Publisher's Synopsis
BEYOND is the perfect title for these underwater adventures because they can go from the expected to the unexpected with a flip of a fin. Veteran diver Bob Burgess starts it with his personal account of an encounter of the worst kind. A hungry Bull shark corners him on Sand Key with a bagful of speared fish. When the shark demands the fish it makes Bob mad. He stubbornly hugs his catch and fins fast for his boat with the bull hot on his tail. What follows is beyond belief but Bob describes it just the way it happened... and lived to tell the tale that he believes was nothing short of divine intervention. But it wasn't the first time things happened out there beyond the expected. Readers get to share some of the scariest and strangest underwater adventures of the last 50 years that this pioneer diver describes in detail. "Beyond" has readers lost in an underwater cave as the diver's light dies; and later he loses a camera in a prehistoric forest. Along the way he dives a spring that gives up a human skull containing a convoluted brain that carbon dates to 10,000 years BP! He will introduce you to the Mermaids of Crystal River. On the barrier reef south of Belize he takes you through a hole in the sea bottom into an Ice Age cavern as sharks circle you. This book takes readers on so many offbeat adventures that one reviewer wrote: 'Don't begin this book unless you plan to stay with it because once you start you can't put it down.' You may get scared but the best part is you won't get wet! In 1944, ten years before Jacques Yves Cousteau liberated divers with his Aqua-Lung, Robert Burgess built a diving rig to explore a shipwreck near Lake Michigan. In 1972 he was scuba certified in Florida where he dived and wrote about his experiences. In January 1994 Robert Burgess was awarded the SSI Scuba Schools International Platinum PRO 5000 Diver rating for making over 5,000 logged Open Water Dives. He still writes about them.
