Screaming at a Wall

The other day I had an long, interesting, and a lovely phone call with a person for whom I have a great deal of respect (and for whom you probably do, too). They wanted to chat about what they framed as the "volume" of my message and brought up a great many really good points about the way that I vent over the internet about every damn bee which accidentally flies into my bonnet.

The conversation was wide ranging, but perhaps the key point they were trying to make is the old axiom: you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. I don't know why you'd want flies to begin with... ... perhaps I should just lay off the insect analogies.

I am nihilistic misanthrope. That comes across loudly when I complain about every damn thing under the sun; but the fact is, despite not being comfortable around people, I do hope for the best for everyone around me. Even those I dislike, it is my enduring hope that they find happiness and comfort and whatever it is they want in the world (just... over there... away from me).

At one point in the conversation they asked whether I had some sort of personal problem with this or that person. There is actually only a single human being I personally know in this world who I truly hate, who I truly see no redeeming qualities to whatsoever (if you're reading this... I guarantee it isn't you). So, "No," I answered honestly, I don't really have personal problems with anyone.

What I have are, mostly, safety concerns. About bloody everything. About some things/techniques/people/groups more than others. These are the things which I longwindedly try to communicate my thoughts on with varying effectiveness.

Before my first rebreather instructor accepted me as a student he sat me down and very soberly told me, "If you are going to do this, you need to recognize that you are going to have friends die. That you might watch friends die. That YOU may die. You need to be comfortable with that."

He was right. About the first two, so far. And not only as pertains to rebreathers.

I am still not comfortable with it, though. At least, I don't accept that it has to be an inevitability. Any time we go underwater we are playing the odds. The question is how resolutely do we tip the odds in our favor?

What I see so often, what I rail about so loudly, is that there are agencies/people/groups/styles/philosophies/etc which are awfully cavalier. We have all seen them. Instructors saying, "We're not supposed to do this, but you'll be ok," or mentors allowing divers not quite up to their own level join them on dives for which they aren't really prepared.

If you see something, say something, right?

Weeeeeelllllllll.......

Diving is funny, isn't it. It's a whole bunch of alpha personalities which have paradoxically fragile egos. What's more, it's a very small world of a luxury pastime operating on a razor-thin margin where business relationships and friendships are a very tightly drawn Venn diagram. Sometimes saying something can cause a rift in the friendship which will fuck with the business. It can be dangerous.

That doesn't really apply to me, though. I'm not going to claim "I'm better than that" or some other such hogwash. It's just that I am not really "in the industry" the way a manufacturer or an agency or a full-time instructor is. I don't have clients or business partners I might offend and am not constrained in the same ways.

So when I see something, I DO say something. Often these diatribes are triggered by conversations I've had with people (case in point, this very diatribe by a phone call the other day). What it comes down to is that I can talk, feel like my point of view may be a positive contribution, and therefore share it.

Sometimes loudly.

I grant that I can be acerbic; perhaps inappropriately so at times. That, I probably should watch. I am really not out to hurt anyone's feelings or tear anyone down. Mostly I'm surprised anyone takes a single thing I say seriously at all. I'm not going to claim I'm not charmed, but I am surprised.

The caustic side comes from the Bill Hicks/George Carlin school of Socratic education: "If they're not going to listen... throw the intellectual equivalent of a rabid monkey with a knives duct-taped to all four paws at them and then just watch the fun."

I know it isn't nice... but it can be funny. And just as educational if people are willing to listen. And if you are just throwing rabid monkeys just for the sake of throwing rabid monkeys, perhaps you should be thinking more carefully about your own motivations?

Just dive safe, goddamn it. Inspire others to do the same. If you are going to be a mentor, know what the hell you're talking about first. If you are going to be a spokesperson, have some consensus behind you.

Listen to the community around you... if they're all saying one thing and you insist on another, yeah, maybe you're being a trailblazer... but you have to grant that just maybe you're being a stubborn prick.

Me? I know I'm a stubborn prick. And I'll keep ranting, if for no other reason, because it's cathartic and it gives me something to do on the subway. And I promise, it is coming from a good place.

I'll hope that it occasionally inspires people think critically about things; and I'll hope it doesn't really hurt anyone.

Deadpool

I love being an educator and acting as a mentor. 

There were so very many things I wanted to know when I was getting started, that I wanted to try and do, but had only limited guidance available.  Just as often as not, even worse, I was given bad, incomplete, or totally wrong information which took time to research and correct.

So I enjoy making myself available as a source for those now coming up.  Even on those frequent occasions that I don't have the information myself I can point people in the right direction.

