You’ve probably seen one but didn't realize its connection to Santa Barbara. It's a Kirby Morgan Superlite Diving Helmet—protective headgear that’s round and hard, like something you’d wear on a motorbike but with a diving mask and breathing regulator.
It’s a design that sets the world standard for commercial divers and will be featured as part of a new monument in the harbor.
"Santa Barbara is considered the birthplace of deep water diving all over the world," explained Greg Gorga, Executive Director of the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum. He said many people may not realize the pivotal role that Santa Barbara played in revolutionizing deepwater diving.
"It really goes all the way back to the Chumash who used to fish for abalone," said Gorga. "In the 1950s, two-thirds of the world's abalone was coming out of Santa Barbara. They were collecting thousands of abalone a day. That was big money back then. A lot of the best divers in the United States, many of them ex-Navy divers, came to Santa Barbara for abalone diving. Then we have this giant Monterey reserve of oil here. So in the late '50s, early '60s, oil companies started coming into Santa Barbara and they needed divers to go down deeper and stay down longer to get to the oil."
Doing that meant rethinking existing diving practices.
"(With) scuba diving, you use a combination of nitrogen and oxygen. In 1962, a Santa Barbara abalone diver by the name of Dan Wilson used helium and oxygen and he dove 400 feet off of Santa Cruz Island using helium-oxygen. Nitrogen gives you that narcosis. You get drunkenness. They couldn't stay down to 150 (or) 200 feet for more than five minutes. With the helium, you don't get that. You're able to go down deeper and stay down there as long as you can," said Gorga.
"It's still mostly oxygen, so it's a small percentage of helium. All those diving suits have weights on them. I mean, the helmets, the original helmets, hard hats, they're wearing—35, 40 pounds. The other issue with helium is that it does affect your voice, so you get that squeaky Mickey Mouse voice. Then the coldness was also an issue for them."
The new monument depicts a professional diver from 1982. The gift from local and international diving communities honors the visionaries who transformed diving practice.
"Two years later, he came up with the world's first commercial lockout diving bell that allowed divers to go out underwater, work on an oil rig, get back in, and start decompressing on their way up," explained Gorga. "That bell is still on our patio today. Not a commercial success, but led to all the other diving bells that came after it."
"Santa Barbara then became the home of the Santa Barbara Helium Rush. Then Morgan and Bob Kirby teamed up in 1965, and '66, and started producing helium-oxygen helmets, the old big bronze ones, and they eventually went to fiberglass. They formed a company called Kirby Morgan Diving Helmets which is still in existence today and still out of Santa Barbara County. (It) provides about 75% of the world's commercial diving helmets."
"This monument that has been built and put in place honors all those pioneers and all that innovation that came out of this little town of Santa Barbara."
The monument will be revealed in a special ceremony on Saturday, April 5 at 4:30 p.m. next to the Santa Barbara Harbor and the Maritime Museum.
