Final preparation is made before the diver enters the water.
The Ichthyandr Programme
It was the 1960s in the Ukrainian town of Donetsk in the USSR. The amateur dive club Ichthyandr embarked on a complex program to study the long term effect on the human body of extended submersion under water. The year was 1965 . By the following year the Crimea club lowered a habitat to the sea bed at a depth of 11 metres where people lived under the increased pressure for a period of 3 days.
There were at this time other projects being developed i.e. Sadko 1966-67 , Chernomor 1968-72 and Sprut 1967-69.
In the Ichthyandr* program which was called CHEEBEES** ,the aim was to maximise the time a human could live under water . The Ichthyandr diving suit was developed in 1970 for this project. The creators of the suit were Barats, Selin, Rudenko and Ivanin. The suit had a hard helmet with a soft variable volume suit and counter pressure system . It had a heating element and a ventilation system . The suit had a complete life support system comprising various sensors, monitoring the body temperature , skin temperature and the diver's ECG. It also monitored the lung ventilation rate. The suit also had a main and emergency air supply and a telephone system . There was a system for diver nourishment by food and for excrement removal . The system took urine and saliva for biochemical analysis and there was also a system to monitor the psychological condition of the diver.
|
|
|
|
|
|
In August 1970 in the Crimea Peninsula, Tarkhancut were working on tests on the suit. The Aquanaut Mocebeker Opsha , dressed in an Ichthyandr suit stayed under water for a period of 26 hours and 15 minutes at a depth of 5-10 metres in a water temperature between 17 and 21.5 degrees Celsius. Another aquanaut, Hacet Lyalko stayed under water for a period of 37 hours and 40 minutes . The aquanauts all worked , ate food and drank and even slept underwater.
 |
 |
|
|
|
* Ichthyandr - This name was
derived from the name of a man who has fish gills and can live in the sea. He is
the hero of the book Amphybia-man. The book was written by the Soviet science
fiction writer Alexander Belyaev.
** Cheebees- This was an abbreviation from the project name ; Man and the
unsupported Immersion Environment.
 |
 |
|
The diver wearing the Ichthyandr suit is seen here underwater undergoing tests. |
|
With special thanks to Konstantin Korchagin from Nikolaev , Ukraine who received this information from the Donetsk Dive Club Ichthyandr (http://www.ddats.org) And our special thanks to Yuriy Kiklevich candidate of Technical Science who worked for a long time in the Donetsk Dive Club, Ichthyandr and forwarded this information on.