Bob Meistrell Dives to 100+' at 80 years old

Bob Meistrell, co-founder of Body Glove turned 80 today.  So family and employees went out on his boat today to go diving on his birthday.  We went off of PV to a sunken ship that was 100+ feet below.  Not only did he dive at the ripe ol age of 80 but he did it with retro equipment.  A set up from the 60's that he has.  This set up has no BCD.  I used modern equipment on my dive and I need my bcd to help swim and float around.  I get tired using that and Bob was down there swimming like a fish without one.  He had  Jocko, who is a expert at diving and dive equipment and Scott Smith (Dive safety) at his side at all times in case of emergency.  Everybody was worried of Bob doing this dive with that type of equipment.  Well turns out he did alright and I was the one who should have had the safety guys with me.  I'm down at a hundred feet shooting pics and I fill this tug on my regulator thinking somebody was yanking me from behind.  I looked and nobody was there so I started to swim.  When I started to swim I felt that I was kicking the bottom of my tank.  My tank had slipped down my bcd and needed to be reattached.  So here I am trying to get the attention of my dive partner because I couldn't swim or my tank would completely fall out and I would loose my tank and reg and have no breathing device.  So Greg Browning sees me by chance on the bottom of the sea floor and swims down to help me out.  He's holding a video camera and trying with one hand to fix it.  He gets it fixed and we start back up because we were getting low on air.  So I only got a few shots down below.  The underwater shot will be in the Daily Breeze newspaper tomorrow along with the story they wrote about Bob and his 80th birthday dive.  I'm just glad to be back on dry land for now.

Old 60's set up that Bob and Jocko used

A shot from the sea bottom just before I had tank problems.

Bob at 15 feet doing our safety stop.  At 100' you need to do this to safely eliminate absorbed inert gases from the body to avoid decompression sickness.

Bob Meistrell