​The internet has changed many aspects of diving, some for the worse and some for the better. It has never been so easy to find out about different dive sites or to hook up with like minded divers. Dive forums allow the novice divers to connect directly to ‘experts’ just waiting to answer their apologetically-asked questions. In fact most forums rate the users by the number of posts as if to provide some sort of credential for the usually anonymous forum member. In dive forums as elsewhere on the internet there is a need for caveat emptor.

I run a dive centre and probably do more than the average number of dives in any given week, though sadly if I lived somewhere warmer and calmer I know I would do a lot more. I struggle to keep up with daily emails, text messages to and from divers, calls to suppliers and that’s without the customers coming into the dive centre as well. As a consequence I rarely dip into the forums and only usually for topic specific threads. When I do read through forum threads I resist commenting unless I have direct knowledge of the matter. I wish that others would exercise the same restraint.

For the average club diver simple economics dictates that they must be in some sort of paid employment to finance the diving activity. I’m lucky in that I can play with my kit as part of my current job, but I think that would have been frowned upon when I was involved in scientific research in a hospital, and I guess not many employers are much more understanding either. So a paid job and the travel to get there and back must take up a fair chunk of the 168 hours available in a week.  A 9 to 5 job plus a bit of commuting accounts for around 47 hours a week.

For all of us there are the basic human needs for food (including shopping and cooking time), sleep, travel, family commitments and at least a little social life that doesn’t revolve around diving. Where on earth does anyone find time to make 50 posts on a dive forum a day and still find time for doing enough diving to become an expert on all matters? I am working on a mathematical description of this phenomenon. It is obvious to me that N [number of posts] must be inversely proportional to L [number of logged dives] but I think I may need to include extra terms to account for A [number of different diving agency qualifications held], C [number of years on Branch Committee], F [number of years as member of forum] and I [number of years as an instructor]. I will be collecting data to further develop my theorem over the coming months.

If we assume that my basic concept is correct then we must be cautious of high frequency posts from forum members. The time spent making those hundreds of posts is time that isn’t actually spent diving. Internet ‘experts’ are probably as reliable as those offers of millions of dollars from a Nigerian government official who died in mysterious circumstances. Have you ever wondered just how the experts know so much about so many aspects of diving? I know I do but then I have the experience to sieve through the information that appears on the forums. Do new divers possess the same scepticism or will they make important, life-critical decisions based on what they read on the internet?

​A few days ago a young lad came into see me. He had bought a cheap drysuit from a store that was closing down. His plan was simple. He had trained as a scuba diver on holiday last summer and was also friends with lots of the fishing boat crews. So armed with his entry level qualification he was going to help out his mates, changing anodes, untangling propellers etc. He’d been on a forum and worked out that he needed 8kg of lead for his 4mm neoprene drysuit. He had not ever been trained in how to use a drysuit and declined my offer of a course because he’d read the notes for a drysuit course and read lots of forum posts about whether to put air in the suit or his BCD. His drysuit came with neoprene socks, so he wanted wetsuit boots to go over the top of the socks so that he could walk down the harbour steps. He read that on the internet and he declined a pair of rock boots. A few days later his father rang to say that all the seals on the suit required replacing and his son had read on the internet that silicon seals were the best thing and ask if we could fit ring systems etc. It’s all just wrong on so many levels…but can we offer him any advice? There’s no need as he’s got it all off the internet!

The world is littered with abbreviations, mnemonics and acronyms.  We use them to save time and energy repeating ourselves, shorten text messages for our lazy thumbs, remember key points and to establish a clear barrier between those ‘in the know’ and the rest of the world.  All this talk of what the DO said to the TO about the skills in SO1, and whether the CBL RBs and subsequent CCs were at the correct rate can leave a new member in the branch feeling like they have landed on another planet.  I once joined my very first team meeting in a college where I was doing some teaching that consisted of impenetrable discussions following these lines.  After 3 minutes I was bewildered and after 20 minutes I was starting to giggle and play abbreviation bingo in my planner.  But in reality such an experience can be off-putting at best and downright discouraging at worst.

