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The liveliest letters from the DIVER mailbag...
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It's time to draw a line under the bashing of kids' diving. Bob Bills' letter Training Falls Short (May) questioned an 11-year-old walking 1000m with a 15-litre tank and 14kg of weights down a rugged coast path.
But would half the diving community do that? You only have to watch every-body fighting for the trolley to run their stuff 50m down to the dive-boat.
Why would a kid need 15 litres and 14kg anyway? My son uses 10 litres and 10kg with his drysuit, and he boat-dives and beach-dives.
Folk like Bob are AK (Anti-Kid) divers. They don't like diving with kids, just as we don't particularly enjoy the company of bolshie, loud, "experienced" divers who insist on being first out of the RIB because they are going to be down for over an hour on their twin-sets.
Is it because they think they can't swear and come out with rude jokes? You guys stick to your macho AK dive club and we'll stick to our kid-friendly club. We're out there at Christmas, riding a RIB at 30 knots in -3°C air after diving in 7°C water.
We're a diving family - mum, dad and son. We have something we can all do together and enjoy, and we dive at home and abroad. Why should kids be banned from coral reefs and seas? The way we adults look after them, there will be nothing left for them to see soon.
My son has dived in the UK, USA and Cyprus, and the PADI instruction and dive guides he has had have been top-notch. We communicate with a dive centre, assess its kid-friendliness, get a history of what it has done, roll-call procedures etc. If it's good, it won't mind the questions.
We have formed a great relationship with certain centres, and they are very strict on what my son can and cannot do. They even check on where we are staying to ensure that we are not at too high an altitude, planning any mountain excursions and so on.
So let's stop the bickering, let us dive with our kids. They don't get half-price tickets on the RIB, the seas are big enough and they don't need your help to carry their gear on the coast path.
Steve Huckvale, Launceston, Cornwall
I was surprised to read Neil Fishburne of PADI's reply regarding dive centres breaking under-age diving laws in Spain, and how "it is every member's responsibility to comply with local laws", and "it is not within our jurisdiction to enforce compliance" (PADI, Canaries And Under Age Diving, Off-Gassing, May).
When I renew my instructor membership in the UK, if I cannot produce proof of liability insurance PADI will not renew my teaching status.
So here in the UK, PADI has decided that it is its responsibility that members comply with UK law and it is within PADI's jurisdiction to enforce compliance, even though this is a legislative issue and not a direct safety concern.
PADI may get 500 PICs (Personal Identific-ation Cards) per day, but the number of Spanish Junior Open Water Divers must be quite small, so easy to check. Then simply suspend any instructors or dive centres ignoring the laws - it wouldn't take long for the problem to be stamped out within PADI's ranks.
Steve Brown, St Albans, Herts
Comment: The diving-age law as it affected the Canary Islands was changed in late April (see News - Diver claims no credit!)
Hubby and I were on a flight to Spain recently in the hope of doing some diving. Our weight allowance was 20kg for hold luggage and (luxury!) 10kg for hand luggage. As we were staying at a posh hotel and needed more clothes than normal, some smaller bits of dive kit went into our hand luggage, including my Buddy reel and its small SMB.
After passing through the X-ray machines, my bag was pulled to one side for inspection, as "a dark rectangle" was showing up. This turned out to be the lead opening of my SMB.
The security officer then found my reel and wanted to know what it was, and why it was in my hand luggage. "It could be used as a ligature - for strangling someone," she said.
I explained its purpose, emphasising that it was a safety device. She let me off, but warned me not to take it out on the plane, and "in future pack it in your case".
We were on the verge of asking if it was OK if my husband left his laces in his trainers, but thought better of it!
All the usual stuff such as dive knives and other "weapons", including tweezers, were safely packed away. I wonder if this was a first? I dread to think what would have happened if it had been confiscated, and a mishap had occurred while diving!
Gwen Walker, Durham
I always look forward to articles in diver that give us Brits a view of the attitudes of divers from around the globe, but An Uncommon Thief in the April issue started me thinking. This is the second piece, recently, to portray US divers in a bad light.
In Big Escape at Guantanamo Bay (October 2005), you told us of the joy US marines in Cuba get from spear-fishing, and now we see a photographer who seems surprised when an octopus tries to "steal" her camera after she has "stretched a hand into his den, and touched the centre of a teacup-sized sucker".
I don't want to start a crusade but I was always told, and always do, "look, don't touch"! Are things taught differently in the USA?
