Perhaps you’ve wondered how you’re going to make it along the coastal road from Simon’s Town after a dive, with a bag full of dive gear. You’re worried that a strong gust of wind might catch your enormous dive bag and overbalance your bike. What’s more, maybe you have a passenger who also has a large bag of gear. What to do? Stay at home?
Final mechanical check
Fear not! Help is at hand, courtesy of Andrew and Oliver. Their solution is as follows:
wear your wetsuit, booties, weight belt and BCD
stow your regulators and masks under the seat of your bike
get the passenger to hold both pairs of fins
don’t forget the helmets!
Ready to go!
I’m afraid if you have cylinders too, we can’t help you. A bigger bike might be required…
In a first for this blog, I’m going to review two books in a single post. They concern (more or less) the same series of events, were written by two men who were close friends for at least part of their lives, and come to wildly different conclusions about what actually transpired and why.
The event in question was the death of French-born freediver Audrey Mestre on 12 October 2002, at the age of 28 (here is a New York Times article on the incident). She was attempting to break freediving a record set by her husband and coach, Francisco “Pipín” Ferreras, in the controversial No Limits discipline of the sport, which entails the diver riding a weighted sled down a line to the required depth, and then inflating a lift bag which rockets them back to the surface.
The freediving disciplines recognised by AIDA, the most well-respected body regulating the sport, mainly involve breath-holding while swimming – down a line with or without fins, or in a swimming pool – or remaining stationary underwater. The challenges are the obvious breath holding, but also (in the depth disciplines) equalising the air spaces in the body.
No Limits is more dangerous than the other disciplines because the use of the sled enables the diver to reach incredible depths at great speed. To return to the surface (even faster than the descent in many cases) he or she must rely on an error-prone sequence of actions. The diver may not be able to successfully release herself from the sled and inflate the lift bag, or a mechanical failure could lead to prolonged time at depth or a slower ascent than planned, and ultimately drowning. Furthermore, it becomes more and more difficult to obtain support divers (on scuba, trimix or other mixed gases) qualified and capable of operating at the depths these dives can reach.
The lack of physical effort on the part of the freediver involved in getting to and from the desired depth has led some critics to comment that the only way these divers will discover the physical limit beyond which a human being cannot descend will be by dying (when their bodies can no longer withstand the crushing pressure exerted by the ocean). Many of the participants in this sport have suffered strokes, partial paralysis, decompression sickness, blackouts, convulsions and even suspected brain damage as a result both of the rapid pressure changes they experience, and of depriving their bodies of oxygen for so long.
The Last Attempt – Carlos Serra
The Last Attempt
Carlos Serra was part of the team of safety divers, organisers and support providers who worked with Ferreras on several of his and his wife’s world record attempts. He and Ferreras also ran the short-lived freediving body IAFD (International Association of Freedivers), a competitor to AIDA, which was dealt its death-blow by the drowning of Mestre.
Serra paints a disturbing picture of Ferreras, as an egomaniacal sociopath who completely controlled his wife and pushed her far beyond what she was comfortable doing. He suggests that Ferreras had put in place a bizarre and elaborate plan for his wife’s record attempt to fail, and for himself to rescue her (to wide acclaim, of course). The damage caused to his ego by her then breaking his record a few days later would be softened by the fact that he would first be hailed by the world’s press as her brave rescuer. He would also have punished her for requesting a divorce a few days earlier, and for her perceived insubordination in planning to leave him.
The allegations are compelling – there are a number of pieces of evidence that indicate that, if Ferreras was not criminally negligent (for example, he did not fill the pony bottle of compressed air that was to inflate Mestre’s lift bag and bring her back to the surface), he deliberately sabotaged her attempt to break his record. The rescue did not go as planned, and by the time he brought her to the surface she had been submerged for nearly nine minutes and her lungs were full of water.
Serra wrote this book himself, and it shows. He’s a native Spanish speaker, and his English is at best broken, and at worst appalling. His spelling is novel and inconsistent. I was charmed, however, by some obvious transliterations of Spanish idioms. The resulting effort rings with honesty, and his deep friendship with and care for Audrey Mestre lends credibility to this account.
