I met an abalone poacher some time ago – just after I first came to Cape Town. He’d brought his regulator in for repairs to a dive shop that I happened to be visiting. When the technician opened it up, it was packed solid with particles of rust from his dive cylinders. Confronted with the information that it will cause him to drown one day if he doesn’t bring his cylinders for a visual inspection and hydrostatic cleaning, the poacher explained that his dive cylinders wouldn’t pass a visual, because they’re painted black (instead of South Africa’s regulation grey and canary yellow).
His cylinder isn’t the only thing that is painted black. ALL his dive gear – wetsuit, booties, hood, gloves, regulator, hoses, first stage, pillar valves, BCD, mask, fins, torches, dive computer – is black. There’s not a single reflective surface anywhere. According to the poacher, if he was standing by the side of the road in his dive gear at night, fully kitted up, and you drove past, you wouldn’t see him. At all.
What does he do with all this stealth gear? He dives, alone, at night, to fetch abalone (perlemoen) from the sea. His dives are often to 50 metres, on air, and he has no redundancy in his setup. No alternate air source on his cylinder (“For whom?” he asked), and no buddy. He sometimes does four such dives a night, and can make R40,000 for a single night’s work.
His view of what he does is that the abalone lives in the sea, and if he goes and fetches it, it’s his. “The ocean is free,” he said. Hardly anyone else is prepared to do four night dives in a row to depths of 50 metres with no support except for a boat on the surface (with no lights showing), and to look for abalone and pry them off the rocks with a crowbar. Why shouldn’t he reap the rewards? He told me that he’s not taking money from poor people – he’s only taking from the ocean, and it’s a big place.
It’s dangerous work, too (and not just because of the way he dives). There are rival poaching groups on the south/east and west coasts, and a police crackdown on the west coast has brought “boatloads” of their poachers across to this side of the world. Shots have been fired, cylinders have been filled with water (hence at least some of the rust), and a simmering atmosphere of impending violent conflict has arisen.
This was the first time that I’d talked to a poacher, and it gave me a lot to think about. This is a world that we don’t necessarily have any insight into as recreational scuba divers, even though we know that what the poachers do is wrong.
Clare and I have seen poachers once or twice before, filling cylinders or buying gear (lots of it, expensive stuff) from dive shops all over. I’ve also seen more than one at Miller’s Point, early in the morning. One tried to sell me his dive gear for money to get home, because his friends had left him alone at the slipway wearing nothing but a wetsuit and his trenchcoat.
You may wonder why I am mentioning this. No one talks about it in the dive industry because it’s awkward and poachers have a lot of cash to spend on gear and air fills. But there is value in looking at hard issues. Tomorrow there is some more reading about abalone poaching, and it’s very thought provoking!
Some time ago National Hyperbarics closed their facility at Kingsbury Hospital in order to move to another location in the southern suburbs. The move seems to have taken longer than anticipated, and with that in mind I queried DAN SA on facebook as to what the alternative recompression chambers are in the Cape Town area. Here is their response:
We have remained in contact with the diving doctor associated with National Hyperbarics. We can confirm that the unit is currently closed and is in the process of being moved. However, there are a number of other options available in the Cape Town (and larger Western Cape area), which includes the Medical School of the University of Stellenbosch (next to Tygerberg Hospital) as well as some commercial diving schools, commercial diving companies and of course the Navy, which we have approached and we have a collaborative partnership in which we would provide the medical support (medical doctors to provide the treatment) and they would provide the technical support (chambers, etc.). It is also of note to mention that the Provincial Government of the Western Cape has made finances available to ensure availability of recompression facilities. As always, this requires some coordination, and it was decided at a multilateral meeting that DANSA would assume overall coordinating responsibility. Therefore, it is vital to phone the DANSA hotline in case of an emergency – and ensure that your membership admin is up to date! Happy diving!
That is all good news. There are alternative chambers in the greater Cape Town area, and DAN will co-ordinate your evacuation to the nearest one (i.e. you don’t have to try and remember where they are). Just ensure that you have current, up to date DAN cover.
The Big Blue (first released in 1988) is a fictionalised account of a rivalry between two free divers, Enzo Maiorca (renamed in the film to Enzo Molinari) and Jacques Mayol. As children, they compete diving for coins in the harbour of the small fishing village where they live, and a strong rivalry (at least in Enzo’s mind) is born. Years later, he persuades Jacques to come and compete against him at the world free diving championships.
