​Sellafield is located across the Irish Sea on the Cumbrian coast and is approximately 32 miles from the Isle of Man, on a clear day you can just about see it. The main activities at the plant include reprocessing of spent fuel from nuclear power reactors and storage of nuclear waste. There are no longer any nuclear power plants in operation at the Sellafield site. It was built in the late 1940s to manufacture plutonium for atomic bombs and Sellafield is one of the most radioactive places on earth. In its prime the plant was releasing eight million litres of contaminated waste into the sea every day. In 1957 the plant became the site of the worst nuclear accident in Great Britain's history, The Windscale Fire. This was a blaze that raged for three days, releasing radioactive gases into the air. The discharge of low level liquid wastes from the Sellafield site in the north west of England is the most significant source of artificial radioactivity in the Irish marine environment.
Now the site is mainly used for nuclear fuel reprocessing, and this and other activities gives rise to the discharge of low level radioactive materials in the form of liquids and gases into the environment. These discharges are regulated by the UK authorities and limits for releases are set by the Environment Agency of England and Wales (EA). Liquid radioactive waste is discharged from the plant into the Irish Sea via a pipeline, about 3 km from land. Gases are released from the plant via a number of chimneys (referred to as ‘stacks’). Discharges into the Irish Sea peaked in the mid-1970s and have dropped significantly in recent years. This is as a result of improved waste treatment facilities at Sellafield, which convert much of this radioactive waste into a solid for long-term storage.
As a result of the discharges from Sellafield, low levels of artificial radioactivity can be detected in sediments, seawater, seaweeds, fish and shellfish taken from the Irish Sea. A wide range of marine samples are collected and analysed on a regular basis by both the EA and the Manx Government. This monitoring can show where the radioactive particles become concentrated.  As expected many particles end up in sea bed sediment, so there are sometimes slight increases when the winter storms have been especially ferocious and stirred up the seabed. Generally, levels are falling from their peak in 1998. 
There are several radioactive isotopes that are monitored, Technetium-99, Caesium-137 and 134 and Cobalt-60. Of these, Tc-99 is regularly tested for by catching lobsters. Tc-99 concentrations in our local lobsters have declined from a peak of around 400Bqkg-1 in February 1998 to average 10 Bqkg-1 during 2015. These Tc-99 concentrations are lower than the levels found in lobsters caught off the Cumbrian coast. The EC recommended maximum permitted level for Tc-99 in seafood which is 1250 Bqkg-1, so these lobsters are safe to eat and regularly eating seafish will only make a minor contribution to your overall radiation exposure.
Now it’s not true to say that lobsters are immortal, but once they reach adulthood they don’t have many predators except humans. Good lobster fishery management sets minimum landing sizes for lobsters, ensuring that they are at least able to breed once before being caught. Small lobsters can get out of pots through the escape hatch or they are returned to the sea anyway.
Just as lobster pots discriminate against small lobsters, they also prevent very large lobsters from getting in.  Consequently, larger lobsters do tend to live a very long time.  The lifespan of European lobsters has been estimated at between 30 and 50 years.  Large lobsters have lived through the peak discharges from Sellafield, unlike their smaller 3-4 year old counterparts who got caught in lobster pots and tested. Lobsters have a fairly high affinity for Tc99 and they accumulate the radioactive particles in their bodies. But the only real predator for the large lobsters is, you’ve guessed it, divers. 
Something to think about the next time you wrestle a monster lobbie from under a rock

