Author: Claudio Di Manao
Divemastering: or: psychopathology and setbacks of daily diving.
from the Red Sea, Claudio Di Manao
Why do people go underwater?
From the perspective of a poor gorgonian attacked at Ras Umm Sid, or a guide struggling to catch those who bounce, go backwards, and then panic, this question makes sense. A lot of sense.
So, let's try to understand together what drives man... or rather, certain men and women generically called "divers," to venture into the underwater world. Is it boredom with aquariums? A thirst for adventure? The blue cast? Or that silence that drowns out the chatter of wives, children, boyfriends, carpet salesmen, and village entertainers?
Each of these answers, on its own, could provide a valid explanation. And we would accept it if strange and contradictory phenomena hadn't occurred in the behavior of the human species we call "divers," or, more scientifically, Homo subacquaticus. To begin with, we should retrace some of the steps of the past together, going far, far back in time, to the days of that cool guy Alexander the Great, for example, who had himself sealed in a glass bell and lowered into the Persian Gulf. Unfortunately, they hadn't yet invented PADI and the PADI manuals, with their little drawings of airspace and upturned glasses brought to the bottom of a swimming pool, and since they hadn't even invented FIPS, Alexander burst his eardrum and died.
“ Nonsense, we don't know anything about it! ”
No, wait, let me finish: he didn't die immediately afterward! He died because he was deaf. In fact, the night he was poisoned, someone whispered in his offended ear that the cook was pouring a strange substance from a strange green bottle into his meal, but he replied, "Huh? Fire?" The other man let it go, because fighting with the deaf is unnerving, and what happened happened. From this, you should understand the crucial importance of adequate equalization. Unfortunately, knowing how to equalize well and keeping your ears healthy isn't enough in itself to go underwater. There are other important things, which I won't explain here because this isn't a scuba diving course.
But let's move forward through the centuries: after Alexander, the first man in history to suffer a fatal barotrauma, we move forward in time, to the deep-sea divers, Haldane and the first tables, the first daredevils with breathing machines of the various navies. What did these men have in common besides a great desire for challenge and adventure? Gambling debts? The closure of the local pub? These men feared nothing. To take to the water with those tables and that equipment, they truly weren't afraid of a damn thing.
Here we are, slowly but surely, approaching our times, the times of recreational diving, the times of reliable equipment, dive tour operators, and instructional videos featuring bejeweled women with painted nails emptying their regulators. It should be easier.
Yet nothing:
“I do it for him, only for him!”
How many times has an instructor heard this response from a student in a one-on-one meeting while he's there rummaging around with his doughnuts under the steps?
In this case, the matter is solvable: simply explain that all your exes were diving instructors, and that every time you took them flying in ultralights or suggested a skydive from a cliff, they'd shit themselves, one by one, and that you never insisted or pressured them about the matter again, because human beings have the freedom to choose. You tell this story, and they brighten up and let it go. Sure, it's not good for the diving business, but it's better this way than creating disgruntled victims. In short: no one can force anyone to become a surveyor, a parking attendant, or a musician. While this coercive system has produced Mozarts and Beethovens in the past, we only know these two who succeeded, but we know nothing about those children who became anorexics or sexual maniacs for the same reasons.
The problem gets much more complicated when you meet someone who's got it into their head that going underwater is a test of their courage and virility. (The concept of virility here extends to women as well.) Extreme sports have this effect: they attract certain types. What's so extreme about recreational scuba diving? If you're terrified of water, 12-meter scuba diving is an extreme sport. This is where things get serious, because these people are hard to convince to stop torturing themselves: they've already bought the equipment, and the instructor doesn't have the courage to fail them because they've done all the exercises. You give them time. Time to become familiar with the water, with themselves, with the equipment. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It's a chemical reaction, adrenaline, intense breathing, and trembling legs are involved. And why is that? And how does it happen? This isn't a physiology course. The point is that if they panic they are at risk, and this, more than a medical issue, is a social issue, which concerns all of us divers, instructors and open water divers.
Then there are those who aren't having fun, no way. Show them a rare nudibranch and they shrug their shoulders; take them among schools of barracudas and they look at you condescendingly. Show them the reflections of a soft coral held up to the light and they turn away, or they chase an anchovy. These are the ones who have a cinematic, or photographic... (in short, something unreal) vision of diving. They think life is a movie, and when reality doesn't surpass the artifice, they complain.
We'll conclude with those who don't know how to dive, but dive because they have a license. The instructor, through distraction, a lack of patience or experience, or simply because he couldn't find the words to tell them (let alone how venal humans can become!), certified them. And you, me, and anyone else reading this right now, have to dive because a license authorized them to do so. I know I'm on the verge of stirring up trouble, and now you're wondering what license, what training program, who issued it. It doesn't matter. They have a license and they drive. And they don't know how to do it, no more, no less. How do you find out if they know how to do it? You only find out with the check dive, but we'll talk about that later. Do you take them? Don't you take them? Do you tell them they should start over? We'll answer these dangerous questions too.
“ Come on! ” (now I've made you angry, I know) “ We divers aren't all like that! ”
I DIDN'T SAY THAT. This list of underwater typologies was only meant to raise doubts in some of you, very few of you... or rather, just you and me:
Why do people go underwater?
I propose you a list of answers:
- a) Because it's beautiful.
- b) Because you feel weightless.
- c) Because it's a fantastic way to disconnect from surface thoughts.
- d) Because there are so many beautiful things to see.
- e) Because light underwater is spatial.
- f) Because sometimes it's like dreaming without completely losing yourself.
- g) Because, like in James Bond movies, you go with lots of beautiful women in bikinis
The correct answer is: all of the above . Does this remind you of anything?
Greetings and bubbles.
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