Extraordinary Adventures-Hardcover: Bob Soto Scuba Pioneer-In His Own Words

Extraordinary Adventures-Hardcover: Bob Soto Scuba Pioneer-In His Own Words

Author: Suzy Soto

Publisher:

Published: 2015-12

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 9780996550147

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Cayman was known as "The Islands that time forgot." However, Bob Soto woke it up when he started the world's first scuba diving company in 1957. He brought it to great success with his talent for marketing. Bob produced Cayman's first promotional film, to advertise the island's sun, sea, sand and amazing underwater beauty. With his permission, the Department of Tourism used the movie as their main advertising tool for many years. It was not long before the Cayman Islands became the top scuba diving destination in the world and Bob Soto's Diving became internationally renowned alongside it. Bob provided the only sea search-and-rescue operation from the time he returned to Cayman. Many times day and night Bob was called out to assist in searching for people and boats. He was always available to help anyone. His experience with the US Navy carried over well into his operations here. Bob also championed conservation issues, lobbying the government to designate the first protected marine park for his beloved sea creatures and the coral reefs. Bob stopped divers and snorkelers from taking coral long before there was an actual conservation movement or any law established to protect the marine environment, thus preserving his island's "treasures." His uncanny problem-solving ability enabled him to invent and build his own scuba equipment, attracting increasing numbers of tourists to experience Cayman's magnificent underwater world with Bob Soto's Diving.He was always working on the "next" adventure, leading to his incredible tales of treasure hunting and pioneering live-aboard diving. As the business grew, Bob eventually built a dive lodge in East End. Bob was a Christian man. He was kind, gentle, and loving, always with a smile, but not to be crossed! He had a passion to honor others, as evidenced by his work on "Tradition," the memorial to seamen, which has become a favorite statue in Heroes Square in George Town, where thousands have taken photos alongside the father and son steering a ship into the "abyss." In November 2014, he had the Home Guard veterans honored with all their names etched on the cenotaph in front of the Elmslie Memorial Church. When you visit Cayman, do not miss it!Come along on Bob Soto's "extraordinary adventures" of scuba diving; treasure hunting; sailing; rafting; and tasting life in Cayman when there were no planes, just ships, donkeys and catboats for transportation. Journey with Bob from the "Islands that time forgot" to modern-day Cayman. This is Bob's story. He tells it straight from the heart.


Extraordinary Adventures

Extraordinary Adventures

Author: Suzy Soto

Publisher:

Published: 2015-11-15

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 9780996550130

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Cayman was known as "The Islands that time forgot." However, Bob Soto woke it up when he started the world's first scuba diving company in 1957. He brought it to great success with his talent for marketing. Bob produced Cayman's first promotional film, to advertise the island's sun, sea, sand and amazing underwater beauty. With his permission, the Department of Tourism used the movie as their main advertising tool for many years. It was not long before the Cayman Islands became the top scuba diving destination in the world and Bob Soto's Diving became internationally renowned alongside it. Bob provided the only sea search-and-rescue operation from the time he returned to Cayman. Many times day and night Bob was called out to assist in searching for people and boats. He was always available to help anyone. His experience with the US Navy carried over well into his operations here. Bob also championed conservation issues, lobbying the government to designate the first protected marine park for his beloved sea creatures and the coral reefs. Bob stopped divers and snorkelers from taking coral long before there was an actual conservation movement or any law established to protect the marine environment, thus preserving his island's "treasures." His uncanny problem-solving ability enabled him to invent and build his own scuba equipment, attracting increasing numbers of tourists to experience Cayman's magnificent underwater world with Bob Soto's Diving.He was always working on the "next" adventure, leading to his incredible tales of treasure hunting and pioneering live-aboard diving. As the business grew, Bob eventually built a dive lodge in East End. Bob was a Christian man. He was kind, gentle, and loving, always with a smile, but not to be crossed! He had a passion to honor others, as evidenced by his work on "Tradition," the memorial to seamen, which has become a favorite statue in Heroes Square in George Town, where thousands have taken photos alongside the father and son steering a ship into the "abyss." In November 2014, he had the Home Guard veterans honored with all their names etched on the cenotaph in front of the Elmslie Memorial Church. When you visit Cayman, do not miss it!Come along on Bob Soto's "extraordinary adventures" of scuba diving; treasure hunting; sailing; rafting; and tasting life in Cayman when there were no planes, just ships, donkeys and catboats for transportation. Journey with Bob from the "Islands that time forgot" to modern-day Cayman. This is Bob's story. He tells it straight from the heart.


