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UNDERWATER BOMBS - THAT'S ALL WE NEED
NIGEL EATON, EDITOR
TO THE MANY SAFETY CONCERNS, major and minor, of which we divers must be mindful when pursuing our sport, a new hazard has been added. Miniature underwater bombs are, it appears, being used by commercial fishermen to protect their catches from marine predators - and some divers have found themselves in the firing line.
According to a recent article in the US diving newsletter Undercurrent, the devices are being dropped into the water at night by squid fishing boats off southern California to ward off foraging seals and sea-lions.
Federal law allows use of the so-called "seal-bombs" to create non-lethal explosions claimed to help spare the animals from death or injury caused by entanglement in fishing nets.
But the bombs have plagued the activities of local night divers and dive operators. Their experiences have reportedly ranged from being merely startled by the explosions to suffering terrifying shockwaves from seal bombs detonated within a few feet.
While the bombs apparently aren't powerful enough to blow off a diver's finger, it's easy to imagine how the explosions could damage eardrums or sinuses, or induce diver panic.
Is there an everyday diving safety lesson to be drawn from this rather unusual story? Perhaps it should stand as a reminder of just how invisible divers can be in the eyes of the surface world in general and of other sea-users in particular.
Commenting on the California divers' concerns, Orlando Amorosa, chairman of the local commercial fishing association, said that he was not aware of a potential conflict between night divers and the squid boats.
"I frankly didn't know that people dived at night," he claimed. And, in truth, why would he?
Graphically underlining the point that it is at our peril that we overlook making our presence known at the surface is a nasty incident from 1998. Recalled in the same publication, it involved a group of Italian fishermen and a hand-grenade.
Having found the grenade and resolved to use it to boost their catch, the fishermen thought themselves fortunate when they crossed paths with a pair of divers swimming under water without displaying a surface marker device. Seeing only the surface disturbance caused by the divers' bubbles, and assuming that these were evidence of a shoal of fish, the fishermen pulled the pin and tossed the grenade into the sea.
One of the divers was some distance away and escaped injury. The other was killed in the blast.
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