Ferreras published his version of events in 2004, two years before Serra’s book came out. It was heavily ghost-written – for example, I find it hard to believe that a Spanish-speaking Cuban who didn’t finish school knows who John James Adubon was – and at times reads like a cheesy romance. It’s very beautifully produced, and perhaps half the book comprises both colour and black and white photographs of Ferreras and Mestre underwater, posing uncomfortably on the beach in various small and tight outfits (this seems to be a very important part of being a professional freediver) and lollygagging on the surface before and after dives.
Ferreras constantly protests his love for Mestre, and while repeatedly acknowledging his vicious temper and out of control ego, denies that he ever pushed her in her freediving efforts. He claims that the impetus to go deeper came from her, and unsurprisingly does not give any hint that he controlled her, regulated her movements, or (as Serra alleges) cheated on her and occasionally beat her up. A goodly portion of the book is devoted to his life story, growing up in Cuba and the defecting to the USA. We are also frequently reminded (even on the cover and spine of the book) of his own freediving achievements and other admirable qualities.
It’s not hard to figure out what actually happened. The entire dive – before, during and after – was captured on video from several angles, and it’s clear that the cylinder of air intended to lift Mestre from depth was not filled. The cable on which the sled descended and the lift bag ascended a short distance (after one of the support divers had partially filled it from his breathing mix) was twisted, which slowed her down at a critical point on the delayed ascent. There were not enough support divers to provide midwater assistance – not nearly enough – and the nearest thing to a doctor on hand was a local dentist watching from a nearby boat. Her husband opened her airway while he was bringing her to the surface, further flooding her lungs (as an aside, Serra prevented Ferreras from acting as the deep support diver – his scuba skills are sub par to say the least, and he has been bent more times than most of us have had breakfast). There was also no back-up or bail-out plan should Mestre get into trouble on the way down or up.
What is hard to figure out is exactly who was to blame. However, whether the narcissist Ferreras himself is solely culpable here, and went so far as to deliberately endanger his wife beyond what she was already risking, or whether the entire team caused Mestre’s death is almost a moot point. If Ferreras was as out of control, slapdash and filled with machismo as Serra alleges, the members of his support team – some of whom had been with him for 15 years and had witnessed the deaths of at least two of his safety divers on other record attempts – were morally obligated to refuse to participate instead of being swayed by Ferreras’ awesome temper and magnetic personality. He was not risking his own life in this attempt – it was the life of his wife that was on the line. Without a team of safety divers and organisers – hard to assemble at the best of times given the extreme nature of the sport – Ferreras would have been unable to operate and Audrey Mestre may still have been alive today.
This article from Outside Magazine suggests that Serra’s description of Ferreras’ character aren’t entirely baseless (and it was written about five years before the death of Mestre). It also suggests that Ferreras has an on-off relationship with the truth and enjoys embellishing his own life history and prowess, something that should be borne in mind when reading his book. Do not read only one of these books – I would strongly recommend that you read both, one after the other. I’m not sure if it’ll help you figure out the truth, but at least you’ll have heard both sides of this tragic story.
If you want to see how beautiful freediving can be – and it can be very beautiful and transcendent – watch this video of current world record holder William Trubridge diving to 101 metres without fins, and then swimming back up. The discipline he’s participating in here is called Constant Weight Without Fins.
It’s hard to convey the deadly earnestness that infuses this book. As with the otherWillard Pricechildrens’ adventures I’ve reviewed, the wild animals and marine creatures that feature here are viewed as sinister, savage and brutish. Almost all of them have a lust for human blood, and the only means of escape is to pit them against each other.
Instead of rambling on, I reproduce here a section from early in the novel. Hal and Roger Hunt are spending time in an underwater city, that is supposed to be a harbinger of future marine development and experimentation.
Now they were passing over the roofs of Undersea City. All the roofs were flat – they did not need to be gabled since they never had to shed rain or snow. Both the roofs and the walls were covered by seaweed and molluscs, food for the thousands of fish. Clouds of fish parted before the bow of the glass jeep.
Columns of bubbles rose from the buildings and from the aqualungs of swimmers and pedestrians. A building marked AIR was evidently the point from which pressurised helium breathing gas was distributed by underground conduit.
There, with a small spire, was the church of which the rascally Rev. Merlin Kaggs was pastor. Roger could hardly resist the temptation to nip off the spire. He high-jumped over it.
The jeep skimmed over what appeared to be a power plant turning out electricity to supply the town with light and heat.
