LET'S TALK UNDERWATER, LET'S TALK PERSONAL
(blog dedicated to personal underwater propulsion and vehicles)
Let’s talk about this.
If you are reading this, chances are you like water. I would bet my hopelessly insignificant retirement plan that you would rather be under the surface than in front of the computer reading my blog. If I am right, then you are like me. Well, unfortunately being underwater is not a permanent state of things for us mortals. We go there when we can.
The next best thing to being there is to talk about it. I know two good ways of doing it: one over some good beer with your dive buddies, another is to be online. In both cases it is great to know some cool stuff about stuff. And this is where blogs like this one come in handy. We write about stuff we know or have learned through painful experience, so you can take it and use in your delightful beer infused sessions in your local bar, by the campfire on the beach, or enjoying the evening in a gazebo after a successful diving day.
I am not going to write much about regular SCUBA here. I love it, but this is not my focus here. I am not even going to talk about freediving a lot. I love it too, but my story is somewhere else. I am going to talk about something which has a potential of changing our underwater experience from being akin to a backyard walk, to something which is like cross country skiing or maybe flying. I will talk about personal underwater propulsion and vehicles.
Given! It will be partially about stuff I built for the Amphi project. But I don’t want to stay with Amphi‘s technology the entire time. I like it, but like everything, Amphi has its space in terms of application and the “fun factor”. I want to go beyond my personal experience. I will talk about history of personal underwater propulsion and vehicles, technologies involved, new products, novelties, trends, safety, civilian and military applications, etc. So yes, you will learn a lot of stuff about stuff. Enjoy! See you underwater.
Dr. Marek Swoboda is a life-long enthusiast of underwater technology. He holds M.S. degree in Physics and Ph.D. in Biomedical engineering. His behind-the-iron-curtain upbringing gave him a unique perspective on the underwater technology. Due to the lack of SCUBA equipment in communist Poland he was forced to improvise and learn on his own. As a teenager, together with his father, he built a series of buoyancy Control Devices, tested his father’s regulators and depth gauges. However, his professional career brought him in a different direction, namely the Artificial Heart and blood pumps, where he had the opportunity to flirt with his lifelong love – hydrodynamics. He teaches biomedical engineering related topics at Drexel and Rowan Universities. His busy schedule gives him little free time, but when it does, he immensely enjoys freediving and SCUBA. He is the brains behind the Amphi concept and implementation. He dreams of creating a new “cross-country diving” movement. On occasion, he enjoys good beer and company.