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WORK IT OUT FOR YOURSELF
STEVE WEINMAN, EDITOR
YEAH, YEAH, WE'VE HEARD IT ALL BEFORE... Check our kit properly at the start of the season, sure. Familiarise ourselves with new gear, OK. Ensure that our fitness levels have been maintained, uh huh. Do a little poolwork if rusty - but of course!
Build up our dives gradually, yeah right. Don't get ratted the night before, plan the dive, dive the plan, live the dream - look, we've been doing this for years, we know what we're doing, spare us the lectures. Isn't diving supposed to be about having fun? Lighten up!
Many of you must have grown wearily familiar with the well-meant wisdom dispensed every spring about starting the UK season in a measured way. The diehards among you won't even be thinking in those terms, because you've been diving all winter anyway.
Repeat something over and over and, instead of becoming a mantra that moderates our actions, it's more likely that the words will lose whatever meaning they had in the first place.
So what should we do to head off that grim spate of diving incidents we've come to associate with Easter and the weeks that follow, as the weather grows warmer?
I for one would like to see divers take the time to read the British Sub-Aqua Club's Diving Incidents Report, because that annual publication is perhaps the most effective wake-up call there is.
Last year saw more UK incidents than ever, with a record number of rapid ascents, lots of missed stops, too many out-of-air moments, and an unhealthy amount of decompression illness to be treated - not to mention 17 fatalities.
Divers had problems with delayed SMBs, drysuits, BCs, free-flowing regulators and too often, it seems, their weights. A number, it's fair to say, had problems with themselves.
The Incidents Report reflects the real world. Once you start flipping through these accounts for an insight into how bad things happen, you'll inevitably find yourself drawing your own conclusions about the steps you would have taken to avoid each one.
If you and your buddies can learn from the misfortunes of others, you'll enjoy a long and happy diving career. You can read the latest report - and all the previous ones if you're really interested - by visiting www.bsac.org.
Meanwhile, DIVER celebrates the start of the season with a shedload of coldwater content, including no fewer than eight British diving locations, from a fast-flowing Scottish river to a tiny wreck that has become almost a family jewel for the divers who found it. We also visit Norway and the Pacific USA - though we've sneaked out to Tahiti and Raja Ampat as well, to warm ourselves up a bit.
But there are no lectures (apart from John Liddiard's article on how to configure those dangly bits of kit - and we also give details of useful refresher courses in the News section). We're counting on you to keep yourself safe.
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