So here’s a challenge: Have a look at your club notice board, website or newsletter.  Is it littered with acronyms that us British Sub Aqua Club members, the cognoscenti use with impunity?  Put yourself in the eyes of a new prospective member.  Would they be able to comprehend 75%, 80%, 95% of the information that you are presenting if they didn’t know what special code words you were using?  Some websites and newsletters avoid this pitfall, but others, put together by well-meaning and time-poor volunteers fall headlong into creating a barrier to others, right at the point where we should be welcoming and helping them into our world.

Sadly this problem is not limited to written materials.  Listen to an OWI or AI (or maybe still a CI) running a OW session and there will be a litany of BCDs, SEEDS, REAPs and ASs perhaps with some ppO2 and an MOD thrown in for good measure.  And as if this wasn’t enough to send you into a tailspin the instructors themselves will get hung up on memories of times past and terminologies encountered, so that terms such as DV, reg and 2nd Stage are bandied around interchangeably.  And confess now, who still refers to AAS in the occasional lapse?  And CPR instead of BLS?  We’ve all done it, haven’t we?

Of course, I am not arguing that we should abandon all abbreviations.  Anyone who has tried to draw up a dive planning sheet on the computer will be aware that there’s only so much space on an A4 page and you can only make the font so small or no one else will be able to read it.  The actual size of the font will of course need increasing as the age of the divers in your branch increases.  This usually corresponds the apparent shortening of one’s arms so that your dive computer display can’t quite be forced into focus, and leads shortly thereafter to the purchase of a dive computer with a larger screen or colour LED higher contrast screen.  This strategy is of course just buying time and bifocal lenses are looming on the horizon.  So in order to stave off the hideous reality, we can happily abbreviate to fit the information into the print out so that our dive plan doesn’t cover an intimidating number of printed pages.

In some cases though abbreviations can be an even bigger lifesaver.  Take the role of DM.  We all know it stands for Dive Marshall or is it Dive Manager?  Nevermind, I can safely hide behing the DM term without struggling to remember.  The Diving Officer’s Conference abbreviated to DOC saved us from misplaced apostrophes, and two years ago we changed the name to the Dive Conference.  But without fail the feedback every year includes reference to the DOC.  You can take an instructor to the bar but you can’t make him drink….oh well obviously you can’t stop some of them..but you know what I mean!

So  I’m setting a challenge to my own teaching and my instructor team to avoid the over excessive use of acronyms, especially with prospective new members and new trainees.  Perhaps I will introduce a glossary of terms list on the classroom wall?  Maybe I will award a wooden spoon style prize for the biggest transgressor?  Maybe I’ll start a diving abbreviations lookup website, like the ones that I use to help me decipher text messages occasionally?  As I was discussing the other day with the NDO and several NIs from the DTG and ITG at the NDC meeting at BSAC HQ, the first step to solving the problem is to recognise it exists…