There was a building that Hal guessed might be a desalting plant to turn salt water into fresh and distribute it round the town.
There were streets of residences, green with tropical growth. The houses were set in pleasant gardens with the most fantastic and beautiful plants – and animals that looked like plants – sea fans, coral trees, sea anemones, gorgeous gorgonias, waxy little animal flowers like tulips.
The principal shopping street appeared to be Main where shops had windows but no doors. Stilts anchored them to the ground and the entrances were underneath. People floated up into them and came out with plastic bags of groceries and household articles.
There was a dairly that advertised whale milk, a book store announcing “Books on the Underworld”, a restaurant, barber’s shop, a shop that offered “Deep-down Souvenirs”, a hospital, a pharmacy, a bank and a shop where one could buy “Jewels from the Sea-bed.”
A man came out of a hardware store with a piece of machinery as big as himself.
“Golly,” exclaimed Roger. “That thing must weight half a ton.”
“Up above, it would,” Hal said. “Down here, he can carry it easily because the dense water helps hold it up.”
There was even a pet shop – but the pets were not dogs, cats and canaries. They were dolphins, porpoises and ornamental fish.
And there were several shops specialising in diving gear, scuba tanks patterned after Cousteau’s aqualung, fins, masks, snorkels and everything else the well-dressed underwater man would wear.
Rather leave the futurism to Arthur C. Clarke. At least Willard Price has learned not to say goggles and flippers instead of mask and fins…
The book is available here (bundled with another Willard Price thriller) if you’re in South Africa, otherwise click here.
Willard Price is an adventure novelist who wrote a series of children’s books about the Hunt brothers, Hal and Roger, and their travels to various exotic destinations collecting animals for sale to zoos, circuses and the like. His titles include Tiger Adventure, Lion Adventure,African Adventure andGorilla Adventure.
The books were published between 1960 and 1980, and are thus very dated (and mysogynistic, and racist, and parochial). Despite this, I read the series over and over as a child, repeatedly taking the books out of the Vredehoek library.
I don’t think I was particularly aware that his generalisations about women, African tribesmen, and the role of men in society were possibly offensive and narrow-minded. What was wonderful to me were the descriptions of the various animals the boys encountered, the idea that a 14- and 19-year old could capture a tiger (or silverback gorilla) alive, and the descriptions of exotic destinations.
I’m re-reading the series now (a fit of nostalgia overcame me when my sister and her husband announced that they are expecting a baby boy in March 2011… I immediately started thinking about the books I would read to him) and loving it.
Cannibal Adventure was published in 1972, which is around the time when the design of the BCD was being fine-tuned, but I don’t think they were yet in common use. It isn’t strictly about diving – it’s more about the boys’ interactions with a tribe on Papua New Guinea, and their efforts to capture local wildlife for their father to sell to zoos. However, they do go scuba diving in order to capture a family of dugongs (manatees).
I have to share this passage – there is so much to love in here!
Donning their scuba gear, which consisted of tanks, masks, weighted belts and flippers, the boys sank into the warm waters of the Arafura Sea….
The boys went back to the depths. This time they descended into a gorge two hundred feet deep. It took some stiff swimming to get to the bottom against the pressure of the water and when they got there Roger was tired out. The over-exertion gave him an experience he would never forget.
He was overcome by nitrogen narcosis. It is also called rapture of the deeps.
Just a hunch, but I don’t think Mr Price ever dived himself. There’s almost NOTHING that is positively buoyant at 67 metres…
There’s also no mention of how long it took to ascend, whether they did any kind of decompression stops, and how quickly they must have used up their gas at that depth. To give Mr Price some credit, a lot of the safety precautions we take now are fairly recent inventions… Jacques Cousteau and his team did some amazing cowboy stunts in the 1940’s and 1950’s with the new aqualung!
If you want a copy of this masterpiece (and it’s highly entertaining, I promise!) you can get it here if you’re in South Africa, otherwise here. If you want to read it on your Kindle, go here. I will review two of Price’s other books, Underwater Adventure and Diving Adventure, in forthcoming Bookshelf posts.
I recently upgraded my little Mickey Mouse fins (child-sized) for a pair of black ScubaProSeawing Nova fins. I’ve had my eye on the white ones for a while (they only come in two colours), but last time I was ill in bed with flu I read one of Tony’s books on the best pelagic dives… And most of the shark-related articles mentioned what a bad idea it was to dive with the sharks wearing light-coloured fins. Apparently they get confused, think it’s fish, and take a munch. Not a chance I am keen to take in Cape Town!