​Some years ago I craved having a tropical fish tank. I’d had coldwater fish starting with the short-lived goldfish I won at the carnival hoopla stand, but tropical fish seemed like they were more interesting. The big problem is that a fish tank is a bugger of a thing to move and at that time in my life it became a chore and a burden. I relocated 6 times with the fish in bags inside a coolbox, hence it was with some relief that when the last fish died I emptied out the last of the water and put the tank away, promising that when life was a little less hectic I’d get it back out and set it up again. About 6 months later disaster struck when I cracked the glass at one end, but I didn’t get rid of the tank, just planned on repairing it. One of those tasks on my endless to-do list.
And then my goals changed. Stuff the guppies and their frilly tails, why not set up a coldwater marine tank? After all I spend a large amount of my life underwater, why not bring some of the great critters back? Several times a year I visit schools on the Isle of Man and bring a variety of sea creatures in to meet the children and explaining something about their lifecycles. I’ve developed a habit of going and collecting little stuff anyway.
A chance conversation with one of our club members who wanted to rehome one of his tanks, ended up in him loaning me a pump and a chiller unit as well as a fish tank without a crack in the end. At 10am we were having a brew in the dive centre and by 2pm I was stood ankle deep on the slipway filling a cleaned out sofnolime container with seawater. Our marine tank was installed and populated within 24 hours. And if I thought the tropical freshwater tank was hard work, I had another shock coming. Weekly 50 litre seawater changes are just hard work.
I now spend my time thinking about the ecological balance of the tank much more than I ever bothered with guppies. When you keep tropical fish there is loads of info about how many fish per litre of water etc, for British marine life tanks there isn’t the same guidance. A small edible crab was a disaster and massacred poor Kevin the Masked Crab within 24 hours. Kevin had a dodgy past himself, and was often seen amputating limbs from small brittle stars, so he was called Kevin the Killer Crab, but we had grown fond of him and it was sad to see parts of his exoskeleton scattered around the tank.
Our current population includes about 10 hermit crabs, who mainly seem to fight over shells and ignore the rest of the inhabitants. We have two small shore crabs, although one of them is getting a little larger and consequently even hungrier. I’ve a feeling he’ll be heading back to the shore next weekend. We’ve ended up with about 30 North Atlantic Prawns who pounce any food in the tank, and will come to your hand if you put it in. Small Purple Henry starfish, a juvenile scallop, a small common sea urchin, some limpets, Top Shells and Periwinkles complete the scene. We’ve had small fish (they get eaten).
The current star of the show is our Leach’s Spider Crab (Inachis phalangium). Leachy has a small triangular carapace which will reach a maximum of 3cm. I picked him as he ran across a sandy patch between rocks. I’ve seen small spider crabs before, but never really bothered too much about them.  Leachy’s small size made him a target for the tank. After a short trip in an old ice-cream container, he was released in the tank. On the same day, another diver brought in 3 small Snakelocks Anemones.
It turns out that Leach’s Crabs have a commensal relationship with Snakelocks Anemones, the crab benefits but not to the detriment of the anemone. Females stay with their anemone and males will rove around looking for a mate and then return home. They are beautifully camouflaged, with legs covered in sponges and algae. This isn’t by chance, Leach’s Spider Crab actively collects sponges and algae and attaches them to specially shaped spines on their legs and carapace. The sponges are unpalatable and stop predators from attacking the spider crab. The algae form a part of the diet, which also includes food debris from the anemone and the mucus from the tentacles. Our intrepid little Leachy has beautifully evolved to fit into his ecological niche. Admittedly, that’s not meant to be in a dive centre tank, but on the plus side, none of his natural predators are there. We’ve so far avoided large fish or octopus. Periwinkles occasionally find their way out past the pipe work so we’d have no chance of keeping a cephalopod and Leachy is safe for now and I’ve learned a lot more about him.