​I’m something of a diving evangelist; I’m happy to help new divers, old divers and lapsed divers, from whatever brand of training they subscribed to.  There are a myriad of reasons why divers fall out of the habit, though I suspect that families and finance are the big ones.  Young families are an enormous drain on time and resources and I’m sure I’m not the only diving parent just ticking the time away until junior can undertake diver training and we can set out on a diving adventure together.  My diving will be massively improved with my guilty conscience at leaving my offspring finally expunged.
But when is it time to hang up your fins?  At what point does diving just not make sense anymore even if you love the sport and have spent years involved in it?  None of us like to admit we are growing older, less capable and more vulnerable….but time keeps moving on and our bodies are programmed to decay.  Accumulated injuries and life’s wear and tear start to take their toll. 
I laughingly joke after a full day of diving and training that this is a young man’s game – it’s not a joke but a heartfelt cry of anguish.  I’m learning to pace myself, something I would never have thought about in my 20’s.  Nitrox is my very best friend even for shallow training sessions.  It takes the edge off the sub-clinical DCI that we all experience, leaving me less tired and capable of keeping going.  But I know that in reality I am just compensating for the effects of getting older.
But at what point does is the compensation not enough?  I’ve had the honour of trying to assist a once excellent and accomplished diver back into the water after a break of over 15 years.  It has been a challenge for both me and the diver.  The equipment and skills have changed and we have worked in the safety of the pool.  But the real changes are the personal ones, physical strength and mental processing.  I’ve changed my approach entirely from one of assisting a fellow instructor to one of just trying to keep this diver and any potential buddies safe. 
I think one of the key factors with someone I have trained from scratch is that they are aware of the dangers and aware of their own limitations.  By contrast, taking someone who, in their day, was one of the foremost divers and instructors in their club is a scary proposition.  Without trying to be harsh, I find myself as Diving Officer mentally registering a huge number of limitations including possible buddies, depths and conditions.  This is taking all my people skills and has reawakened branch politics and disagreement from years before I even started diving!
So what have I learned?  In future I will try not to be over-awed by any diver’s past glories, but instead rely on my own observations regarding ability.  Returning divers rarely take up the offer to attend Ocean or Sports diver lectures, but refreshing theory knowledge is essential especially if the subject matter has moved on.  Mainstream diving has changed.  My offer of Nitrox was met with incredulity. The Devil’s gas?  And you give it to Ocean Divers?! But my motives were entirely about trying to keep my elderly friend safe.  .
And the really big lesson is trying to judge when to give up on diving altogether.  Will I notice when the time has come for me?  Will I be able to look at my physical state and work out that my diving days are behind me? Or will I be the one looking for a sympathetic Diving Officer willing to work out how to achieve my one last dive?  Do I set the limits now?  I will give up diving when I can no longer carry my own cylinder?  (But then we have disabled divers now for whom we carry kit around.)  I will give up diving when the instructors are 40 years younger than me?  I will give up diving when it seems like too much hard work?
The incident reports in the last few years have highlighted a possible increased risk to elderly divers.  Maybe it’s time to bring back a diving medical for specific sections of the diving community, perhaps the over 60’s?  And maybe that defines the end point of my diving too.  When I can no longer pass the rigorous HSE diving medical I will give up diving altogether.  Instead of waiting until I start to endanger myself and others, if I can’t make the medical I need for professional instructing, it will be time to hang up the fins and watch my children continue in the sport I love.  For now I will make the most of the time that our diving overlaps.

