| Watching processions of blue-fleshed diving trainees got Guy Tinsley worried last winter. Now he's hoping that a word to the wise now will prevent the same thing happening next winter |
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I WOULD HAVE DONE IT, HONEST. As I phoned around my usual list of buddies, however, it began to dawn on me that it wasn't going to happen.
The reactions and refusals I was getting ranged from politely mumbled excuses such as: "Oh, I'm tidying my sock drawer this weekend" to the more overt: "Are you mad?"
So what was so revolutionary, so stupid, so ground-breaking a change in my diving that my usual diving friends were cutting me off?
I wanted to try a dive in a semi-dry suit.
I wasn't even asking my buddies to forsake their snuggly drysuits and don a semi-dry themselves. I just needed a buddy so I could discover what it was like to dive in 5°C in a semi-dry. It would be research for this article, you see.
Something had been worrying me increasingly during the winter months. I saw the strangest processions coming out of the water down at Our Beloved Cove.
These processions consisted of a trim expert, beaming with health and happiness and sporting the most fabulous drysuit on the face of the Earth, and behind him/her, a straggling line of blue and shivering human beings, waddling like frightened ducklings and sporting bog-standard semi-dry or even wetsuits.
"If you get them in and out fast enough, they don't get too cold at all," these experts would say.
Oh, well, that's all right then.
Reactions from other positions on the expert ladder were varied.
"I learned in a semi-dry and it didn't do me any harm," I was informed by a cheerful and authoritative Rescue Diver. So when did he get that lovely mem-brane number? "As soon as I'd finished my Open Water Course."
An Advanced Diver reminisced fondly of her Open Water course. "I learned in March down here. I didn't stop shivering until I'd been sitting in the pub for two hours. Dad didn't stop shivering until he got home!" Dad nodded sagely. Clearly he didn't enjoy shivering quite as much as his gorgeous daughter, who now graced a jet black crushed neoprene suit.
I wanted to ask Open Water students in situ about their experience of learning in a semi-dry at that time of year, but I didn't. It would only have worried them.
Instead, I went to the opposite end of the expert ladder and Dr John Bevan, former Head of the Environmental Factors Section of the Royal Naval Physiological Laboratory. Nowadays he runs Submex, a diving safety consultancy, and is an expert on the effects of cold on divers.
I asked him if there was any research that showed that trainee divers in semi-dry and wetsuits were at best not enjoying themselves, and at worst in danger of succumbing to the effects of cold or even severe stress.
He told me that much research had been carried out into the effects of hypothermia, but none that compared wet, semi-dry and drysuits.
"You see, when things are so very obvious, scientists tend not to research them. It's obvious that mild hypothermia and even severe cold is detrimental to both learning and psycho-motor performance. Psychological stress-related problems appear long before mild hypothermia sets in."
So what if the student gets their tasks done quickly? "Well, why should they have to hurry up when diving teaches us to take it easy and enjoy ourselves?
"And look at the tasks themselves, like mask removal. With a flooded or lost mask, there's a high probability of inducing panic in a trainee, and it can also cause involuntary inhalation. Given that mask-flooding and removal is a necessary part of the Open Water course, one would question how appropriate this practice is in very cold water.
"It's my personal belief that trainee divers should not be taken into water temperatures of or below 10°C," said Dr Bevan. "Where they are taken into water at, say, between 10 and 15°C, extra precautions are essential. These should include a reduction in the instructor/ trainee ratio to 1:1 or 1:2 and avoidance of deep water.
"Good suit insulation is of paramount importance. A drysuit with the appropriate undersuit is the most reliable for good insulation."
Cold water is a major stressor, and when people are stressed, they panic. I am grateful to Dr Bevan for reinforcing that point, and also to the landlord of my local pub who, when I mentioned this article to him, said: "15°C? If I sold beer that cold, people would complain!"
Diving is meant to be fun. People don't have fun when they're cold, hurried or stressed. Schools, if you cannot put your students into a drysuit, wait until it gets warmer, and tell them why. They'll respect you for it.
But if you show them a PADI video of the tropics and then, without a hint of irony, get them frozen to the bone and let them meet one of the increasing numbers of Open Water drysuit divers, you'll probably lose them forever.
For whose benefit are you running this course? If you need cash flow next winter, sell drysuits or train Rescue Divers.
As things are, we'll be needing both.
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