Internet experts - they're everywhere!

​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!