Hans Hass
According to Wikipedia, Hans Hass was born in Vienna on 23 January 1919 and died there on 16 June 2013, aged 94. Most of what follows about his career comes from Wikipedia and from a 2024 profile published by the La Gacilly-Baden photo festival.
First dives and first books
The two sources date his start differently. Wikipedia says he took up underwater hunting on a holiday on the French Riviera in 1938, where he met the American diver Guy Gilpatric. The festival profile says he first came across underwater hunting on the southern French coast in 1937, straight after finishing high school.
Both sources agree that he set off on his first Caribbean expedition in 1939, at the age of 20. Wikipedia says he published his first book of underwater photographs that year, Jagd unter Wasser mit Harpune und Kamera (published in English as Diving to Adventure), and made his first underwater film, Pirsch unter Wasser, in 1940.
Rebreathers, a doctorate and the shark film
Wikipedia says Hass and his team logged more than 2,000 dives on Drager oxygen rebreathers between 1942 and 1953.
He also studied for a doctorate, and its date is given in three ways. Wikipedia gives 1943 at the University of Berlin, but the same article says the thesis was completed in February 1944. The festival profile gives 1944.
Wikipedia says his film Menschen unter Haien (Men among Sharks), shot on an expedition to the Aegean in 1942, premiered in Zurich in 1947.
The Red Sea and the Xarifa
Hass's Red Sea film won first prize at the Venice festival in 1951. Its English title varies by source. The festival profile calls it Adventure in the Red Sea. Wikipedia uses Under the Red Sea and also lists Adventure in the Red Sea at the second Venice festival of scientific film.
The festival profile says that in 1951 Hass founded the International Institute for Submarine Research in Vaduz and bought the research ship Xarifa. A search summary of Wikipedia says the Xarifa expeditions ran from 1952 to 1960 and that Hass sold the ship in 1961.
A dive computer
Wikipedia says Hass also developed the "Deco-Brain" decompression computer in 1983. Its date and how it should be ranked among early computers are disputed, and the versions are set out on the first dive computers.
Lotte Hass
DeeperBlue reported on 19 January 2015 that Lotte Hass had died on 14 January 2015, aged 86. The sources disagree on when she joined Hans Hass's work:
- DeeperBlue says she began diving in 1949, as the only woman on the crew filming Adventure in the Red Sea.
- Wikipedia, seen as a search summary, says she joined in 1950 and married Hans Hass that year.
DeeperBlue says she learned to dive on a Drager closed-circuit rebreather. Her autobiography, A Girl On The Ocean Floor, was made into a film in 2011, according to the same report. Wikipedia lists her among the first class inducted into the Women Divers Hall of Fame, in 2000.
The "first woman" claims
DeeperBlue credits Lotte Hass with several firsts: the first underwater model, the first woman to dive with autonomous diving equipment, and later the first female professional underwater photographer. These are the publication's claims, and we could not confirm them as firsts. One of them is contested directly. The Ocean Futures Society, run by the Cousteau family, and the Women Divers Hall of Fame listing reported by Wikipedia both call Simone Melchior Cousteau the first woman scuba diver. DeeperBlue's wording is about autonomous equipment, which in her case was a rebreather, while the Cousteau claim uses the word scuba. The sources do not settle who came first. Both women, and other early women divers, are on women in diving.