bottomless dark, inky void that filled me with foreboding. Was I really going down that far into that?
Looking around at either side of me, other than the boat I was holding onto, there was nothing that I could see other than empty water. It struck me that this was something of a tenuous position to be in. I was far out from shore clinging to a small inconsequential speck of a rubber boat with a single outboard attached to it - and was preparing to let go of that meagre modicum of safety to plunge down into the depths.
I kicked my legs and finned to the front of the Zodiac where the anchor line dropped away down below. I looked down the line as far as I could and saw it disappearing into the inky void, seemingly into infinity. This was something totally new to me – I hadn’t been in water this deep before and had not expected it to look, well. …. so deep.
Colin looked at me, eyes seemingly bulging through his facemask and gave me the OK question signal. I gave the OK signal back, belying my apprehension and he then gave the thumbs down sign, the sign to start going down. He dipped his head down and raised his feet high and the weight pressing down helped him duck dive. He started going down the line effortlessly and casually. I duck-dived and followed him down the line, hand over hand.
I was not to get far down. I had been unnerved by the depth of the water we were in – there was still no sight of the bottom. I then realised that I had not seated my mask properly on my face. The seal, which should seal onto my skin, was sitting on top of a small section of my wet suit hood, not under it. I did not have a watertight seal and so, as I went down a steady trickle of water entered the mask and it started filling up.
I was making the descent in a head down position so the water dribbling into my mask ended up on my faceplate. Everything below, the line – including Colin - seemed to become slightly blurred and indistinct. Then everything swam completely out of focus so that I could not make out anything at all.
I knew that my mask was now almost completely filled with water. I had been trained in the pool how to ‘mask clear’ in a situation like this - but I was now in an incident pit, when one small thing triggers off a series of events and you lose the ability to sort it out. Each incident is manageable on its own but it is the culmination of these individual factors that causes problems. A bit more common sense and experience and it would have been simple to resolve. As it was I couldn’t deal mentally with the depth or the mask flood and loss of vision. I was starting to lose it.
I tried a mask clearing drill by holding the lower part of the mask off my face and blowing through my nose. You can only do that when you are in a ‘head up’ position - and I soon discovered the hard way that you can’t do that exercise when you are head down. As a consequence, the air I breathed out trying to clear the water from my mask disappeared, and more water flooded into my mask.
My mask was soon completely filled with water. As I breathed, it was going up my nose and making me gag. My eyes were bulging wide open - and were completely immersed in water. Why I didn’t simply bring my legs and feet beneath me to repeat the drill I don’t know.
On the verge of panic, I looked down with my blurred vision. I could barely make out my surroundings – I couldn’t read my depth gauge and didn’t know what depth I was in. I couldn’t tell if I was going up or down.
With my blurred vision I couldn’t make out any sign of Colin below me. In the few seconds that it had taken for me to arrest my descent - and shoot from a semi-controlled state into abject terror, he had disappeared from view beneath me into the darkness. I grimly held onto the anchor rope and fought to deal with my mask flood.
In reality I was completely safe, but my novice’s inexperience was running riot with my common sense. I was in an alien environment, things were going pear shaped – I now perceived I was in trouble and was teetering on the edge of panic.
My first thought was to try and continue the descent and reach Colin who would now be well below me - out of sight but still holding onto the anchor line. I tried to tough it out and continue down blind but I got some more water up my nose and gagged - I couldn’t go on.
I stopped this attempt at a blind descent and started to go back up the anchor line. I moved into a head up position and kicked my legs to start moving upwards. Why I didn’t just clear my mask now and then recommence the descent I don’t know. I had just lost it - and was bailing out - whatever. Looking back, the main trigger for all of this was the simple fact that I was thrown by not being able to see the seabed below and not knowing what depth I was going into. That sealed how I behaved.
I reached the surface and my head broke through into daylight. I pulled my mask up and the water flooded out of it. I was back beside the Zodiac and safety. As I talked to the divers in the boat reassuring them that I was fine, Colin appeared unexpectedly beside me. He swam over to me and asked if I was all right. It turned out that he had got right down to the bottom at 25 metres. When I hadn’t appeared down beside him he had followed the rules and made his way back up the line slowly.
I had given up on the idea of the dive completely and felt a fool. But, Colin was very understanding and persuaded me to have another go. I agreed and we started the descent once again, this time Colin was right beside me, holding onto the strap of my ABLJ.
We pressed down and again I was disturbed at not being able to see the bottom. But then, when we got down to a depth of about 15 metres it was as though a curtain was pulled back and we moved through a visibility horizon. One moment I couldn’t see the seabed. Next, there was an amazing underwater seascape about 10-20 metres beneath me. The white anchor line led down to the chain and anchor – which were just lying on the seabed.
We dropped down the last 10 metres and landed on the seabed. I took time to look all around me at my new surroundings and get my buoyancy sorted out. Then, after an exchange of OK signals we moved off in one direction, swimming along just a few feet above the seabed.
All around me were flat slabs of rock housing lobsters, edible crabs and lots of conger eels. I had never seen conger eels in the wild before and they hid in their dark bolt holes with their blue/black head and eyes peering out at us, alien visitors in their underwater world. I had heard divers’ stories of congers biting off fingers and so gave them a wide berth. At one point I saw a conger in the open, a rare sight during the day as it moved over and under a large overhanging rock.
After a bottom time of about 20 minutes down at a depth of 25 metres it was time to start our ascent. My novice diver’s inability had almost ruined the dive but Colin’s stoic perseverance had saved the day and introduced me to the world of boat diving.
Learning Curve
“A little learning is a dang’rous thing”
Pope, An Essay on Criticism
For the next couple of years after my introduction to the amazing undersea world of Scottish coastal diving I turned up every Sunday for club dives around the north-east coast. My diving skills developed as I explored an underwater fairy-tale land of plunging cliffs, massive subsea canyons, gorges and subsea caves amidst all the rich and varied sea life of Scotland’s shores.
I moved down to Stonehaven, some ten miles south of Aberdeen, in 1984 but still kept my links with my dive buddies in the Ellon branch of the BSAC, now some 40 miles north of where I lived. I jointly took a small loan and invested in my own 5-metre orange inflatable dive boat, an Aberglen Gordon with a Johnson 35hp outboard engine.
