Safety – Page 7 – Learn to Dive Today Blog

Dive sites: SAS Transvaal

Some of Tony’s students needed to do a deep dive, so we paid a visit to the SAS Transvaal in Smitswinkel Bay, on a gorgeous Sunday morning.

I was trying out a new seasickness remedy – ginger pills – although the sea turned out to be so benign I scarcely needed them. This particular experiment is going to require repeated observations before we can even draw tentative conclusions, unless I go out in a storm, pepped up on ginger capsules, and suffer no ill effects. But I’m reluctant to try that.

The SAS Transvaal was a naval frigate that was scuttled in 1978 using explosive charges. She is identical to the SAS Good Hope, which lies in the same bay. The wreck is long – nearly 94 metres – and quite broken up but still readily identifiable as a large ship. She makes an eerie creaking sound, which is at once creepy and wonderful. Auditory stimulation is rare on a dive (part of the reason I like diving…) but can be very special.

I’ve dived this wreck twice before, the most recent being in September last year with Kate and a big group of Tony’s current and former students. (This also happened to be the very first dive I did with my Sony Cybershot DSC-TX5 camera.) There was far more light and visibility that time – the photos in the first half of this post are from that dive – hopefully you can see the difference in the water colour and amount of light.

This time, we descended slowly, on the shot line. I was extremely wary of nitrogen narcosis, having had a bad experience on the wreck of the SAS Good Hope late last year. After orienting ourselves on the wreck, we dropped onto the sand so that the guys could do skills.

This time, it was dark, but the visibility was pretty good once we’d passed through a steep thermocline, above which the water was green and soupy. Once again I wished for a giant spotlight to illuminate the whole wreck at once – the dimensions of the vessel are astounding and the colours down there are spectacular, but all the reds, oranges and purples are totally washed out and only show up in a camera flash or torch beam.

There’s a lot of soft coral adorning the wreck, including my favourite – the wonderfully named sunburst soft corals. They look completely grey until you shine a torch on them.

Sunburst soft coral with polyps extended

The ubiquitous mauve sea cucumbers were a prolific presence, as usual. They form a large component of the biomass at that depth, and are clustered in huge groups all over the wreck.

Orange gas flame nudibranch and purple soft coral on the SAS Transvaal

I found an orange gas-flame nudibranch, which made me very proud (it was the start of a nudibranch bonanza at Partridge Point later in the day…) and a pair of redfingers, who seemed to be having a fight (or courting) until I disturbed them. This isn’t a great picture, but I can’t usually photograph moving targets at all on deep dives, so for me it’s a bit of an achievement!

Dodgy photo of redfingers on the SAS Transvaal

These dives go so quickly – our air and bottom time were up pretty much at the same time – and we made a leisurely ascent, with Tony deploying a jumbo-sized SMB at the safety stop. While he was doing so, he dropped his knife, and I made a spectacular catch – I managed to perform an acrobatic swoop towards it as it tumbled downwards, all the while aware of my own depth and comfortable that if it went too deep I’d let it go. I felt rather smug after that and made sure that everyone had seen my moves once we were back on the boat.

Strawberry sea anemones on the SAS Good Hope

Dive date: 6 February 2011

Air temperature: 26 degrees

Water temperature: 8 degrees

Maximum depth: 32.4 metres

Visibility: 8 metres

Dive duration: 32 minutes

Dive on the MV Romelia (2010.12.19)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-XWVdUaD8I&w=540]

We dived on the Romelia late last year, in very surgy conditions. It wasn’t ideal for videography – you can see the movement of the water, and also that there was a large amount of plankton and also many juvenile fish or larvae from other creatures in the water. Some of the red seaweed looks like it’s blowing in a strong wind!

The wreck is very broken up and covered with urchins and the most enormous and colourful sea anemones. There are lots of boulders with narrow gaps between, fun to swim through. A couple of sea jellies pass by and once we ascended into the red bait zone you can see some curious hottentots passing by. There’s also a very large, four-legged sea star that caught my attention.