This is one of the many things I truly love about my job and feel is the mandate for any instructor: to find and use every opportunity to send better, safer divers out into the wild.

I'm aware that my online persona (possibly my real-life persona, too) is generally that of a curmudgeonly, know-it-all misanthrope... but it comes from a good place.

The old axiom is that with 10,000 hours of engagement comes expertise.  (This theory has since been disproven, which explains why there are so many crap instructors out there.)  I bring this up because I have been a full-time dive professional and dive safety geek for 8 years now.  8*52*40 = 16,640.  Whether that makes me an expert or simply a blowhard who is unemployable at real work is a conundrum I'll have to struggle with in my dotage.  But while I may not be an expert... I'm pretty well-equipped in a conversation on our sport.

I walk away from a great many of these conversations shaking my head and wondering why people won't listen and benefit the experience and mistakes others have and have made.  Why they'd prefer to make the same -- sometimes dangerous -- mistakes themselves.  Why they think they're so bloody clever when people who legitimately are experts are telling them they are doing something silly.

Perhaps it is the personal illusion of expertise that is the dark side of the exhilaration to be a mentor?  Vanity and ego.  The reason it is so frustrating when you try to help someone and your suggestions are dismissed as ignorant or swatted away like gadflies.

Or perhaps the frustration comes from the fact that among the legitimate experts there are actual deadpools.

There are unofficial lists of people who have been approached, often by several experts, offering mentorship or advice who are generally agreed to be on a fast track to a watery death.  It isn't gossip... it is commiseration.

We do talk about you.  It is not flattering.  You have reputations and nicknames.  But even if we don't like you, we do worry about you and don't want to see you hurt or hurt someone else.

Why the hell don't you listen?

Secondary Victims

Over the last few days I have had the same conversation with four different divers and instructors I respect enormously. Several of them about the same couple of divers.

There are a couple of divers out there that are going to die diving. Possibly soon. And they don't know it yet.

They certainly don't behave like they care. They seem to refuse to take the advise of their betters or agree to the long, slow process of mentorship. All they seem to think is, "I am preternaturally good at this and, besides, I'm only putting myself at any risk." They are 100% wrong.

As "technical" diving has become more mainstream over the last decade people have grown hell-bent for leather to reach the very top of the game. They see the empty spools, the gorgeous pictures, or the piles of brass that the rockstar divers bring back and they figure, "If I push really hard I can be doing that in a year or two!"

But they can't.

They selectively ignore that the rockstars have been slowly becoming who they are and what they're capable of for 10, 15, 20, 30 years. They don't think of the countless called dives or minor incidents or long-forgotten learning moments that these people have built their careers upon. They don't romanticize the hours of planning dives and bailout and emergency plans. They don't think of the support required. They just figure, "What's the worst that can happen? I die doing what I love?"

No. The worst that can happen is that you hurt or kill someone else because of your own bullshit ego trip.

When you die underwater you leave buddies who question, "What more could I have done?" You have rescue or recovery teams who have to go get you and carry around the memory of the dead look in your eyes as they find you floating there in their heads forever. Every instructor you've ever worked with (at least those worth a shit) will spend YEARS questioning every moment they worked with you and whether it was their fault for having certified you at all.

You have their families who certainly never signed on for this who suddenly have to become an emotional support network for those who were anywhere near your accident in any capacity. Strangers; people who you may never meet. People who now lose sleep worrying about their own loved ones.

Because you can't accept that you're not as good as you think you are. Because you decided to jump from the very peak of Dunning-Kruger mountain.

Slow down. Don't create secondary victims. You selfish dingbats.

Maybe one day you'll get to where you want to be. Maybe. But it should take longer than you think it should.

Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right (but three rights do make a left)

There are two pictures on the internet right now.  Almost identical: a diver sits on a boat, smiling at the camera, breathing oxygen to mitigate a minor DCS hit.  I don't know the circumstances of either incident, but as I saw each I had a very different reaction.

The one I saw first I thought, "Now that's pretty funny."  To the other I thought, "That is terrifying."  

Bear in mind, there really is very little different from photo to photo.  Both divers are safe and comfortable back on board their boat, both look in fine spirits, and most importantly, both apparently walked away from whatever incident precipitated first aid without any residual effects.  So it's the same picture; nothing different; except for everything.

In the one picture is one of the most experienced divers you'll find anywhere.  The other is of a relative newbie.

