DAY 2008
By Jeffrey Gallant

Foreword by Leslie Leaney
President of the Historical Diving Society
www.hds.org


Information is power! How many times have you heard that mantra, and how often in your journey through life have you personally proved the saying to be true?

You have questions. You seek answers. We all do. The correct answers are the power.

As technology marches ever onwards, our diver's blue world gets smaller but our information horizon becomes much broader, with information "overload" becoming a common condition. Our challenge is to sort what we actually need to know from what we receive, and to focus on that information source that gives us the correct answers to our questions.

Many in the professional diving community receive triple digit communications daily that require some form of reply. The digestion and filing of the correct information keeps us in the game and often ahead of a colleague who may suffer from the dreaded "info indigestion."

The Diving Almanac and Yearbook was born out of Jeffrey Gallant's own need to find answers. In this second (2008) edition, Jeffrey and his team again provide a printed flow of valuable information that help answer our questions, as they continue to refine and update this expansive content.

Although the Almanac's information horizon continues to expand, it is easy for you to avoid an information overload. The select information and answers you need are immediately locatable at both ends of the book through the chapter listings and also the index.

The content bulges with diving topics from Aquariums to Archaeology, Tsunamis to Trade Shows, and an alphabet of destinations from Algeria to Yemen. This Almanac is the information trailhead for a multitude of underwater experiences that a diver can become involved with, including, I am delighted to say, Diving History.

My personal journey through the sea of diving information is recorded by my constant gaze in our sports' rear view mirror. As one of a small group of international diving historians, part of my role is to sort the facts from the often ego-driven fiction of our infant sport. Correct information is the fuel that advances all of our research.

Another part of the diving historian's role is to provide an accurate historical record of what has actually transpired in our sport prior to next "embryo" Stan Waterman turning up at the local dive shop eager to experience the thrill of diving.

As noted by many, many, senior dive instructors, our sport's history has been surgically removed from the curriculum of diver training. It is as if the past never existed, and our 60 + year culture, containing names like Hass, Gilpatric, Cousteau, Cross, and Lambertsen, had never evolved. The "wanna be" diver enters a cultural void. As the Talking Heads put it: "And you may ask yourself, Well,.... how did we get here?" A great question!

Well, as the days go by, the diving historians try to answer that question.

By invitation, members of the Historical Diving Society have reviewed much of the information in the Almanac's history section. However, the Society fully expects some corrections from readers, and we are as eager as Jeffrey is to add any new input that straightens the historical record.

So welcome to the undersea information highway that is the 2008 Divers Almanac and Yearbook. You do not have to turn it on. It runs constantly.

You have questions. This book has answers. Lots of them!

So, dive into this important addition to the underwater world's library. Information is power, and this Almanac is your one-stop-shopping resource.

Enjoy the knowledge.

Leslie Leaney
President
Historical Diving Society
Santa Barbara, California