[leadin]The ability to breathe underwater unencumbered by heavy equipment is a common dream. Unfortunately, it also appears to be a pipe-dream that has hundreds of hopeful underwater explorers shelling out big bucks ($700,000 in just a few days) for a product of dubious design, and the number is growing.[/leadin]
Currently raising funds on Indiegogo, the Triton claims to be the world’s first “artificial gills rebreather,” a concept that has eluded the world’s top scientists and military contractors for years. If true, it would revolutionize snorkeling and recreational diving overnight.
Experts say that the Triton’s claims are bold, and implausible, and the company’s lack of third-party verification or industry experience raises red flags.
We reached out by email to Triton (the company has no phone number or address listed on its website, Facebook page, or Indiegogo campaign; red flag number one). The company has not responded to our request for information.
We also spoke with several experts — Ph.Ds at Divers Alert Network and Deep Sea News, scuba designers, and researchers in human physiology.
The consensus: The Triton faces limitations in battery design, high-pressure storage, and filtration that will likely not be overcome for decades.
We’d love for this product to be real. It would change shallow diving forever. If it turns out to be effective, we’ll be eating crow and lining up to buy one after the company claims they’ll be delivered in Dec. 2016 (or as soon as a third party verifies they really work as promised). But for now, we, and many others, are skeptical.
Why ‘Triton’ Can’t Work As Claimed
To understand the difficulty of extracting air from water, you need to go back to middle school chemistry. Water in lakes, oceans, and pools contains air from the atmosphere in solution.
To remove solutions from water while underwater is not an easy task. But we’ll give this startup the benefit of the doubt and allow that they’ve come up with a revolutionary technology that removes 100 percent of dissolved oxygen from water.
![To function in optimal conditions, the Triton would have to pump between 45 and 90 liters of water through this device each minute](https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.gearjunkie.com/uploads/2016/03/Triton-Gills.jpg)
Oxygen Extraction From Water Isn’t Easy
Needed: Huge Pump, High-Pressure Storage, Revolutionary Battery
Three Major Problems
- Extraction Of Oxygen: “You have to both run a lot of water through your product, and have a means to separate it,” Pollock said. “They have some kind of filter system they say works with a membrane. But what entices the oxygen to go through that membrane? The explanation is not compelling.”
- Storage: “We breath volumetrically. At the surface, the volume of a breath would be about two liters while exercising (or about .5 liters at rest). So the system needs a reservoir to hold the compressed air. They are claiming this tiny reservoir will hold it, and it will take a very powerful pump.”
- Delivery (metering): Somehow, this compressed air needs to be metered; a job that in scuba gear is accomplished by a regulator. At depths beyond 130 feet, or for prolonged dives, a rebreather that mixes oxygen with other gasses like helium and nitrogen is used. That’s because deeper than 15 feet, pure oxygen becomes toxic, so if an untrained user (anyone can buy this product) ventures too deep, they could be poisoned.