S
etting foot where no one has
before is difficult in today’s
world, but it is a challenge
Bill Stone, Ph.D., has met
repeatedly. An intrepid technical diver,
inventor and explorer, Stone has led
notable expeditions to explore the
world’s cave systems since the 1980s.
In 1987 he dramatically introduced his
Cis-Lunar MK1 rebreather in Wakulla
Springs, Fla., by spending 24 consecutive
hours underwater. During the expedition
Stone also revealed his underwater
decompression habitat, which enabled
divers to complete decompression
obligations in a dry setting.
Stone’s desire for discovery began
early in life. He was inspired when John
Glenn took flight in 1962 and again as
he watched Neil Armstrong and Buzz
Aldrin land on the moon in 1969. In
1968,
during his sophomore year of high
school, Stone joined a caving club and
there began to find the balance between
academics and adventure. In his
freshman year at Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute, he completed the deepest
known single descent into a cave in the
United States at the time. After being
thwarted by a few sumps (submerged
areas), Stone learned to dive. Since then
he has continued to explore hidden
reaches of the earth and develop the
tools needed for those explorations.
Stone has developed six generations
of rebreather systems, including the
Poseidon T60 “Tech Rig” he introduced
at Rebreather Forum 3 in Orlando,
Fla., in May 2012. During the forum,
he announced Poseidon would provide
DAN® with access to all Poseidon
Discovery MKVI digital dive logs to help
establish a global database of rebreather-
diving data. “It’s the only way to improve
the safety overall for rebreathers,” he said.
Untethered Exploration
In 2007 Stone deployed the Deep
Phreatic Thermal Explorer (DEPTHX)
to explore and map Mexico’s Sistema
Zacatón, a series of hydrothermal
springs that includes four cenotes.
During the project, DEPTHX used
3-
D simultaneous localization and
mapping (SLAM) to map the entire
system, confirming a maximum depth
of more than 1,000 feet. DEPTHX also
discovered a chemocline that it decided
to follow, found a hydrothermal vent
shaft and extracted a core sample
from the wall. The sample DEPTHX
extracted on that mission revealed
four previously unknown divisions of
bacteria. DEPTHX was the first of four
autonomous robots Stone developed
for NASA’s planned expedition to
Europa, a moon of Jupiter.
The next version of Stone’s
autonomous-exploration design was
ENDURANCE (Environmentally Non-
Disturbing Under-ice Robotic ANtarctiC
Explorer), which was developed to meet
the requirements for mapping West Lake
Bonney, a subglacial freshwater lake in
Antarctica. It mapped the underwater
junction between Lake Bonney and the
Taylor Glacier and conducted a complete
aqueous chemical characterization of the
lake. This technology provides scientists
with the capability to monitor subglacial
areas for indications of climate change.
Oceans of Another World
With funding from NASA, Stone’s
company, Stone Aerospace, is now
building VALKYRIE (Very-deep
Autonomous Laser-powered Kilowatt-
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FALL 2012
DIVE SLATE
//
MEMBER
PROFILE
Bill Stone
Hometown:
Austin, Texas
(
born in Pittsburgh, Pa.)
Age:
59
Years Diving:
38
Favorite Dive Destination:
Wakulla
Springs, Fla.
Why I’m a DAN Member:
“
Affordable
diving insurance! Plus, I like the
leadership role the organization has
taken in dive safety.”
Exploring the Final Frontiers
WES SKILES
The dual MKV rebreather,
the long-range “Fat Man”
DPV units, the “Digital Wall
Mapper” and the mini-sat
recovery system (recompres-
sion habitat) were all custom
developed for the Wakulla 2
project. None of the hardware
shown existed two years
before this photo was taken.
(
Wakulla Springs, Fla.,1999)