Look out for Clare and Cecil in the water, and Grant (in a bright orange jacket), Mauro (in the sunhat), Richard (in his rash vest, looking a bit like Jacques Cousteau) and Belinda (in the background) on the boat once we surface, right on the buoy line.

Dive sites: SS Cape Matapan

Desirous of doing a deep dive for three students busy with their Advanced course, Tony, the students, Tami, Goot and I set off on Saturday 22 January, bright and early from Oceana Powerboat Club near the Waterfront. The southeaster was strong, and the boat ride was a hoot – sitting on the plushy bench at the back of the boat, I was soundly drenched by the freezing waves as we hurtled down the coast. I had forgotten to eat any ginger snaps for seasickness, but the wind on my face and the splashing waves made the boat ride a pleasure, and even when we stopped, rocking, I think the wind helped a lot with nausea.

Tony (back to camera) doing deep skills with students

Our planned destination was North Paw, to explore a part of the site that hasn’t been mapped yet. Unfortunately when we got there the surface conditions were atrocious and it was decided to move further towards the shore to see if the sea was calmer there. An investigation of the rocks at the north end of Camps Bay beach revealed flatter seas, but visibility of not more than two metres. Personally, I will accept cold water, or poor visibility, but not both.

We were heading back to OPBC for breakfast, but as we passed the section of coast opposite Cape Town Stadium it was decided to dive the SS Cape Matapan, located thereabouts. The surface conditions were still pretty rubbish, but when Mauro got in to check the props of the boat after a small barney with a rock, he came back reporting that the props were fine and the visibility was stunning.

The Cape Matapan was a steam-powered fishing trawler that sank after a collision with another ship in dense fog in 1960. The location of the wreck was not known (apart from the information that it is about 30 minutes from Table Bay harbour under slow speed) until last year, when some False Bay Underwater Club veterans searched for it and located it off the Atlantic seaboard.

The wreck is very broken up on a flat bottom. I loved being within view of the Sea Point promenade, and then sinking beneath the waves to see what’s there. Goot compared it to the moon, and he was right – the visibility was good (15 metres or so) and we could see for ages around us. Nothing except the ship’s boiler stands up from the ocean floor.

There was a very strong current down there, the sort that you don’t want to even try to fight against, so we drifted with it. We didn’t get to the boiler (events intervened while most of us still had lots of air – boo!) but we saw bits of metal plating and twisted wreckage here and there as we motored along. Tami and I were delighted with an entire field of golden sea cucumbers sticking up from the sand (of which there isn’t much). We didn’t see any fish, but the ocean floor was echinoderm paradise. It was a beautiful dive.

Golden sea cucumbers near the Cape Matapan

The dive site is on the edge of the shipping lane serving the harbour in Cape Town, so we all had SMBs (didn’t get time to deploy those!) and Grant was on high alert when we surfaced. Seeing giant container ships in the distance reminded me that if we were to get in the path of one of them, with a draught of 10 metres or more, we’d be toast. We didn’t want to get separated as a group, either, because of the current.

Brittle stars and sea cucumbers next to a block of cheese (coraline algae on a rock!)

Tony was doing his first Cape Town drysuit dive, trying it out. His initial report is good, and you’ll hear more from him on the subject. Here’s a dodgy photo of him in his snug getup. I was particularly jealous of the body-shaped sleeping bag/drysuit pyjamas (neither of those being the correct technical term) that one wears underneath. His had fetching purple stripes down the sides.

Dive date: 22 January 2011

Air temperature: 25 degrees

Water temperature: 7 degrees

Maximum depth: 24.4 metres

Visibility: 15 metres

Dive duration: 20 minutes

A near miss at 26 metres

Diving accidents are rare, yet in almost every case stupidity features highly and Saturday’s dive was no exception. We were a group of seven. Three were former students with various qualifications (minimum Advanced), all having done between 20 and 100 dives. All regular divers with me, they were just tagging along for a fun dive. I had three students doing a deep dive for their Advanced diver qualification. All three had completed most of the dives for this course and deep was one of the last dives. I had assessed all three during previous dives and did not anticipate any problems. Cecil, very capable, excellent dive skills and safety concious; Mark, very capable, good dive skills and Diver X, also capable and on two previous deep dives had displayed good watermanship.

