The great grandfather Ray Woolley, a World War II veteran (as a ship radio operator), set a new record for longest service life for a recreational diver. He beat himself a third time, setting the maximum depth at 42,4 meters, total permanence in water a 48 minutes and age a 96 years.
But why is it an epic feat? Non-experts will be able to shrug, thinking that it's just a question of having the courage to breathe underwater and to overcome the sense of claustrophobia. And instead, anyone who goes underwater knows very well that the first challenge is…putting on a wetsuit. Young people suffer at this stage, let alone a 96-year-old person! Ray Woolley has chosen a wet suit, or one of those linings, made of 5 millimeters of neoprene, that don't slide on the skin, except with lots and lots of patience. Yes, because at -42 metres, especially in the Mediterranean, the cold takes your breath away over 20 meters.
It must be said that it is one recreational divingi.e. without decompression. A hit and run at that depth which is enough to be able to declare the maximum limit reached. Also because, the table of divers, which calculates the time limit for permanence at that depth without incurring the risk of Decompression Pathology, is 8 minutes, no more. In short, the dive was done at lower depths for the rest of the time. A consideration that in no way detracts from the feat of the English gentleman also in function of the risk due to his age.
But what is decompression sickness and why is an older man more likely to dive than a younger one? It's all a matter of physics. There Henry's law, in fact, establishes that the solubility of a gas in a liquid is directly proportional to the pressure exerted on the gas and on the liquid. Therefore, the amount of inert gas (such as thenitrogen contained in the air a diver breathes) which is dissolved in the diver's blood and tissues, increases with increasing pressure. The greater the depth, the greater the pressure (at 40 meters the pressure is 5 times that found at sea level).
During ascent, when the external pressure decreases, bubbles can form bubbles of nitrogen depending on how fast the ascent is. These bubbles can form in any tissue of the human body and cause local symptoms, or the blood can carry these bubbles to important organs such as the heart, lungs or brain. Bubbles cause symptoms of decompression sickness mechanically blocking the vessels, by breaking or compressing tissue or by activating blood clotting and inflammation mechanism.
Along with low temperature, dehydration, excessive exercise, obesity and patent foramen ovale, theage It is one of factors that expose you more to decompression sicknessAnd. This is because diving triggers physical reactions such as: movement of fluids to the vital/central organs of the body, skin vasoconstriction and increased urine production and release. The inevitable consequence is a considerable loss of liquids. In the elderly, dehydration can develop rapidly, especially in summer, and cause serious diving accidents. The "thick blood” in fact fails to contribute effectively to nitrogen removal.
Ray Woolley has factored into all of these eventualities and has adequately prepared for his record. He didn't use any particular technical equipment, on the contrary, the equipment is conspicuously dated (apart from the wetsuit). His dive computer is one of the first to be marketed, his regulator has made the history of underwater activities. He has no redundancy in the breathing system (spare equipment), nor systems reserved for "technicians". In short, the beauty of the Englishman's feat is that he accomplished it with theequipment that anyone could use to go underwater.
