Social media kills divers.

There was a brief conversation on Facebook yesterday about how sometimes ridiculous boat policies need to be explicitly listed and even signed off on by divers.  What’s more, that each of those policies tend to be there because, at some point, someone has done something that so strains credulity that it’s easier to just write a policy against it than to think overly about it.

Ever notice the crawl at the bottom of every car commercial where the dynamic excitement of the new mid-size SUV is being demonstrated by driving the little mom-mobile up on two wheels through Prague while presumably communist spies chase a presumed hero of freedom, justice, and the American way?  It always says something along the lines of, “Profession driver on a closed course.”  Translation: “Don't try this at home, because you can't do it.  Dummy.”

Most people don't bother reading that.  Most people, wisely, just fast forward the DVR through he commercial.  But you know somewhere out there in today's world there is some idiot with something to prove who turns to his friends as they're passing the bong around who says, “I can do that.”

The crawl isn't there to dissuade our champion.  Nor was it written in with any sense of altruistic contribution to public safety.  It was inserted there by the manufacturers lawyers so that when some dipshit has severed his T7-T8 vertebrae and killed 6 pedestrians in the resultant crash the car company can say, “We warned everyone not to do that!”

The saying goes, “life imitates art,” but the truer statement is, “people are idiots who copy what they see in the movies.”  Or TV.  Or YouTube.  Or Facebook.

Divers can be especially susceptible to this.  Diving is not a spectator sport where you invite friends over, get a tray of wings and a crudités, and watch some diving.  When divers hear about a cool dive or watch their friend’s reg-mounted GoPro video of a cool dive site (yes, a reg mount is a real thing.  I know… right?) the usual response is, “I wanna go there!”

And here's the slippery slope.  

Diving is all a recreation, yes.  Almost always we participants are simply enjoying being underwater as our hobby.  But not every diver belongs everywhere, some people are pros.

The difference between some levels of diving the contrast is stark; no one thinks bringing someone with their brand new Open Water certification to the Lusitania is a good idea.  But as a diver accumulates more experience the lines get fuzzier.  Someone with their Advanced Open Water or Rescue diver may or may not be ready for that wall dive known for sudden down currents.  A person with their DM may or may not be ready to wear a 7mm with thick gloves and hood for the first time and assist with a quarry class.  And someone with their Advanced Trimix/CCR/Cave/DPV simply may not be up to the challenge of this or that passage.

But each of those divers has heard about that kind of diving, or even that particular dive.  They have Facebook friends who have posted all the pretty pictures or videos of that exact site and, because diving is interactive, not spectator, they have said, “I want to go there, too.”

It's 21st century peer pressure.

Perhaps they're up to it.  Perhaps they used to be up to it.  I had a dive not long ago where someone who had all the credentials, logbook, and experience to do a dive completely screwed the pooch on the actual dive.  Because all that experience and all the dates in that logbook were a long time ago and they had only spent many years 80s diving.  Not that 80s diving is a bad thing… but dying because you think you’re still capable of something you no longer are is most certainly a bad thing.

Perhaps now that the kids are finally out of the house you've got the time and money to finally get the rebreather and the scooter you'd spent the last decade dreaming about.  Perhaps the years haven’t been kind.  Perhaps that extra slice of meatloaf and the second helping of ice cream every night for the last 20 years really shows.  Perhaps you know you're a little older than you'd like to have been when you started diving deep caves, but you're here now; alive, and well off, and isn't life grand that you've finally got the freedom to dive all those sites you see pictures of posted?  But do you belong there?  Really?

Whether it commonly seems so or not, diving is a sport that depends on good cardio-pulmonary health.  Whether hoisting gear, swimming against a flow, the even slightly elevated work of breathing of a rebreather, or even simply hanging at 20 feet off-gassing the young and the fit have an advantage of those of us who are a little older and a little less fit than we used to be.  This is not to say that only people who look like Chris Evans or Jennifer Lawrence should be allowed to dive… simply that it’s a consideration that strongly deserves some honesty when making a dive plan.  You’re not captain of the football team anymore… time to make your peace with that.

