Jim changed hats and became the Chair of the morning session and introduced the first Speaker, Dr. Lou Jankowski who spoke about "Disabled Divers: Past, Present and Future."

Dr. Jankowski interspersed his talk with a great variety of interesting slides.

He said "Welcome to the Auditorium.. Audit means listen and taurus is the bull". In the early days of diving we had two hose regulators and tanks filled to 2250 PSI. After I started diving as a college student, a sport movement call the all inclusive sport movement was started by Sir Ludwig Guttman in England. He had noted that injured war veterans were dying early not of their wounds but from diseases associated with lack of exercise. He started wheelchair basketball. The paralympics evolved later from that early activity. "Seek not the infirm among you, we each limp in our own way". People engage in all sorts of sports and some people happen to be disabled. This idea got me into training the disabled to scuba dive. I had been involved with helping to train wheelchair marathoners. Larry Emerson had taken a group of disabled people scuba diving in the Bahamas and I joined him in similar activity and started a program in Montreal. However, I got all these calls from irate doctors because they were opposed signing "fit to dive" medical forms for disabled pupils. The doctors seemed to think the disabled should not dive. I continued anyway and certified the first class three months later. Today several physicians refer patients for scuba diving classes.

There are lots of advantages. The buoyant forces in water make it easier for paraplegics to move about. Some amputees can use special prostheses with fins. some paraplegics make leg cradles to hold the legs together and stop them from floating. Scuba diving is a wheelchair sport without the wheelchair. The health benefits of diving accrue because the disabled lose bad habitssuch as smoking and heavy drinking. The degree of physical fitness needed in diving motivates divers with disabilities to train and become fitter, healthier people. We have found paralympic and Olympic athletes who like to get into diving in order to help them stay fit after retirement. There are a lot of advantages to scuba diving for the disabled including better self esteem.

There are also disadvantages. Accessibility is still a problem but that's changing. This is still very much a problem on dive boats and such things as accessibility to the head may be impossible. Those in wheelchairs may not be able to get inside and under shelter if it rains. Scuba diving is expensive and many disabled are not employed and are on social assistance and thus cannot afford to dive often. Diving in cold Canadian waters presents and particular problem for paraplegics because they have no physioloical thermal protective reflexes in their denervated lower limbs and can get apidly hypothermic. The security of the buddy system in compromised and we have found it necessary to form buddy teams of four with one disabled diver and three buddies. One is the designated buddy and the others are there to watch over them if they need assistance. There is inconvenience associated with dressing, getting equipped, entry and exit from the water and other factors,but once in the water things are failry easy. There the factor of interdependence in that the disabled cannot dive alone or in pairs. Thus there is the imposition of a disabled diver on the able bodied which may result in a higher than average rate of attrition in a diving group. It takes a special person to work with the disabled.

A new organization has been founded for those who are interested, headed by Gain Wong here in Toronto. It is
the Adapted SCUBA Association
Suite 123
650 Dupont Street
Toronto, ON M6G 1Z2 ( telephone: (416) 534 2527