Gather round and hear the story of Paul and Jacinta's "deep dive". The dive itself wasn't very deep at all, only 22.9 metres of water, it's the conditions around this dive that made it exceptional.

We woke up stupidly early, had breakfast, and sat down with our instructor for the briefing. We'd be dropping down to the sea-floor, doing some exercises, and then making our way gently up a coral wall not that far away. We were told that there was a bit of a current near the surface, but that would drop off as we got further down.

As we entered the water, it was clear that 'a bit of a current' was a bit of an understatement. Grabbing the J-line as it shot past we discovered that 'a bit of a current' was intent on sweeping us far away from the boat. We were glad that we could expect it to get weaker as we went down.

The three of us (Jacinta, the instructor, and myself) made our way to the anchor line. The instructor informed us that we shouldn't need to hold the line, just use it as a guide, but if the current was a bit strong we should be fine to grab it if need be. We all signalled for descent and started heading down -- the instructor first, then myself, and then Jacinta.

What we rapidly discovered is that the currently didn't drop off, it became stronger the further we went down. We were making a fast descent, but the current rapidly required us to hold onto the chain for support. By the time we reached 10 metres we were flapping like flags on the chain as we descended.

The other thing which became apparent is that the further we went down, the worse our visibility became. I could see Jacinta, the instructor, and about a metre of two of chain above and below, and that was it. As we continued down this dropped to me being able to see Jacinta, the instructor, and the chain immediately in front of my face. Clearly, the current was kicking up a bit of silt.

When we started to get near the bottom, the instructor signalled to me that we should let go of the chain and settle onto the surface below. Given that was only a metre or two below us, I thought this would be an easy task. I signalled that was OK to the instructor, and checked with Jacinta that it was OK with her. With everyone signalling OK, I let go of the chain and descended to the bottom with the instructor.

What I hadn't realised is that while I could see the instructor, the poor visibility meant that Jacinta could not. She had not seen the signals to descend to the bottom, and thought I was just doing regular checks to see if everything was OK. Jacinta also had no way of seeing that we were near the bottom, and so when I let go of the chain in this strong current, she very sensibly stuck to the chain.

I also hadn't expected that in the metre or two from where I let go of the chain to the bottom, the current would sweep me well away from the anchor. In fact, with the poor visibility I had no idea how far away we really were -- there was me, the instructor, a sea floor incredibly devoid of landmarks, and very little else.

The current was strong enough that I was clutching at the sea floor in an effort not to be swept away, and as you can imagine the effects of this -- plus the obvious fact that we had been separated from the anchor chain and dive buddy -- meant that the effects of stress were starting to become apparent.

The instructor had signalled a direction in which we could swim, and we proceeded to do so, with a great amount of effort required on my behalf. For some periods the instructor (who was a much stronger swimmer than I), was half-towing me. During this period I was completely disoriented, with no idea how we'd get back to the chain. The instructor, of course, knew exactly what to do and swam us directly against the current, and right back to where we had left the chain.

We arrived to find Jacinta finishing the last stages of her lost buddy procedure, and it was only that she saw our bubbles that she did not start to slowly ascend the chain to the surface. It took a couple of attempts for me to become re-attached to the chain -- I was exhausted and having difficulties judging distance. Jacinta practically hauled me onto the chain. By this stage I had chewed through a significant amount of air.

Once we were all together, we descended to the sea floor, keeping a tight grip of the chain as the current was still increasing. We did a couple of exercises, mainly observing how regular objects like drink bottles and pancake mix reacted to the increased pressure. We didn't do very many exercises, as I had signalled a few times to the instructor that we should be thinking about ascending given my air usage and remaining reserves.

The instructor made the suggestion that we should swim over to the coral wall and ascend that, but given our existing adventures, the lack of visibility, the strong current, and the fact that Jacinta and myself had no idea of the direction of the wall, we signalled back that it wasn't an idea we wanted to entertain. We were going to ascend the anchor line.

The instructor conceded to our wishes, and we began to ascend, hand-over-hand, up the chain. In order to check gauges we would loop an arm around the chain and grip our BC, a necessary procedure as neither of us were confident of remaining on the chain while gripping with only a single hand. To make matters more interesting there was now a bit of chop on the surface, so the chain was climbing and falling, since it was attached to the bow of the ship. This give us a variety of interesting readings from our gauges.

Upon reaching our 5m safety stop I had about 60 bar of air remaining, and both regulations and common sense require us to surface with at least 50 bar. As such, for the duration of the safety stop I was breathing off the instructor's octopus (secondary regulator), flapping around like a flag, and being heaved up-and-down by the boat moving on the surface above. A rather uncomfortable position, albeit one that would no doubt be amusing to an onlooker.

After what seemed like an eternity on the safety stop, we finally ascended to the surface. This provided me with another important lesson -- when ascending near a boat, be aware of that boat's location. While I didn't collide with the boat, I did come up underneath it and had to swim out to the side.

Upon the surface we grabbed the J-line, and gratefully accepted the assistance of the crew in getting on board. The instructor admitted that the dive wasn't "quite as he had planned", but we performed admirably nonetheless. After getting out of our gear, having a drink of water and a de-brief, we proceeded to cook the pancake-mix we had taken down to 23 metres and enjoy a lovely meal.

	Web pjf.id.au

Technical clue provided by Perl Training Australia

Copyright 2000-2008 Paul Fenwick. Copyright information