So in the one picture is someone who should have known better, or had something unavoidable happen, or wasn't hydrated or was over-hydrated, or inadvertently had any number of countless other variables in the barely-understood physiology of decompression stress bite him in the ass.  Or maybe it was nothing... just one of those days.  Like a pro athlete sometimes steps down wrong without even noticing it at the time, but pulls something in their leg... if you're diving at a certain level for long enough every once in a while divers get minor injuries, too.

The other diver has NOT been diving at that level long enough.  And when I say "long enough" I mean "at all."  So what frightened me is the smirk.

Why should someone with suspected symptoms of a potentially debilitating injury be smiling into the camera when they have not been around long enough to have any frame of reference about what is happening to them?  Let's drop a mental bookmark there and flip to a different chapter for a bit.

Recently I was testing a different set of counterlungs on my rebreather, these sleek neoprene jobbies.  Thing was, there was nowhere on them to stow my oxygen and diluent pressure gauges with them over my shoulders the way I usually do.  The number of times I check my gauges on a normal dive I can count on one hand.  Sometimes on only one finger.

So I removed them for the dive.

Rebreather divers, on reading that, are now having one of two reactions.
A) You goddamn fool!  Diving without gauges?!  I'm amazed you're still alive!!
B) So?  I took my gauges off forever ago.  Just one more hose and more failure point.
If there are people with some reaction in the grey zone between those two opinions I am not aware of their existence.

I started this particular dive with a pretty good handle on my oxygen consumption that comes from almost a decade of CCR experience.  I was also perfectly comfortable that in only 60 feet of water there was no way I was going to be able to use the entirety of the 2L bottle of dil.  The dive itself was lovely.  Until...

"PSSSHT!" said my solenoid.

Then, a few minutes later, "PSSSHT!"

"PSssh...." some time after that.

"What the fuck was that?" some functionary toward the back of my consciousness said.

"What was what?" said my conscious mind absently.

"Shut up!  Listen!" said the functionary.

(Yes, I imagine the inside of my mind like Mission Control, and the guy who noticed an issue is in charge of some lower system that no one usually cares about, but right now he's pushed back all the papers on his desk and is standing up in fixed concentration.  All eyes in the room are on him.)

"pssh..." said the solenoid.

"That!  Did you hear that?"

"Yeah, we heard it," says Ed Harris, now standing and straightening his vest.

"CLICK," said the solenoid with finality.  "CLIIIIIIIICK," and again with a lot more oomph.

Ed Harris adjusts his headset and sighs, "OK, people, we've got us a situation.  Let's stay calm and work the problem."

Here's the thing.  I had started the dive with a good grasp on my oxygen metabolism -- I had also started the dive with a minor leak out of the tank valve.  It had been there for a day or two, a nearly insignificant little bleed, and I had intended to tell the place I rented the tank from about it toward the end of the week.  I didn't want to be the asshole customer who insists you overhaul shit for me on the spot when the failure was so small, so until then I figured it wasn't impacting me poorly.

BUT... this was the dive that the tiny leak decided to escalate to a major leak.  So it was on this dive that I ran completely out of O2.

I signaled to my wife asking whether the bubbles she had pointed out were still there?  She smiled when she signaled back, "No," certainly thinking that the problem had resolved.  She stopped smiling when I signaled, "It's because that tank is empty."

She held up a questioning thumb and I signaled, "No, the spool I dropped at our exit was just over there."  So we swam back to the spool, collected it, and exited normally.  Well... normal-ish; I had a regulator in my mouth by the time we hit the surface.  Before putting the regulator in my mouth I admit using a couple of unconventional tools to complete the dive staying on the loop for as long as possible.
Mostly I was grateful to that little functionary at the back of the attic of my mind who was listening to the solenoid.  Always recognizing what "normal" sounds and feels like and instantly recognizing when something not normal has just happened.  It has taken a long time to get there but just as when you can feel when your sock has twisted and the seam is pressing against your pinky toe, so is some little part of my mind always monitoring the solenoid.

I didn't know for sure that was true until this dive.

I had hoped.  And I am delighted as hell to know that it is true; that I detected the problem even before my PO2 started dropping.

Can you?

I am sure a great many of you reading this could (assuming fucking anyone is reading this).  But I am also sure a great many can not.

I have been doing this a while.  Longer than some, no where near as long as others.  But long enough that some things are second nature.  Long enough that I've been exposed to a great deal of the diving world.  Long enough that I've seen friends bent.  Long enough that I've had minor DCS hits myself.

And with that let's go back to where we bookmarked.

It takes time and experience to get to where you can or should be comfortable with certain things or having a fair gauge of what's normal and what isn't.  If I was a brand new rebreather diver who ran out of O2 would I have noticed?  Would I have even lived?  People have died for less, but even as I knew what was happening I viewed it mostly as a minor inconvenience.

