Recently I received fantastic pictures from a true legend. The Biomarine CCR 1000. To put things in perspective for those never herd about the unit, when you are 35 years old this unit was already produced for two years! Also, we use the term Closed Circuit Rebreather CCR but at that unit is labelled Closed Cycle Rebreather. In earlier articles on my website I have published information about the company who build this unit. Biomarine was the original manufacturer and designer of the unit. Imagine the days when the cold war was still on. These units have been the predecessor of real spy stories! Also these units have been part of testing by NEDU in 1975. The military planned to build a MILSPEC unit for there operations and used three units for there tests. The first was the Westinghouse CCM, the second the General electric (GE) 1500 (related to the MK 10) and the last and best the CCR1000 (predecessor of the MK 15 - MK 16 - and finally MK 15.5. please notice order of development! ).

Jan, I live in Canada and I have been diving for 45 years, a long story.  In my home town, Thunder Bay Ontario, there was a brief period of diving technology madness.  A company Deep Diving Systems (they lifted the name right out of the US Navy Diving manual) was formed around 1973 or 74.  John Gerard one of the Bio Marine employees ended up there and they built “Constructor” a tethered submersible with a lock out capability to 3,000 feet.  When you entered through the lock on the bottom they had three units overhead.  These were all built into the PP1 system with an Aquadine cam shell hat.

It was the coolest thing I had ever seen; now I would not get into the water with it.  The principal of DDS Fred Bronelle is still alive and still in Thunder Bay well into his 70's.  He dove a CCR 1000 on the Gunilda shipwreck site, (so happy to be on the wreck he spit out the mouth piece out and kissed the mast, half flooded the unit and yet made it into a wet bell and survived the dive).  I would like to take this unit back to Thunder Bay and do a half hour documentary ‘the dives of Fred Bronelle’ and let him poke at it over dinner on camera.  I am a long time believer and diver of mCCR systems and that is where my rebreathing diving is going to stay.    I do not think this unit ever saw salt water it is used but looks good I am attaching photo samples for you to check out.

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