While free diving and being the world championship seems to be all that occupies Enzo’s mind, Jacques is quieter and more philosophical, and tries to understand his connection to the ocean (he has an affinity for dolphins) and to the life he has when he’s not diving. He begins a relationship with an annoying American woman, but his immaturity and other-worldliness gives rise to frustrations when he cannot reciprocate her desire for a white picket fence with two and a half children and a dog.
The film was shot mostly in the Mediterranean, and has a beautiful soundtrack of electronic music by Eric Serra. Despite the competition between the men, it’s quite slow paced. We watched the director’s cut, which is almost three hours long. The scenery and the clarity of the water in which the men dive (and the idyllic little coastal villages where they grow up and compete) is quite bewitching.
The discipline in which the two men compete is No Limit, the same as that practiced by Audrey Mestre, Pipin Ferreras and Carlos Serra, protagonists of The Last Attempt and The Dive. The diver descends on a weighted sled (in The Big Blue, to 130-odd metres, which is far shallower than current records) and ascends with the assistance of a balloon or inflatable jacket. It is considered to be one of the most dangerous free diving disciplines (HerbertNitsch, one of the greatest living free divers, has recently had a bit of a speed wobble trying to extend the record to 244 metres).
It’s interesting to compare Nitsch’s highly experimental arrangement with the somewhat primitive-looking sled shown in the film. The concerns of the doctors, that the men are reaching depths beyond which it is physiologically impossible to descend, are still echoed each time a new record is set. The frequency of DCS and other neurological disturbances in divers who push the limits, however, makes me wonder whether we are in fact approaching some kind of threshold. Since many of these divers are genetic abberations (in a good way), it’s hard to generalise, but I watch developments in the sport with interest.
This is a beautifully filmed, engrossing piece of cinematography, and a classic ocean film that deals with some universal questions (not least, why do some women insist on falling pregnant without first discussing it with their partner?).
The DVD is available here if you’re in South Africa, otherwise here. The soundtrack, which is sublime, is available here for South Africans, and here otherwise.
The Last Dive is a number of things: a history of how cave diving techniques came to be applied to advanced wreck diving (use of lines for wreck penetration, for example), the story of the early days of mixed gas diving in the United States, the chronicle of the close-knit bands of divers who risked their lives to explore the cold, deep waters off the north Atlantic seaboard of the USA and retrieve trinkets from the many vessels wrecked there, and a biography of Chris and son Chrissy Rouse, who were involved in all of the aforementioned threads of the tale. The central subject of the book is the Rouses’ death while (or just after) diving on the German U-boat discovered by a local dive boat skipper.
I first encountered the Rouses in Robert Kurson’s book Shadow Divers, a gripping read about the efforts to identify the same mysterious German U-boat that the Rouses perished on, off the coast of the US, and Deep Descent, which describes diving on the wreck of the Andrea Doria and features many of the same divers and dive charter operators. Their relationship is (perhaps too) sympathetically portrayed by author Bernie Chowdhury, a friend of the family.
The Rouses were extremely technically proficient divers, but their downfall seems to have been their fraught and fractious relationship that was characterised by vicious bickering and name-calling that stopped only when they put regulators in their mouths to descend into a cave or onto a wreck. Chowdhury shows how their difficult (but ultimately loving) relationship led them to doing a dive (their final one) onto the U-boat when the conditions were decidely sub par. Their choice to dive to over 80 metres on air, when they were proficient in mixed gas use, as well as what seemed to be the firm conviction of Chrissy (the younger) Rouse that he was immortal, also appears to have contributed greatly to their deaths.
Both Chris and Chrissy Rouse died of DCS – Chris died in the water within minutes of surfacing, and his son Chrissy hours later in a recompression chamber. They had both ascended rapidly without any decompression stops, from a longer than planned dive to over 80 metres, having lost their stage cylinders in their disorientation after emerging from a disastrous penetration of the submarine during which Chrissy became trapped under a fallen book shelf and a self-inflating life raft.
Earlier in the book, Chowdhury describes his own experience of very serious decompression sickness, which gives great insight into how debilitating (if not fatal) the experience of being bent can be. His enumeration at the end of The Last Dive of the serious physical conditions now prevalent among divers of his generation who have persistently pushed the envelope and, in many instances, been bent and recovered, serves as a cautionary tale to those who believe that no-decompression limits are for wussies.
As I expressed in my review of Deep Descent, I strongly disapprove of the macho cowboy attitude that seems to be (have been?) disturbingly prevalent among the divers and charters of this generation (and not limited to the United States). But Chowdhury’s book is more than an ode to the glory days of artifact retrieval and experimentation with trimix. As a history of cave diving, mixed gas diving and advanced wreck diving it’s invaluable. As a diver himself, conversant with all these disciplines, Chowdhury is able to explain in simple terms concepts that would slow down someone who hasn’t done a dive course. The book is very readable despite the technical subjects covered.