Trailblazer: The Extraordinary Life of Diving Pioneer Dottie Frazier

Trailblazer: The Extraordinary Life of Diving Pioneer Dottie Frazier

Author: Dottie Frazier

Publisher:

Published: 2019-09-28

Total Pages: 114

ISBN-13: 9780578551982

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Dorothy Adell Reider Gath Frazier May. Her name is longer and weighs more than she does, standing barely five feet tall and 100 pounds dripping wet. And dripping with water is how Dottie has spent much of her remarkably adventurous and long life. What is amazing about Dottie is not just WHAT she did, but WHEN she did it: Ocean swimming and boating as a child in the 1920s, as well as surfing, skin diving and spearfishing. In the 30s she was a skin-diving instructor. In the 1940s she was a 'Rosie the Riveter' during the war years and a commercial fisher to help feed her growing family. In 1950 she was a charter member of the famed Long Beach Neptunes dive club. And in 1955, she became the world's first certified female scuba instructor. She was also a hard-hat diver and was the first female dive shop owner and wetsuit manufacturer. Dottie tells her extraordinary life story in her own words, bringing to life her early childhood in Long Beach, California, where she was raised as the son her father never had, to being honored in 2019, at the age of 97, with the Historical Diving Society Diving Pioneer Award.


World Within

World Within

Author: Robert F Burgess

Publisher: Independently Published

Published: 2021-11-21

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13:

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Consider how it must feel to find yourself the center of attraction for a very large circling tiger shark and when you fire your spear at the animal he takes spear and gun away from you leaving you wondering what you have to offer him when he returns. This happened to the author, Bill Royal, off a reef in the South Pacific during World War II. Royal volunteered to dive daily in shark-infested waters to collect specimens for scientists trying to learn why the local fish population was toxic to eat. Non-poisonous fish became toxic wherever the Pacific military went. The reason scientists learned had to do with the World War II military habit of pushing trucks and other obsolete equipment into the ocean to extend runways. Toxic elements in the metals were eventually absorbed by the fish and passed on to humans who ate them. Later, as a shark-catcher for Florida's Cape Haze Marine Laboratory, Royal learns to capture the giants by hand to bring them in alive for scientists using sharks for human cancer research. While the original hardcover book-The Man Who Rode Sharks-details more about his adventures with sharks, this e-book edition focuses on Royal's far greater contribution to science by alerting us to the fact that some large Florida springs whose underwater profiles resemble gigantic stone hour glasses actually held the remains of Ice Age animals and early man carbon dating back to 12,000 years BC, a fact so incredible to scientists in the early 1950's that no one believed what he had found. In his own words this book describes how it all evolved, along with Royal's incredible good luck in being able to survive underwater adventures that repeatedly took their toll of human lives in those years. No one knew the dangers that lay in wait for divers using primitive scuba diving equipment so recently made available to them then. A tank of air at the surface lasts 60 minutes. But few knew that same tank of air when at 100 feet underwater lasted only 10 minutes. That lack of knowledge was deadly if you were fumbling around blindly in a silted out cave. In the beginning it all seemed so easy. We now had a way of breathing underwater; a way to explore the long hidden depths of underwater caves. Eventually, Royal's diving curiosity leads him to a prehistoric fossil boneyard as fabulous as the legendary elephant graveyard and to a sunken cavern where hundreds of human bones of prehistoric man are found beside those of sabertooth cats and giant ground sloths. Here, in dramatic detail, are the highlights of almost a half century of diving adventures by one of the most daring pioneers in the field, a modest, quiet-spoken man who pushed the frontiers of diving so far back that the experiences almost cost his life. Still, Bill Royal made one of the most important but frustrating archaeological finds of all time-a human brain in a 10,000 year old skull that scientists branded a hoax...until carbon dating proved it not a hoax, and they saw for themselves the incredibly rich underwater archaeological site Royal preserved for them for seventeen years. These events are described in such detail by co-author Robert Burgess that readers will re-live every tingling moment of Royal's life-threatening experiences whether they want to, or not. This is high-tension adventure at its best!


