BEACHCOMBER
Diving can be tough, especially if you
attempt to complete multiple dives
per day over multiple days, something
you might otherwise know as a
liveaboard trip, and we all know how
physically demanding those can be.
Still, youth can overcome, but when
one youngster recently boarded his
boat for a week of Red Sea wreck-
diving, he might have been forgiven
for being a little dismayed as he
realised that he was half the age of
the next youngest guest.
Then the diving started, and as well
as being the youngest guest it turned
out that he was the least experienced,
by a margin greater than the age gap.
Not that it mattered, Red Sea
liveaboard diving being as easy as it
gets. Come day two, however, and he
missed a dive as the result of being
too knackered. And day three.
And all the while, the old gimmers
around him were happily plunging
into the depths four times a day,
except those for whom night-diving
holds less attraction than a deco beer.
Reportedly, the average age of UK
divers is 61. That’s the average age,
which means there must be plenty of
active divers over that age. Diving
must be the only sport in which age is
a total irrelevance, once you’ve
learned to relax and not work at it.
Just ask our young Red Sea diver,
when he’s got his breath back.Pool-bound
You remember those school photos that
your mum and dad bought every year?
Taken by some sad, broken old
photographer who set up his camera on
a tripod and spent all day shooting pictures
of every class in the school, putting on a
professional front but really wishing he
was somewhere warm and sunny, shooting
covers for Vogue?
Well, the job just got worse. According
to online style sources the final frontier for
pics of your kids is an underwater action
shot of the little darling, which means that
the photographer has to take the pics in a
cold swimming pool swirling with verruca
plasters and lost hair-grips.
The next time a diver with a camera
moans about O-rings or strobes not
working, I’ll tell them about the
underwater photography job from hell and
that should get them off my back,
whaddaya think?High hopes
Build it and they will come, or so they
say. There are now dozens of artificial
reefs off North Carolina, put there to
attract scuba-divers and their tourist
dollars, and they’re doing a great job,
with divers travelling internationally
to see them.
What wasn’t planned was that
tropical fish species would use the
chain of artificial reefs as a maritime
highway along which to commute to
more appropriate habitats.
Researchers from Duke University
say that the fish are using the artificial
reefs for protection as they move from
one place to another, and there are
even sharks following the fish, much
appreciated by divers.
I‘m really excited by this news.
I mean, my local lake has an artificial
reef programme, three old cars and
a van, so I expect the tropical fish and
sharks and stuff will turn up any day
now. I can’t wait!Shark-witted
What’s more frightening than a shark? An
intelligent shark!German scientists have discovered that
sharks can pass on cognitive skills to other
sharks, and can recognise differences in
quantities. So those old cartoons where
one shark advises another shark not to bite
divers ‘cos the hard metal tank thing on
their backs can make them fart turn out to
be less amusing and more accurate than
we thought.
What this means to me is that I need to
re-evaluate my buddy-selection process.
Instead of going for a fit, lean, air-
conserving buddy to maximise dive-time,
I’m going for an, er, more substantially-
built buddy, on the grounds that an
intelligent shark will go for the all-you-
can-eat menu and ignore the stringy
leftovers represented by myself.Poo power
Dive scooters are a lot of fun, but they
generally run short on power after
an hour or so of zooming around,
especially if you’re a bit heavy-handed
with the throttle.
Enter the US Navy, which is
researching underwater robots that
can utilise seabed organic material in
microbial fuel-cells to maintainperformance for longer periods.
For “seabed organic material”, re a d
fish-poo. And if there’s one thing the
seabed has a lot of, it’s fish-poo. It
might not be yummy, but if it works...Unreliable source
I was recently offered the opportunity to
purchase a financial investment report
entitled Diving Oxygen Scuba Tanks Market
Segments Research Report Till 2025from
Illuminated Insights.
I thought about it, but decided not to
bother. You can use oxygen tanks for scuba,
but it was quite clear that Illuminated
Insights had not bothered to check its
facts, and simply assumed that all scuba-
divers use oxygen. And if it had done that,
how much reliance would you put on its
financial advice?
The fact that I have no money to invest
was irrelevant to my decision. Honest.Bare-skin solution
I’ve loved diving in the Egyptian Red
Sea, even when I had to share it with
millions of other divers back in the
glory days. Then the 2011 Arab Spring
hit the tourist industry and closed
dive-centres throughout the area as
divers took their money elsewhere,
with devastating consequences for
the livelihoods of the Egyptians
working in the diving sector.
A few years later and diver numbers
were just starting to increase when
the Russian airliner was brought down
and the cycle started again.
Last year and especially this year,
diver numbers have been rising again.
They’re nowhere near pre-revolution
levels yet but, typically, the problem
of divers damaging the corals, wrecks
and habitats they’ve travelled so far
to see is already back in the news.
Egypt’s Rebounding Tourism
Threatens Red Sea Corals,shouted the
headlines recently.
Yes, indeed, but on the one hand
you have divers experiencing fantastic
dives and the dive-centre staff paid
the money they need to feed their
families, while on the other the
spectre is raised of an existential
threat to the eco-system’s well-being.
And no, I don’t know what the
solution is, but here’s a suggestion.
You should be allowed to dive in the
Red Sea only if you wear a shortie
wetsuit. That’ll teach you to keep your
knees and legs and arms and elbows
clear of the coral or suffer the
consequences.
I know it’s only a small step, but
every little helps, as Tesco insists.divErNEt.com 9 divEr
DIVERS AS
YOUNG AS
THEY FEEL
Time
bomb
Just after the Great War, 35,000 tons of
unexploded bombs, shells and grenades
were dumped in the sea off Knokke,
Belgium (contemplative beach-resident
pictured), and had long been considered
safely disposed of.
Well, except for a bit of TNT that might
or might not have somehow found its way
to the surface. And some mustard gas that
might be escaping.
Mustard gas is ‘orrible stuff, and after
the war drums full of this and other
chemical weapons were enthusiastically
sealed in concrete and “safely” sunk along
with those explosives.That’s a lot of explosives and chemical
weapons, but the Knokke disposal site,
which is a kilometre out to sea and three
kilometres long, is just one of dozens, or
maybe hundreds, of similar sites off the
coasts of France and Belgium.
Apparently nobody knows exactly how
many such sites there are, or exactly
where they are, which is not reassuring.
It also made me think. You know when
they test you for explosives residue at
airports? How long will it be before the kit
of any active UK North Sea diver tests
positive, and won’t that be fun?
Still, better than a sniff of mustard gas.PIXEL2013 / PIXABAYBEACHCOMBER