Scuba Trooper: Why I love diving
© The Independent written by Hamish McRae
Scuba diving is like skiing. Well, no of course it isn't. In the most
obvious of ways it is the exact opposite: you go down to do it, not up. But
there are parallels that anyone who does both will see. I would urge anyone
who enjoys skiing to have a crack under the seas.
The structure of a scuba holiday is remarkably similar. You do a fascinating
physical activity all day in breathtaking surroundings, then you have a good
dinner, and then you do it all over again the next day.
The mixture of care, competence and mastery of some basic techniques is also
similar. With skiing you need to be able to turn, sideslip, snow- plough and
so on. With scuba you must be able to clear your mask, maintain your
buoyancy, know when it is time to come up, etc.
You must be careful, for in both sports people do get killed. As so often in
life it is the problems associated with the sport - crashes on the piste,
being hit by a speedboat's propeller on the surface - that create much of
the danger, not the activity itself. But neither is particularly dangerous
provided you remain within your limits of competence.
I am not an experienced diver. But as with skiing, you don't need to be to
have memorable experiences. Just as anyone who can get down a red run can
have a good time in the Alps, anyone who has earned the basic PADI
qualification can see some wonderful things underwater.
Best bits? For me it is a toss-up between watching two octopuses mating in
Phuket and a wall dive, weaving in and out of the coral wall, at Cozumel, an
island just off the Mexican coast. The boy octopus, for those who are
interested, pops one of the girl octopus's tentacles into his mouth - I
suppose it is a toe-job - but I could not quite see quite how they went on
from there as we ran short of air.
The wall dive is truly remarkable because you swim through tunnels in the
coral, 80 feet down from the protected area, inside the reef full of
multicoloured shoals of fish, to the open sea on the other side where the
giant tuna sashay through what seems a bottomless, endless blue.
My spouse prefers to go on night-dives: different creatures come out to feed
at night, and the subtle lack of the reference point of light coming from
above makes the whole sensation seem different, too. You feel as though you
are in outer space, quite alone (though of course you are with a buddy and a
team leader), only able to see the things that your torch picks out.
I suppose everybody is thrilled by wreck dives. Wrecks become attractions
for all sorts of marine life, and there is also that curious sensation that
living people used to crew the boat - all now forgotten. We mammals are gone
and have been replaced by an utterly different set of species. It is our
privilege for a few moments to share their world.
And that, surely, is the core of it. Yes, the physical exercise is demanding
but not too stretching; the camaraderie has often been wonderful; you have
to use your head, which is good; and what you see is endlessly interesting.
But the sense of privilege is the great turn-on. We are lucky to share this
world with these different, wondrous creatures.
© The Independent written by Hamish McRae