Anyway, these fins have a joint that separates the foot pocket from the blade, making them extremely powerful. When you kick hard, they lock rather than continuing to flex past the point of usefulness. There’s more technical stuff on the ScubaPro web page for the fins.
I’m not really a textbook kicker and my finning technique isn’t great (too much knee, too little hip), but I found myself easily able to keep up with Tony on the surface (he says I overtook him) and underwater I didn’t get stressed about getting left behind photographing things because I knew I could keep up. I don’t really do frog kicks, and some of the reviews I have read say these fins aren’t great for that. But for traditional up-down finning, they’re marvellous.
My new ScubaPro Seawing Nova fins at a safety stop in Sodwana
I haven’t dived with lots of fins – just my small ones and a hideously buoyant pair belonging to Tony that had me hanging head down for most of the dive (involuntarily – I do like to do this for fun, but only when I feel like it)! Even though these fins are not much longer than my old pair, they are efficiently designed so that a greater amount of my finning effort is translated into forward motion.
These fins are fitted with a bungee-style foot strap – no clips. There’s just a monstrously strong spring/elastic combination that means you pull on the back of the fin, slide your foot in and let go. It hugs your foot snugly, but is really quick to remove and replace, which is super on the boat. For surf entries, this is also very convenient if you don’t want to mess around in the waves. There’s also a far smaller chance of equipment failure because of the absence of clips and flimsy straps.
The only downside is that these fins are becoming so popular that on a given boat dive there can be three or four pairs floating around. I wrote my name on the bottom of my pair with white marker, which also helps my buddy Tami to find me when we get separated!
Don’t talk about soup sandwiches, cheesy garlic rolls and other such topics on the boat while someone is throwing up… Be nice!
Don’t walk around the boat once you have your weight belt on. If you fall in the water we all laugh first and then try to rescue you, and by then you may be on the bottom… Not nice!
Don’t rinse your mask, fully kitted up or while the boat is moving… You will lose it (or fall overboard) and we will all laugh again… You then get to sit on the boat while we dive… Not nice!
Don’t shout “yee haa!” when the skipper gets the boat airborne on a huge wave… Its embarrassing enough with just you lot watching him fluff things, so when you shout everyone on the beach looks as well… Not nice!
Don’t all rush to one side of the boat when someone shouts “dolphins!” The boat becomes unbalanced and the skipper (or a diver) sometimes falls off… Not nice.
Don’t call your mask goggles, your fins flippers, your weights sinkers and your cylinder a tin of oxygen… Your Instructor gets embarrassed and gets a beer fine.
Tim and Grace on the boat in Ponta do Ouro
Do check that your buddy is on the boat after a dive as most skippers and some DM’s went to night school and can’t count during the day. Plus it’s a waste of fuel to drive all the way back to the dive site to fetch him if you forget.
Do make sure your air is on before you fall into the water… Look at your gauge, take a few deep breaths, and if the needle fluctuates you air is not on. If you can’t breathe at all, it is also not on…
Do remember to shout “man overboard!” if your male buddy falls in the water, but please shout “girl overboard!” if your buddy is not male… Girls are sensitive about these things… Besides if a girl falls overboard all the guys do too… to help… This makes the boat fast and the skipper falls off…
You don’t need to be an Olympic swimmer in order to learn to scuba dive. Scuba diving isn’t about covering big distances or swimming really fast. In fact, we take great care not to over-exert ourselves in the water, and if you swim too fast you won’t see a thing! Also, divers wear fins, which add a lot of power to your kick stroke, and wetsuits and BCDs, which assist with buoyancy.
However, you do need to be at least comfortable in the water in order to become a scuba diver. If you’re absolutely terrified of water and struggle to take a shower without a lifeguard on standby, scuba diving is not the sport for you. If you can’t swim at all, you do need to learn to swim before you learn to dive. If you’re a half way ok swimmer who can hold your own in your pool at home (but not necessarily swim the English Channel), then let’s talk!