So what went wrong?

We descended in a strong current, staying reasonably close together and doing a nice safe slow descent. (I am not a fan of dropping like a brick.) I paused at 20 metres to make sure there were no signs of stress from anyone. Tami was a little slow in getting down but her buddy was watching and of all the group Tami rates high up on the best of the rest list so I was not concerned. The visibility was good, 10 – 12 metres and I could see from everyone’s bubbles that they were all breathing in a relaxed manner.

We dropped to the bottom, and I handed slates to the three Advanced students, slates with a few questions, a bit of maths, and a simple puzzle. This task is a good indication of nitrogen narcosis and a diver’s state. Some of the questions on these slates are ‘”How much air do you have?” and “What is your depth and who is your buddy?”

I time this exercise, so I check my dive computer during the process. This tells me if the depth answer is right, and at the end of the exercise I ask each diver to signal their air supply. Diver X got most of the answers wrong, and more to the point his air pressure answer was 10 bar. I asked him to look at his gauge as everyone else had close to 200 bar. He indicated he did not understand his gauge so I looked at his gauge and it was ZERO.

He then turned and swam away from me towards Cecil, pointing at Cecil’s body. Having someone point at your torso tends to make a person look down to see what he is pointing at. At this point I had caught him up and started to turn him around. He then spat out his regulator and at this Cecil realised there was some problem and perfectly executed the raised arms so his octo was in clear view.

I shoved my regulator in Diver X’s mouth and looked at his eyes – he had no idea of what was going on. I then gathered the group and we started to ascend with Diver X on my octo. At one point I had to bang him on the chest to get him to understand he should hold onto my BCD as he refused to do so and twice drifted off and lost the regulator. We did a short safety stop and ascended. He did not orally inflate his BCD on the surface so I did it for him.

I am extremely grateful to Grant for racing the boat over and getting us out of the water quickly, as we surfaced far from the buoy line (owing to the howling current) and the unexpectedly rapid ascent (and the fact that my hands were occupied holding onto Diver X) meant that we hadn’t deployed our SMBs. The dive site we were at, the wreck of the SS Cape Matapan, is very close to the shipping lane into Table Bay harbour and very exposed. The southeaster was strong and the sea was choppy with fairly large waves making divers on the surface without SMBs very hard to spot.

What do we learn from an incident like this?

Check, check, check your gear. I doubt Diver X checked his equipment before the dive. Second, he did not do a proper buddy check.
Keep your skills sharp. Diver X has forgotten many of the skills he was taught when he did his Open Water course. Refreshers exist for a reason.
Be fit to dive. Get enough sleep and don’t party the night before a dive – SPECIALLY a deep one, where there is no room for error. DON’T come diving if you’re hung over or stoned.
Be alert before and during the dive. Check your pressure gauge before you stow your gear on the boat, when you kit up before rolling into the water, again when you get to the bottom, and frequently during the dive.

And, if you require a dive buddy with exceptional skills, then Cecil is your man.

I know you will all blame nitrogen narcosis for this incident, but on the way up I stopped at 15 metres, again at 10 metres, and again at 5 metres, and there was no change in Diver X’s behaviour. I had to descend from 2 metres back down to the group doing their safety stop and get them all together so we could surface as a group as we were diving on the edge of a shipping lane (I was concerned that we had possibly drifted into the shipping lane in the current) and I had not surfaced with a SMB as I could not release my grip on this diver to deploy the SMB.

What most people don’t realise is that when you don’t take dive safety seriously you almost always put others at risk. I had five other people with me, their safety being my responsibility. We risked surfacing in a shipping lane, without an SMB in less than perfect surface conditions (to put it mildly). All in all other people were put at risk due to the casual disregard for safety by one diver. Don’t dive stoned, hung over or when not serious: not with me and not with anyone else.