​Once upon a time my Editor and I went diving together.  It was a few weeks after he had penned an opinion that back entry dry suits were an integral part of the buddy relationship.  It was, he opined, important to trust your dive buddy to close the ridiculously expensive brass zip without trapping your undersuit or that annoying flappy bit of neoprene stuck in the back of several suits.  Relying on your buddy to ensure the zip was closed all the way, contributed to the mutual support aim of buddy diving.  As we stood kitting up for our dive, I happily fastened my front-entry plastic zip with the minimum of fuss and decided to tackle Simon about his ill thought-out piece. 
I have a front entry suit because I like being responsible for myself…or more precisely I don’t always trust my buddies, especially if my buddy is a trainee or new to dry suit diving.  I lack the ability to rotate my neck like a barn owl to check that everything is OK behind me.  It only takes one trainee, who earnestly assures you that the zip is closed when in fact it’s half an inch open, to make you reconsider.  When that cold rush of sea water starts running down your shoulder, you know that this is one mistake you won’t be making again! 
But how do you get the dive manager or boat crew to double check your zip without offending your buddy? Surreptitiously sidle over to the crew as you leave harbour, keep your voice low so it can barely be heard above the engines (and definitely not by your buddy) and assume some wistful position that doesn’t look like you’re hugging a large imaginary tree?  And of course all the while you must try not to offend your buddy and generate “trust issues” because at the very first time you are supposed to rely on their assistance you bailed and found another source of help.
So for me a front entry suit solves all of these problems.  If my zip isn’t closed properly, then that’s my fault and my soggy right leg. For anyone thinking of getting a suit with a plastic dry zip, they are fabulous but never ignore the need for silicon greasing the stop end, even between dives if you’ve peeled out of your suit. But it’s my responsibility and I’m good with that.
Front entry suits frequently have two zips, the dry one and a cover zip, and this can cause endless problems too.  I took my eye off the ball one day whilst doing a dry suit introduction in the pool.  I will accept some of the blame, but we had just done a session at the dive centre trying on suits, and the concept of a dry zip and a cover zip had been discussed as we established that this particular suit was a good fit.  I am to blame for thinking that our discussion would be remembered barely an hour later when we kitted up on poolside.  When I turned to look at my two eager divers, they had closed their zips and were ready for the stride entry. Yes, the cover zip was closed.  No, the dry zip wasn’t.  Yes, the suit filled with water (luckily the warm pool version). No, the diver couldn’t climb up the pool ladder unaided. The phrase “I seem to be getting a little wet” was a total understatement on her part.  Once dekitted, we laid the unfortunate lady down and rolled her around on the pool surround to empty the water.  To give her credit she laughed nearly as much as we did and gamely carried on the orientation session. Five years on she is still diving, in a front entry suit, which she knows has two zips and one of them is very important.
Sadly she’s not the only one who’s been caught out in this way.  Even some quite experienced visiting divers have missed the ‘hard to do up’ brass zip and relied on the ‘easy to do up’ cover zip in one of our rental suits.  A cold shot of Irish Sea water down the leg is a salutary lesson in the need to familiarise yourself with hired equipment.  So for anyone who read, noticed and remembered Simon’s treatise on the importance of back zipped suits for buddy trust and diving, maybe I was wrong to criticise him and perhaps divers with front entry zips could do with their buddy’s assistance, just sometimes. 

One of the best things about running a dive centre is the diversity of the clients that walk through the door.  One of the worst things about running a dive centre is the diversity of the clients that walk through the door.  Our centre is multi-agency which means we can honestly offer the most suitable training to each person that comes to us.  We’ve become experts at chatting to prospective divers about their interests, travel plans and diving aspirations and offering them considered and justified advice about their training. 

But when people walk through the door the first thing they will say is “I want to do my PADI.”  The marketing spend and brand awareness for PADI is huge and there’s the common misconception that only a PADI cert will be accepted elsewhere in the world.

Like many experienced divers, I’m entitled to carry a range of cards covering a number of different aspects of diving, but I pick which ones I take on trips with me.  Somewhere in one of my filing cabinets is my set of cards but rarely do they see the light of day.  I once had the misfortune to be on a Red Sea liveaboard with a guy who when asked to prove his diver grade slapped a huge wallet of cards on the table with the classic line “There’s 50 years of diving experience in there. Take your pick.”  It was unnecessarily aggressive and made all the sweeter when, later in the trip, this same guy was the one who surfaced from the night dive to check where the boat was before dropping back to 12m to finish his dive.  Obviously the 50 years of experience didn’t include basic navigation.

In truth, BSAC qualifications generally carry a large amount of kudos.  We train in some really tidal, very murky conditions and our training includes a huge amount of dive and rescue planning that stands us in good stead wherever we pitch up in the world.  On a particularly difficult pick up from the Rosalie Muller in the Red Sea it was our experienced divers who took over recovering the divers from the water, threw out grab lines and carefully timed their assistance with the pitching of the boat.  No shouting.  No fuss.  They just stepped forward and stopped a difficult situation developing into one that would have ended up in the BSAC incident report.

