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Legends of Diving Articles |
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James Stewart
Pioneer and Early Dive Expert
James Stewart was born in 1927 and his diving career
began before there was scuba. In 1941 at the age of 14 in La
Jolla Cove in San Diego,
California James first borrowed a
friend's mask and put his head under water and started free
diving. This is when free diving and spear fishing soon replaced
swimming and surfing. He quickly became a very accomplished free
diving spear fisherman as a junior in high school. The following
year became a life guard.
James was drafted in the final year of World War II and went
into the Army Air Corps in Nome, Alaska. Upon returning home he
was invited to join the Bottom Scratchers, the nation's first
dive club in 1951. This exclusive club was by invitation only
and only had seventeen members. James was |
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the youngest. Initiation requirements included including
collecting three abalones in 30 feet of water in one breath,
bringing in a six foot shark by the tail, and catching a ten
pound lobster. Scuba was not allowed.
California James first borrowed a
friend's mask and put his head under water and started free
diving. This is when free diving and spear fishing soon replaced
swimming and surfing. He quickly became a very accomplished free
diving spear fisherman as a junior in high school. The following
year became a life guard.
His scuba diving career began in 1951. The equipment was a
converted oxygen regulator from an Army Air Corps bomber. This
was only two years
after the first Cousteau/Gagnan Aqua-Lungs
arrived in the U.S. Since there were not scuba diver training
programs, Stewart learned like everyone else then ... through
trial-and-error, sharing knowledge between divers and pure luck.
This background made him extremely conscious of the need for
polished diver training programs and diver safety programs. He
became a pioneer and expert in this field.
His academic background is as a Marine Biologist, receiving his
Bachelors Degree in Botany from Pomona College in 1953 and his
Teaching Credential from San Diego State University in 1958. He
studied marine botany at the graduate level, both at USC and the
University of Hawaii.
In 1952 Stewart began his long and productive association with
Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Connie Limbaugh and Dr.
Andy Rechnitzer developed the diving program at Scripps.
Limbaugh recruited Stewart as a volunteer in the Scripps
program. He helped in research and diver training. The Scripps
diver training program was just to train scientific divers with
scuba. But it paved the way for many sport and scientific diver
training programs throughout the world.
Los Angeles County sent Bev Morgan, Al Tillman and Ramsey Parks
through the Scripps scuba diver training program. They in turn,
with a lot of help from Limbaugh, Rechnitzer and Stewart, set up
the first sport diver training program in 1953: the Los Angeles
County Underwater Instructors Association. Stewart has been
Technical Advisor to the Los Angeles County Program and NAUI
from the start.
In 1955 Stewart was hired part time by Scripps to work on a kelp
study, sponsored by Kelco. The company harvests help and
processes it into over 200 commercial products.
Jim Stewart traveled to Enewitok and Bikini in 1955 with a
Scripps research team. This was the site of atomic and hydrogen
bomb tests. Stewart conducted studies on the affects of the
nuclear blasts and fallout on marine life. He joined the Scripps
staff full time in 1957.
Also in the 1950s, Stewart and Dr. Andy Rechnitzer recorded the
sounds of humpback whales in the Channel Islands off Southern
California. This was during the first diving research cruise,
using the 100-foot vessel Orca.
As part of his responsibilities, Stewart was to collect fish
species for research and the Scripps Aquarium. He developed a
technique of using hypodermic needles to remove gas from the
swim bladders of deep diving fish. This allowed them to adjust
the surface pressure and remained alive.
In 1959 Stewart, Limbaugh and Dr. Wheeler North discovered the
amazing underwater sandfalls at Cabo San Lucas. They worked
together to film and produced the film, Rivers of Sand, which
won many awards at film festivals throughout the world.
Tragically, in 1960 Conrad Limbaugh was killed in a cave diving
accident in France. Jim Stewart was named to succeed his close
friend as Diving Officer at Scripps.
Stewart was instrumental in further developing the formal
training program at Scripps and established diving standards.
