Dear friends and followers of the MARES / SSI / rEvo Dive Expedition Team blog,
While in our last blog we told you where we were going to go with our expedition, we now want you to tell you what our objectives are.
We have chosen Lake Baikal since it provides sweet water diving in temperatures ranging between 0°C and 4°C close to the iced surface.
This is a critical temperature range, especially for regulators, since any drop in temperature from 0°C to 4°C reduces the temperature exchange ratio over-proportionally inside the breathing system versus the ambient temperature.
While we have dedicated all our MARES metal second stages to cold water diving (they provide a 300 times better temperature exchange rate compared to plastic second stages) we now want to learn more and see how some of our new developments work in these extreme conditions. We are doing this in order to further improve the performance and durability not only of our existing regulators, but also of our new regulators.
This drive and spirit has helped us to get listed together with only one other regulator in the world on the famous ANU-list issued by the US Navy (follow the public link to get to the product listing). Products on this list are the only ones allowed for military use.
Two years ago, some of the former regulators listed came off the list since the US Navy discovered that under certain very severe conditions these regulators could fail. At the same time ours came on the list since it exceeded the expectations and needs of the US Navy, even if those needs were very extreme.
We only can state: we are Proud to be Navy!
P.s. In our next blog we will introduce you to the team members and divers that will be coming with us on this extreme adventure. BTW, only 26 days to go... ;-)