There are swimming tests for the various courses (the precise name of the skills being tested is watermanship). For Open Water, you have to do the following, either in a swimsuit or wearing a wetsuit and weighted for neutral buoyancy (i.e. wearing a weight belt):
swim 200 metres continuously without any swim aids,
OR swim 300 metres continuously wearing fins, snorkel and mask ;
float unassisted in water too deep to stand in, for 10 minutes.
swim 800 metres non-stop, face in the water, wearing mask, snorkel and fins, with hands tucked in;
tow or push another diver for 100 metres in full gear, non-stop;
tread water for 15 minutes in water too deep to stand in, hands out of the water for the last 2 minutes.
At Open Water level, these swims are not timed. The Divemaster and Instructor swims are timed. You can use whatever stroke you want, but doggy paddle may get tiring! The swims are very important to confirm that you have basic water skills and can take care of yourself (and others, at DM and Instructor level).
If you’re a decent swimmer already, improving your swimming fitness, stamina and technique will definitely improve the quality of your dives. Not having to think about your position and attitude in the water will enable you to focus on the other things around you, and get more out of the experience. Developing your swimming muscles (that’s almost all your muscles!) and your cardiovascular endurance in the pool will make diving feel a lot less physically strenuous, and you’ll be far more relaxed knowing that your body is in a condition to handle the sport with no strain at all.
You should be comfortable on the surface as well as below the surface.
Finally, being a confident swimmer will make you a more confident scuba diver. While we try not to rush on dives, you never know when a situation will arise that will require you to swim towards or away from something quickly. If you do boat dives, you’ll need to float on the surface at the start and/or end of the dive, waiting for the other divers to gather together, or for the boat to pick you up. Strong swimming technique and developed muscles will help you in both these situations. Basic swimming skills should be part of your arsenal as a fully prepared and competent scuba diver.
If you are in need of swimming lessons – whether it’s to start from scratch or improve your stroke, contact Swimlab, run by Hilton and Wayne Slack, at the Wynberg Military Base swimming pool and in gyms around Cape Town. They offer swimming lessons, coaching, training for high performance swimmers, and even sell swimming gear.
Often divers find that the hi-tech latest fins they bought for a packet are not giving them the pleasure and speed they thought. The slightest current has them finning as fast as possible, consuming air rapidly and not keeping up with the other divers.
A decent pair of fins allows you to use your most powerful muscle, your thigh muscles. If you fin like you ride a bicycle you will go nowhere.
The downward stroke delivers the most propulsion. Keep your leg straight and kick down slowly, bending the knee slightly on the upward stroke. You will find long leisurely fin strokes will use little energy and give you exceptional forward movement.
It is also important you have a good horizontal profile in the water because if you are swimming almost upright across the bottom you create a huge amount of resistance. Stay streamlined, keep your arms at your side and ensure all your gear is tucked and clipped close to your body.
Ensure you have a good horizontal profile in the water (hint: this isn't good)
It is common for similar dive sites to have a completely different entry styles, and shore diving is no different.
Boat diving will in most instances involve either a backward roll or a giant stride depending on the size of the boat and the bottom contours. A giant stride off a jetty onto a submerged object is no fun.
Preparing to do a giant stride off the boat in Aqaba, JordanDoing a giant stride - note the inflated BCD, and hand over regulator and mask to hold them in place.
A giant stride can be a long drop to the water on a large boat that does not have a dive platform and it is important to ensure the area is clear before you leap.
Hitting the water, still holding mask and regulator in place
Doing a backward roll off an inflatable has its hazards. Ensure everyone rolls at the same time to avoid landing on the person next to you. Even the slightest hesitation can result in the boat drifting slightly and you landing on a diver. Ensure that your BCD is inflated, and that you have your hand over your regulator with your fingers on your mask to hold them in place. If someone does land on you, don’t panic – just relax, remember to breathe, and wait to pop to the surface.
It can get crowded around the boat, which is why it's important to roll off exactly when the skipper tells you to
Shore entries may have you walking through the surf to get some depth and even a small wave can knock you off your feet. Clambering over rocks at some dive sites will find you slipping and sliding about so watch the waves and time your entry and exits.
If you aren’t already wearing your mask, make sure it’s around your neck or with the strap pushed well up over your forearm, NOT on top of your head or inside a fin! Or preferably on your face already. Ensure you have your fins clipped correctly and slide the straps up over your forearm so that if you stumble and place your hands instinctively in front of you they shouldn’t get lost. As soon as you are waist deep don your fins and swim away from the shore.
