Scuba Diver History

Jules Verne in Scuba Diver History
was a French writer, whose stories are well known world wide. He is often called the “Father of Science Fiction”. His stories were about inventions which were far ahead of his time.
Jules Verne was born in 1828 and died in 1905. He made a name for himself with travellers’ tales – stories which tell about the adventures people have on journeys.
In his life time he wrote 54 major novels which were about science fiction. Jules Verne was able to invent a future that did not exist until well into this century.

He is one of those authors that make you wonder if time machines have been invented after all.
He wrote “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”, predicting humans living and working for very long periods in the deep
oceans. “Around the World in 80 days” must have encouraged many people in the last century to travel internationally.
Even today, it can be a challenge to achieve Jules Verne’s journey in his time limit… and maybe that is one of the
reasons you are right here, right now.

CAPTAIN JACQUES-YVES COUSTEAU in Scuba Diver History
Cousteau has been called the “explorer of the world of silence”.
He invented SCUBA and pioneered unaided deep sea diving and underwater photography.
He was born in 1910 and died in 1997.
The public owes most of its knowledge of ocean life to the television programmes of Jacques Cousteau., which revealed the treasures of the deep to the entire world.

Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau left his mark forever on the planet and the oceans.
When Cousteau and his teams embarked aboard Calypso to explore the world, no one yet knew about the effects of pollution, over-exploitation of resources and coastal development. The films of Calypso’s adventures drew the public’s attention to the potentially disastrous environmental consequences of human negligence. Cousteau, through his life and his work, was a major player in the environmental movement.

HANS AND LOTTE HASS in Scuba Diver History

Their intrepid underwater films, such as ‘Undersea World Of Adventure’ were dubbed for English and German audiences, and they proved very popular in Britain.
Their first series in 1956 show the photogenic aquanauts submerged beneath the Caribbean, The Aegean and the Red Sea.
It was then followed by ‘Undersea World of Adventure’ in 1958 and later ‘Adventure’ (1959-60).

Hans Hass was born in Vienna on 23rd Jan. 1919 as a son of a lawyer.
The 18-year old Hass was in the South of France in 1937 and he was always interested of the mysterious sea, he also
put the head under the water and he was immediately fascinated by this fairytale world.
In 1938 Hans built housing for the first sub-water camera, a (mostly) watertight case for his Rolleiflex.
Within the years 1941/1942 Hans Hass has collaborated substantially at the first swimming aqualung of the world of the company Dräger.
He has dived with oxygen, with compressed air, with circulation equipment, with re-breather and he experienced his first depth high when we didn’t know that there is something like that at all.
From the sports diver became the first marine biologist. Hans Hass financed all dive expeditions alone and he was all
over the whole Mediterranean Sea, in the Red Sea, in the Pacific and naturally also in the Indian Ocean and he dived in
the most Maldives atolls.
He had His first diving ship the legendary “Seeteufel” for only 3 years then she was confiscated by the Russians in
1945, but already 1951 he bought the “Xarifa” that took him diving for 20 years. Today, a diving place is still known in
the south of the North Male atoll as “Hans Hass Place” and the to date unknown, shy Tube-Eels Heteroconger hassi
and Xarifania hassi are named after him and his ship.

DR. ISMAIL SERAGELDIN in Scuba Diver History

Ismail Serageldin, Director, Bibliotheca Alexandrina…
also chairs the Boards of Directors for each of the BA’s affiliated research institutes and museums and is Distinguished Professor at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

Serageldin has also served in a number of capacities at the World Bank, including as Vice President for Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development (1992-1998).

He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering from Cairo University and Masters’ degree and a PhD from Harvard University and has received 18 honorary doctorates. With his efforts, the year of 1997 was named the “year of the reef”, and because of his unequalled efforts to protect and preserve coral reefs, a new coral species was named after him. (Montastrea serageldini)

We inquired into that matter a bit more, and learned that beyond his love for the sea and for corals, Dr. Serageldin has
been at the forefront of supporting a lot of serious work to study and protect corals all around the world.
He helped involve the World Bank with the first efforts at designing a Marine conservation Strategy, and then in the
design of a world-wide system of protected marine areas. Dr. Serageldin also worked closely with the late Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau,and then joined forces with the Cousteau society on protection of the coastlines, an effort led
by Francine Cousteau. He also worked with then Under-Secretary of State Tim Wirth on the launch of the international
Coral Reef Initiative (ICRI).
He also organized the world conference on saving the world’s coral reefs, ending with an eloquent plea for action. Dr. Serageldin also supported the global efforts to establish the global taxonomy of coral reefs partly, and the special
efforts of the one and only J.E. (Charlie) Veron. But it was such an unusual honor for Prof. Veron to bestow upon Dr.
Ismail Serageldin… Thank you Charlie, we know that nothing in the world could have pleased Dr. Ismail as much!