The Isle of Man hosts motorsport events throughout the year, the TT in June, Southern 100 in July and the Manx Grand Prix in August.  These events attract large numbers of foreign visitors carrying a variety of dive qualifications, some stating CMAS equivalence and several requiring translation.  We’ve met and dived with some fantastic divers from around the globe, and we’ve had some very deluded people walk through the door.  My favourite has to be the bloke who walked in and announced in a very heavy Eastern European accent “I vant to dive vith the sharks!”  A little gentle questioning established that he had done a try dive, in a hotel swimming pool in Turkey, about 5 years ago.  We carefully explained how much legal protection covers the basking sharks that come to pup and breed in Manx waters, that they avoid divers, that he wasn’t qualified and no, we couldn’t just hire him some kit.  He left muttering and we breathed a collective sigh of relief.

We run two boats from our dive centre and when necessary have the services of a third boat.  The skipper’s first question when I call him to book a group is to ask “Are they BSAC? That’s OK then.”  He knows he will get divers who, thanks to the strong club system, will turn up as an organised team and just get on with it.  Delayed SMBs aren’t a special course, they’re mainstream.  Nitrox isn’t something just for multiple dives on a liveaboard, but for safety in everyday diving.  And should anyone have any difficulty there will be someone throwing out a grab line and watching the pitch of the boat as they go to assist.
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But of course I’m not claiming BSAC clubs are perfect.  We’ve had the divers who got confused when they ran out of dishwasher tablets and put washing up liquid in the machine instead (Don’t try this at home without a mop and bucket handy).  We’ve had the clubs that plead for discounts, usually for the ‘poor students’ and their trip turns out to be comprised of university staff and post-docs on sizeable bursaries. And we all look forward to hearing about the club politics as the week goes on.

Anyone who runs a retail business will tell you that they are regularly approached for donations to a variety of charities.  It’s a common thing for businesses to choose charities that reflect their employees’ interests or even to have an annual pitch from the employees to pick a charity of the year.  In our dive centre we have collecting boxes for the local Hyperbaric Chamber and the RNLI, both close to divers’ hearts and interests. 

The reality is that I’ve never been to the chamber for anything more than a planned visit and I’ve never called out the lifeboat.  In fact we’ve responded to several emergencies at sea and reduced the times that Port St Mary lifeboat has been scrambled.  So although we actively fundraise for both these charities, we definitely count in the low/no user group.  But it’s reassuring to know that they are both there if we ever need them.

I have come to the conclusion that the RNLI isn’t always the diver’s best friend.  With improved navigation aids and communications, excellent training and really powerful pumps our local lifeboat has been involved in many incidents.  We know many of the crew, in fact we taught several of them to dive.  The Isle of Man is blessed with numerous wrecks, many still unidentified.  These are the product of two World Wars and, in the past, considerable navigation errors.  Stick a lump of rock in the middle of the Irish Sea and it seems like a considerable number of vessels will manage to run into it!  But all these wrecks are gradually deteriorating, leaving just the boilers and maybe the prop shaft behind amidst a collapsed mess of plates and ribs.  As time marches inexorably onwards, the decay takes its toll and within the next few years several of these sites will all but disappear.  So my big dilemma is this, where will the next generation of wrecks come from?

I can’t have been the only diver who watched the Riverdance drama unfold in 2008.  Once the crew and passengers had been safely lifted off and she was adrift towards the Blackpool coast, I admit I was willing her, telepathically transmitting a “Sink. Sink. Sink” message.  The seabed between the Isle of Man and the North West of England is rarely more than 40m.  Just imagine a wreck of that size as a dive site.  The Zenobia of the North West.  But oh no!  A conspiracy between the RAF, coastguard, ship owners and RNLI meant that they had manoeuvred her towards the shore until she was abandoned and by then she was so far inshore that she ran aground.  She rapidly became a big tourist attraction, but after several failed attempts to refloat her, the owners sliced Riverdance into scrap metal and carted her away to an ignominious end.  What an utter waste of a brilliant dive site!