​The issue of children being able to dive is an emotive subject.  During my years in diving I have seen the debates rage back and forth about what age limit should be set.  When I became involved in the Clubmark scheme several years ago I was motivated not necessarily by the idea of attracting children into sport, as by the concepts of fair access and freedom from discrimination.  If you read the fine-print of many Branch constitutions many of them still include the ability to black-ball new membership usually couched in the phrase “membership applications will be subject to approval by the branch committee.”  The grounds and procedures for accepting or refusing a membership application and the mechanisms for appealing the assessment never seem to be included.  Even if you asked, I suspect no-one in the branch would be able to explain.  I have no idea how often, if ever, this clause is invoked – but wouldn’t you hate the thought that, after an evening’s visit to the club you are considering joining and a quick chat in the bar, committee members could decide that you just ‘don’t fit’ and refuse your application? Perhaps when joining a branch we should modify Groucho Marx’s oft quoted put down?  Please accept my resignation.  I don’t want to belong to a club that won’t accept anyone as a member.
Of course, the really successful BSAC branches are those who welcome everyone as a member.  These are the branches for whom getting a Clubmark award is just a case of putting the paperwork into a file and getting it sent off.  The biggest barrier to this happening is that they are probably having so much fun snorkelling, diving, doing outreach work and recruiting new members that there just isn’t time to get the evidence together. 
The politics involved in the management of a dive club can frequently overwhelm the members involved.  As the equipment and techniques involved in diving evolve, the long-serving members find that they are suddenly not the ‘expert’ voice that they were in previous years and feel deep resentment.  Young enthusiastic members feel frustrated as they argue their case in committee meetings. 
Dive clubs tend to elicit deeper bonds than other sporting clubs.  We rely on our diving buddies not only to share the safe diving we are all seeking, but to provide the support to take on more challenging dives and the back-up when things go wrong.  Members of other sports clubs don’t have to rely on each other in anything like the same way.  Poor teamwork on a football pitch means you lose the match, but no-one’s life would be endangered by it.  Poor teamwork on a dive trip means oxygen cylinders don’t get checked, dive briefs get skipped and the outcomes can be deadly serious. With strong links to the people in our dive club come strong emotions.  Longstanding members of a club will know each other’s families, children will spend their summer holidays on dive trips and learn to snorkel or dive within the branch.  Non-diving partners can frequently be found supervising a game of beach cricket for a coach load of divers’ children.  So woe-betide any Johnny-come-lately who suggests that, instead of the annual pilgrimage to Weymouth, they would like to head to the Farne Islands this year.  You are not suggesting that diving with seals might be a fun trip.  Oh no! You are (inadvertently) criticising years of family summer holiday tradition! How very dare you?
Diving attracts people from a wide range of day jobs and with that diverse background comes a wide range of skills.  The key thing for all of us is the ability to work within the team, to respect each other’s perspective, to negotiate change and to keep an open mind.  The job of the Diving Officer maybe delegated from the National Diving Officer but really good DOs will have a skill set that would make a recruitment agency go weak at the knees.  Some time ago a study tried to calculate the value of a mother, checking all her many roles and pricing the commercial equivalent.  The final figure was somewhere over £100,000 a year.  Putting a value on your DO will reveal a similar scary figure.  Can you imagine employing someone to check the training, observe instructors, meet and greet, strategically plan, keep tabs on the kit and manage the members within the branch?  For those frustrated members within clubs please note I specifically said putting a value on your DO, not a price! Dive branches can be the most frustrating places in the world at times – but they can also be the most rewarding and supportive environments for your dive adventures. Choose yours wisely.

​In 1973, four hostages were seized in a bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden. A convict on parole attempted to rob the bank but as the siege situation developed he negotiated the release of his friend from prison to help him.  The hostages were held for 6 days in the vault. When the siege was finally over none of them would testify against their captors and they even started raising money for the defence’s legal team. Baffled by the responses of the hostages, further assessment was sought.

A Swedish psychiatrist examined the hostages and described ‘Stockholm Syndrome’. In cases where Stockholm syndrome is present, victims start out as powerless, but go on to develop positive feelings towards their captors. Sympathy for the cause and goals an often follow hostages back into their real life. This can cause cognitive and social problems, and a feeling of dependence on the captor.

Stockholm syndrome probably arises as a coping mechanism.  The victim wants to survive, and that is a stronger instinct than hating the person who has created the hostage situation. A positive emotional bond will help survival, but there’s a danger of being spotted as a fraud. So the victim ends up believing that they really do like their captor.

You’re by now, probably wondering why I’m writing about this topic…and whether you’ve accidentally picked up a copy of Psychiatrist Monthly. But actually, Stockholm syndrome is an extreme example of how an imbalance of power in any relationship can have a massive influence on how the parties behave.  For this reason, educational establishments (from schools to universities) have very strict guidelines about appropriate relationships between teaching staff and students.  Teaching staff (or instructors) occupy a position of power over the student. Instructors grade work, give personal feedback, ensure standards for the course are met. And students will hold the instructors in high esteem because of their position and experience. Most educational establishments would require a member of teaching staff to remove themselves from teaching any student who they were having a relationship with. In this case the student may be so overwhelmed by the instructor’s attention that they may feel unable to say no, concerned about the impact on their progress. And the student will normalise this behaviour in their future life.