I’m left with one cylinder half filled with sea water, one salt-filled pillar valve, and one first stage and two second stages requiring complete rebuilds or servicing. And hopefully some thoughtful divers who all learned something today.

Dive sites: North Lion’s Paw

On Thursday seven of us decided to do a fun dive from the boat. We dived at a site called North Paw. It’s a short boat ride from the Oceana Powerboat Club launch site close to Camps Bay and Clifton, and despite the howling south easter the site is sheltered. The sea was calm, very little current or surge and the visibility was amazing, 15 – 20 metres. The outstanding visibility always has a catch: the water was cold. At 25 metres the temperature was 4 degrees celsius.

The skipper had mentioned this dive site was anchor paradise and so it seemed, I saw 3 anchors lost at sea. Cecil decided to take one home so he followed the trailing rope, lifted the anchor and discovered just how heavy it was. We attached Bernita’s SMB to the anchor and sent it to the surface.

Cecil's anchor on the way up — Cecil’s anchor on the way up

I was really happy to find a juvenile manefish (Caristius groenlandicus), not much bigger than a five rand coin. Initially I was really excited believing it was a batfish, but the books proved me wrong and a manefish it is.

On the way back to the slipway, we saw a seal beating a large octopus to death on the surface of the water. After it had finished eating its tasty snack (one tentacle at a time), it delicately wiped its mouth with its flippers.

FAQ: What can I expect on a deep dive?

I was very nervous before my first deep dive. It actually took a few deep dives before I was comfortable with them, and now I even look forward to them. Mental preparation for deep dives is something you might need to work on – it’s easy for one’s imagination to run wild when it’s an unfamiliar skill.

If you haven’t done a deep dive before, there are some things that you might want to know in advance:

There will be a boat ride. You’ll roll over the side of the boat on the skipper’s count, along with the other divers. Don’t roll over late – rather stay on the boat and let the skipper drop you again when everyone has moved clear. If you land on another diver it’s a good way to ensure you won’t get invited for any more boat dives!
You will probably descend on a shot line. This is a weighted line with a buoy on the end, and the skipper will drop it close to the reef or wreck you plan to explore. You’ll use the line to make sure that you find your dive site – you’ll be descending through a large water column, and a current can easily carry you away from your destination. Circle the shot line gently with two fingers and use it as a guide while you descend. DO NOT grip it like a monkey!
If you’re diving in Cape Town, it’ll be cold. And it’ll get colder the deeper you go. It might even be dark, too. The first 10-15 metres of water may be very murky and green, but down below that the visibility will probably improve, even if it’s dark.
You will feel stupid. At about 25 metres, nitrogen narcosis becomes a noticeable issue. If you feel weird, ascend a bit, wait for it to dissipate, and then resume your descent – SLOWLY. But even if you don’t get it severely, your mental abilities WILL be limited. This is a fact of deep diving on air. You might find your field of vision narrows a bit, that you obsess over things, or that you are very conscious of only being able to do one thing at a time. All this means you need to take extra care, and don’t be reckless. Stay close to your buddy and watch each other carefully.
You will feel heavy at the bottom – no matter how much or how little weight you are wearing. Don’t wait until you’re at 30 metres to start inflating your BCD. Stop at 10 metres, slow your ascent, and inflate your BCD slowly as you continue going down. This way you won’t rocket into the sand at the bottom (assuming there IS a bottom within the range of scuba – not the case if you’re diving a wall) like a cannonball, the chances of severe nitrogen narcosis are minimised, and you can be in control of your buoyancy all the way down.
Colours will be dim and greyish. Take a torch – you may not think it’ll make a difference, but even at 20 metres the reds and oranges are significantly diminished and by 30 metres you just won’t see them at all without artificial light. One of the joys of deep diving is illuminating a very ordinary object and seeing the colours pop out at you.
Swimming will be more of an effort than usual. The water will feel a bit like molasses – thick and viscous. You’re under tremendous pressure, and you simply won’t be able to dart around like a mosquito. Take it slow, don’t over-exert, and move at the speed of natural creatures.
The dive will be short. This is for two reasons: first, you will use your air up very quickly at depth. If it is your first deep dive, this will be especially true – you’ll be nervous, or excited, and you won’t have the experience that enables you to reduce your air consumption. Second, your no-decompression time decreases the deeper you go. So even if you have lots of air, you will only be able to spend 20 minutes or so at the bottom before you have to ascend. If you can’t remember what no-decompression time is, it’s time to revise your dive tables!
You will do a safety stop. Don’t be slack with this – it is absolutely vital. You’ll ascend slowly, maybe stop at 10 or 15 metres for a little bit, and then do a safety stop of at LEAST 3 minutes at 5 metres. Your cylinder will be quite empty, so you’ll be buoyant. Make sure that you control your buoyancy very carefully. Watch the Divemaster, your computer, or the reel on the DM’s buoy line (he may let it hang in the water next to him) to ensure that you stay at a constant depth. Your depth gauge will respond slowly to changes in depth, so it’s not hugely reliable at this stage of the dive.
You might deploy a surface marker buoy (SMB). Your instructor may get you to do this yourself, for practice. An SMB (or as I like to call it, a safety sausage!) is a long tube on a line, usually orange or yellow, that you inflate with air from your octo (NOT your regulator). One end is closed (the top) and one end is open for you to put your octo into and press the purge button to fill it with air. It stands up straight in the water, and warns passing boats that there are divers about to surface. It also shows the skipper of your boat where you are, so that he can be nearby to fetch you. When inflating the SMB, hold onto the line attached to it – not the tube itself, or you might be pulled out of the water with it when you inflate it. Don’t fill it to capacity if you’re still at the safety stop – just a couple of purges of your octo will be enough. As it ascends the air will expand and when it reaches the surface the SMB will be sufficiently inflated to stand vertically out of the water.
Gerard demonstrates correct safety stop technique in Sodwana