The couple of times I have felt symptoms of DCS it scared the crap out of me.  I knew I probably wasn't going to die... but I damn sure didn't like it.  And I damn sure wasn't in the mood to pose for pictures.
"So why," I thought, "Is this inexperienced diver sitting there smiling at the camera, happily accepting that they are showing signs of DCS?"
Lest anyone think I am simply picking on this one person in this one photo, I have heard and overheard a conversation like, "I got so bent," a number of times from people who really should't have had that happen at that point in their dive career.  Or, more to the point, at all!  

Just as often as not the reason these folks got hurt is not because of an "undeserved hit," but because they were doing some shit they shouldn't have been doing in the first place.  

The reason I think of it now was the surprising contrast, the almost double-standard, I found in my reaction to those two pictures.
Is it a perceived badge of honor to newbies?  Is it about the perception of being a bad-ass diver?  Do they think that in getting "hit" they have now achieved some level of credibility, that they are closer to the same level as the wildly experienced diver in a similar circumstance?  Don't they recognize that's not how it works?  That there's not even an "it" to work like that?

I wonder if it is like inexperienced CCR divers who take their pressure gauges off because some person they respect told them that pressure gauges are for babies?  They forget that the person telling them, "You don't need them," is someone who knows exactly their metabolism level to two decimals of LPM given any range of workloads* when they, themselves, barely remember the basics of emergency procedures.

(* I do not claim to be one of these people.  I am back to my normal counterlungs and my pressure gauges are back on.  I don't think you're going to die without them... I just like having them there.  A tool I probably won't use, but doesn't bother me when they're just sitting there not being used.)

Diving is not a competitive sport.  There are no ranks, there are no secret handshakes, there is no reason to try to be bigger, meaner, tougher, deeper, or more cavalier about being bent than the next guy.

If you are going to stay in the sport for long enough, yes, things are going to happen.  Sometimes bad things.

My original rebreather instructor sat me down before accepting me as a student and told me, very soberly, that if I was going to start doing this I was going to have to accept that I was going to lose friends.  What's more, I was going to have to accept that I may, myself, die doing it.  

It did not spark any ember of bravado in me.  Sadly and inevitably, it turned out that he was right.  

Because he was right I get really upset when I see people doing things like moving too fast or diving too ambitiously.  It's why I make this same blog post bitching about how people need to slow the fuck down and dive more cautiously over and over again.

Of course taking chances are essential to growth, but zealous growth can be dangerous.

Think about tomatoes.  Do you ever think about tomatoes?  I'm Italian and it's the season right now; I think about tomatoes frequently.  When they grow large they can spread out and you get a ton of flowers which turn into a ton of tomatoes.  But a tomato plant needs a trellis.  You need to be careful to make sure that you keep the plant comfortably within an appropriate frame and that it doesn't grow to fast.  Otherwise it will probably fall over and die.

Learn slowly.  Learn over time.  Dive safe.  And eat a lot of tomatoes.  They're really good for you.



(Thanks to Tom McCarthy for "donating" the questionably uncopyrighted image above.)

We Don't Need No Education

You absolutely must follow training standards.  Until you don't.  

When is that point?  How distant a deviation is acceptable?  What is your responsibility, if you are an instructor or mentor, to act as an example at all times?  You start really getting into the long grass with these questions; the frontiers through which there are a couple of well-worn, lazy paths which can be dangerous and destructive, like a commonly used hike shortcut which becomes a torrential waterfall at the first showing of rain.

Example:

How did you learn deco gas switching?  Instructors, how do you teach deco gas switching?  Now… how do you actually do it?

I am not going to walk through the steps of the former two in my own case, but I'll tell you how I actually make a gas switch.  I always wear my gasses in the same places, distributed on both my left and right sides.  When it's time to make a switch I reach for the regulator on what I know will be the right tank, I get the second stage out and ready, confirm the tank is on, then put the thing in my mouth and start breathing at the correct time.

Those of you either recently trained or otherwise familiar with standards will notice about 42 steps missing up to and including showing everyone in your dive team both the tank, the first stage, the second stage, and a notarized living will detailing exactly what steps they should take if you accidentally forgot to label your MOD in the correct units.

In a recent discussion with another instructor they scoffed when I told them this.  They were wondering after the red valve knobs I have on my 50% bottles.  “It just catches the eye,” I explained, “My 50% regs are red, too.”

“But you would switch to 50% at 70 feet where red wavelengths would have already been diffused, so it would just look black,” they correctly, if pedantically, pointed out.