So much as I love the RNLI I have come to the conclusion that they are not really a diver’s best friend.  All this pumping out boats and towing them back to harbour malarkey is not good for maintaining a decent number of wrecks to dive.  A recent faulty fire alarm panel in a neighbouring building saw the fire brigade arrive at 7am outside the dive centre.  The building was locked up, but having established that no-one was in the building and there was no fire, they all accepted a cup of tea (in our DDRC mugs of course) and left with the alarm still ringing.  I want the RNLI to take the same approach – if there’s no one in danger then just leave the ship to become a wreck.  Don’t worry about where it’s going to end up, we have sounders and towable cameras to find it.  A last known position will do and we’ll take it from there.
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Sir William Hillary lobbied for the inception of the RNLI after witnessing the destructive power of the Irish Sea around the Isle of Man.  He took part in commanding a volunteer crew in the heroic rescue of all the passengers of the St George as she struck Connister Rock outside Douglas harbour in 1830.  The Isle of Man is proud of our longstanding association with the RNLI and Douglas boasts the first Life boat station.  But in the early days the rescues were aimed at saving lives, the saving vessels part came later.  All I’m asking for is the crews to be a little more pragmatic…..the next generation of wrecks lies in their hands!

​For a while just before Christmas a couple of years ago, the common description of the Isle of Man as ’80,000 people clinging to a rock in the Irish Sea’ couldn’t have seemed more real.  Our only winter capable ferry managed to ingest some lobster pots cunningly set in the entrance to the harbour, destroying one of the bow thrusters essential for manoeuvring into the tight confines of her berths both here and in the UK.  A period of windy and stormy conditions meant that several sailings were cancelled, the schedule went to the wall and running the Dive Centre during this time was a challenge.  Customer orders couldn’t get through so there were a few ‘I ordered it in plenty of time, but it didn’t arrive yet’ apologies to some of the local divers on Christmas morning.  But in general the poor weather meant there wasn’t much diving going on anyway however the security of supplies should actually be a worry for all divers.  We see it as a challenge to arrange expeditions to remote locations, carrying with us tonnes of equipment, fuel and supplies to dive in some of the lesser known spots.  The planning takes weeks if not months, and part of the satisfaction is diving knowing that you have overcome all the obstacles.  But just think what your diving would be like if that was the level of organisation that you had to run to all the time.

It’s no secret that the current economic climate is hitting leisure industries hard, and that includes dive equipment manufacturers, retail operations, dive training schools and charter businesses.  The whole sector has seen a contraction in spending, and those who depend on it for their living are working harder and longer than ever to keep going.  I spent 2 hours last weekend advising a diver on kit, discussing the relative merits of different options, measuring him for a dry suit and painstakingly working out a competitive price for the choices.  As I slaved over the pricelist and a calculator I saw the dreaded smart phone in his hand and watched in horror as he scanned the barcode and searched for an online price.  Despite the time that I spent, the various configurations that I’d rigged for him to try and the detailed knowledge I provided, he ordered online whilst standing just outside the shop!

It’s a free market and of course he can choose where to buy from.  Some of the big dealers can get much better trade rates than the small guys and rely on high volume of sales to make their money.  However, a word of warning; if the kit was supplied by us, we would happily set it up, take him for an orientation to his new kit in the pool followed by a weight-check dive.  Any warranty issues would rest squarely with us and if we couldn’t sort it out in our workshop, we would happily lend him replacement kit whilst we dealt with the returns process.  These are all little things that we would do as we recognise that the commitment to buying dive kit is a big step, and a little guidance along the way can make a huge difference.  How many new divers buy exactly what someone in their club, usually the loudest person in the bar, told them to get?  And how many change their kit within two years?
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With heavy hearts now we have had to introduce an admin charge to deal with warranty issues for which although we are a dealer but did not supply the item.  If we didn’t make even a small amount of profit selling it, we can’t justify paying the postage to send it off to be repaired.  And if the owner of new kit wants to try it out, then we will be charging him for the pool or open water sessions.  So how much does the odd £20 that he saved really matter?  Obviously to him that mattered a lot, but perhaps now he’s seen the value to the service we provide he’ll reconsider?  The good news is that no-one has yet invented a way to download air via a USB cable, so we’ll be seeing him back in the store real soon.  Have a think about the security of your supply chain for diving.  Local Dive Stores have overheads and may cost a little more, but they will be around to supply your air, provide repairs at short notice, hire kit, give advice and support your purchases.  Your diving activities would be infinitely more difficult if they disappeared.