D Jarrett, London
On a recent holiday to Cuba, my wife and I went to the dive office at the hotel and were asked for, and happily presented, our certification. We were chatting about the dive sites and what we would like to see when a very nice Austrian guy came over and said: " I've only done one dive and that was 15 years ago - can I come out and dive tomorrow?"
The staff said: "No problem, we'll just check you out in the pool first."
After half an hour the Austrian came past our spot in the sun and proudly announced that he would be diving with us the next day.
We both felt very uncomfortable about this. How much checking-out can be done in half an hour? We agreed that there were real concerns about safety and the man's competency levels, so we not only didn't dive the next day, but didn't dive on the holiday at all.
Two days later we saw the Austrian again and he said the first dive had been to 10m and the second to 23m.
Later in the week, I saw the dive staff's idea of checking people out. It involved standing at the side of the pool while the person wishing to dive swam around for 15 minutes.
We all know that diving has its risks as well as its rewards. We not only rely on our own skills but on the skills of those around us. If it doesn't feel or look right, it probably isn't, and we should all make those disappointing decisions and live to dive another day.
Ian & Nicky Woolley, Oundle
I have noticed student after student qualify full of enthusiasm to dive, even in the UK, only to be faced with expensive kit-hire rates, air and so on.
The local dive store (LDS) needs to provide such a great service that existing customers remain faithful and that newly qualified divers come back again and again for more courses - and more expensive kit!
So why don't they offer deals of, say, 10 days' kit hire for £100? By the fifth or sixth dive, new divers should have become hooked and will go on to purchase their own gear, which in the long run will bring in more trade for the LDS.
Not every diver will use all 10 days, either, so overall the store will probably win hands-down.
Also, there must be thousands of divers out there who would like to be coached - just like a weekly piano lesson, or football training - even if it's only diving theory. This could be intermediate between courses or dive levels, and could bring in extra revenue for an LDS on quiet days.
I never get anything through my door about learning to scuba-dive. Surely schools and clubs could be targeted more with offers of free try-dives? The LDS can survive, but it must find more interesting ways to win new customers and keep them loyal.
Mark Newman, Maidstone
I am not very happy with my Mum and Dad. After a dive they always use my climbing frame to dry their dive gear. As you can see, I couldn't even play with my sister and cousin.
Why can't they hang it on the washing line like everyone else so we can still play on it?
Daisy Pierce (6), Market Harborough, Leics
As an avid amateur underwater photographer, I really enjoyed hearing about Steve Weinman's first experiences in this field (Digital Virgin in Bonaire, March). Like him, I've had my problems. I used to have a housing that didn't access the power switch to my camera and, of course, on one of my more memorable dives, I forgot to turn on the camera before going under, causing me much distress.
He mentioned the problem of shooting into the blue with a point-and-shoot camera.
My flash is similar - it's great at a metre or so but doesn't do well illuminating the entire water column. I use Photoshop for post-development of my pictures and someone has donated an "action" that goes a long way towards reducing the blue. It's called Underwater Correction by James Connell and can be found if you Google underwater.atn
Just copy the file to your "Actions" folder in the application, then go to "Window" and select "Actions" in Photoshop, look for "underwater" and hit the play button. The program does miraculous fixes to those blue photos and most times eliminates all but the tinniest blues.
I've also found that just a bit of colour correct-ion with the levels (click on the bottom right eyedropper and click a section that should be white, click a section that should be black with the left eyedropper and ignore the middle, grey eyedropper) helps finish off the effect.
Randall Gamby, Bennington, Vermont, USA
Firstly, the mag is excellent. I have already read the latest edition twice over in two days.
I was a fairly sane 45-year-old bloke until I first dived three years ago. Now I am like all the other gibbering idiots who think of any excuse to go to the dive shop or show, or spend all their time reading about scuba on the Internet.
I don't care that my fiancée thinks she is marrying "the man from Atlantis", as she puts it, as she tries to have a bath among all my kit hanging up to dry.
I want to take my dive kit abroad, but the weight allowance hits hard. Do I take it all and upset the fiancée because I look like Robinson Crusoe in my one pair of shorts and T-shirt, or take my whole exclusive Primark wardrobe and hire dive-shop kit at the resort?