Ignoring both that I mostly cave dive where everything looks black unless you shine a light on it, I ignored the comment.  I also didn't say anything about how I don't bother looking at the tank valve when I'm making a switch.  What I depend on is that I put the right distinctive regulator on the right distinctive tank before the dive.  Then, during the dive, when I deploy a plastic Cyklon (as distinctive a regulator as exists) I know that 50% will come out of that mouthpiece, because whatever color it is, whether I can even see the reg or not, the only thing I use a plastic cyklon, in all it's weird looking glory for, is as a 50% reg.

It isn't that I'm immune to physics or that I have outsmarted training standards.  I have preparatory procedures and equipment to confirm a series of data that do, indeed, need to be confirmed before making a gas switch.

Do I teach it this way?  No.  There are way more steps in the way I demonstrate it and teach it... even though I'm using my awesome regs.

“I'll just get different regulators, like you,” some eager student may say, if they happened to read this blog.

“This is one of only a very few regulators that trick will work with,” I'd explain, “And they're about seven hundred bucks new… you gonna spend that on a deco reg?  Follow the steps as you learned them.”

Instructors, especially vastly experienced instructors, run the very serious risk of behaving as a poor example.  Perhaps not during classes, but when simply out diving their vast experience and the tools and refinements and personal style over the years has developed into something seamless, which works perfectly for them, but could turn things critical on someone without their many years of experience.

Few instructors I know, either recreational or technical follow training standards during their own, personal, non-teaching dives.  Because… and here's the crux of it… training standards only apply during an active class, when there is a teacher(s) and student(s).  When there is no formal, documented teacher/student relationship, the training agencies have no oversight.

(Note: when people who have a pre-existing teacher/student relationship are diving together, say, right after a class, things get ethically and, probably, legally hairier.  A responsible instructor should continue to encourage strict procedural adherence through those times, as opposed to, “You're certified now, do what you want,” or worse, encourage potentially reckless behavior like, as a totally random example apropos of nothing, diving to/past 200 feet more than twice a day.)

That said: it is pure folly to interpret “instructors don't follow training standards” as “training standards are overly conservative.”

The standards are there as minimums… minimums with the best, most capable students in mind. A more typical student will require more work on top of these, repeated exposure over time. Whether ideal or ordinary what they initially learn from their instructor will be used as a foundation upon which they can build their own styles and decide on their own tricks.

When?

Yeah, I'm not going to answer that.  It's a long, wide, blurry line between when the standards as you learned them should be followed to the letter and when you can start fooling around with what works for you. This line gets even blurrier if you haven't learned according to standards, when an instructor has allowed you scope to believe the shortcut that will turn into a waterfall is acceptable... as long as it doesn't rain (which it inevitably will sooner or later). Poor buoyancy control, crap finning, sloppy gear configurations, lack of buddy or body awareness: these are paths to the dark side.

So while I can't give you a standard answer on when standard breaking becomes safely allowable I can parrot back to you is an old line I’ve variously heard ascribed to Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, and Pablo Picasso:

“You've got to learn all the rules so you can break them.”

Learning them -- mastering them -- comes first.

Afterward:

All this comes with a very, very big BUT. As you evolve and learn you must ALWAYS be vigilant for the creeping evil of normalization of deviance. Think things through. Don't ever do shit just because you got away with it this time or someone (even someone you like or even respect) told you you could. Just because some lazy shortcut worked today doesn't mean it will work tomorrow.

The Four Instructors

The Setting: Corner booth of a dive bar on some tropical island. Four tanned dive instructors raise their glasses in a toast.
----------------------------------------------------------------

PADDY: Ahh.. Very passable, this, very passable.

PATTY: Nothing like a round of irish carbombs at the end of a charter, ay Pat?

PAT: You're right there Paddy.

PATSY: Who'd a thought when we were studying for the IE we’d make it here, teaching divers, living the dream, buying rounds of irish carbombs?

PADDY: Yeah. In them days, we'd a' been glad to have the price of a carbomb.

PATTY: A warm carbomb.

PATSY: Without bailey’s or whiskey.

PAT: OR beer!

PADDY: In a filthy, cracked mug.

PATSY: We never used to have a mug. We used to have to drink out of a customer’s used paper cone cup.

PATTY: The best WE could manage was to suck on a corner of a beer-soaked bar rag.

PAT: But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were just tank monkeys.

PADDY: Yeah. BECAUSE we were just tank monkeys. My old Course Director used to say to me, 'Certifications don’t buy you happiness.'