Perhaps all that doesn’t even apply to you.  Perhaps you’re young, you spend several hours a week at the gym, and you’ve been diving non-stop for three years, and managed to get all the cool toys that lead the market (rebreather, scooter, backup scooter, backup rebreather, etc).  You’ve been pushing your boundaries, diving with all sorts of cool people to all sorts of cool places and received a whole bunch of compliments on just what a groovy diver you are.  You are the baddest-ass diver in your club or at your shop and are facebook friends with some of the biggest names in diving who like your pictures and respond when you comment on their photos of their last push dive.

Know what?  You’re still not one of them.

Maybe you will be some day.  Maybe.  But honestly… probably not.

Those people are either professionals or folks that are engaging in that level of diving so frequently that they might as well be.  Yes, their pictures are very, very cool; their dives are very, very cool.  But what you don’t see from that one picture of the two empty reels is an amount of work, set-up, and preparation dives, the years’ worth of called dives and near-misses, the 20 shitty dives that went pear-shaped before the 1 that all the pictures were taken of, the support divers’ sacrifices and volunteer time, the years of living on a shoestring, perhaps in a country with a seriously depressed economy, while trying to earn a living teaching Open Water classes, or the agita and worry that comes from running your own business in a recreational field, and on and on and on.  Those divers weren’t born that good; they worked hard to get there, putting in a LOT of time and effort that you can’t imagine.

You dive on your vacation.

See the difference?

As I said above, we may all be participating in a recreational activity, but not all divers belong everywhere.

I’m sure you’re very good… but you’re not that good.  I flatter myself to say that I’m pretty damn good… but I’m certainly not that good.  I recognize the temptation to push too far, though.

There are a handful of spots that I daydream about: Twin Dees/Weeki Wachee, the possible connection between Blue Abyss and The Pit, Britannic, Revelation Space in Eagle’s Nest, Boesmansgat, and so on.  Some big fucking dives, some of which I have been near.  Maybe, MAYBE one day I’ll get to some of them.  But I’m not that diver yet.

I have seen lots and lots of pictures and videos of each of these, posted all over social media by people I don’t know all the way through people I consider real-life friends.  Each time I see an image I am that much more determined to get better and work up to where I might get there myself, but I often wonder: will I know when I’m ready?  How?  This isn’t the realm of C-cards or required number of dives.  Qualification at this level is something so ambiguous -- even arguable -- that there isn’t any true answer.

What I do know is that a few weeks ago I got to see the first restriction that leads back to Revelation Space and my first thought was, “Oh HELL no.”  More people have walked on the surface of the moon than been through that hole… and for good reason.  You might as well be a quarter of a million miles from home right there.  And I’m not ready for that.  Very, very few people are.

Social media has made the dive world very small.  That is, there is so much more interaction with the scuba diving rock stars and there is so much more exposure cast on the epic, world-class dive sites that it all seems so much more accessible.  You’ve got the right gear, you’ve got the right training, and you are “friends” with all the right people; equipped as one may feel with this the lure of places for which they are ill-prepared to be may be simply too much to overcome.  When you’re on vacation somewhere so close to an epic dive that you have seen videos of enough times it can be really easy to visualize yourself making the dive.

Maybe there should be warning crawls at the bottom of every diving video on YouTube.

“Warning: Dive is performed by professionals with 500 dives per year on a closed site.”

But I don’t think it would help.  For those of us who try to share the sport we adore with our loved ones, it would just be frightening.  And for those of us who are determined to be super bad-ass it would just strengthen resolve.

Instead, I think the best we can hope for is that we all cultivate a more safety-conscious culture by refusing to buy into the hype.  Be honest with yourself about your abilities, experience, and fitness.  Be honest with friends.  Avoid “trust-me” dives.  Push yourself, certainly, but remember that absolutely everyone has a breaking point.  Most of all, perhaps hardest of all, avoid comparing your dives to every single one you see on social media.  

Remember when you were first diving and you would say, “Anytime I’m underwater is a good dive!”  Yeah… more that -- less “bucket-list” stuff where you might kick the bucket.

I suppose this whole entry could be condensed to:
Yes, the pictures are very pretty and I’m sure you are very good friends with that explorer, but please don’t go where you don’t belong.  

You’ll hurt yourself.