Chowdhury does not conclude that the risks taken to achieve what this particular group of divers did were unreasonable, and does not overtly criticise the Rouses for the attitudes and behaviour that – I think most sensible people would agree – contributed to their deaths instead of just a scare that might have forced an adjustment to the dive plan. While he admits to having experienced times of ambivalence about diving, particularly when he describes the strain it placed on his relationship with his wife and son and the long road to rehabilitation that followed his episode of the bends, his equilibrium surprisingly undisturbed by the loss of several friends and acquaintances to the sport he loves, and his own health difficulties.
For some more perspectives on this book and the perceived accuracy of the descriptions of the events it covers, you can read this review and this discussion.
You can purchase the book here if you’re in South Africa, and here if you’re not. The Kindle edition is available here and here.
Clare and I took a tour of the National Hyperbarics facility at Kingsbury Hospital earlier this year. This is a specialised clinical hyperbarics facility, where they use a recompression chamber to treat diving injuries as well as to provide wound care. Breathing oxygen at an elevated pressure (higher than atmospheric pressure) is beneficial to healing of wounds, and also part of the first aid for decompression sickness.
In contrast to the chamber we did our chamber dive in at UCT, the National Hyperbarics chamber is for medical purposes. It’s equipped with comfortable seats for eight patients, and oxygen masks and monitoring equipment for each patient. It’s rated to 30 metres so actually wouldn’t provide a very exciting chamber dive experience despite the creature comforts!
Interior of the chamber
The team at National Hyperbarics are almost all (I think) scuba divers, and on occasion I have referred my students to them for assessment before signing up for a dive course. In addition to providing and monitoring hyperbaric oxygen therapy, the doctors are able to advise and prescribe treatment for divers with asthma and other concerns which may require medical clearance before getting in the water.
Control panel for the hyperbaric chamber
In the event that you have a diving accident in Cape Town, this is probably the chamber you’ll end up in. If you’re a DAN member (which you should be), DAN will arrange transfer to National Hyperbarics for you. If you’re not, you’ll have to contact them yourself to arrange for a medical technician to meet you at their Claremont facility should you require recompression treatment. So if you aren’t a member of DAN, visit the National Hyperbarics website immediately and save their contact number in your cellphone.
Update (February 2012): National Hyperbarics is moving from Claremont to Tokai. Their new facility is currently not open, so you can’t use their chamber in the event of an accident. Dive safely!
Update (March 2014): It doesn’t look as though National Hyperbarics is going to open for business again. If you’re concerned about which hyperbaric chamber you’ll go to if you have a diving accident in Cape Town, read this post.
I’ve been using the Suunto D6 dive computer for about eight months now, having finally got my grubby paws on it just after returning from our last trip to Sodwana. I think it’s about time I write a little review of it, because Suunto have just released the D6i and before you know it my computer will be a museum relic.
Specifications and appearance
The D6 is near the upper end of the range of Suunto dive computers – the model I have will now set you back in the region of R10,000 and there are several cheaper but no less effective offerings. The USB interface cable that will enable your dive computer to talk to your computer will set you back up to a further R1,500 – although this item is frequently advertised on special by Suunto stockists and occasionally as a special bundled with the dive computer, so keep your eyes open. It’s far more usual, however, to have to buy this innocuous-looking cable separately, and gasp at the price.
You can choose an elastomer strap or a metal strap (for about R2,000 more). Although the metal strap looks really cool, it’s not really practical if you dive in varying water temperatures and change the amount of neoprene on your wrist frequently. The computer functions as a dress watch if you want to use it as one – it displays the time constantly when not in dive or memory mode – but it weighs more than a slab of chocolate (130g) and is far too large for the average lady’s wrist, so I don’t use it for this purpose except when travelling (to deny the baggage handlers at OR Tambo Airport the privilege of stealing it).
The computer has a four button interface that I find very intuitive, and I could figure it out to a large degree without reading the manual. That said, if you buy a dive computer, YOU MUST READ THE MANUAL! Don’t be a fool – you want to know EXACTLY why the thing is beeping at you, what it looks like when you go into deco, and be very sure (as one clown – who was buddied with us once because he didn’t know anyone on the boat – wasn’t) whether the “3” you see on the screen indicates a time in minutes, your current depth, or the number of brain cells you have. Read the manual!
