Bottom scratchers san diego

People took an occasional dip in the ocean, but by and large they did not take to it as would a hunter in the field, see in it a place to spend the better part of a day exploring vast forests of kelp or probing crevices on the rocky bottom.

Bottom Scratcher Pacific Wilderness

And the San Diego Bottom Scratchers lived up to such requirements and then some. Jacques Cousteau was still a teen-ager. Prodanovich, who for 35 years was a night custodian for the San Diego School District so he could dive in the daytime, is credited with the development of the face mask.

New plaque at La Jolla’s Scripps Park honors Bottom Scratchers dive club The club was considered one of the nation’s earliest, and most influential, free-diving associations. Of those, only five still live here and get together for the monthly meetings, during which they mostly reminisce.

That was 59 years ago.

The San Diego Bottom

Today the Bottom Scratchers are, for the most part, an inactive group. There were no wetsuits, masks, snorkels or fins. San Diego's Bottom Scratchers – grandfathers of scuba diving, fathers of skin diving When men went under water. The catch qualified Prodanovich for the presidency of San Diego s famed Bottom Scratchers club.

To be a Bottom Scratcher you must at least be able to bring up three abalones from a depth of 30 feet, catch a shark of any kind with the bare hands and haul up a live lobster from a slippery underwater ledge. The first organized free-diving club in the world, founded inthe San Diego Bottom Scratchers revolutionized the art of breath-holding and pioneered face masks and spearfishing gear.

The club stopped taking new members in and only eight are still alive. The five-prong frog-gig-fitted spear, nearly impossible to drive into the larger game fish, became a thing of the past. There was no such thing as skin diving. Starting From Scratch: The San Diego Bottom Scratchers, a Dive Club Formed 59 Years Ago, Are Short on Members, but Long on Memories of Early Days in the Sport.

The Bottom Scratchers ndash

In the early days, a popular place on weekends was Scripps Pier, where fishermen would regularly haul in huge grouper and black seabass, and bonito and barracuda by the hundreds. Membership reached 19 and many members contributed significantly to goals set by the founders.

Now 78, his hearing all but gone after countless hours in the water, he told how he grew tired of the old swimming goggles. The introduction of swim fins by Owen Churchill, made popular by the Bottom Scratchers, was credited largely with the growth of the pastime.

Huge crowds would gather to watch. Orr, Prodanovich and Stone were charter members of the San Diego Bottom Scratchers, formed in and today the oldest dive club in the world.

About the Project Bottom

Bill Johnston, 73, who began skin diving off La Jolla inowns two dive vessels--one of them named the Bottom Scratcher--and today operates a successful diving operation out of San Diego. The Bottom Scratchers – San Diego Freedivers Skip to content CLUB INFO CLUB INFO History Meetings Watermen's Alliance Club Sponsors Board Member Contacts.

I guess the biggest school I ever seen was sardines. The Bottom Scratchers, considered one of the earliest free-diving associations in the United States, formed in San Diego in the s with a focus on catching local seafood to feed members’ families.

Prodanovich also built and patented a spear tip fitted with a. The Japanese followed that with a rubber and glass mask. SAN DIEGO — It must have been a sight, grown men emerging from the surf in bathing suits adorned with the horns of a horn shark, wearing funny-looking goggles, carrying long wooden pitchfork-type poles--and dragging behind them loads of huge fish.

Potts told of the days when the ocean was more than just a world full of wonderful life.

San Diego Bottom Scratchers

A requirement for membership was the capture by hand of a horn shark and the removal of its horns, which were then attached to rings on their swim trunks. Such activity was unprecedented. Most at one time or another worked in some capacity with the scientists at Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla.

Prodanovich later designed a full-face mask of copper, rubber and glass. This, after all, was the late s.