There is a good chance that any given technique and safety procedure practiced by divers today was conceived a half-century ago in the dive office at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. On September 26, 2003, the San Diego, California, institution will celebrate not only its centennial but also the accomplishments of people like James R. Stewart, its dive officer for more than 30 years and the codifier of safe research diving principles in use to this day.

Stewart's story illustrates how Scripps has been at the forefront of oceanography and the technologies and techniques that facilitate the most hands-on of sciences. Alongside the researchers who have identified concepts like plate tectonics are the technicians and engineers who have developed the equipment and know-how to allow the scientists to make these profound discoveries.

Besides being the oldest oceanographic institution in the United States, Scripps is also home to the oldest research diving program in the world, a program that involved Stewart almost from its inception. His association with Scripps spans more than half its history, starting with his teenage days snorkeling near its La Jolla pier.

When Stewart succeeded Conrad Limbaugh as dive officer in 1960, scuba diving gear had been available in the US for barely a decade. Gauges were a new concept. The wetsuit was four years old, having been developed at the University of California, Berkeley, by physicist Hugh Bradner, who would go on to spend the rest of his career at Scripps.

Hand-in-hand with the lack of now-commonplace equipment was a dearth of safety or training standards. After the deaths of two divers associated with the University of California in separate accidents, the university system's board of regents turned to Scripps, which already had a National Association of Underwater Instructors (NAUI) program to train and certify research divers from the system's campuses, to establish a written manual.

In 1964, Stewart wrote the University Guide for Diving Safety, which has been updated several times but never replaced. It was a milestone in the development of scuba diving, establishing some of the most stringent dive standards in the world. To this day, participants in Scripps' program must first be able to swim 1,000 feet in the ocean before being accepted in the class. A Scripps-trained diver must also make 12 dives per year, go no more than 90 days without a dive, and regularly take refresher courses in CPR and oxygen administration to maintain his or her certification.

Over the years, Scripps has trained scientists as well as professionals ranging from transportation agency specialists to state fish and game department officers.

Stewart realized the fruits of that vigilance in the early 1980s when the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) wanted to regulate research dives under commercial diving rules, a plan the University of California fought vigorously. For proof that research diving should be regulated separately from commerial diving, Stewart asked the operators of research diving programs around the country (most of whom he had trained himself) for their logs.

"We were able to generate three-quarters of a million dives, and within the commercial diving field in those days, there was about one case of decompression sickness for every 2,000 dives," Stewart said. "Within the sport diving industry, there was one in every 10,000, and ours was one for every 100,000. I feel that that's one of the contributions I've made, putting that whole thing together and making sure that it worked."

As a result of the OSHA hearings, the Scripps guidelines were accepted by the federal government as the standard for all research diving in the United States.

"We've had a very good and safe program that's been used by state and federal agencies, and as a model for other countries to establish their own," said Wayne Pawelek, who succeeded Stewart as dive officer in 1991.

Underwater Vessels
The same era that saw the template established for research diving also witnessed some of Scripps' most famous experiments with submersible vehicles.

In 1962, Scripps launched the Floating Instrument Platform (FLIP), a unique spar buoy that is partially flooded and flipped into a vertical position on the open ocean. Its unmatched stability allows scientists to detail the ocean's physical activity on scales impossible to achieve on conventional research vessels. The platform was used in fall 2002 on the Hawaii Ocean-Mixing Experiment.

In 1965, the underwater canyon just beyond the Scripps pier hosted the SeaLab II program, the second phase of the Navy's experiment in long-term undersea habitation. Over a month and a half, three teams of 10 divers each spent 15 days inhabiting the craft 205 feet (63m) below the surface, breathing a mixture of oxygen and helium.

Highlights of the event were live communications between astronaut Scott Carpenter transmitting from SeaLab and counterpart Gordon Cooper orbiting Earth in Gemini V, and from SeaLab to Jacques Cousteau's habitat Conshelf III, submerged off the coast of France. Of more long-lasting significance was what the researchers learned about saturation diving. Life underwater as practiced on SeaLab proved expensive and risky. However, the habitat provided the foundation for modern saturation systems in which divers can remain submerged for more than a month.

Association of Diving Contractors International Executive Director Ross Saxon, whose Navy career included an assignment piloting the bathyscaph Trieste II from 1968 to 1970, credits the SeaLab program for allaying fears officials had about the safety of saturation diving. Without the experiment, many advances in oil and gas exploration would have been delayed several years, he said. "It took us much, much farther forward, not only in terms of military but commercial applications as well" Saxon said.

The institution's use of remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) began in the mid-1960s when engineers converted a Marine Corps-tracked amphibious vehicle into the Remote Underwater Manipulator (RUM). In 1976, ROV technology reached a milestone when a tethered camera platform called DeepTow allowed Scripps scientists to first detect life at the hydrothermal vents in the Galapagos Rift off the coast of South America.

In July 2002, Scripps researchers tested technology that will allow dives as deep as 32,800 feet (9,950m) in modified Bluefin Robotics or Odyssey autonomous undersea vehicles (AUVs). "We'll have the deepest diving AUVs by three kilometers or so," said Scripps engineer Kevin Hardy.

Scripps will enter into its second century promoting diving safety and advancement of oceanographic technologies. Scripps' continuing evolution will be on display in September of this year when San Diego hosts Oceans 2003. The show, produced jointly by the Marine Technology Society and the Institute of Electric and Electronics Engineers, will feature exhibits, technical sessions, and a presentation on Scripps' first century and oceanography's future. For more on the event, check out oceans2003.org. For more on 100 years of history-making at Scripps, visit scripps100.ucsd.edu. UW
Robert Monroe is senior science writer for UCSD's Scripps Institution of Oceanography Explorations magazine.