Air integration and the D6i
The D6 has actually been replaced by the D6i, which is functionally identical but has more internal memory, and is capable of air integration with an optional (heart-stoppingly expensive) dongle that you attach to your cylinder and reads remaining air. The computer will then give you an estimate of remaing dive time based on air consumption to date. I have no interest in this (at the time I bought the D6, air integration was the main distinguishing feature from the D9) – I’d use a pressure gauge regardless, and wouldn’t feel comfortable trusting what I see as an physical, analogue process (displaying the air remaining in my cylinder) to a potentially failure-prone piece of electronics.
I know I may sound like a luddite here, but an experience Tony had on the boat a few months ago confirmed my reservations. Another instructor’s student had an air integrated computer and no pressure gauge (why bother with redundancy?). The air integration with the computer wouldn’t work, but they only discovered this on the boat when they were parked over the dive site, and – after toying with the idea of cancelling the dive, and then swapping kit so the instructor, who should have an excellent feel for his air consumption, had the set up with no pressure gauge – did a very short dive. As a mathematician I can see that having snapshots of your remaining air at 20 second intervals to look at in the dive manager software might be appealing though…
Decompression algorithm
The D6 uses the Suunto Deep Stop RGBM (Reduced Gradient Bubble Model), and allows for continuous decompression as you ascend (instead of forcing you to do stops at particular depths). It also allows you to complete your safety stopsat depth – something I haven’t experimented with much, but will be using next time we dive the Lusitania. The computer recommends a safety stop once you exceed 10 metres on a dive, and if you violate the recommended ascent rate it will advise a mandatory safety stop between 3 and 6 metres. I tried to photograph the D6 during a dive where I’d switched on deep stops, but there was a 20 metre layer of green plankton blocking out the light from above, and my flash kept reflecting off the screen protector. Hence the dubious results you see here. I have 28 minutes of no-decompression time remaining, dive time is 11 minutes, depth is 20.9 metres, and my first deep stop will be at 13 metres. Maximum depth (bottom left) so far has been 23.8 metres.
Suunto D6 during a dive – first deep stop is due at 13 metres
You’re most likely aware of this, but a dive computer does not measure anything that is going on in your body with respect to dissolved gases. Dive computers use mathematical models – based on the original dive tables, only more sophisticated – that approximate, for the average person, how much nitrogen has gone into solution in the body’s tissues, and how fast it is being released, based on your dive profile. They measure depth temperature, and time, that’s all. For this reason many dive computers, including the D6, have an option for you to set a more conservative calculation algorithm if you’re at higher risk of DCS – for reasons of increased age, high body fat percentage, or any of the other DCS-predisposing risk factors. You can also adjust the partial pressure settings up and down if you so desire, but anything higher than 1.4 bar (ata) strikes me as reckless.
Nitrox and no-fly time
It goes without saying that the D6 is Nitrox capable, and it’s very straightforward to set the Nitrox mix. After one dive on Nitrox, the option to do a repetitive air dive disappears, and you have to manually set the oxygen percentage of your mix back down to 21%. I think this is to force you to think about what gas is in your cylinder. The D6 also handles switching to a richer mix for decompression, and this optional second mix may be set through the same menu system as the primary nitrox mix.
The D6, again like most dive computers, gives a no-fly time after you’re done with diving for the day. This time is usually well under 18 hours, but you’d do well to follow DANguidelines forflying after diving (usually 18 hours after your last dive) and not bank on the reading given by your computer. Do not be like Gerard, who shall remain nameless, and mistake the time display on your computer for the no-fly time. After a dive on the Aster that ended at about 3.30pm, he announced that his no-fly time was “fifteen hours and twenty nine minutes.” A few minutes later, to his puzzlement, it was “fifteen hours and thirty four minutes!”
Dive Manager software
The Suunto dive manager software, that allows you to examine the details of your dives on your computer screen at home, is not compatible with Apple Macs, so I had to find another solution. I’ll review the software I do use, MacDive, in a separate post. Apparently from “fall 2011”, whenever that rolls (rolled) around, the Suunto software – DM4 – will also be compatible with Apple computers. I’ll test it when I get a chance, and let you know what it’s like… As is apparently wildly popular these days, one can also share one’s sporting activities on the Suunto Movescount site via an automatic link-up from within the software interface. And, no doubt, publish them to facebook.