PATSY: 'E was right. I was happier then and I had NOTHIN'. We used to work in this tiny old shop, with great big holes in the roof.

PATTY: Shop? You were lucky to have a shop! We used to work in the owner’s garage, all twenty-six of us, no classroom. Half the BCs leaked; we would all fight over the one regulator that didn’t freeflow for fear of drowning!

PAT: You were lucky to have a garage! *We* used to have to work in an alleyway!

PADDY: Oh we used to DREAM of working in an alleyway! Woulda' been a palace to us. We used to work in a public restroom in a fishing marina. We’d start class every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! Alleyway!? Heh.

PATSY: Well when I say “shop” it was only a construction site covered by a piece of tarp, but it was a shop to us.

PATTY: Our boss got us evicted from *our* construction site; we had to go and work in a quarry!

PAT: You were lucky to have a QUARRY! There were a hundred and sixty of us working in a mask box in the middle of Route 1.

PADDY: Plastic box?

PAT: Yeah.

PADDY: You were lucky. We worked for three months in an old pizza box in a dumpster. We used to have to start class at six o'clock in the morning, clean the dumpster, eat a piece of stale crust, crew the boat for fourteen hours a day week in-week out. When we got back to the shop, our course director would make us do paperwork for the next four hours!

PATTY: Luxury. We used to have to get to the quarry at three o'clock in the morning, clean the quarry, eat a handful of yesterday’s guest trail mix, crew the boat every day for $10 a month, come back to the quarry, and our boss would beat us until we made $5000 in sales, if we were LUCKY!

PAT: Well we had it tough. We used to have to get to the mask box at twelve o'clock at night, and lick Route 1 clean with our tongues. We had half a handful of month-old trail mix, worked twenty-four hours a day on the boat for $5 every six years, and when we got back to the shop, the boss would slice us in two with a dive knife.

PATSY: Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of seawater, work twenty-nine hours a day on the boat, and pay the captain for permission to crew, and when we got back to the shop, the boss and the course director would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing 'Hallelujah.'

PADDY: But you try and tell the DMCs today that... and they won't believe ya'.

ALL: Nope, nope..

The Right Stuff

“Do I really need to buy my own regulator?”

Like fingernails on a chalkboard.  Obviously it isn't meant to be annoying; it's an honest question by someone staring down the long barrel of a several hundreds of dollars purchase.  It's the exasperation, the jaded plea for honesty that grates at me.  As though the instructor is little more than a back-alley hustler and the student asking wants to make clear that they're no Oakie simpleton.  So it’s not the question itself, it’s the implication that I’m trying to take advantage of you in some way that I find upsetting.

Of course the shortest possible answer is, “No.”  None of us really need any of this shit.  It is heavy, awkward, finicky, demanding, and (obviously) expensive.  

The flip side of all that is that it is life support equipment.  From the regulator that delivers you breathing gas, to the computer that tracks your inert gas loading, to the BC that keeps you from sinking to the abyss, to the wetsuit that protects you from hypothermia, to the fins that get you back to the boat in a current.  Every article of gear serves an important safety function.  

So, while you certainly don't NEED this stuff.  You could go take up rollerblading or ultimate frisbee instead.  But if you're going to be a diver, then obviously you need the gear.  If you're going to be a frequent diver then having your own gear grants you a recognition that leads to muscle memory and a frequency of use that gives you the flexibility to keep things just the way you like them.  These benefits grant a consequent level of safety bred of practice and familiarity.

Yet there's that question.  “Do I really need my own…”

I have been asked enough times, now, that I have difficulty not shaking the asker by the lapels while screaming, “I have spent more money on D-rings than you are likely to ever spend on all your dive gear combined in a lifetime!”

If you're actually reading this chances are that you're with me so far.  You're no cert.  Maybe you're an instructor.  You have been asked that question yourself and, perhaps, have to suppress a lapel-shaking impulse yourself.

“Do I really need to replace this bubbling hose?”

“Do I really need to bring a whole other set of gear?”

“Do I really need to refill my scrubber?”

Now, how many times have you been asked any of those questions?  By yourself?

It's not just about the gear… it's about the right gear.  It’s about gear that is both designed for the task, that you’re familiar enough with that you can safely use it, and that is working properly.  Lacking any one of those three points means that it is not the right gear and, therefore, a failure point.

They say all the best stories start in the middle.  So…

Familiarity

This is, almost certainly, the most common failure point among the vast majority of divers.  That is, the vast majority of divers, like those I referenced above, don’t even own their own gear.  So the very first time they are going to use this BC or that dive computer is about 20 minutes after the first time they see it when they pick up their rental gear at the boat dock.

