UKDIVING
Let me take your tiny dSMB from you
1 Embarrassment is your enemy
It’ s your first dive of the week and it turns out you were underweighted. You try to hold your safety stop but, in a blink, you find yourself on the surface. Awkward. You look around. The dive boat is some way away. Great! You’ ve got away with it. Telling your buddy to stay schtum, you head for the lift.
Look, stuff happens. Nobody will think you’ re a bad diver – until you get back on the boat and insist nothing’ s wrong. My friend, your Suunto is screeching like a seagull outside a chip shop and I saw you surface feet-first with five metres of string between you and your dSMB. Now I’ m concerned. I sit you down and offer you oxygen.
This is the point where you can choose to be a bad diver. The good ones grab the oxygen and breathe it, monitoring their symptoms and putting up with 11 other people asking if they’ re okay. The bad ones wave it away and insist they had a totally normal dive. Do they end up saving face? Of course not. Just ask any politician: it’ s not the mistake that ruins your reputation; it’ s always the cover-up.
2 Positivity is your friend
My favourite thing about the job was seeing people’ s faces as they came back up on the lift: people surfacing from their first dive on the Kronprinz or the Markgraf; the thrill of a teenager who’ s just done her first 40m dive, and the pride
Stromness, rainbow capital of the world
32
That hot drink doesn’ t reach you by accident