Stephen Weir articles, editorials and popular social media weir postings

Diving into the past – Important 2012 underwater  milestones and of course the dubious records For the Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/../../stephen-weir/underwater-feats-2012_b_2382560.html   Ignore what Captain Kirk said.  In 2012 the last frontier was underwater. Never in the history of the planet has mankind ventured so far under the surface.  And, in pushing the underwater boundaries, more individual achievement records were set this year than ever before.  From the 7-mile underwater depth record set by Canadian filmmaker explorer James Cameron inside a futuristic one-man bathysphere, to freediver Ashley Futral Chapman who went down to 67 meters (223 feet) and back on a single breath of air, new milestones continue to be made and to be broken. Skimming through our back pages we noted the following achievements, albeit some of them pretty dumb that were reached over the past 365 days. CSS Website Photograph ...

. .... For writing about the things that divers do to get publicity for their causes (and themselves). PART ONE How to generate press for a non-event? Set a world’s record. Build the world’s first or the world’s biggest. Do something that no one has done before, or set a record for doing it over and over again. Hold your breath. Hold all your neighbours' toes. You can even make the world’s smelliest Taleggio (stinky cheese) and attract reporters willing to take a sniff. No one knows this better than scuba and skin divers. There is a certain amount of implied danger in anything you do underwater and as result the media sits up and takes note when there is a potential underwater accident. Hold your breath for 10 minutes and no one will care. Do it underwater? CNN will be knocking on your door. Play bad billiards in the rec room and no one, not even your family will watch. Do it underwater? Headline news. No matter how obscure your record is, announcing it generates publicity in prin...