FathomOz

There are TEN issues of Fathom.  Each is 48 pages.

Edition numbers can be located in CATEGORIES in right hand column.

First issue was  December 1970.  Issue TEN was 1973.  Fathom magazine is said to have put Australia on the international diving map during those early years, as the stories and advertising will illustrate.

In the same era the Captain Wally Muller owner of charter boat Coralita began operation for scuba divers.  The first live-aboard and with dive destinations to The Coral Sea.
We hope you will enjoy these pages from the past.

Double click picture

A larger and similar picture is at  http://fathomoz.wordpress.com

Walter A.Starck, Vic Ley, Ron Taylor, Phil Eather, Richard Weir, Wally Gibbins, Mal McLeod, Gai Girdlestone, John Harding

Wally Muller, Van Laman, Ben Cropp, Kathy Troutt, Lynn Roberts, John Michael Harding, Bob Grounds, Dean Cropp, Ron Taylor, Trevor Collins (with marlin), Valerie May Taylor, Henri Bource.

The Late IRVIN ROCKMAN  CBE

RON IBLE (White Water Wanderers) 30 April 2013  R.I.P. mate

Ron Taylor won his world crown in Tahiti, 1965.  After returning home this picture was taken at Montague Island off Narooma (New South Wales, south coast).  It could have made a good Rolex advert had not water drops been on the lens port of the Rolleimarin housing.  The Yellowtail Kingfish still exist but large fish are no longer common.

The speargun used in Tahiti is shown with Ron Taylor, in 1995 at his former Roseville residence, Sydney.

(Updated 5 September 2010)

First spotted earlier in 2009 at Taiwan’s Keelung Fish Market

Then last week I saw the species being unload at the Coffs Harbour fisherman’s wharf in Australia.  The young professional fisherman explained the name and how it was a very oil fish which produced diarrhea if you ate too much of it.

A friend helped with this information:

“I looked up the rudderfish – several unrelated species are called rudderfish.  The other more specific common name is escolar, Lepidocybium flavobrunneum.

Their oiliness comes from their diet.  Oils – wax esters – they can’t digest.  Neither can we.  Recommendation on eating this fish:  small portion, 6 oz and grilled to let the oils drip out”.

“These oils in the flesh is used for buoyancy.  Gas gives more buoyancy but swim bladders burst for deep sea fish rapidly swimming to the surface at night.  Oil for buoyancy is a better solution for these species”.

One of the crew was Henri Moeyaert who sent these pictures of everyone when they arrived home.  The ship’s doctor met and married an Australian girl.

Henri seeks a picture of the wedding which was aboard the ship.

David Barnes PhD, now of Townsville, Queensland was part of the expedition.  Dave commented to Henri:

I am sorry that I cannot help you with photos taken on the day that Dr Pullinckx was married.  I remember that day very well.  Also, I visited Gus and his Australian wife in Ostend – and they visited me in the UK.

I think your model of the De Moor is fabulous.  I note that you even left the gun out of the forward turret – as it was for the expedition to the GBR (the forward turret was used for storage).  I have many times looked to see if there is a commercial model of a Flower class corvette but have never found one.

Note: The Belgian Expedition was primarily to make scientific marine biology films in 35mm underwater.  It was a huge and very expensive operation on behalf of a university.  Ron Taylor was one of two cinematographers.

Charter boat owner and skipper, Wally Muller assisted with navigation, especially around The Swain Reefs – his home territory.

The expedition visited all the dive locations we know so well today between Lady Elliott Island in the south and Lizard Island in the far north.

Few divers in 1967 had been privileged to see so much of the Great Barrier Reef.  It was still largely an unknown frontier underwater.

Editor JHH assisted Wally Muller as a deckhand for part of the expedition, thanks to an invitation from his friends Valerie and Ron Taylor.

Additional ship and dive pictures at:   thejohnharding.com

(Above left) Diver Clay Wilcox from New York helps in the galley. (Above right) Diver Marc Blessington from southern England and Michel Deloire

Alcyone was the revolutionary sailboat being tested by Cousteau’s team.  The ship arrived in Australia via the port of Cairns, North Queensland.