When would-be instructors first attend a BSAC Instructor Foundation Course, we run a session on what the ideal instructor would look like. Usual (and valid) responses include knowledgeable, patient, approachable, organised and skilful. Rarely does anyone mention ethical. In PADI’s instructor manuals, there’s a small section on ethics, although it seems to deal more with the ethics of business than the relationship between an instructor and a student. And yet, instructors are in a position of extreme power. On smaller courses, especially technical ones, there may only be one instructor for 2 students. That instructor will play a variety of roles during the course, mentoring and assessing the student.
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Diving at all levels in built on trust. Instructors that build a positive relationship with a student will achieve more as they work to develop the student’s skills. But whilst this relationship can be hugely beneficial, they are in a situation where a massive imbalance of power in possible. The risks for student infatuation with the instructor are real. Ask any experienced instructor and they will be able to tell you of the students who came a little too close. In the stress of the course with the worry of whether you’ll pass, those evolutionary survival mechanisms kick in. The need to survive outweighs the desire to fight back against the demands of the course (and the instructor delivering it). Scuba instructors get idolised, and that’s not always a healthy situation. Stockholm syndrome may be at the extreme end of the scale, but the potential imbalance of power exists. Treat carefully my fellow instructors. 

​At the end of 2016, diver training agencies including BSAC launched Sea Survival training courses developed in conjunction with the RNLI. Despite the common view of the RNLI as being the provision of lifeboats and crew, there is much more that they are involved in from a safety at sea perspective, with particular foci on fishing industry accidents, Swim Safe training courses and safety advice for all water users. It’s astounding how many fishermen don’t wear lifejackets, especially local pot-boat skippers who often work alone.
To try to educate fishermen the RNLI brought a dozen of them from around the UK down to their training base in Poole. All the skippers had previously attended the mandatory Personal Survival Techniques course (and it’s predecessors) which are run in swimming pools around the country. The RNLI trainers asked about lifejackets and got the usual story, the fishermen had them but rarely wore them. The general feedback was that as strong swimmers they were confident that should they fall in the sea, they would be able to swim back to their boat, climb up the tyres on the side and self-rescue. Interestingly, qualified divers and anyone who swam in the sea was excluded from the test group. Repeated attendance at sea survival training had led each fisherman to conclude that their lifejackets weren’t necessary.  The RNLI sought to challenge that belief.
The night before the training course, the trainers opened the doors around the training pool to let out the heat. Overnight the water temperature dropped to 15 degrees.  If you are a diver around the British Isle I am sure there are days where you dream of 15 degree water! At the first attempt the fishermen were asked to wear their normal deck attire and jump in to deep water to simulate falling off their boat. With no life jackets on, the impact of cold water shock was immediate. None of the 12 fishermen lasted longer than 5 minutes before a rescuer intervened. Post dip interviews revealed their shock and surprise at how debilitating the cold water was, definitely nothing like their sea survival training course.
Cold water shock is an immediate short-lived response to immersion in water less than 15 degrees. Blood vessels at the skin contract rapidly, increasing blood pressure and the heart rate. An initial gasp for air can be followed by a breathing rate that is 6-10x higher than normal. It is likely that cold water shock accounts for most deaths when people have unexpectedly entered the water. If you are not wearing flotation during this phase, keeping your head above water becomes the biggest problem.  Over the next 10 minutes, cold incapacitation reduces blood supply to the muscles, making it difficult to swim or self-rescue. A crew member throwing a life ring to you during this time will be frustrated that you can’t actually hold onto it or kick towards the safety of the vessel.
The following day the exercise was repeated but this time with lifejackets being worn. The same cold water shock reaction was initiated, but the fishermen didn’t have to work so hard to keep their airway out of the water, the cold incapacitation stage took longer therefore improving their chances of getting back to the ladder on their boat. You can see the videos from this exercise on the RNLI website.
This started me thinking about why divers were excluded from the test group. I’ve realised I still brace myself for the cold water after decades of diving. OK, I’m wearing a drysuit and the cold water shock reaction is pretty much limited to my head and hands. But how many of us drop beneath the surface in anticipation of that brain freeze moment? As the blood vessels rapidly contract they stimulate the trigeminal nerve sending pain signals to your brain. It hurts for a few moments until you become acclimatised. The fishermen in the RNLI training exercise couldn’t get past that brain freeze feeling.
I think we sometimes underestimate the impact that cold water immersion has on new divers. I can recognise it enough now, but when I think back to learning in a wetsuit I can remember the feeling of panic, rising heart rate and accelerated breathing rate as I used to get into the water. Although we will all recognise increased air consumption by trainee divers, perhaps part of this is their reaction to cold water immersion? I’m sure that with experience comes the anticipation, the forced control of breathing rate for the first few seconds, but until our new divers have developed their response, maybe we should keep a close eye on them for those first couple of minutes? If your trainees are hoofing through their air and their buoyancy is being disrupted by their rapid breathing rate, maybe it’s something to consider?

