becomes blocked with mucus due to irritation from the cold and often polluted water. Consequently, countless divers are forced to rest until their ears can recover and "re-calibrate". Equilibrium dysfunction not only means "lost dives", but penetration by cold water and exposure to pollutants are often the source of infection. In extreme cases, divers can suffer permanent damage to their hearing from a host of problems, including ruptured eardrums and chronic infections.

Together with a team of dive masters, diving physicians and engineers, Safe Dive Ltd. has developed Proear 2000, which keeps diver's ears dry and assists in equalizing the pressure from the marine environment on the human ear.

Proear 2000 is a special diving mask that sports a pair of hydrodynamic silicone and plastic "cups" added to the standard silicone diving mask. The cups completely envelop the outer ear, forming a watertight area that leaves the divers outer ear, ear canal and eardrum completely dry. The unique design protects the ear from the adverse effects of cold, pollutants and water pressure. The mask also includes two thin silicone tubes that extend from the front to the ear cups. When the diver expels air through his or her nose into the mask, the air travels through the tubes to the cups, equalizing ambient pressures between the outer ear and the middle ear.

The second company to successfully market an aid for divers is Aqua Acoustic Ltd. Established in 1996 by diving enthusiast Benjamin Kantor, this start-up has invested $600,000 in developing of a tiny homing device that improves safety and deals effectively with emergencies.

Until recently, only the military and large commercial operations had communications equipment that allowed divers to signal that they were in distress. This equipment was expensive and cumbersome, and could not immediately pinpoint the location of the diver in trouble. All too often, rescuers could only retrieve the body.

As the popularity of diving spread, the need for a relatively cheap, small and effective device that can act as a distress signal and a homing device has grown. Aqua Acoustic Ltd. rose to the challenge.

The DiveGuard unit is based on a two-way ultrasonic alarm and homing system that operates as both a safety link and reference point in diving. The system is comprised of a pair of special sleeve-like devices, one worn by the submerged diver and the other by another diver or located at the designated departure site. If a diver gets into trouble - for example, tangled in a fishing-net or disoriented by a dwindling air supply - he or she can activate the device in "SOS mode". It immediately sends out a continuous distress signal in all directions. Any device on standby mode within a third of a mile (500 meters) can pick up the signal, activating a buzzer and an SOS alarm light. The signal, passing through a narrow conical beam, allows rescuers to simply follow the direction of the alarm "beaming in" - literally and figuratively - on the distress signal until reaching the site of the diver in distress.

The DiveGuard unit operates at a maximum depth of 50 meters. It can also be enhanced with an alarm clock that notifies a diver when a preset time has elapsed, and a depth gauge that warns if a permitted depth is breached. In addition, the developer plans to market cheaper units comprised of transmitters only, which can be left as markers leading the way to a designated spot - the diver's equivalent of "trail markers" in a forest.