UKDIVING KIRSTYANDREWS
How do you spend yours ?
Are decompression stops a time for thoughtful contemplation , a spot of mischief or yet more photography ? Kirsty Andrews considers the options
Ah , the decompression stop . Enforced minutes of doing not-a-lot at the end of the dive , when you might be cold / bored / needing relief of some sort … do the seconds tick by too slowly , or do they pass in a flash ?
Casting my mind back a few years , I used to be a fan of the odd game on a safety stop . My dive slate was filled with noughts and crosses , hangman , and after a few of these my buddies and I might even progress to a mimed ‘ I spy with my little eye ’… ingenious ! It is on decompression stops that I first learned the important signals for ‘ I desperately need a wee ’, ‘ why isn ’ t my computer counting down fast enough ’ and ‘ no , I definitely don ’ t want to do the Hokey Cokey ’.
These days I ’ m far too cool for such antics . If I ’ m hanging out by a shotline I ’ ll be examining every inch of it for exciting lifeforms , be they juvenile lumpsuckers ( two found so far !) or teeny tiny caprellid shrimps ( inevitably you ’ ll surface covered in the things and the whole boat will point and laugh at the infestation ). If I ’ m going with the flow midwater with my SMB then my camera is still poised to capture any jellyfish , comb jellies , sharks , dolphins , whales , submarines or other enticements that might pass by .
Do you ignore any other divers and gaze into space , imagining yourself an aquatic astronaut and tuning in to your inner Zen ? Or are you the chatty type , trying your hardest to describe the original purpose of that particular piece of rusty metal you ’ ve just seen , using only your threefinger mitts and the medium of dance , to the exasperation of your bemused buddy ? Maybe your conscientious nature compels you to use those bonus minutes productively to practise shut-down drills , gas switches and extra bubble checks . Or maybe you ’ re a competitive type and without acknowledging it you are not-so-secretly showing off that your buoyancy and trim is the most admirable of them all . Not for you , the hanging off the buoy or shotline ; your breathing control and carefully balanced kit weighting keep you attuned perfectly to the ocean , thank you very much .
For those who can ’ t possibly wait to surface , it is possible to take drinks and snacks down with you , to while away those final minutes . Compressible containers for the former and easily chewable / swallowable for the latter are advised . I ’ ve seen waterproof MP3 players and laminated magazines in use , but these would suggest a length of deco stop beyond my own comfort zone . Half an hour is about my personal limit , and if a stage of rich mix can cut that down a bit , so much the better .
My buddy Fred gets bonus points here for demonstrating a new skill of bubble blowing on this particular extended stop in Scapa Flow . We ’ d ascended from a perfectly enjoyable dive on the Bayern Turrets at 35m and had ten minutes or so to hang around . Thankfully Fred understood my signals for ‘ ooh , that ’ s fun , could you just do that again , I didn ’ t quite catch it on camera ’, ‘ again please , I got my camera settings wrong ’, ‘ one more time please ’ … Never spend a deco stop with a bored photographer . �
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