​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 Office 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.