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Brave New Dive

A diver prepares to enter the waters of Vinyard Haven, Mass., from the USS Tringa in the summer of 1947. Divers at the time wore lead boots so they could walk along the seafloor and relied on compressors to pump air from the surface into their brass helmet. Developments in diving technology have come a long way since then. Today, WHOI researchers use rebreathers, which remove carbon dioxide from a diver’s exhalations, and the Exosuit, which maintains pressure at one atmosphere to extend dives to 1,000 feet for up to 50 hours and was used for archeological exploration of an ancient shipwreck off the Greek isle of Antikythera in 2014. (Photo by Jan Hahn, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)