Love is in the air.  As divers we obviously prefer our air to be uncontaminated in anyway, but the reality is that many of us will meet our partners/spouses/significant others through our dive club, or on a course somewhere, or hanging around a dive boat.  There’s an honesty that comes with having a diving partner.  They already know about the hideously early starts to get to the slack water window on a dive site.  They understand the stress when your weekend trip is looming and you still haven’t managed to get to the dive shop for an air fill.  They are happy to abandon any idea that the garage will ever accommodate the car again as your collection of dive kit expands to fill the available space.  They know that you will finish your dive with hair resembling a bird’s nest and a smear of snot across your face.  And they won’t think any less of you for any of it.

In fact there is something evolutionarily positive about partnering up with another diver.  You’ve got a basic health screen for starters.  And there’s a reasonable level of physical fitness.  The ability to carry a 15 litre cylinder is a fine test for being able to carry the shopping in from the car or a laundry basket of wet washing.  Divers generally have a level of practical skills useful enough for most DIY.  And any Dive Leader who has successfully buddied a nervous, newly-qualified diver will have people skills to deal with most situations in life. 

I once took a diver out in Cyprus on a nice easy shore dive, but the slight swell running made getting back to shore one of those nauseating moments where the seaweed and us were moving in harmony but the seabed was doing its own thing.  This was too much for my nervous trainee who signalled and headed up.  We ascended together and on the surface she spat her reg out before she’d inflated her BCD.  Getting a firm grip on her, I reached for her inflator and hit the button.  My reward was a face full of vomit as her seasickness overtook her.  Never have I been so grateful for my mask and regulator.  But what excellent training for parenthood!  Anyone who has ever reared children will appreciate the desire to run away and get some SCUBA kit before changing an explosive nappy.  Even if your conscience overcomes you and you decide to stay with the baby, at least your breath hold techniques will come in very handy.

If your partner is not a diver then you will have to maintain the mystical air of the ‘deep sea diver’.  For non-divers our world can be a strange and confusing place, and their concepts of divers will be guided by Sean Connery as James Bond stepping out of a dry suit in Goldfinger.  His dinner jacket was immaculate.  I tried this once for a film themed fancy dress party.  I persuaded my dad to lend me his dinner jacket and dressed out of the back of the car, cunningly parked only 20 yards around the corner.  Fully suited with my dive kit on I walked to the front door and rang the bell.  It was July and by the time I had made my grand entrance perhaps 20 minutes had passed.  My pièce de résistance was to open my drysuit and step out.  And there I stood, in the crumpled, creased, soggy mess formally known as my dad’s dinner suit.  It was an entrance alright.  While paying the extortionate dry cleaning bill, I reflected on how the media portrays diving as such a glamorous sport and how we have a responsibility to keep that alive for our non-diving friends and relations.
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It’s only when we persuade the non-divers to come and try a SCUBA session that they will really understand what we’re up to and if we are lucky they may well be hooked too.  It’s possible to get married underwater in a number of places in the world.  Instead of saying “I do”, you can exchange “OK” signs and then go for the first kiss.  It won’t be a long, passionate, drawn-out snog!  But it will hopefully be the start of sharing life’s adventure with your buddy.  At least you should reduce the number of guests to something manageable as you can limit invites to qualified divers.  Why not score extra points with your dive buddies and make it a club trip?  After all you’re a diver – you can take the pressure!  Happy Valentine’s Day.