Electronic compass
Suunto D6 with elastomer strap (right) and titanium strap (left)
One of the major appeals for me of the D6 – and I think the feature that bumps its price up so much higher than the D4 – was the integrated electronic compass, which can be accessed at (almost) any time by holding down the top left (Select) button. In the picture at right, the D6 with the elastomer strap is on the compass display (the one on the right is in the memory log display mode which can’t be accessed during a dive). If you’re not on a dive when you use the compass, obviously the depth and dive time won’t show.
The D6i has updated the compass to allow accurate readings when your wrist is tilted; the old D6 (the one I have) is not as tolerant and you’ll need to keep your arm level as with a standard dive compass. Unfortunately the D6 doesn’t record the compass heading along with the temperature, depth and other dive statistics during the dive – or, if it does, the download software I use doesn’t access it. I suspect the former is true, since I installed Suunto’s own dive manager software on Tony’s PC to check, and there was no sign of compass headings. Boo.
What’s in the box
In the box was the computer, a strap extender, the instruction manual, a disc with the Windows-compatible dive manager software on it, and two or three scratch guards which are trimmed to fit the D6’s screen. I’ve done close to 70 dives with my D6 so far, and the scratch guard is scratched and still doing its job well. Tony’s computer, the Mares Nemo Wide, is protected with some cheap cellphone screen protectors we got from Look ‘n Listen. You can buy a generic size, and then trim it down to fit your phone (or dive computer, as the case may be). We didn’t expect this makeshift scratch guard – which is NOT designed for regular immersion in salt water – to last beyond five or ten dives, but over 100 dives and it’s going strong. I think I paid R60 for the pack of screen protector stickers, and we’ll get nine Nemo Wide-sized ones out of the package.
Buying it
Continuing with the subject of good value, one more tip for the bargain hunters. I actually bought my D6 from Cape Union Mart. They stock Suunto sports watches, and were able to order me a D6 from Suunto in Finland. I had to wait six weeks for it to arrive, and it cost R8,700. What made the deal very sweet was that by buying it on my Discovery Card which gives me a 20% discount at Cape Union Mart (thanks to my years in the Vitality program and points status), the computer ended up costing just under R7,000. I paid a further R1,200 for the download cable (I got that at a dive centre). If you have a few weeks before you need the computer, or are prepared to wait in exchange for some savings, it’s worth getting a quote from Cape Union Mart as to what they’ll charge you. If you’ve got a Discovery Card it’s a no-brainer. Email them via the website for a quotation, and they’ll tell you to print that and take it to your nearest Cape Union Mart to place the order. I had to pay a 50% deposit.
Update (late 2012): Based on feedback from other divers who have shopped for Suunto computers lately, it seems that Cape Union Mart isn’t doing this any more, unfortunately – but it’s worth asking anyway!
Maintaining it
Finally – if you have a dive computer and live in Cape Town, take it to Orca in Claremont to get the battery changed when necessary, and ask for Chris the “worship manager” (that’s autocorrect gone wild on “workshop manager”) to do it for you. Tony’s students have had baaaaad experiences (a hair across the seal, anyone?!) at other locations. There’s usually not much you can do if the service centre doesn’t seal the computer properly and it floods – your only recourse will possibly be to your insurance company.
On 1 October ScubaPro held a dive day at False Bay Yacht Club in Simon’s Town. This is an extremely congenial venue to dive from – most of the local boat charters were in attendance, mooring at the floating jetty in the marina. The grass was set up with a fenced off area for each boat charter, a stand for the wonderful Dive Site magazine, and an extensive area showcasing ScubaPro gear, manned by experienced salesmen. There’s a very reasonable little restaurant, a bar upstairs, hot showers, grass, tables and benches to relax on between dives, and lots to look at. We were expecting parking to be a nightmare, but it seemed to be fine.
The venue for the day (all the divers were inside at prizegiving)
The idea of the day was for ScubaPro to sell lots of gear, and I think the local ScubaPro suppliers will have had a good week after the divers tried out the SeaWing Nova fins, various kinds of BCDs, and regulators! Unfortunately since Tami and I bought our SeaWing Novas, the material from which they are made has been changed – from a really solid, just flexible enough, smooth-edged substance to a cheap and nasty, brittle plastic that is almost transparent and feels as though it’ll snap under stress. The price, unsurprisingly, has stayed the same (so perhaps look for a pair of these fins on gumtree before you rush out and buy some new ones). They are fantastic fins, and it’s a real pity to see nasty knock-off versions being sold at the same price as the original high quality ones were.
