Under the guise of sustaining clean, healthy, safe, productive and biologically diverse oceans and seas, the MMO has required contractors to pay for and wait up to three months for over 2584 ludicrously unnecessary licences since November 2009, allegedly. Do the words “wasteful red tape, unnecessary bureaucracy and incompetence” spring to mind?

100 years ago

In 1915 the United States Commission looked “favourably” on Simon Lake’s invention of a wheeled submarine with diver lock-out capability. It was intended to be able to creep under German minefields as well as being able to lay mines of its own.

150 years ago

Auguste Denayrouze, a lieutenant in the French Navy, patented his compressed air breathing apparatus in 1865. It included a diaphragm regulator and a pressurised air reservoir. It could be used either with a surface supply or as a self-contained unit for short periods. He collaborated with a French mining engineer named Benoit Rouquayrol in its development and the equipment was named the “Aerophore”.