Advanced diver reporting for duty. It’s amazing what the title of a certificate can imply. Having now dived a total of eleven times I am not advanced in experience or knowledge yet the title suggests otherwise. It does mean I can now dive to depths of thirty metres which is a vast improvement on the eighteen I’ve been able to for the last thirteen years. There are no guarantees but the plan is to dive more than once in the next thirteen. I’m a total sucker for courses and learning so at the very least I’ll be working my way through these as time goes on. I quite fancy doing some wreck diving, night diving, dry suit diving and the enriched air nitrox diving. Because I value life, and not just mine, and also because these are skills we should all have, I’ll do the rescue diver course eventually too. First before all of that I’ll just see what comes up and do some diving as the opportunity arises. If next years plans come together, judging by this year though I won’t hold my breath, which you should never do when diving by the way, anything is possible. The whole point of this was to allow for future diving and not just future courses after all.
There is a phobia called submechanophobia, which is a fear of submerged man-made objects like shipwrecks, submarines, buoys and other such things. I discovered this when discussing the sea with someone who suffers from extreme anxiety. I can appreciate the fear because when I’ve looked at images of sunken shipwrecks or submarines there is something eerily terrifying about them. Perhaps it’s the implication of death. The same exists for images of sudden drops that disappear into darkness or images of divers from a distance in the ocean with nothing around them for miles. There is something about these types of images that creates a fearful reaction, perhaps it’s some instinctive survival mechanism. When diving though it feels different. I can look over the edge of a drop that becomes nothingness but it isn’t necessarily scary. The mind is aware of possible dangers both rational and irrational but nothing like images manage to portray. When you are in and around it you understand how much is in the mind.
And that is one of the things that we can get from diving especially. Diving is not simply an adventure for the body but for the mind too, arguably more so. With all the water around and despite there being another person there, you feel fully in your own little bubble. Nothing else is going on. Nothing on the surface in our distracted little minds. You’re just under the water with the fish and the coral keeping yourself buoyant and focused. Even if you’re not keeping yourself focused you drift off into your surroundings, no opportunity to be anything but present. And for the last two evenings I’ve been so chilled out and not just from being tired or because I’ve had decompression sickness which I haven’t. Sailing and diving, I could think of worse hobbies and lifestyles.
Observations and Misunderstandings 