In the photo above, note how Gerard is watching his dive computer for depth and while it counts down his safety stop, hanging onto his SMB while he waits to ascend.
There should be a hang tank for you to breathe off at the safety stop. A hang tank is a spare cylinder of air, with several regulators attached. It allows you to complete your safety stop without worrying about being low on air, if that’s the case. It also provides a useful reference for keeping yourself at a constant depth while you’re degassing!
Divers breathing from a hang tank in Smitswinkel Bay

Zero to… HERO!

Congratulations to Kate, who arrived in Cape Town on 8 October 2010 having never dived before, and is leaving on 10 December qualified as a Divemaster, with more than 60 dives and over 45 hours underwater under her belt!

Kate demonstrates incorrect snorkel technique (in the car, on the wrong side)

While she was here we dived almost every day, in all sorts of conditions. She dived in visibility ranging from pea soup (with croutons) to over 10 metres, water temperatures from 11 degrees up to 18 degrees, and experienced a wide range of what Cape Town diving has to offer. She even did a dive in just a shorty wetsuit – the water LOOKED warm but wasn’t – and I am pretty sure she’s the first diver EVER to do something like that in this city!

She experienced everything from orally inflating another diver’s BCD at 15 metres, to securing Clare’s cylinder when it came loose (oops!), tying knots underwater, a meeting with a very frisky sevengill cowshark on her first ever dive with sharks at Shark Alley, and using a lift bag to ferry our artificial reef out to the correct depth.

Kate transporting part of the artificial reef

She spent a lot of time towing the buoy line, inflated SMBs and balloons underwater (the latter was highly amusing to watch), mapped wrecks and the pipeline at Long Beach, exchanged information on the layout of the SAS Pietermaritzburg with wikivoyage guru Peter Southwood, enjoyed high-speed boat rides to various local dive sites, filled cylinders at a local dive centre, and navigated at night in order to find the yellow buoy at Long Beach. She’s breathed from a hang tank at a safety stop after a deep dive, and from another diver’s octo while swimming to shore. She’s a pro with a compass. She’s also done some underwater photography – thanks to her, the gobies at Long Beach have a serious complex about the paparazzi!