This was formalized in the original University Guide For Diving
Safety written by Jim Stewart. Published in 1960, this created a
means for establishing reciprocal diving programs throughout the
University of California system. This first university diving
safety manual included rules on training, dive procedures,
maintenance and record keeping. Many universities and colleges
across the country have adopted this manual.
As Diving Officer at Scripps, Stewart heads the nation's oldest
and largest non-governmental research diving program. He has
also managed the Scripps Research Diving Program, which has
become the model for safe and effective conduct of international
research diving programs. He has supervised a yearly average of
130 faculty, staff and students who have amassed more than
100,000 dives.
Stewart has shared his diving knowledge, training methods and
safety procedures with sport diver training organizations. And
he has lectured throughout the world on diver training,
scientific diving and diving operations.
As part of his responsibilities as Diving Officer, Stewart has
been diving in most parts of the world in support of research
projects at Scripps. This has included the South Pacific, under
the ice in Antarctic, all along the eastern Pacific Coastline
clear up to Alaska, the Caribbean, Europe, the Indian Ocean and
several other locations.
In 1961, while doing diving research off Canton Island, Stewart
was attacked by a gray reef shark. He was hit twice on the right
elbow. It was
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a very bad bite, cutting the joint capsule and two
arteries. Because of his considerable diving experience and the
rather brave help of his friend Ron Church, Stewart was able to
get away from the shark. Stewart had to be flown clear back to
Hawaii, the closest hospital to handle such emergencies. He
lived to joke about it, probably because he was destined for
greater contributions to diving.
In 1962 Jim Stewart was part of the safety team on the Hannes
Keller 1,000-foot Dive off Catalina. When an accident forced
Keller and his dive partner, Peter Small, back into the diving
bell, Dick Anderson and Jim |
Whittaker were able to clear a fin out of the hatch and
seal it for decompression. Anderson signaled Whittaker to
surface and have the bell raised. But the bell would not rise.
Anderson surfaced to discover Whittaker was not there. Jim
Stewart and Dave Wells immediately dove to correct the problem,
which was in the counterweight winch system. They were able to
clear it, but were sucked up in the turbulent water that pulled
Wells' watch right off his wrist. The bell surfaced, Keller
recovered, Small died and Whittaker was never found.
Jim Stewart was a Saturation Diver on the Westinghouse Project
600. This operation was a record saturation dive with the
Cachalot Diving Bell System to 600 feet in the Gulf of Mexico.
The Saturation Divers breathed a 95-5 helium-oxygen mixed-gas.
The project was a success, including the 62-hour decompression.
He was part of a research dive team in 1967 that discovered the
Japanese ships at Truk Lagoon. Their research ship had anchored
there to ride out a typhoon. Thousands of sport divers have
since made dives on this massive underwater grave site and seen
the spectacular marine life through crystal-clear water.
He is Technical Consultant for the Division of Polar Programs
for the National Science foundation. In 1969 he made his first
of hundreds of dives under the Antarctic ice. The water
temperature is a constant 28.5 degrees F.
Over his many years at Scripps, Stewart has been a key part of
countless diving operations: both the Pacific and Atlantic
Oceans; the Gulf of Mexico; surveying effects of nuclear blasts
at Enewitok; diving under the Arctic and Antarctic ice; Safety
Diver for the Hannes Keller 1,000-foot Dive; the Mediterranean
Sea; and other areas.
In addition, Stewart has worked well with the scientific field,
conducting dives in submersibles, and in studying submarine
canyons and deep water fishes.
Stewart is on the NAUI Advisory Board, the San Diego County
Coroner's Scuba Committee and many other groups.
He serves as a Diving Consultant to the U.S. Coast Guard, NASA,
FBI, U.S. Army Special Forces, National Park Service and many
universities.
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The Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Marine
Technicians Handbook, Procedures for Shipboard Diving:
The University Guide for Diving
Safety for the International Legends of Diving. Project to preserve this
original document for dive training, in cooperation with James R. Stewart,
revised in 1971 by the author.
Read the original dive manual
here.
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