We knew she was on her way.  Charter boat Coralita had met them at Osprey Reef and exchanged stories and especially some fresh fish as the French crew were low on food supplies.

They met skipper Alby Ziebell and told of having just filmed a  pair of killer whales catching? and eating a hammerhead shark underwater, plus a manta ray – both on 35mm motion picture film.

A few weeks later Christine Danaher and I were invited aboard while the boat was docked in Cairns.  We learned the boat carries 5000 gallons of fuel, 800 liters of fresh water – sufficient for one month at sea.

Contrasting Calypso expeditions of the past, where the entire crew was French-speaking nationals, the Alcyone crew had a pair of young English-speaking divers as part of the 12-man team aboard which consisted of:  captain, two mechanics,cook,two divers, a chief diver,underwater cameraman, above water cameraman, camera assistant, soundman.

Everyone had dual-jobs.

We also met the cinematographer Michel Deloire, probably responsible for most of the filming we’d seen in The Underwater World of Jacques Cousteau. Deloire has worked as a cameraman on feature films in France with actors Brigitte Bardot and that other French icon, Catherine Deneuve.

Deloire got in the  the water with a 3-meter saltwater crocodile in the Jardine River.  The first person I knew of in Australia to do such a thing. “It was very friendly” said Deloire.

(Underwater filming equipment, there were ‘special camera’s’ with lens such as a 5.7mm to 37.5mm zoom,  9.8mm Kinoptic, 18mm Cook).

When asked of  his most special dive anywhere in the world, Deloire considered it was probably the Fontaine Vaucluse, an underwater cave that was a very emotional place.

Christine and I were treated to a video (of our choice) downstairs. We chose the one featuring Jack McKenney as a guest underwater cameraman working with Alcyone on the freezing southern tip of South America.

The guys gave us a good guided tour.  Nothing was out-of-bounds.  It was a friendly and behind-the-scenes look at how the then current series was being put together.   This was still the age of film – video  was yet to catch up to the quality of celluloid.

Meanwhile Jacques Cousteau had invited Sir Peter Blake (the New Zealand yachting champion of The America’s Cup fame) to head the Cousteau Society only to have Sir Peter murdered in the Amazon by would-be pirates as he wrestled to take a rifle from one of them.  The gun discharged during the struggle.  The bandit was captured and jailed.

Then Jacques Cousteau himself passed away.  Somewhere in between the famed Calypso sank at her harbor mooring.

It was a tragic chain of events.

The Calypso has been restored but the modern American Cousteau ‘family’ is divided with extensive legal proceedings – usually over who can use the Cousteau name and in what context.

An interview in a French magazine (Paris Match) before his death showed Jacques looking very happy with his second wife Francine, and his two children to her, both young adults today.  Jacques answered very hard and personal questions.

The Cousteau name continues nicely in cyberspace.    http://cousteau.org This is the European organization headed by Francine Cousteau.

Google:  “clay wilcox” diver brings up Jack McKenney and his book featuring time spent aboard Alcyone and several hours at an airport with Captain Cousteau himself.  The pressures of fame etc.

Google: “marc blessington” diver alcyone and the only entry is a Spanish  blog features Cousteau diver memorabilia.   The plastic dive helmets, a mask worn by Albert Falco etc.  Very interesting for collectors.

Google: “michel deloire cameraman” has an extensive listing.  (My apology for the incorrect name spelling on the picture caption above).

The first tourist postcard to feature an anti-tourism subject. I posted a first edition copy to (the late) Dr Robert Endean (Reader in Zoology, University of Queensland) who was a CoT (as a eco threat problem) activist often quoted in the media. The postcard never arrived. The card was a good selling item for Peer Productions for several years. Girls featured underwater are Jocelyn Edwards and Christine Danaher.

Murray Island, October 1996 – brothers Phillip and Steven Tapau home from boarding school in Townsville, demonstrated there was no shortage of triton trumpet shells at a nearby reef.  Reef crayfish (lobster) were also plentiful there.   Photographed during a Ben Cropp documentary filming expedition to the island, which is also known as Mer Island. (The home of the late Eddie Mabo).