The Cave Divers

The Cave Divers

Author: Robert F Burgess

Publisher: Independently Published

Published: 2022-04-12

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

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Exploring the Lure of the Labyrinth... Cave divers are a special breed. They are truly the elite. This is their story - a story of pushing technology and human endurance to the limit in what has been called "The Most Dangerous Sport in the World." Using words that put you right beside him, Burgess takes you on a harrowing journey from pioneering descents into submerged prehistoric dry caves last seen by man 20,000 years ago, to the most recent record-setting expeditions using Space-Age Computerized Rebreathers. With them you will explore one of the world's deepest and largest underwater caverns. Along the way you will glide to the ceiling of cathedral-sized rooms that contain a graveyard of mammoth and mastodon bones, and ponder how they got there. Then, you will go off on other underwater adventures, some frightening; some joyful and all of them exciting. For instance, ever wonder what it is like to get lost in a black underwater cavern when your flashlight dies and you are running out of air? Burgess sees to it that you experience it. He will also see that you go along with pioneer diver Bill Royal exploring a deep-water spring to recover a 10,000 year-old human skull with its brain still intact! Evidence so shocking scientists failed to believe it until carbon-dating and tissue analysis proved it to be true! But how? You learn how and why. And you also learn what happens at 230 feet down when you overstay your time and end up bent. The author who built his own diving gear out of a World War II gas mask to explore a shipwreck near Lake Michigan in 1944, and who years later received the prestigious SSI Platinum Pro 5000 certification for making over 5,000 verified dives, now shows you never seen before sunken caverns once inhabited by Ice Age Man. With him you will explore passages feeding the Bahamas Blue Holes, and read about record depth and horizontal penetrations where none have gone before in Mexico and Florida. In this book you too will begin to understand the lure of the labyrinth and learn of the thoughts and struggles of divers lost but to God. You will even join six divers who discover a long-sought difficult way into a dry cave underwater but lose their lifeline. Now, in this secret cavern, they realize they are the only ones in the world who know where they are and how they got there! Thrilling stuff. Best of all you will live through all of these adventures...and not even get wet! Though you may end up a little breathless. "... Those who think that exploring underwater caves is too exotic a pastime to be of much interest will change their minds after reading this work by Burgess... Of special poignancy is the author's recounting of the accidental death of a favorite diving companion. This is an interesting mix of adventure and archaeology that probes one of the earth's last frontiers."--Publishers Weekly "...it is easy to see why this book earned a 'Book of the Year' award from Forward Magazine... As a photographer, Burgess is able to add another dimension to this book... Burgess' photos cover many decades and many caves... Overall, the book is a delight, entertaining and an easy read. It's a great vacation book, full of adventure, divided into chapters that can easily stand alone or mesh together...[Burgess] masterfully glides the reader through tales of history that cavers and non-cavers will enjoy." Susan Brillhart Book Review IMMERSED. The International Technical Diving Magazine.


Scuba Pioneer

Scuba Pioneer

Author: George Landgrabe

Publisher:

Published: 2020-08-03

Total Pages: 166

ISBN-13: 9781951492243

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Welcome To A Whole New Underwater World... Whether you're new to the sport of scuba diving, considering giving it a try, or a seasoned veteran, you will enjoy reading the insights from someone who has been diving for more than half a century. You'll appreciate how advancements in equipment have changed and made it easier than ever for more people to enjoy the vast underwater world that, for most, remains a hidden mystery. Are you ready to dive in? Why settle to read only facts and statistics about what can become a lifelong hobby, when you can benefit from reading a story? This book shares with you one man's journey of "taking the plunge", from swimming across the surface of the water to diving down to explore vast reaches of magical world invisible to those above.