The beauty of running a dive centre is that we become the first port of call for the ‘odd projects’ that come along.  Over the years this has varied between organising dive conferences, running evening snorkel safaris, recovering plankton data recorders, surveying scallops, razor shells and caves, and every so often some film work. A while ago I worked with a German film presenter whose task was to catch and cook some scallops.  Part of the director’s vision was that the poor presenter didn’t know the plan until she arrived on the shoot.  This is a European programme so she’s seen Belgian chocolate factories, Swiss cheese makers and now she was headed for the bottom of the Manx sea bed. 

In situations like this your Instructor Sense starts tingling as bad as Peter Parker’s Spidersense ever did.  How much diving has she done? Has she dived in cold water before?  Has she used a dry suit before?  Has she ever used a full face mask and comms?  The director shrugged the questions off with an air of nonchalance that only a non-diver could maintain.  Would it be alright if they flew in on the Saturday morning, did the filming and flew out in the evening?  Involuntarily my hand flew up to smack my own forehead as I briefly lost my air of professionalism.  Cue a lengthy discussion about sea conditions, weather, familiarisation with new kit and skills, risks of DCI and flights. Oh and the scallops in question being out of season at the time they wanted to film, making us liable to a fine of £50,000!

The Director of Fisheries was duly contacted and issued a special permit for us to collect and retain enough scallops for the filming.  The TV director was persuaded that a three or four day filming period was needed to be able to teach his presenter the necessary skills, safety divers were lined up and we started anxiously watching the weather.  I read somewhere the other day that many teenagers wake up and check their Facebook profile before getting out of bed, brushing their teeth, using the toilet or anything else.  I’d like to think I’d never be that bad, but I’ve realised lately that I can find the weather apps on my iPhone before I’ve really opened my eyes in the morning.  I’ve become a compulsive forecast watcher.  And as filming days approached the weather was looking less and less favourable.

We took the executive decision to go and catch our scallops early and store them so that we would at least be able to ‘seed’ a sheltered bay if the weather really turned bad.  As the scallop season had closed in June we hadn’t bothered going near our favourite scallop spot over the summer.  We dropped down in anticipation and were stunned by the state of the seabed.  Port St Mary Ledges are a series of limestone gullies running out from the shore.  Although the dredgers run up and down the sand at around 30m, they never usually come into the rock ledges – but that must have changed last year.  If we’d sunk a tractor and ploughed the seabed it couldn’t have been any worse.  The deep gouges through the rock and sandy gullies had cleared every bit of life; the hydroids, dead man’s fingers and sponges had all been ripped away. And there were no scallops at all.  Luckily our back up plan for a slightly deeper, more tidal site came through and we collected our scallops for the shoot.
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The shooting days were long and repetitive.  The weather was as bad as predicted and the visibility was poor.  Our safety divers ‘seeded’ the seabed from the bottom of the shot line.  Never before has a skipper so confidently said “Head North and you’ll find the scallop bed.”  But our presenter wasn’t happy.  The overwhelming amount of new skills and new kit, the demands from the director and film crew and challenging surface and underwater conditions tipped her over the edge.  For a couple of hours she sulked in the cabin next to the heater, declaring that she had never been so cold and miserable in her life.  Never underestimate the power of divers to ‘make things happen’.  We dressed our male dive intern in the female presenter’s drysuit, gloves, mask and hood, dropped off the back of the boat and went and did some more filming anyway.  The dive brief was short and sweet and mainly consisted of reminding him “Don’t look into the camera” repeatedly!

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.