Obviously this shortcoming is often combined with inexperience.  If one hasn’t made the investment in their own equipment, then they are almost certainly not diving frequently enough to have refined their skills enough to quickly master unfamiliar equipment.  Chances are very good they aren’t that hot with their buoyancy control or even heard the word “trim” before.  So typically it is a safe bet that someone who doesn’t own their own gear is not going to be a terribly competent diver.  

Yes, of course there are exceptions to the rule; but in general if you were working at a destination dive center and two divers got on the boat: one with a bag full of rental gear that you know is hanging on by a thread and one with a bag of their own well-used looking gear… which one are you going to expect to be more work that day?

What if it’s one person with a bag of well-used gear and one with brand new gear?  For my part, I’d still be wary of the new gear person.  Good for them for having their own things… but if a diver doesn’t have time with their gear they haven’t developed muscle memory yet, and that is where safety is really coming from, the ability for one’s hands to simply find and manipulate the tools needed at the moment.  Getting caught in a downcurrent is not the time to be trying to figure out or remember which button on a power inflator does what.

This holds just as true for someone with their brand new Aqualung i3 jacket BC on a Thai liveaboard as it does for even an experienced cave diver with a brand new sidemount harness.  Or a bloody camera.  Or the rebreather that you love more than life itself.  If you haven’t practiced using the tool in benign conditions for a while please don’t take it into conditions that will challenge you right away.  How many accident victims have been found on the bottom with their weights in place, exactly?

If you haven’t mastered it you will be incapable of using it safely in the event of an emergency.

Working Properly

This one bites experienced and inexperienced divers just as badly, but for different reasons.

Inexperienced divers often don’t know what “properly” means much of the time.  Especially when combined with not owning one’s own gear and lacking familiarity with either the gear they’ve just rented or dive gear in general.  I can remember a dozen times having been working a boat, rushing to get gear set up for everyone before getting to the dive site and hearing one diver meekly raise the question.

“My regulator is leaking a little.”

“No problem,” I’d step to their side to quickly diagnose.  The first diagnostic being, of course, percussive maintenance.  Just as often as not a couple of whacks to the heel of the hand would stop the regulator leak.

“There you are,” I’d say and return to whatever task.

Generally that person would happily take a couple of breaths from their regulator and, satisfied that the Divemaster knew what he was talking about, went on trying to remember which fin went on which foot.  They probably did not wonder after whether it was just a grain of salt in the second stage or a sticky lever.  It is exceedingly unlikely that they’d know what an IP creep or a cracked crown might be.  So why would they suspect that the dive professional might not know what in the hell they were doing?  After all, the professional must see this all the time and fix things that way all the time, right?

The fact of the matter is that fixing things like that, not taking a potential failure seriously sets a bad example by dive pros.  And yet I would be you a two-week trip on the Arenui that somewhere on a dive deck right this very second, some DM is whacking a leaky second stage with their hand and saying, “It should be fine,” to someone who doesn’t know better.

More experienced divers come at this from a different angle.

I’ve got OPVs (overpressure valves) on all my bailout regulators.  It’s a little $13 part that sometimes goes bad after not terribly long and starts to leak a tiny stream of bubbles.  If I’m going to be honest I have to admit that I have started many dives knowing that one of my OPVs is leaking; hell, one of the OPVs on my main two bailout regs is leaky right now (I can’t remember which one… which is the reason it’s still leaky).  Is it a major failure point?  No.

But, it’s a little like driving with your Check Engine light on after you’ve gotten the code read.  You have learned there is a minor problem that probably won’t affect anything… but if a bigger problem appears it is now completely masked.

And this is how experience divers get screwed.  You set up all that stuff, bring all those bottles to the water or onto a boat, put on heavy underwear and a drysuit, climb into a rebreather, connect, clip, stow, and verify a small fortune in gear… and then discover that the tiny o-ring at the end of an inflator hose is leaking just a tiny bit.  Do you call the dive?

Of course not!  You twist the hose a couple of times or you disconnect and reconnect it a few times and the bubbles go away and you say, “Let’s splash!”

But you know the whole time it isn’t the right thing to do.  A failure is a failure.  And that minor failure of a simple 010 o-ring could be the pebble at the top of an avalanche.

Right For the Job

I am not going to go off on another tear about how sidemount is a fad (even though sidemount is a fad).  Instead I’m going to work from the logical extension.