Cindy, Maurice and Corne in their trial pairs of Seawing Nova fins (and me in my own pair) on Grant’s boat
Several of the Learn to Dive Today divers tested BCDs (and regulators – Sophie was forced to after the inflator hose on her old regulator wouldn’t fit the new BCD). For those whose kit fitted properly reviews were very positive indeed, but unfortunately the salesmen weren’t good at sizing the lady divers and didn’t even have a full range of sizes available, despite Tony emailing in advance to check this very fact… So not everyone who wanted to was able to try out gear, and there were some tense moments on the boat trying to get cummerbunds to close over thick wetsuits!
The floating jetty where the dive boats moored
In order to try gear, one had to hand in an existing set of gear as security. Those divers who didn’t have their own kit had to rent gear first, and then hand it in, before they could test equipment. Expensive, but no doubt very happy-making for the nearby dive centres. Perhaps as a more fair system next year (unless the aim really is just to enrich the local ScubaPro supplier, in which case fair enough) dive cards or ID books could be held as security for those divers who don’t yet own their own gear. The diving community is small enough that divers who run away with kit can be easly tracked down, and named and shamed if necessary! No proof of ID or dive card was requested when exchanging old kit for new, so the reasoning was flawed anyway – I could have said my name was Priscilla, handed in a dodgy old BCD, and skipped home with a new one if that was really what was motivating me.
Walking to load gear on the dive boats
The launches went off mostly very smoothly, and it was extremely pleasant to have gear carriers available to tote our kit to and from the boats. We tied up our hoses to avoid them getting banged on the ground. The diving conditions were mixed – visibility from 2-8 metres depending on the site, and truly awful surface conditions thanks to a nasty little southeaster that was blowing. A photographic competion yielded some surprisingly good entries given the conditions – underwater it looked as though snow was falling, and backscatter was the order of the day. Fortunately the requirements were not technical brilliance, but more to capture the “spirit of diving” – how awesome it is, and something that would encourage a non-diver to take up the sport. I had a private chuckle looking at the jellyfish photos – there were lots of compass sea jellies in False Bay – and thinking of a student of Tony’s who has a jellyfish phobia second to none and would run a mile if she saw a picture of a diver anywhere near a jellyfish!
Sophie and I discussing whether to get a hot chocolate now, or later
In order to enter the photo competition divers had to set the date on their cameras to 25 December 2011, a slightly insulting proviso intended (I assume) to ensure that nobody cheated by entering a photo taken the day before. This, combined with the issue of having to hand in kit in order to try some, left one feeling that the organisers didn’t trust divers at all. I can’t speak for those who have a financial interest in selling gear, but ordinary Joe Soap scuba divers are decent, helpful people in general, and as a rule don’t steal or cheat.
The ScubaPro display stands
We did two boat dives, the first (at 0800) and the last (at 1400) launches, to Photographer’s Reef and Roman Rock. We had about eight metres of visibility on the first dive, dropping off as we rounded the seaward side of the reef. Fortunately we had a monster current to distract us! The second dive yielded up about four metres of visibility, and in both cases we had beautiful jellies and small breaking waves to greet us on the surface. The sites we visited are beautiful and I’m looking forward to going there again on a day with better water conditions.
There were some seasick divers, and an emergency situation in which a diver experienced an uncontrolled ascent from 20 metres. He had tingling extremities – indicating possible DCS – and lay on the grass for over an hour breathing oxygen (fortunately several of the boats had emergency oxygen on board) while the organisers tried to find the phone number for National Hyperbarics, who operate a chamber at Kingsbury Hospital. When we realised this was what was going on (it was kept rather low-key and the diver was hidden behind some bushes) Tony went over and provided the number, which he keeps on a card in his wallet. The diver in question was not a member of DAN (I am guessing he now is!) which meant that instead of DAN handing all emergency evacuation procedures, arranging an ambulance and alerting the chamber operator, the recompression chamber operator had to be contacted directly. Unlike the OMSACevents we have attended, where there has been an impressively strong emergency and medical presence, there were no provisions made at this event except for those by the individual boat charters, and the incident was poorly handled. Hopefully some lessons have been learned here!
Gathered in the bar for prizegiving
Despite sub-optimal water conditions, the day was extremely enjoyable. We were very grateful to the dive charters who launched for only R100 per dive – that price makes for razor-thin profit margins and in order to come out even slightly ahead their boats had to be full for every dive. Most of them were, and I really hope that it didn’t end up costing anyone money to participate in this event, considering that it probably enriched ScubaPro quite a bit. Seeing so many divers together, making the most of Cape Town oceans, was very encouraging. I hope some divers – encouraged by the cheap boat dives – got back into the water after a long break, and that the end result will be more happy divers in the Cape.
