History of scuba diving the high number of recreational scuba accidents. this started with informal training and led to the creation of training and certification agencies. BS-AC was formed in 1953, CMAS in 1959, NAUI in 1960 and PADI in 1966. The sport of scuba diving had its roots among the multitude of small enthusiastic snorkelling and spearfishing clubs in the decades just before and after the Second World War. After the invention of the "aqualung" by Cousteau and Gagnan, the first commercially marketed underwater breathing apparatus became available for sale for sporting purposes in the late 1940s. In 1951, Jim Auxie Jr and
Jacques Cousteau with the Cannes Film Festival 1951). Cousteau and the "Élie Monnier" then took part in the rescue of Professor Jacques Piccard's bathyscaphe, the FNRS-2, during the 1949 expedition to Dakar. Thanks to this rescue, the French Navy was able to reuse the sphere of the bathyscaphe to construct the FNRS-3. The adventures of this period are told in the two books "" (1953, by Cousteau and Dumas) and "Plongées sans câble" (1954, by Philippe Tailliez). In 1949, Cousteau left the French Navy. In 1950, he founded the French Oceanographic Campaigns (FOC), and leased a ship called "Calypso" from Thomas Loel