Lizardland is my small, virtual empire. My name is Stuart Morrison and I have been diving for ten years and have been involved in technical diving since the early nineties.

I began diving on the island of Martha's Vineyard, just off the coast of Massachussetts in the USA. I learned from a guy I used to surf with who had some obscure certification but was nowhere near an instructor. I knew no better and he rented some equipment for me, and standing on the beach he taught me the four things I needed to know so I would not die:

• how to equalise the pressure in my ears
• how to clear my mask
• not to hold my breath or my lungs would burst through my chest
• I cannot remember number four, so I don't imagine it was that important

We finished our beer, shuffled into the water and returned an hour later, having cheated death.

In 1993 I returned to Britain and realised that water could be both cold and murky. These were the great days of Aquacorps and Sub Aqua magazines, Dick Rutkowski advocating oxygen to improve your sex life, Anne Kristovich doing some of the most important cave explorations of the time and Michael Menduno publishing photographs of her naked, Captain Billy's did the best gas on the planet, WKPP was a brand of peanuts and DIR only meant anything to computer nerds (oh well, at least that hasn't changed). Diving may have been less safe than a Beirut tea shop but it was a lot of fun.

In winter 1993/4 we got hold of copies of Mixed Gas Diving by Tom Mount et al and with jaws hanging open we set about recreating our heroes' efforts. Armed with two independant 12 litre back-mounted cylinders and two ex-fire brigade 6 litre side-mount bottles we laid siege to a deep wall on the shores of Loch Fyne in Scotland. We may have had helium and oxygen, but we never had an analyser so we mixed heliair in our twinsets and for deco we had air in one bottle and oxygen in the other. Our tables came from the US Navy's extreme exposure air tables and a bit of guess work.
 

Nitrox is no longer a gas for maniacs, every second diver has trimix or a rebreather or both. The KKK, sorry typing error, I meant the WKPP forced DIR on to us and, dammit, diving got safe. AquaCORPS gave way to Immersed and 9>90, Captain Billy folded his tents, even PADI started to think about tech courses. I must have been doing something right because I haven't died once in ten years.

While in New England I got introduced to the great sport of mine diving. Old shafts and tunnels abandoned because they were on the verge of collapse, now filled with water, and ready to be explored by divers. I did two or three and thought no more of it. A few years later a Cave Diving Group (CDG) member showed me Holme Bank mine in Derbyshire, UK. We stood in the sump pool, I was scared shitless, intending only to swim a few metres in then come straight out. One hour later I came out, we took a breather then went back underwater. Outside it was snowing but in the mine it was warm and the water, although chilly, was crystal clear and blue. On the four hour train ride home, I passed the time pouring over the NSS-CDS manual I had just bought and the grainy copy of a WKPP video I had just watched. From the moment I had shone the beam of my light down that dark tunnel I knew that diving wrecks was not for me.
 

A few months later I took a flight to Jacksonville, Florida and then a $100 taxi ride to Live Oak (I found out at the Hertz desk that my Massachussetts driving licence had expired) and spent two weeks diving with John & Shelley Orlowski, getting cave certified through both NACD and IANTD.

Since then, most of my diving has revolved around cave diving. In 1997 I made a trip to the Dordogne & Lot areas of France after a chance phone conversation with Richard Stevenson of Deep Blue Diving in Congleton and ever since then I have been returning to the area  whenever I could. At one point I was making the 2000 mile round-trip journey by road every six weeks. It is very remote and very beautiful, the caves are visited by only a handful of divers and there are many sites still unexplored. Even the far reaches of known sites have wide open passage just waiting. Previous visits have involved mixed-gas diving, and XS was developed for one series of mixed gas dives there.
 

I have dived throughout Europe and North America and recently made a trip to Mexico with three other members of that original expedition to south-west France. In the early part of June 2000 I shall be returning with helium and scooters to explore a number of sites, including the Emergence du Ressel.