I knew that some airlines offered a bigger baggage allowance for dive kit but I thought it would be 5kg. Readers may like to know that I have just heard from Excel Airways that its baggage allowance for dive kit has been increased by 10kg per person. John Bantin has advised on getting extra allowances confirmed in advance, and it does work. No doubt my fiancée will want to buy a dive bag so that she can put in those extra few shoes she may need for the holiday.
Now I just have to get her to understand that the 20-plus dives I am doing in Sharm over 14 days will not ruin our "romantic holiday", but simply add to the "mystery of our relationship".
Paul De-Verre, Hornchurch, Essex
My husband and I were on holiday in Rhodes recently. Our first dive was fun and we were looking forward to the second, which would be my husband's 100th. It was memorable, if not for the right reasons.
Five minutes in, I noticed the dive guide rooting around in a hole with a snorkel. Thinking he had dropped something, we hovered next to him. What could he have dropped to dig so furiously - a wedding ring? The answer to world peace?
Imagine my surprise and disgust when his hand emerged clutching an octopus. The unfortunate creature was wriggling like mad and squirting ink, and I signed to the instructor to put it back. Clearly thinking it was a great joke, he tried to get me to stroke it, so I signed again.
Deciding I was a killjoy, he took it to a newly qualified Open Water diver before finally releasing it, presumably for the octopus equivalent of five pints and half an hour with a therapist.
On surfacing, I reported the guide's behaviour to the dive-boat owner. The response was basically: "Well, Greek dive guides are a bit like that, what can you do?"
Concerns about respecting marine life and teaching new students appropriate and safe behaviour (not to mention basic PADI rules) apparently fall on deaf ears in Greece. As awkward as it was challenging an unknown dive guide and his employer, I'd do it again in a second. I'm just sorry not enough other folk seem to be doing the same thing frequently enough to make a difference.
Kate Anderson, Edinburgh
I found it soul-destroying on a recent trip to the Red Sea to watch a dive guide face his group of five divers and do nothing when two of them poked and damaged the coral.
I was at the back of the group and saw them hitting it with their fins and with a dive-rattle repeatedly for the full hour of the dive.
I went on five dives over two days with this group, and every dive was the same. The guide was a local guy who I would have expected to be keener than anybody to keep his back garden the way it was meant to be.
Please help educate dive guides. I want my children to see this big back garden in all its splendour!
Chris Cooper, Wigan
In the group test Putting Computers In their Place (March), we are told that Dr Richard Pyle noted that when he paused on ascent at around half the maximum depth of the dive, then did the same from there to the surface, he felt a lot better afterwards.
This is described as a "technique"- as if it were a new discovery. Professor Haldane's work of 1907, which gave us stage decompression tables, was based on open-water dives and came down to the simple statement that "it was safe to halve the pressure on a particular body tissue at any time without ill effect".
I have always looked on this as a rule of thumb, because the stop tables he developed laid out the proper way to dive. What is the difference? Only, as far as I can see, that Pyle talks in terms of "depths" while Haldane talked in terms of "pressure". We were certainly using this technique in place of strict decompression stops in the late 1950s and '60s - a kind of casual working interpretation of Haldane. In future history Pyle will get the credit while Haldane will be sidelined.
Peter Dick, Osterley, Middx
I persuaded the wife to let me buy another reg for a new twinset at the Dive Show.
I needed to get it re-configured for left-hand use, so on the Monday I sent it to Apeks. Four days later it came back, all done, free of charge, compliments, postage paid. Not bad.
The other day I checked my drysuit and found the shoulder dump valve not working properly. It's an Apeks. I called and was asked to take it off the suit and send it back. Guess what? Four days later I had it back, all done, FOC, compliments, postage paid.
Now this can't go on. I've spent a large part of my adult life getting used to shoddy service, being treated like a piece of doggy doo if I have the nerve to question or complain.
My son, 12, has grown up believing that all dads are grumpy old sods. He watches Rick Wakeman & Co and just thinks it's real life.
What am I going to do if this catches on?
I and thousands of others will have to learn again how to say thank you.
Apeks, if you have a shred of decency, you'll drop this sort of aftersales treatment. Don't try to change things, be like the others and brush us off or just ignore us. Or ignore me, and show how it should, and can, be done!
Andy Phillips, St Helens, Isle of Wight
I have just seen the new HSBC TV ad, in which a diver slides over the side of a RIB and descends to find a crowded dive site, as the camera reveals hundreds of dive boats at the surface.
The director must be a diver who has visited some of the popular Red Sea sites recently.
Alex Liddon, Lowestoft, Suffolk
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