Why Do You DM?

The Divemaster giving the breifing knows it all!  Their gear is well-worn and faded, their skin is sunkissed and salt-worn, their wetsuit looks to have seen better days, but each of the scuffs and aquasealed holes must be a story of the sea.  They are the envy of the dive world, the tropical dive pro; the archetypal person that everyone wants to either sleep with or to be.  

It's a romantic image, to be certain.  The devil-may-care attitude, living in a tropical paradise, getting to dive glorious reefs so often you know EXACTLY where to find some of the hardest to spot wildlife.  What is there not to envy?  Such people are "living the dream!"

And so, back home, when the LDS suggests you would make a great Divemaster an image flashes through your mind: yourself on the dive deck, wetsuit pulled down to your waist, giving the briefing to a boat full of tourists from far-flung places you'll never want to visit (because there's no diving where they're from).  You imagine living on an island happily going about days of flat, clear, blue water and night hours ringing late with the chimes of cold beer bottles.

"Yeah," you think, "I would be a good Divemaster!"

You respect your instructor, perhaps you have been working with them for some time already.  They know how committed you are to the sport and how capable and safety-minded you are.  This is not even to mention that they've been teaching for years and, after all, they're an instructor!  Of course they know what they're talking about.

Do they, though?  Do they really?

It is hard to intuit that there are some seriously crap instructors, especially when you're a newer diver.  It becomes a classic case of not knowing what you don't know, with the person offering to tell you the things you don't know... when they don't know themselves.

I have known a great many crap instructors and instructor trainers.  Still do know.  By and large they mean well;  they like the sport and believe in dive safety.  Sometimes they even accidentally train a good, lifelong diver.  But, for the most part, they come to the life of a dive professional either as a bit of personal fun or (more commonly) because they were sold the class.

For my purposes here I am going to ignore the destination DMs/Instructors.  The people who ACTUALLY live the dream.  Most of these wind up in the life either accidentally as most people get their jobs, or because they are true misfits who had too little sense to hold down a real job.  The people I'm talking about here are not these, but rather the 99% of people you've ever met at the office Christmas party who say, "Actually, I'm a dive instructor."

I got lucky. Very lucky.  I had finished Recue Diver class and first aid and Cavern Diver.  Like so many newer divers who have been really and solidly bitten by the bug I loved taking classes; I loved learning more.  I wanted to take my diving further and I was trying to decide which way to go next.

"Should I take tech classes or Divemaster?" I asked, Mark, an instructor I had been working with pretty extensively.  He sighed.  On reflection, I know that sigh.  In that sigh he said everything I am trying to work around to writing out here.

"Do your really want to teach?" Was all he came up with.

"I guess so?  Eventually?"

"No, no.  I mean now.  Do you really want to be a dive instructor?"

"Not really.  I mean, im not ready to teach anyone," I admit, I didn't understand what he was asking.  He was trying to press me on whether I get that dive instruction was a vocation?  A holy calling that I couldn't resist or extinguish thoughts of.  He wanted to know whether it hurt my soul that I couldn't teach people how to dive.

"There really isn't any point in becoming a local Divemaster unless you intend to be an instructor.  And you really don't need to be an instructor unless you really want to teach."

I thought about that a long time.  And I enrolled in tech courses.

I was jealous when a good friend got his Divemaster certification.  Not long after he had his instructor.  I was jealous of that, too.  Because some little part of me knew that now he had that imaginary life on the boat available to him.  Now, somehow, he had access to some hidden truths that are obscure to the rest of the diving world; somehow he was a better diver than me.

I know now that my friend Mark saved me from myself, in a way.  He could have easily sold me the shop's DM course.  Ushered me through the coursework to make his numbers look good and to score some free labor for the shop for a while.  The joke is that Divemasters are any given shop's tank monkeys; people who not only work for the shop, but PAY for the privilege of working for the shop.  It isn't a terrible stretch of the imagination to see why this might be a valuable arrangement, not only to the shop, but to the certification agency.

At some point I'll talk about how the largest certification agency is not much more than a publishing company cult anymore; for here you'll simply have to take me at my word.  Which is a bit of a cop out considering it gets quite pointedly to the center of my thesis...

Most people become Divemasters and even instructors simply because that was their next apparent step.  The instructors, the shops, and the agencies are all too happy to accommodate them because they have proven to be a reliable source of revenue. 

When I say my friend Mark saved me, this is what I mean he saved me from.

