Scuba Diving Animals

Who says scuba diving is just for humans? Just because you have to breathe strap a can of compressed air on your back and breathe through a regulator, why should that stop a four-legged companion animal from venturing under the sea with their owner? No reason at all, if you've got a clever human to help you out. Here are three scuba dogs and a scuba cat that are taking their species to new lows, all the way under the ocean.

(Image copyright Gene Alba)

Folks who lived in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1980s might recognize Muttey the scuba diving dog as the cute canine costar of a local TV show from that time period called "Mac and Mutley." Mac was Doug McConnell, the host of the show and Mutley was, well, Mutley, a mixed-breed dog who was the "real" star of the show. To prove her star status, Mutley even won an Emmy Award for her outstanding performance on the show.

Mutley was owned by Gene Alba, a friend of Doug McConnell, and she was an adventurous dog who listed scuba diving among her many outdoor pursuits. She could also reportedly enjoyed snow skiing, water skiing, rafting, kayaking, skateboarding, surfing and other activities not normally enjoyed by four-legged mammals. But Mutley was different. She was rescued from a shelter by Alba, a certified diver and he later spent 6 months and $40,000 to design special scuba diving apparatus for her. The dive suit included a Plexiglass bubble helmet and weights to allow her to go under the water. Mutley may very well have been the world's first scuba diving dog.

See a video of Mutley diving on Animal Planet.

In addition to being an Emmy Award-winning scuba dog, Mutley was also a hero of sorts. One day after Mutley saw a cat in trouble outside the house and led Gene Alba to the young animal. The cat had a wire wrapped around her neck and was near death. Alba freed the animal, performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and named the cat Hawkeye. She quickly became Mutley's best friend and would even jump in the swimming pool to be near the dog. So Alba set to work making another scuba suit for the cat. This time, the custom scuba cat suit "only" cost about $20k.

HowStuffWorks has an excellent article explaining how Alba turned his four-legged friends into scuba diving animals.

See the scuba cat in action below.

Shadow is another water-loving dog that has learned to scuba dive. She was rescued from the pound by Dwayne Folsom, a retired engineer who liked to scuba dive. Folsom used to bring Shadow on the boat , and she'd always jump in when the scuba divers hit the water, so he decided to make her a special doggie scuba suit. Her fancy getup even includes an intercom so Folsom can give her instructions underwater. When this video was made, Shadow had already logged 392 open ocean dives.

Not to be outdone by Mutley or Shadow, here's another scuba diving animal - Hootch the scuba dog!

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