Babis and Johnny are the owners of Yellow Submarine dive center in Loutraki, Greece. They also provided the boat, the filling station and the logistics. Their knowledge of the deep reefs around Loutraki was a major asset for this week of deep diving.
Claude Rives
Well-known French underwater Photographer (National Geographic, Paris Match, etc), Claude is also trimixrebreather diver. He was helped by Brigitte Thouvenot.
Vangelis Niagos
Diver, skipper and also owner of the decompression habitat.
A TwinMegrebreather is a major asset for deep diving. It is made of two fully independant ISC Megalodon Closed-Circuit Rebreathers. The configuration was fine-tuned during a few shallow and deep dives and bail-out/emergency procedures were tested.
The Meg electronics (APECS 2.5) had to be filled with oil to withstand the pressure at depth.
And of course a lot of trimix tanks to fill, a lot of time spent loading and unloading boats and trucks, a lot of headache planning the dives!
Even loading the TwinMeg on the boat is a challenge!
George and Cedric tested the Scooters in Sintzi cave, a deep (and very cold) spring close to Loutraki.
This week was also the opportunity to try a few prototypes of the new Liquivision X1 computer. Extremely compact and convenient, they compute real time decompression based on V-Planner Live decompression software (VPM-B).
A nice shotline for the descent...
and a warm decompression habitat at 12m/40ft for the ascent.
Cleaning the habitat
Vangelis Nagios the skipper, is also very skillful when it comes to build the habitat.
Use of decompression habitat is not frequent in open water, due to various logistical problems. However it's a very useful tool to avoid severe hypothermia for long decompression in cold water (26C/79F at the surface but only 12C/54F at depth!
But setting up a decompression habitat in the ocean is quite difficult. If you want to have some fun, watch this:
Loutraki is a great place to dive, even if the weather can change quite rapidly...
The view from the hotel room during a resting day.
The same view when we're ready to dive!
What about the dives? We did some great dives in different locations like Sintzi cave (a deep spring going down to 140m+), Sternas, Milokopia and a few others. Underwater shots will be published in several diving magazines...
