Divers Record Rare Frogs And Fishes Under Water

Underwater diving is as old as swimming and has been perpetuated into the present by pearl divers and sponge divers. Skin diving requires only a face mask or goggles, a short breathing tube (protruding from the mouth and kept above water), and flippers, or foot fins.

A wet suit, a dry suit, or the latter over the former may be used in cold water. Skin diving was first popularized in the 1920s and ’30s in the Mediterranean and off the California coast, notably by the American diver Guy Gilpatric, whose The Compleat Goggler (1938) gave great impetus to the sport and aroused the interest of the French naval engineer and diver Jacques Cousteau. The goggles, flippers, snorkel (the name given the air tube from the German submarine air exhaust and intake device that allowed submerged operation), and face mask were all developed into their basic forms in the 1930s.