DIVE LOG Australasia

Life’s For Living

A lthough it had nothing to do with diving, a recent newspaper article about the tragic death of an adventurer immediately grabbed my attention. Not least because the story’s headline stated, in part, that he had, “ died doing what he loved ”. Almost a cliché, one that trips neatly off the tongue and that’s intended to give a measure of solace and comfort to the family and friends of the deceased, “ died doing what he loved” is in danger of becoming a bumper-sticker slogan rather than a meaningful epitaph; especially when key aspects of dive planning are overlooked, or ignored. The acceptance of risk - regardless of depth or location - is, of course, an integral part of any diving activity. It’s only when we fail to minimise those risks by attending to all of the fine details of a planned dive that we put ourselves squarely in harm’s way and add to the possibility of becoming yet another unnecessary statistic. The operative word in all of this is, ‘ unnecessary ’. There will always be occasions when, despite all reasonable precautions, the individual comes to grief because of the unpredictable. But for all of those things that we can control and influence, planning is everything. The old adage, ‘ Plan your dive and dive your plan ’ is a well-worn saying that seldom receives the attention it deserves. While some divers claim to actively practice the concept, others view it as an impediment to diving spontaneity and enjoyment, or even regard it something that only novice divers need concern themselves with; attitudes that are markedly at odds with common sense. And it doesn’t take much in the way of common sense to see that without a little forethought about what might go wrong in any undertaking - and what safeguards need to be put in place to forestall disaster – there will always be the potential for mishaps. Consider, for example, the departure from England of the First Fleet and its mission to establish a new penal colony in Australia. It’s tempting to think that the British government of the day - having had plenty of experience sending its surplus convicts overseas to grow tobacco in Virginia - just loaded up a few old ships with 1,400-plus prisoners, would-be settlers and military, handed them some cricket bats, meat pies and the recipe for beer and told them to bugger off south in order to establish a claim on Australia before the French got there. But they didn’t.

Years of considerable thought and planning went into provisioning those ships with everything that the colonists might need in order to survive the first early years of settlement. Included among the supplies were things like, tools, agricultural implements, flour, seeds, livestock, (including just five rabbits?), 600 gallons of rum, 300 gallons of brandy and 10 sets of handcuffs. Also listed in the inventory was one small cask of raisins and - leaving nothing to chance - 5,440 pairs of knickers! Without that level of preparation – particularly given the laxative properties of raisins - it’s unlikely that the First Fleet settlers would have got much further than the outer reaches of the English Channel before having to turn back and re-supply with underwear. Although that was planning on the grand scale, the same principles apply before undertaking any sort of dive, regardless of whether it’s a shore-dive to 5-metres or a drop onto a wreck at 70-plus metres. And even having covered all of the bases in terms of training, fitness, attitude, equipment and all of the parameters of the dive, the diver should still take time to visualise everything that could go wrong and then – without being obsessive about it, or labelled as having a severe personality defect - take every reasonable precaution to ensure that it doesn’t. The fact is that nobody (it’s to be hoped?) actively sets out to die doing something that gives them pleasure: like diving. But if it should happen - and is subsequently shown to have been preventable and caused by a planning oversight - then having news reports state that, “ he died doing something that he loved ”, may not reflect well on the victim’s diving abilities or knowledge. In fact, having given the matter a lot of thought, I like to think that if I have to shuffle-off-this-mortal-coil in an unexpected and sudden fashion, then I’d rather it was doing something like food shopping than while out diving. Being crushed beneath a runaway shopping trolley overloaded with frozen packets of broccoli in the freezer section aisle of the local supermarket may not be a dignified ending. But it does have the advantage of being unpredictable. Perhaps more importantly, there’s a ready made headline for the local newspaper, “ he died doing something that he hated .” Best of all is the fact that there’s no adverse impact on diving – an activity that I love – by suggestions that it’s unnecessarily dangerous.

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DIVE LOG Australasia #408 - October ‘24