Irrespective of the style of entry, before committing to enter the water ensure your gear is clipped, weight belt tight, zipped up suits and gloves are on. Ensure your mask is on and secure and your regulator firmly in your mouth, This will ensure that should you be toppled over by a wave you will be able to see and breathe. Likewise when doing a giant stride or backward roll, place one hand on your weight belt, the other over your face with the palm holding your regulator in and the fingers holding your mask firmly on your face.
You are in the middle of your Open Water course. There is possibly some pressure from your instructor/dive centre to make a scuba gear purchase. It is time to stop and think.
This will not make me very popular in the dive industry… But I do not recommend you buy your first set of dive gear without a fair amount of research. Sure, this can easily be done on the web or in one day by visiting a few dive centers, but the reality of the matter is you are new to the sport, you have yet to build a vast data bank in your head of the multitude of options available, you are impressed by your instructor’s opinion, and are swayed into buying the gear. A month later you decide diving is not for you, sky diving is the next option and you try and offload the gear with a ”hardly used dive gear” advert… You are going to lose money.
Don't let this be you!
But let’s be positive and say that you have decided that diving is the best thing you can do clothed. Some time has passed. You are done with the Adventures in Diving, have at least 10 dives in your dive log and want to dive the world.
You have booked your flights to the Red Sea and are starting to pack, thrilled with the idea of arriving at the dive centre with all of your own gear looking like a hard core diver. You even have your own heavy duty dive bag with wheels, handles and pockets galore.
You are now faced with a dilemma…
That fancy dive bag, the wheeled one with pockets, weighs 6 kgs empty. That won’t work, so you haul out the old lightweight bag you used on your previous travels.
The water temperature where you are going is 30 degrees, ouch, that 7mm two piece wetsuit won’t work there, so you decide to leave it at home and rent one. You discover your fins weigh a ton and are so long they wont fit in the old travel bag you are now using for weight saving, your very expensive BCD with 6 pockets, a back plate and 8 D-rings is also far too heavy… and to top it all your top of the range regulator is way too expensive for check in luggage and way too heavy for hand luggage. You decide to leave the whole lot at home and rent the hard and soft gear at your destination.
Ah, that ”brightest dive light in the world” that you bought, weighing in at 3kgs, is a bit too heavy so you decide to leave it at home too, and rent a light.
You can get dive lights in a wide variety of strengths, shapes, weights and profiles. Do your research!
So you arrive at your destination, rent everything you need and have a wonderful trip. You cram as many dives possible into every day and head home feeling wonderful. On the way home you reminisce on the dives, replaying them in your mind over and over again (this always happens when you are a dive junkie, trust me).
”That lightweight BCD I used with rear inflation is much more comfortable than my side inflation one… Hmm…”
”The rental dive torch was small, light and compact, and fitted easily into the one tiny pocket on the BCD, I wonder why I thought I need a BCD with 6 pockets? Hmm…”
”It was real easy getting into the rental wetsuit with a zip in front, why does my wetsuit not have that? Hmm…”
“Those short fins were so light and never made my legs tired – why do my fins feel so heavy?… Hmm!”
”That tiny mask they gave me was a breeze to clear, but mine is so big it takes several breaths to empty. Hmm…”
When you arrive home you re-evaluate you dive gear. It’s not junk, by no means, but not quite what you have found to be the best option. So you embark on a long, slow, deliberate road to replace these items with items in the style you have found to be ”your comfort zone”.
What to do?
This point – of having well-formed preferences for different types of gear – is only reached once you have dived for a while, once you have done 10-20 dives. There is no way you are able to reach this point half way into your Open Water course.
Many people will advocate that in the interest of health and hygiene you purchase your own soft gear, wetsuit, booties, fins, mask and snorkel, and some dive centres will only conduct your training if you make this purchase.
In all fairness to the dive centre, sales person, or your instructor, they will give you sound advice, and no manufacturer makes ”junk” in this industry. But the advice will be based on their own style, based on what they have available in their store and they will seldom recommend you shop around. It would be foolish to do so, but before you rush out and buy, try different configurations, rent different gear and decide what works for you.
For some general advice about buying gear, you can visit my follow-up posts on hard (BCD, regulator, cylinder) and soft (wetsuit, mask, fins, booties) gear.