I didn't understand what I was asking when I first suggested I might become a divemaster.  I didn't know what being a Divemaster really entailed, being responsible for people's lives (people who are often trying to kill themselves... and you), being hyper-aware of your surroundings and your divers in the water at all times, never really calming down and simply enjoying the zen calm of being underwater.

Some years later I looked at the divers around me and realized something heartbreaking.  They're just crap.  Few had the first ideas about buoyancy or trim, many "experienced" divers had no concept of streamlined gear or safe diving.  Far worse: I'd hear instructors repeating falsehoods and myths to their students who didn't know any better than to accept them as gospel, likely to go repeat them to others (who, if they go on as divers are likely to repeat these same myths even as they earn regard as an experienced diver themselves).

"I can do better than that," I thought.  It became a constant, nagging thought, that I could teach better, stronger, safer divers than the baseline.  I simply needed to do it.

It had become a vocation.  And it continues to be, as I have earned higher degrees of teaching credentials; all along the way it had been about making better divers for me.  It was never about the agency or or credentials or the prestige.

Full disclosure: I have to admit, there is a joy in being a working dive professional.  But the drive to do it was never some windswept fantasy for me, I view it as a job.

So why do you DM?  Do you want to help make better divers and keep people safe?  Or do you want people to look at your C-card and think, "Ooo, this person must know so much about diving!"

If it is the latter, I'll let you in on a secret:

The people you're impressing don't know shit.  The people you are seeking to impress -- the resort boat crew -- they have seen your type many thousands of times over... they anticipate you being a giant goddamn nuisance. 

Has-been

I used to be a NY/NJ wreck diver.

That is now many years passed, and while I am nostalgic about it, I'm ambivalent about whether I miss it.  Or, at least, miss it enough.

On the one hand it is local and can be challenging.  The boat captains and crews are entertaining at least and good friends at best.  When you're diving locally you get to be a part of a cadre of weirdos who spend their time appreciating what their very own ocean is capable of and you get to visit local marine wildlife which, while it might not have the colors of the Caribbean, it is all still curious, abundant, and cute.

On the other hand... and this, I find, is the dominant hand... there are the 4:00AM wake-ups and the two hour drive to the boat.  The loading and unloading of gear while you're jostling for parking and still 1/2 asleep in a marina lot that stinks of yesterday's fishing charters.  There's wind fetch and off-shore storms that could get a charter called only an hour after you've left the harbor.  The $120 ticket per ride.  There's whole seasons where you make the emotional and psychological preparations for boat after boat, just to get a call at 8:00 every night before every charter to say that the wind is against us.  To say nothing of running tanks around NYC to get filled for these charters when helium is damned expensive and there are cops waiting in every subway station to do random bag searches who would be none-too-pleased to find compressed oxygen in a 3 liter bottle in your messenger bag.

And there's the salt.

If you haven't had to rinse salt off of 300lbs of gear -- including 1/2 dozen scuba tanks and a rebreather --  in a second floor walkup's bathtub then had to find a place to hang it all to dry in under 900 square feet... well, you haven't REALLY gotten to appreciate the NY dive experience.

The land of Bon Jovi and Pork Roll

I used to be proud of my ability and my background as a Northeast wreck diver.  Hell, I've got this image tattooed on my chest over my heart!

For the years I was living in Hawaii people would often ask, "Where is your favorite place to go diving?"  And without any irony or pause I would say, "New Jersey!"  I missed my wrecks while I was out in the middle of the Pacific, I thought about them often and dreamed of, one day soon, returning to them and seeing how the ocean had treated them.

So what happened?  Have I grown lazy?  Burned out?

I have been back for five years, now.  Every year I vow that THIS will be the year that I'll revisit the wrecks that I loved and longed for.  And every season comes and goes with, at best, a small handful of unphenomenal dives.

So why don't I miss the wrecks now?  Or, at least, miss them enough?

I hope I will.  This season is all but finished; I'm scheduled to go out one more time with the NYAquarium folks in about a month.  And I do look forward to it.  

I look forward to jumping off the back of the boat into the cool, green water and descending through the haze with only the line to guide me.  I look forward to the shadow of the wreck materializing into the outline, then the clear angles of a shipwreck below me.  I look forward to the silence the sea imposed on this once-great tool of humanity and the quiet reflection of impermanence and change that is so accessible when you're surrounded by marine life and rust.  I look forward to the rush that I lived for for years.