Extraordinary Adventures

Extraordinary Adventures

Author: Daniel Wallace

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Published: 2017-05-30

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 125011845X

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**Wallace named the Harper Lee Award winner for 2019 by the Alabama Writers' Forum** **One of PopSugar’s Best 2017 Spring Books for Women** A large-hearted and optimistic novel, Extraordinary Adventures is the latest from the New York Times bestselling Daniel Wallace. Edsel Bronfman works as a junior executive shipping clerk for an importer of Korean flatware. He lives in a seedy neighborhood and spends his free time with his spirited mother. Things happen to other people, and Bronfman knows it. Until, that is, he gets a call from operator 61217 telling him that he’s won a free weekend at a beachfront condo in Destin, Florida. But there’s a catch: the offer is intended for a couple, and Bronfman has only seventy-nine days to find someone to take with him. The phone call jolts Bronfman into motion, initiating a series of truly extraordinary adventures as he sets out to find a companion for his weekend getaway. Open at last to the possibilities of life, Bronfman now believes that anything can happen. And it does.


The Everything Store

The Everything Store

Author: Brad Stone

Publisher: Little, Brown

Published: 2013-10-15

Total Pages: 387

ISBN-13: 0316219258

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The authoritative account of the rise of Amazon and its intensely driven founder, Jeff Bezos, praised by the Seattle Times as "the definitive account of how a tech icon came to life." Amazon.com started off delivering books through the mail. But its visionary founder, Jeff Bezos, wasn't content with being a bookseller. He wanted Amazon to become the everything store, offering limitless selection and seductive convenience at disruptively low prices. To do so, he developed a corporate culture of relentless ambition and secrecy that's never been cracked. Until now. Brad Stone enjoyed unprecedented access to current and former Amazon employees and Bezos family members, giving readers the first in-depth, fly-on-the-wall account of life at Amazon. Compared to tech's other elite innovators -- Jobs, Gates, Zuckerberg -- Bezos is a private man. But he stands out for his restless pursuit of new markets, leading Amazon into risky new ventures like the Kindle and cloud computing, and transforming retail in the same way Henry Ford revolutionized manufacturing. The Everything Store is the revealing, definitive biography of the company that placed one of the first and largest bets on the Internet and forever changed the way we shop and read.


American Holocaust

American Holocaust

Author: David E. Stannard

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1993-11-18

Total Pages: 408

ISBN-13: 0199838984

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For four hundred years--from the first Spanish assaults against the Arawak people of Hispaniola in the 1490s to the U.S. Army's massacre of Sioux Indians at Wounded Knee in the 1890s--the indigenous inhabitants of North and South America endured an unending firestorm of violence. During that time the native population of the Western Hemisphere declined by as many as 100 million people. Indeed, as historian David E. Stannard argues in this stunning new book, the European and white American destruction of the native peoples of the Americas was the most massive act of genocide in the history of the world. Stannard begins with a portrait of the enormous richness and diversity of life in the Americas prior to Columbus's fateful voyage in 1492. He then follows the path of genocide from the Indies to Mexico and Central and South America, then north to Florida, Virginia, and New England, and finally out across the Great Plains and Southwest to California and the North Pacific Coast. Stannard reveals that wherever Europeans or white Americans went, the native people were caught between imported plagues and barbarous atrocities, typically resulting in the annihilation of 95 percent of their populations. What kind of people, he asks, do such horrendous things to others? His highly provocative answer: Christians. Digging deeply into ancient European and Christian attitudes toward sex, race, and war, he finds the cultural ground well prepared by the end of the Middle Ages for the centuries-long genocide campaign that Europeans and their descendants launched--and in places continue to wage--against the New World's original inhabitants. Advancing a thesis that is sure to create much controversy, Stannard contends that the perpetrators of the American Holocaust drew on the same ideological wellspring as did the later architects of the Nazi Holocaust. It is an ideology that remains dangerously alive today, he adds, and one that in recent years has surfaced in American justifications for large-scale military intervention in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. At once sweeping in scope and meticulously detailed, American Holocaust is a work of impassioned scholarship that is certain to ignite intense historical and moral debate.


Overthrow

Overthrow

Author: Stephen Kinzer

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2007-02-06

Total Pages: 415

ISBN-13: 0805082409

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An award-winning author tells the stories of the audacious American politicians, military commanders, and business executives who took it upon themselves to depose monarchs, presidents, and prime ministers of other countries with disastrous long-term consequences.