“…About 200 Persian ships were sent to trap Greek navy nearly Yevbeas island. During the campaign Persian took aboard a Greek prisoner named Scyllis. When captive realized that Persian King Xerxes was to attack Greeks, he seized a knife and jumped overboard. Persians, who can’t find him in the water, supposed that man has drowned. Scyllis surfaced at night and made his way among Xerxes’ ships, cutting each ship loose from its moorings. He used a hollow reed for breathing to remain unobserved. Than he swam nearly 15 kilometers to rejoin the Greeks…” In that way historian Herodotus has described the most popular history of heroic Greek diver Scyllis immortalized in monuments in his homeland. Numerous late texts quoted this feat to describe divers’ skills and possibilities.

Feeding At the beginning of the diving history, when people haven’t possessed knowledge of writing and have depicted their experience on the cave walls, they had dived for like animals, food impetuous and adroit, and even unarmed till time of the net invention. They hunted fish for food, collected shells for decoration and used different aquatic creatures for buildings.

Navy divers Antic industry, transportation and military required divers for sponges and corrals hunting, salvage working and recovering of boat damage. Professional divers arose from navy development of Egypt, Cyprus, and Finikiya. Even the primitive navigation required divers’ work: underwater repair, anchors untangle, salvaging. Aristotelius (IV BC) has told about special equipment resembled to dive bells and about leather bags filled with air and helmet with breather. Air bags, helmets and bells allowed working underwater for a long period of time. During the centuries people seek the ways and equipment to stay underwater deeper and longer. They improved diving bells supplied with air from the surface, full diving suit and helmets in which air has been provided by manual pump. First prototype of modern scuba diving equipment was invented in 1843 and was used by French navies for several years. It consisted of steel tank with compressed air placed on the diver’s back and connected through a valve arrangement to a mouthpiece. Jules Verne mentioned this equipment in his novel “20 000 Leagues Under The Sea”.

Treasure One of the most excited possibilities which diving offers to people is treasure questing. From the very start people try to find places where boats sank or were sank and lifted wealth up. Seeking and surfacing sank treasure became so popular and widespread in ancient world that special Low Of Share was passed in 111 BC. Due to that Low diver can take the tenth, the third or even the half part of treasure in depends of depth where he has found it.

Investigations Scientists, moved by passion of knowledge, study the civilization history examining underwater artifacts. Undersea great find match lot aspects of ancient life: customs, legends, orders, rules, decorations. Battleship wrecks, different luxury objects, household goods help to reconstruct the past life pictures. First professional archaeological research dated by 1928, when scientists were interested in exploring two gorgeous ornamented Roman ships have been sank nearly 1 AC. Discovering different form of underwater life provided mankind with knowledge of Earth formation and aquatic species development.

Recreation And above all people start to dive for recreation and pleasure. An amount of dive centers work around the world and teach people to dive safe. First course for scuba certification started in 1959. Since that time everyone can admire under water freedom to move, breath and study. People learn listen to silence, observe the aquatic creatures, swim with fish, and examine the underwater life. They learn to respect to animals. They learn to see beauty and chaos in their pristine harmony. They learn to be careful to environment. They establish new connection with nature lost many years ago. They involve their children dive and discover underwater world together. They find courage, passion, proud and mild in their heart and it is the most exited discovery in people’s life. And it will continue forever till people will possess this amazing curiosity to Universe mystery.

Material was written with the help of Dive-center “Triton” (+38 044)416-89-80