High Dynamic Range Photography by Carl Roessler

In Memoriam of Bob Croft

The 1968 Bob Croft World Free-diving Record Expedition
During the Winter of 1967, Carl served as Director of Computation at Yale University, managing an administrative computer and a large scientific computer center. One evening he went to a party, where he met a U.S. Navy diver named Bob Croft. Croft was a long-time submariner, some of whose exploits are detailed in a spy blockbuster named Blind Man’s Bluff (1998, Public Affair's Publishing).

When Carl met Bob, Croft had transitioned to training submariners to escape sunken vessels in the Submarine Escape Training Tank in Groton, Connecticut.

	The Navy diving instructors in the tank were superb breath-hold divers. They spent hours underwater each day escorting submariners from escape hatches at 18, 50 and 100 feet safely to the surface. The tank was built with air blisters at various depths, so one could wear a mask and bathing suit and remain below the surface in 92-degree water for several hours, ducking into a blister whenever one needed a breath…
Croft had suffered Rickets as a child, which left him with larger-than-usual lungs. His amazing breath-hold ability soon resulted in an attempt at the world Free-diving record. Three men (Croft, French diver Jacques Mayol and the Italian diver Enzo Majorca) were vying for the title, playing ‘Can you top this?’ with each other. At the time of Croft’s expedition, Mayol held the record at 231 feet.
	Croft invited Carl to be a safety diver on the following Summer’s (1968) expedition. When Croft wanted a film crew to chronicle his assault on the record, Carl suggested three experienced Californians whom he had met in the Summer of 1967—Bob Hollis, Dewey Bergman and Al Giddings. The resulting film was called Deep Challenge.
Bob Croft set the record of 240 feet on the final day after a series of successively deeper attempts. Carl was there at the record depth when the Pneumofathometer was placed on the clothespin marking Croft’s final depth. The Pneumofathometer read out on a large gauge on the surface vessel above us so that witnesses could immediately verify the record.
Parenthetically, within a year, Carl had quit his job as Director of Computation at Yale University and plunged (couldn’t resist) into the international dive travel business. Moving his family to Curacao in the Netherlands Antilles, he hosted groups from Dewey Bergman’s See & Sea Travel, Inc. in San Francisco. Three years later, he would join Bergman in San Francisco as a partner in the firm.

The Croft expedition was a life-changing event for both Croft and Carl!

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