Kate and Clare getting their bearings on the beach. To infinity and beyond!

Kate dived with and without a computer, in various types of gear and several different wetsuits. She knows the difference between an A-clamp and a DIN fitting. She removes and replaces inserts on cylinders with her eyes closed, changes O-rings, and puts on her own kit. She has filled over twenty cylinders as part of her compressor operator course.

Kate was also a fantastic ambassador for diving for the various students of mine that she interacted with. As part of her Divemaster training, she led dives, demonstrated skills, helped students with their kit, and took on various tasks in order to prepare her for the responsibilities that go with this qualification. She did all of this with good humour, good sense and great precision.

During her stay, Kate buddied with all kinds of divers. She met Russians, Swedes, Canadians, French and fellow British divers, and some regte egte South Africans. She assisted foreign-language students with understanding the questions on the quizzes and exams when their English wasn’t up to the task. She got on famously with everyone she encountered, and was never grumpy or a prima donna.

In the ocean she encountered seals (she’s not a fan), giant short-tailed sting rays, hundreds of octopus, sevengill cowsharks, and her favourite friends – barehead gobies! They’re going to miss you, Kate… And especially your underwater singing!

Barehead goby — Look at that sad little goby face!

The courses Kate completed during her stay in Cape Town are:

Open Water: 21 October 2010
Advanced: 27 October 2010
Emergency First Responder (EFR): 3 November 2010
Nitrox/Enriched Air Specialty: 8 November 2010
Rescue Diver: 17 November 2010
CMAS Compressor Operator: 24 November 2010
Wreck Specialty: 7 December 2010
Night Specialty: 7 December 2010
Divemaster: 8 December 2010

I am confident that she is a safe, capable diver with excellent experience under her belt so far, and I look forward to hearing about her future exploits in the underwater world.

Bookshelf: Underwater Adventure

Underwater Adventure – Willard Price

I’m on a Willard Price binge at the moment – he’s an author of children’s fiction who wrote a series about a pair of adventurous brothers, Hal and Roger Hunt, travelling the world to capture animals for their father’s zoo. I read the series as a child and am revisiting it now.

Mr Price’s knowledge of diving improved slightly between Cannibal Adventure and this effort, but is still quite amusing.

The boys are moored in Truk lagoon, capturing (with incredible ease) creatures for aquariums around the world. They are also hunting for a shipwreck. While using an underwater sled to search for the wreck, Roger undergoes depth and pressure changes so widely varied (hundreds of feet – I kid you not) as to cause a serious case of the bends and/or nitrogen narcosis in any normal human being.

The wreck penetration episodes (yes, they find it) are curious indeed. There is no mention of a reel at any point, and the boys climb stairs, and stand in various rooms as if they’re on land. A marine archaeologist reading this would have a conniption – they loot a three hundred year old wreck with crowbars and scant regard for its value as a relic in situ. The figurehead and other carvings are prised off the superstructure of the wreck to be taken to a museum in America.

All marine creatures are the enemy, sinister and malevolent with intent to kill. A giant octopus is described as a “brute” (favourite word of Mr Price) and a “monster”, and attempts to bite Roger’s head off with its vicious beak. The sharks they encounter are without fail desperate man-eaters, determined to get a taste of flesh at any cost. (The quote on the cover of the book – “never trust sharks” – conveys the extent to which evil intent is ascribed to these creatures in the book.)

The lagoon is depicted as a hostile environment filled with hungry marine life just waiting to maim or kill the human visitors. This isn’t my experience of the ocean, and despite the damage done by Jaws and its ilk, anyone who has spent time in the sea and interacting with its creatures will agree with me.

Get the book here if you’re in South Africa, otherwise go here. It’s an entertaining read, despite my complaints! If you read it with your kids, be sure to explain how the reality is different from what Willard Price depicts.