250 foot dive to penetrate Northeast shipwreck.  Which set of equipment would you like (assuming you’re certified on both)?
-- HP doubles filled with 16/50 trimix, 50% & 100% deco mixes, BP/W, drysuit
-- Single AL80 filled with air, Scubapro Classic, 3mm wetsuit

The above is an extreme example, but I found myself answering the same questions the other day that I once asked around this very topic.  An old acquaintance is looking to get into technical diving, but is trying to be frugal and wondering what wing to get that will work for both single tanks and for doubles.  I gave them the same answer I was given: That isn’t a real thing, you get a singles wing and a doubles wing.

Diving is not a cheap sport, not by a long shot.  Between the travel, the training, the boat fees, and the gear that you sometimes need multiples of it is certainly going to put a dent in your wallet.  But, to go all the way back to the person who asks, “Do I really need my own regulator,” “YES! You really do!”

Not only do you need your own regulator, if you are going into more advanced levels of diving, you are going to need several.  So if you’ve already got a whole closet/room/garage full of dive gear are the savings you achieve by avoiding buying a singles wing and a few cam bands going to make that big a difference?  

Do you really need to bring your sidemount harness on that dayboat in the keys?  (I know, I said I wasn’t going to pick on sidemount, but with the absurd ubiquity of it, it’s hard not to.)  I know you love your rebreather, but do you need to bring it on the 30 foot reef and make everyone wait, getting ever-greener on the boat, while you get in all your planned bottom time?  Sometimes just throwing on a stab-jacket with an 80 and backrolling off the RIB is the best gear for the dive.  Not fucking around with bungees, not trying to pass a bottle up or down, not needing someone to reach your bloody fins for you.  Just wear what everyone else on the boat is wearing and dive.  If it was good enough for Steve Zissou it can be good enough for you.

Conversely, if you know you want to dive to the bottom of that wall or a little further past that scary cave sign is it so hard to wait a few weeks/months/seasons until you’ve got the appropriate equipment and training to use it?  As much as one might giggle at a set of double LP108s for a no-deco dive it would be worthy of a recoil in horror if someone shows up at Eagle’s Nest in a single 80.

To have equipment that is overkill might be dangerous.  To have gear that is inadequate to the task is probably lethal.

And this is not restricted to divers who have not yet been trained up to this or that level.  Do you have enough deco or bailout?  Really?  You sure?

Are you cave diving and carry only a single 40?  You aren’t carrying enough bailout.  Not even a debate or an argument.  You just aren’t.  I’m not even going to do the math for you, you should have been trained and can do it on your own, but what you’ll find is that with an elevated SAC you’ve got enough bailout to swim a couple hundred feet at most.

OK, fine.
40cf is easy.  Let’s say it’s hypercapnia, because you should be prepared for that anyway, right?  SAC will go VERY high; let’s say, conservatively, 1cf/m.  So that tank, at the surface, until it is drained of its very last molecule will last about 40 minutes.  But you’re not at the surface.  You’re at 90 feet, 4 ATA.  So that tank will last you only 10 minutes.  How far can you swim in 10 minutes?  So how much is enough?  A single 80?  Isn’t two one and one none?  So… 2 80s then?

I am not going to be one of those who prescribes a single, uniform gear configuration for absolutely every diver whether it is recreational or technical, nor that only blue Cressi superfrog fins shall be used for all diving.  That is silly.  But as much as our dive gear is a toy, it is also a tool; there are right tool selections and wrong tool selections and just plain silly tool selections.

You can hang a picture by knocking the nail into the wall with a pair of scissor handles, but it makes more sense to get a hammer.  And that is what I think when I see someone wearing a SM harness on a boat.  OK, that’s the last time.  I promise.  For this post anyway.

The Right Stuff

Is it right for the job?
Does it work?
Can I safely use it?

If the honest answer to any of these is “No” you would be better off not diving.  As painful as that might be at the time, it is true.

Most people know The Right Stuff either as a cliche or from that now-cliched scene of a bunch of astronauts walking in slomo.  It’s about the Mercury Seven, a bunch of guys who eagerly participated in, perhaps, the most ambitious and dangerous program in all of human history.  We, as divers, like to think of ourselves as test pilots or astronaut explorers or some other such nonsense.  

But we’re not.  We’re a bunch of dorks with expensive toys.  Real astronauts call the mission when shit goes wrong, if the equipment isn’t right or doesn’t work.  There is simply no question of the extent of training to safely use it.

With the exception of Gus Grissom most of those guys lived into the 80s and 90s.  Several of them even going back into space that late.  That’s badass.  While my prattle hear is mostly about gear The Right Stuff is about the people, who they are and how they managed to do what they did.

Use the right stuff.  Stay safe.