Divers waiting to enter the water on the floating jetty
Bernita in Hout Bay Harbour
Some of the garbage that was retrieved from the harbour
For those of you that did not make it to the ocean last weekend I can truly say you missed out big time!! The OMSAC clean-up dive on Saturday morning was really enjoyable with some amazing articles being removed from Hout Bay harbour. True to form OMSAC ran an excellent event with everything happening on schedule. After the clean-up we dived the Asterwreck. We dived on Nitrox to maximise our bottom time and penetrated the forward hold. Goot and Gerard were doing their Nitrox specialty dives, Goot had a taste of wreck penetration, and Cecil was also test diving his new twin tank setup so we had a ‘’busy’’ dive.
Tiny basket stars on the Aster
Knobbly anemone on the Aster
Horned blenny hiding on the Aster
White-edged nudibranch on the Aster
The mast of the Aster at night
Back on dry land we waited out the sunset and then went back out to the Aster for a night dive. The conditions were great, visibility 10 -12 metres and cold water (11 degrees) on the bottom. Night dives to the deeper wrecks are more challenging than shore night dives so a big well done to the guys and girls that joined.
Goot, Tami, Tony, Clare, Gerard and Cecil, ready for a night dive on the Aster
Talks
On Tuesday evening we attended a talk and slide show at Dive Action. Barry had done some diving in a fjord in Norway and recounted the trip with a lot of info and photos of the dive centre there and the wrecks. He also talked us through the logistics of diving far from home with a few hundred kilograms of dive gear. As you know I have absolutely no knowledge of rebreathers so if you want to know more about diving with a re-breather then Barry is the man to see.
The Fernedale and the Parat side by side
As you can see in this photo (courtesy of Gulen Dive Centre, kindly shared with us by Sarah from the Dive Action team), the visibility in the fjords is something else. It was taken at around 30 metres and the wreck on the right sits on the sand at over 55 metres.
This evening we attended a talk at the Save Our Seas Shark Centre by George Branch… He is one of the authors of the Two Oceans book and is an almost legendary figure in South African marine biology. The talks at SOSSC are always very good and are always ocean related so you should make an effort to attend a few… You are never too old to learn something new!!! Visit their facebook page and like them and this way you will be informed of their activities. Their page is constantly updated with some stunning photos and lots of info on sharks.
Hyperbaric chamber
Clare and I were taken on a tour of the hyperbaric medical facility in the Kingsbury Hospital in Claremont today. It is the only chamber of its kind in Cape Town and is used for many forms of medical treatments not related to diving, but should you have a problem on a dive and get DCS, this is the place you will go! This centre is also home to one of the most respected diving doctors in South Africa. As a diver you should have DAN Medical Insurance and you should know where the nearest chamber is, how to get there and who to call. All of this information should be in your log book. Their website is here. We will post a detailed report of this visit on the blog soon. This is a fully equipped medical facility and a lot different to the chamber we did our 50 metre chamber dive in!
What we are going to get up to
Training
Saturday is pool day and if you want to join and play with your gear and buoyancy text me before 2pm Friday. The cost to scuba dive in the pool (if you’re not on course) is R50, and if you just want to swim it’s R7. We are still busy with Deep and Nitrox Specialties which we will continue with early Sunday morning, launching out of Hout Bay at 7.30am. The boat takes 14 and we are already confirmed for 10 people so text me quickly if you are in.
After the boat dive we will move to False Bay and then do dive 3 & 4 for a few Open Water students. If the conditions are good we will try the Clan Stuart or A Frame. The visibility in the bay at the moment is 10 – 15 metres and despite some southeaster for the next two day I doubt it will do too much harm so diving will be good.
Scubapro Day – 1 October
Scubapro are having a ScubaPro Day in the Simon’s Town yacht basin on 1 October. They will allow you to test dive the latest gear from their range. There will be food, drinks and goodie bags plus lots of divers and other kinds of people. Boat dives are going to cost R100 and R25 gets you a goodie bag and registration at the event. I have booked 12 places on two dives on the boat, big brother to this boat.
Ruby Runner’s little cousin, spotted in Germany
If you want to participate you need to book and you need to do this soon. Boat dives at R100 don’t come round too often so book this week or lose out. You will need to book and pay by Tuesday next week for this event. The dives are at 8.00am and 2.00pm.
Travels
There is a trip to Mozambique on the weekend 4-6 of November. It is a five dive/three night package that starts at R1850. You will need to mail me for more info as it is a trip shared with a dive centre in Durban and will need some quick decisions.
Reminders
A diver is currently in jail in Cape Town for diving without a permit… Don’t let it be you… Get a permit if you don’t have one.