Wreck specialty course… Part 2

Tami, Kate and I are busy with the PADI Wreck Specialty course, and did our third of four dives on Sunday 21 November. It was miserable weather, pouring with rain, but Kate demonstrated the virtues of organising a rental car with ample boot space.

Dive 3: SAS Good Hope

The SAS Good Hope is one of the five ships scuttled in Smitswinkel Bay. This was the second dive I’ve done on it. (The first one involved an unfortunate case of nitrogen narcosis – I had to briefly stop my descent because I felt it again this time, but nowhere near as badly.)

The water was a chilly 13 degrees at the bottom, and while the visibility was excellent – perhaps 10 metres – it was very dark. The wreck is spectacular, of massive dimensions (94 metres long) and with large sections caved in. There are numerous bits of metal to swim under (we did try one or two under Tony’s instruction) and overall it is incredibly dramatic. The darkness, however, meant that even though my eyes could see the entire structure in front of me, my camera couldn’t see more than a foot or two. So the only pictures that came out were of a macro nature.

Our skills on this dive involved use of a reel and line. We tied off the reel on the wreck, and then swam into the current, keeping it tight as if we were going to using it in penetration. We turned two corners and tied it off each time. I really do not like the way I feel at depth – I feel noticeably stupid – but I was quite proud of our performance.

We did a good safety stop in very green murk, and deployed an SMB from seven metres or so. There was a fairly large swell so surface conditions were not ideal, but I managed to keep my breakfast down which pleased me no end.

I love my BCD

I bought a SEAC Sub Muse (click on the British flag at the top right to change the language to English) at Andre’s shop in Simon’s Town earlier this year. I’m coming up for my 50th dive in it, and every time I wear it I am reminded of how much I love using it.

It has integrated zippered weight pockets, and I take full advantage of the opportunity that presents for fine-tuning my weight… From a shallow dive at Long Beach, to a deep dive, I can make quick adjustments during the course of a day. Having a spare weight pocket in my dive bag is a necessity – I have not lost one yet, but it’s possible that I could drop one when handing the weight pockets up onto the boat one day. The pockets click in and out quite easily, and it is very easy to feel when you’ve got the pocket seated properly.

The BCD comes standard with a whistle (black – not so easy to spot!) attached to the inflator hose, and a large pocket that actually expands at the pull of a tab to hang almost down to your knee, should you wish it to. It’s not very easy to put big things into the pocket when the weight pockets are full, but it’s perfect for an SMB, a slate and a knife, as well as any golf balls that you may collect during a dive. The pocket is not easy to see once the BCD is on (can’t twist your body much, because the weight pockets are quite rigid), so I had to practice finding the zip and opening it sight unseen. Gloves make everything harder!

Kitting up in Sodwana - me on the left, Tony on the right, Tami behind him

I don’t use the inflator hose to let air out of the BCD. I am not even sure if it works for deflation, to be honest! From day one I have been using the dump valve on the right shoulder – I just make sure that the little string is lying on top of all my clips and hoses so that I can reach it without looking down. I can also reach the dump valve near my bottom, but I don’t tend to use that on myself (only on others, when I think they need a hand adjusting their buoyancy… super annoying, I bet!).

This is a rear inflation BCD… I learned to dive using surround inflation, and found it very unpleasant. I don’t like the feeling of being squeezed, specially when I am already feeling a little out of breath or nervous. I don’t wear so much weight that the rear inflation causes me to tip face-down on the surface, and I am able to swim either on my back or face in the water quite comfortably.

Kitted up and ready to go on a night dive

Taking it off and putting it on is straightforward provided I loosen the vertical arm straps fully. This is easy – there are very large plastic rings to grip onto. It’s fully adjustable (I find that I am quite different dimensions depending on whether I am wearing one or two layers of neoprene, and depending on the rate of recent custard consumption). There is a lot of space for octo, camera and other clips, so my gear never needs to drag on the sea floor.

Finally, it has cute pink and purple SEAC Sub lettering on the pocket that’s girly without making me feel like a total naff. I love my BCD!