INTO THE ABYSS
Published by
Whittles Publishing Ltd.,
Dunbeath,
Caithness, KW6 6EG,
Scotland, UK
© 2018 Rod Macdonald
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, recording or otherwise
without prior permission of the publishers.
First published in Great Britain in 2003 by
Mainstream Publishing Company (Edinburgh) Ltd
Reprinted 2005, 2008 and 2016
Reprinted 2008
This edition 2018
ISBN 978-184995-383-2
Printed by
Also by Rod Macdonald:
Dive Scapa Flow
Dive Scotland’s Greatest Wrecks
Dive England’s Greatest Wrecks
Great British Shipwrecks - a personal adventure
Force Z Shipwrecks of the South China Sea- HMS Prince of Wales & HMS Repulse
The Darkness Below
Dive Truk Lagoon - the Japanese WWII Pacific Shipwrecks
Dive Palau - the Shipwrecks
Shipwrecks of Truk Lagoon
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
Rod Macdonald is one of the world’s pre-eminent shipwreck explorers and an international best-selling author of a number of classic diving books such as Dive Scapa Flow and Dive Truk Lagoon. He lives in Stonehaven, a small coastal town on the rugged north east coast of Scotland where he served as lifeboat crew and then as Operations Manager for the RNLI lifeboat station. An RYA Advanced Powerboat Instructor, he currently instructs international maritime Search and Rescue crews out of Stonehaven harbour. He was inducted into The Explorers Club of New York in 2015 for his work exploring shipwrecks around the world.
Author’s Note: The 1st edition of Into the Abyss was published in 2003 at a time when technical diving, which had arrived in the UK about 1995 was still developing. Up until the introduction of mixed gas technical diving the very limit of safe air diving was 50 metres. The introduction of helium breathing mixes and accelerated decompression techniques radically changed diving for ever. Getting used to the quantum change that had hit diving took time - and we were largely human guinea pigs finding out the hard way what worked and what didn’t. This book charts my diving career from novice single tank diver in the early 1980’s through the dangers of deep air diving to the introduction of what became know as technical diving. Looking back now from a distance in time when all our techniques are largely settled, it was clear that evolution was at work - and as they say, evolution is a slow process.
My follow on book The Darkness Below was published in 2012 and charts the development of our sport from open circuit trimix diving through to Closed Circuit mixed gas rebreather diving. The final book in the Diving Trilogy, Deeper into the Darkness, was published in 2018.
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