Book for the boat for Sunday and October 1 (ScubaPro Day) NOW!
If you’re a Cape Town diver, and serious about enjoying the huge range of wrecks and reefs we have here, there are two Specialties that you should seriously consider.
One is the Deep Specialty, which qualifies you to go to 40 metres. (The depth it qualifies you to go to is actually less important than the skills you will learn on the course.)
The Number One cat helps Tony apply a Nitrox sticker to one of his cylinders
The other is the Enriched Air/Nitrox Specialty. Enriched air is ordinary air that has been enriched with extra oxygen. This reduces the nitrogen concentration, which is a good thing for two reasons.
When we breathe air under pressure, nitrogen is absorbed by our body tissues (particularly quickly by fat). While you’re at depth this isn’t a problem, but it becomes a problem when you ascend too fast and neglect to do the required safety stops or decompression stops. The nitrogen forms bubbles in your blood, brain and joints, and you will get bent. This can be fatal, and it’s a horrible way to go. You can think about what enriched air does for you in two ways: you get extended bottom time within the no-decompression limits, or a margin of safety because if you follow the dive tables for air when breathing nitrox, you will have absorbed less nitrogen into your tissues by the time you ascend. The risk of decompression sickness is thus reduced.
Nitrogen has a narcotic effect when breathed under pressure, and this can impair judgment and lead to all sorts of stupidity on a dive. Less nitrogen in the mix you’re breathing means less narcosis.
It’s not as simple as just putting more oxygen in your cylinder and jumping into the water, however. Oxygen is toxic when breathed under pressure (you just can’t win!) and can cause convulsions. At the bottom of the ocean, a convulsion is bad news. So while you are free to add oxygen to your breathing mix, your maximum depth is restricted by the richness of the mix you choose. Nitrox mixes are referred to according to the percentage of oxygen in the mix. Normal air has 21% oxygen: Nitrox 32 means that the cylinder has 32% oxygen in it.
The Nitrox Specialty is mainly theory – there are some formulas that you need to get to grips with, and you need to understand the two-edged sword that is enriched air. Once you’ve mastered the theory, you’ll learn how to use a Nitrox analyser, and probably do two dives on Nitrox.
As you dive more and more, your air consumption gets better and better. When you get to the point where your dives are limited by the no-decompression limits of air rather than the amount of air in your cylinder, the Nitrox specialty becomes extremely attractive. If you’re in the group of divers (such as older, or overweight) who are most at risk of decompression sickness, diving on Nitrox is a huge investment in your own safety. And finally, if you do repetitive dives (several dives in a day), diving on Nitrox will extend your total bottom time tremendously.
Diver Down: Real-World Scuba Accidents and How to Avoid Them – Michael R. Ange
Diver Down
This book should be compulsory reading for all careless, lazy, poorly-trained, slapdash or happy-go-lucky divers out there. In fact, for all divers.
This book is short with lots of sidebars (I don’t like these in books – they make it hard to read smoothly). Each chapter starts with an account of a diving accident (not all of them fatal). An analysis of what went wrong follows, as well as a short checklist of what you can do to avoid a similar fate.
I was at first reluctant to read this book because I thought it might scare me, but Tony devoured it and suggested I read it. It was disturbing, but didn’t give me nightmares. Michael Ange doesn’t write in a prurient or senstational manner – he just presents the facts. He has ample experience reviewing diving accidents.
Most of the time it was really simple things that caught people out, or a cascade of trivial compounding errors or problems. Often it was ego or over-confidence that led to the problems. Controlling partners or well-meaning parents who pressured their loved ones into doing things they shouldn’t also feature strongly.
The emphasis is on training, experience and common sense – every single thing you learn in your dive courses is vital. PADI and friends want to make diving fun and accessible, and they’ve pared down the manuals to be as concise and un-intimidating as possible… So EVERY SINGLE WORD counts. This is both a good thing (no scary huge textbooks) and a bad thing (you NEED to pay attention when you read and watch the DVDs and spend time with your instructor).
Dive briefings are also important. Your local Divemaster isn’t trying to dampen the mood by warning you not to surface without an SMB – he’s ensuring that you don’t end up out at sea without a signalling device, or with an unwanted Yamaha haircut. When the skipper and Divemaster speak they’re doing it out of a wealth of local (and that’s important) experience. Pay heed.
You can get a copy of the book here if you’re in South Africa, and here otherwise. If you want to read it on your Kindle, go here. If you dive, you should read it. And you should do a Rescue Diver course.