I do not look forward to the salt.  Or my alarm clock going off.

Perhaps it's a function of age.  Or maybe I'm just a grumpy, old bastard anymore.

I want to be as excited about this facet of the sport as I used to be.  But I'm not.

I guess I'm just a cave diver now.

Dive Junkie

All I ever really want to do is dive. 

I know there are a lot of people who say that.  I know a lot of people who say that.  I work around many of them.  Every few days I spend the morning with a group of people dedicated enough to the sport that they volunteer their time at the aquarium, diving, for any variety of reasons. 

They're people who go on dive holidays and people who read all the magazines. There are instructors and DMs among them; folks who are actively teaching on the side, from whatever their day jobs are.   These are not dabblers, they're divers. 

But there's a separation, a sort of sad separation, between the way I look at diving and the way most around me do.  They have other interests, don't they?  They're into cycling or running, hiking or kayaking, tennis or book clubs or politics or knitting or photography.

I dive.  For work, for fun, for vacation and vocation.  While at work planning dives, dive safety, and dive activities I take a break now and again to read dive blogs or messageboards.  Or I look at Facebook where my entire feed and all my friends are divers.  Then I go home to sit and talk to my wife (a diver) about diving.  We have no other hobbies; we dive.  What's more, we cave dive: a sport within a sport, the BASE jumping of parachuting, the F1 of auto racing, the Nathan's hot dog contest of American gluttony.  A sport that requires absolute focus while participating... But it's like we never relax that focus, even when dry for months.

I worry that I'm missing out.  The world spins, full of interesting people, places, and things... And all I do is dive. 

Then, ah-ha, but then I actually do dive.

I get to visit those places mostly hidden from human experience, and I can revel in the quiet, the peace, the thrill of an alien world.  It touches me in all the ways it touches every diver.  I couldn't say anything about the experience that any diver doesn't already know in their way.  Magical, otherworldly, transcendent, peaceful, exciting.  It's all of those things. 

So what is it that has fixed, in me, this singlemindedness where other divers can explore or even have other facets to themselves and their lives?

Am I boring?  Or are they unfocused?

I have tried to find other interests, indulging friends and acquaintances their flights of fancy thinking, "Perhaps I'm just not paying attention."  But alas, I find mostly boredom.  Even old interests of mine seem stale without, forgive the pun, depth. 

Even among other divers I have become impatient or intolerant.  Seeking some social contact (other than just my wife and I talking about where we'd rather be diving each night on the couch), we go out to meetings of the local dive club.  It's a long-running, well-run, and really great club, among whose membership we have several friends and dive buddies.  There, at least, I figured we would be among our people.

No.  Sadly.

We show up to the meetings and listen to the dive reports (some of which to some interesting, far-flung, or at least expensive sounding places), and the presentations on photography, and the introductions of all the new members and the like.  Then, as the official meeting breaks up and the chatting begins, I find myself at a loss of things to talk about.  The conversation strays into non-diving topics on which I have no interest whatsoever.  I don't really care what people do for a living unless it's dive related.  I don't care about the backpacking vacation they just took through Turkey, there's no diving in those hills. 

Worst of all is when I find myself not caring as much as I should about even their diving.  It's diving isn't it?  I should be excited to hear about their experiences and share our common joy in the underwater world.  At the very least, it's polite... they are always willing to listen to me babble.  Instead I wind up with an uncomfortable and unjustified feeling of superiority as I think, "40 feet deep on a calm coral reef, huh?  I have actually, literally fallen asleep in those circumstances."

(Note: waking up underwater is really discombobulating.)

And so, among divers, my people, all I wind up thinking is, "I really wish I was diving."

Ah well.  

I've always been a bit of a loner, even when I haven't been an outright outcast.  Maybe I'm just used to it now, some sort of social manifest destiny.  Yet, on the rare cases I meet someone else who is as single minded as I am, we can happily talk about bolt snaps for hours.

Or perhaps I have become one of those dive snobs I so despised when I was first learning, who seemed to look down their nose at me, a mere open water diver.  Yet I'm always perfectly delighted to answer any student's question with as much detail as they like; it's part of why I love my job.

I suppose it could just be a bit like an addiction.  My drug is floating around in the back of a cave, marveling at the natural beauty.  It is a high, and it's all I crave, to the detriment of my finances and my social life.

Perhaps there's help out there, but the first step in getting over an addiction is wanting to. 

I don't.