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A PROPER DIVER
TO TWIST A PHRASE FROM SAMUEL JOHNSON: "A man who is tired of diving is tired of life." Diving literally takes you into another world; every type of experience and sensation is on offer, and all of human life is on display. Not even Channel 5 can promise as much.
Diving is such an incredibly diverse sport. The reasons why people dive, the conditions that can be encountered and the equipment used vary so widely that it can be hard to see what we all have in common.
At one extreme, you have pampered tourists in bikinis and shorts being helped into teeny Mini-breather backpacks for their hand-held guided 6m tour of a tropical reef. At the other end of the scale, you can barely make out a human being under the weight of multiple cylinders, gadgets, wrecking tools and lifting bags.
There are fish-spotters, photography and video nerds, scallop-hunters, archaeology freaks, military enthusiasts, brass fiends, treasure-seekers, flattie-bashers, sea surveyors counting the marine life, thrill-seekers, kit obsessives, configuration nazis, James Bond fantasists, shark-lovers, wreck-explorers, ice-divers, depth junkies, geek boys who spend more time planning and calculating than diving, cavers squeezing through flooded restrictions, and constant students - always training for the next qualification. Not to mention people who just like to get wet, get weightless and have a mooch about under water.
How mind-blowing an experience is diving that it can attract and fascinate such a diverse bunch of people and interests! Anything this good must surely be illegal, immoral, or expensive.
And if you fancy a mixed-gas dive on a protected war grave, you can achieve all three at the same time! What other sport can offer you that?
Human beings tend to cope with differences by pre-judging, forming cliques and reassuring ourselves that we're OK by sneering at everybody else. Diving is rife with competing philosophies and allegiances.
How much we choose to indulge in these issues largely depends on how insecure, competitive or bored with our existence we may be.
Those of us who are screwed-up bring our screwed-upness into diving and dump it on the heads of people who are basically out for a good time. It's not fair, but there it is.
So the killer question is: who do you regard as a proper diver?
I was quoted on the subject in the last issue of Diver, so I'll share my prejudices with you. To me, a proper diver is someone who simply loves diving and exudes that buzz that you get from a good dive.
It helps if you're good company on the boat, carry food and can make a mean cup of tea, but that's all a bonus. As long as you're competent to survive the dive, the issues of who you trained with, how deep you go and how you rig your kit are irrelevant to me.
I don't believe that anyone who truly loves diving wouldn't want to dive in the UK. Whatever "floats your boat" - marine life, dramatic scenery, wrecks - is here in abundance. The barriers to UK diving have been tumbling - better drysuits, great charter boats and easy access to the sites. Not to mention the demise of dive club mini-Hitlers.
Unfortunately, as I wander among "diving professionals" in my job as a diving journalist, I encounter the tired hackery of people who whinge that Hurghada is dived out, Cocos was much better last year, and the flight back from Tahiti was just soooo stressful.
I speak to instructors who boast that they never get wet unless they're being paid. I deal with writers who are proud to announce: "I don't dive in the UK because I don't have to". I don't regard these as proper divers.
But then, what do I know? I would never claim to be a "proper diver" - I much prefer to think of myself as an improper diver.
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