I want to dive all year round.  I’m not addicted to diving, of course.  I could give I up any time I want.  It’s my choice to have the kit and the training that allows me to be out whenever the conditions permit.
I started out my diving career in a wetsuit, a badly fitting, compressed, slightly smelly dive centre wetsuit.  It wasn’t described to me in those terms of course – it was a semi-dry suit, which is a term that has always puzzled me.  Semi-dry must by definition be semi-wet and how wet do you have to be before you are just wet?  Maybe my approach to life is too scientific but wet and dry are opposites and in my world ‘damp’ is still a form of wet.  So there I am in a wetsuit.  On my 9th dive, whilst on a diving course, I had my first hit of hypothermia.  It was a sunny day in Cornwall, but an old and poor fitting wetsuit was enough to make me cold in the water and then the wind chill back on the boat sapped my remaining core temperature.  I just remember feeling extraordinarily tired as I huddled down into the bottom of the RIB and passed out.  It took 3 or 4 days before I felt well again and the experience was enough to send me off to find out about the dangerous world of dry suit diving.

My Diving Officer at the time thought that drysuit diving was best left to the experienced guys so his ruling was that only Sports Divers with at least 2 years diving could use drysuits.  (And just in case you were wondering, yes Nitrox was the devil’s gas.)  I went outside the club for my training and have never looked back.  The first training session wasn’t auspicious. Despite the 5am arrival at Stoney Cove we still didn’t manage to get into the water until after some other divers had been in and come out.  The water dripping off their kit froze on the path and my buddies and instructor slid elegantly down into the water.*  The instructor I was diving with provided a membrane suit without any undersuit, but I was reassured that hiking socks, tracksuit bottoms and a long sleeved t-shirt would be fine.  The sweatshirt I’d brought was a layer too far and would have “doubled the amount of lead” I was carrying, so it was left in the car.  Needless to say I was freezing during and after the dive.  Inversion drills aren’t funny when your feet come out of the suit boots but I was so cold that I didn’t notice until I tried to fin.  It seems funny now, but as an instructor I would be mortified if I had taught such a poor course.  Half the students in my group gave up diving totally shortly afterwards!

So now I am an instructor I am acutely aware of hypothermia.  We’re taught on instructor courses that your kit as an instructor should mirror your students.  All of my instructor team wear dry suits, so it’s natural that so do our students.  Besides, there’s no point trying to teach someone whose only thoughts revolve around wanting to be somewhere warmer.  Our students not only get drysuit training but proper undersuits and socks as well.  We explain the cooling properties of sweat on cotton t-shirts and frown on those who keep mentioning that their mate in [insert name of a.n.other UK diving location here] has just been learning in a wetsuit – and they said it was sooo much easier.  Less dives and less to remember.  And ultimately less diving too!

Around the Isle of Man the sea hits it’s coldest at the end of February, beginning of March.  Over 120 years of continuous data recording at the sadly closed Port Erin Marine Lab have shown this to be the case.  It’ll bottom out at around 4 degrees and dry suits become essential.    Every so often the devil inside me offers the newly qualified diver with the ‘mate who learned in a wetsuit in the Irish Sea’ the chance to do a wetsuit dive.  That is usually the end of the topic and within a couple of weeks they’ll be in the dive centre being measured up for their drysuit.  This ensures that they too have the kit for that year-round hope that the wind will stop blowing, the swell will subside and the vis will superb. They join me in the ranks of fevered weather watchers just looking for the gap in Atlantic low pressure systems. The winter storms have stripped the kelp off the rocks now and this breathes a whole new perspective into our favourite sites.  Maybe I am addicted to diving. Winter diving?  Bring it on!
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*I lied about the elegant part.