This is Andy – he’s a deep sea diver!

When I first started diving my friends and family would often refer me to others, saying;

“This is Andy – he’s a deep sea diver!”

I Are Deep Diver

I quite liked the term and made very little effort to correct them, partially because it made me sound really cool, secondly because I have become a complete bore to my the non-divers friends by constantly correcting them on such things as ‘fins not flippers’ and ‘mask not goggles.’

I knew I had reached a very bad place on a particular occasion when I explained to a guy from work that I didn’t breathe ‘oxygen’ at depth, as he suggested, but would only use said gas to aid decompression and in fact breathed air when diving. I then proceeded to explain humans couldn’t breathe oxygen when ‘deep sea diving’ due to an elevated PPO2 level, would definitely convulse and most likely die.


He proceeded to explain that I was not a deep sea diver, but was in fact, a dick. I was then treated to a brief outline as to why that was the case.


The whole point of scuba diving is to go under water. I was able to work that concept out very early on, even without my PADI training. However, once you are trained to scuba dive it brings a whole new question; “How deep can I go?”

When I completed my initial PADI courses I was qualified to 30m with no decompression allowed. Now I’m qualified to 45m with as much deco as the dive requires. I know plenty of divers that can dive to 60m, and there are those who can, and do, go deeper. So, what’s considered to be “deep?”

I discovered very early in my diving that depth is not a number. Depth is relative.

PADI Deep Diver

I will never forget my first ‘deep dive.’ As part of my PADI advanced open water course I had to complete a number of dives that exceeded my current training at the time of 18m. I did my PADI Open Water and Advanced Open Water courses back to back so the increase in depth was quite a fast tracked affair.





The majority of my training at that stage was conducted in shallow waters of 8-12m. I had grown quite accustomed to those numbers and when I was told that I would be diving to 22m on the next training dive I nearly did a poo. As usual, my ever faithful wife-buddy was by my side and also nearly did a poo.

Not only was the prospect of the deep dive truly frightening, but we also had to wait an entire week before it would actually happen. This was brilliant, as it gave Kerri and I a whole 7 days to look up lots of tragic scuba diving related deaths of divers going ‘deep.’

The week quickly disappeared and the cold February morning soon arrived bringing the ‘deep dive’ along like its evil twin. When we got to the dive centre wife-buddy and I stayed close together, huddling as if to somehow combine what element of courage we had left into a suitable quantity that could be used to conduct the actual dive. We picked out the gear we needed from the schools supply and headed to the hard hull boat nearby.

Suppressing incredible fear we boarded the ship and headed to the dive site out in the middle of Strangford Lough. I can’t remember the actual name of the dive site; I was more focused on the regulators I would be using…. the "Cressi Sub" ones.

Let me explain.

The dive school had a big old box of regulators. They all worked fine(ish) but some worked better than others. The Tusa regs were always picked first as they breathed quite well, whereas the "Cressi Sub" was the fat, ginger child with thick glasses held together with elastoplasts. In short, no one wanted to use them for any sport, let alone diving.

Big old box of regs

I sat on the boat staring at the heavily worn second stage and browning mouthpiece of the "Cressi Sub," attempting to create a valid situation where they could fall overboard, leading to me getting my paws on the magnificent Tusa regs. Despite many failed scenarios of tripping, passing out and feigning temporary insanity I begrudgingly set my kit up knowing that every rotation of the A clamp was effectively a nail in my coffin.

I glanced at wife-buddy who was putting together her personal brand new set of Tusa regs. Such dark thoughts….

We received our dive brief, buddy checked and conducted a giant stride off the ship and surface swam over to the shot line. Once everyone signalled they were good, I put the old banana coloured mouth piece in and descended into the gloom.

The divemaster escorting us was excellent. He descended backwards looking up at me constantly as the metres ticked by; 2m ………. 5m ………. 10m ………. all the way down to 22m. I held his gaze as if his eyes were providing the very air I was sucking, like a cheap Thai boy, from the "Cressi Subs."

In true PADI fashion I hit the silty bottom on my knees and froze.

Titanic 30m+

When I first decided to be the best scuba diver in the world, wife-buddy and I spent a lot of time reading all the internet, especially anything related to diving. We quickly learned that we would become qualified to dive to 30m, and then dive the world. A little research also showed that The Titanic was 3810m deep. How the hell was I supposed to dive that with a PADI Advanced Open Water certification card? 30m was not deep at all.





Oh, how wrong was I?


At that moment 22m was deep.

Very deep.

The deepest.

Ever.

I stared at the divemaster as he continued to give me the OK signal. Finally my senses returned, I sucked some more air down the "Cressi Sub" and returned the signal. I wasn’t really ok in the normal sense but I was convinced I could hold it together for the short dive we were briefed on.

I followed the DM away from the shot, never allowing his fins out of my sight. A beluga whale could have asked me directions to the local tanning salon and I wouldn’t have allowed my sight to deviate from those Tusa split fins. Tusa = safety, that was the rule for the day.

15mins later I signalled 50bar and thumbed the dive. I had done it, I was alive and thank all the gods there had ever been, it was time to go.

I couldn’t believe what happened next.

There I was, ready to go, and the DM was fooling around with some stupid reel and a big plastic orange sausage thing. It seemed to go on FOREVER. I was now at 49.6bar. I had to leave. I tugged his shoulder and gave the ‘low on air’ signal and thumbed up again. I began to get agitated. The guy had lost it, what was he doing?

I was now at 49.2bar. This was getting critical.

The DM finally appeared to have finished whatever he was building and gave me an OK signal. Then the devil himself must have possessed him as he grabbed my octopus and purged it into the orange sausage.

What the hell was this maniac doing?!! That’s MY air you bastard!!

SMB - for rogering

What was that orange thing for? Had he lured me down here with the pretence of a deep dive but was instead going to roger me in secret with an inflatable phallus? How would I face Kerri after such an ordeal?

Before I could instigate a form of defence against the subsequent orange balloon invasion, and a suitable explanation for Kerri, it shot out of sight with the reel spinning away below. Swiftly the DM started to ascend giving me the thumbs up. We were finally going up, and no rogering. Thank Christ. 5 mins and a safety stop later we were back on the boat.




Deep dive done.


As usual, wife-buddy and I had our own private de-brief about the deep dive on the journey home. As usual, we drew the same conclusion as each other; in this case that deep diving wasn't all it was cracked up to be and we wouldn’t be repeating it. The Titanic dive was going to have to be delayed until the next ice age when the sea level dropped accordingly, to around the 10m mark.

Since then, most of my dives are in the 20m range, and have recently been venturing past the 40m mark. I have only done this as I completed further training to dive deeper. It took me quite a few dives at the 20m mark before I was happy, and the same has proved true of the 45m dives. It’s all about building experience.

I prefer a little depth when diving, I’m in my element at 25m yet one of my favourite dive sites is only 8m deep. At the end of the day I only dive to a depth where I can see stuff.

Lessons learned

- Deep diving uses the same techniques as diving shallow.

- There is no need to dive deep just for the sake of it.

- Don’t dive outside your training.

- Make sure you know how to use smb’s, they’re useful for deep dives.

- Work your way down slowly and get used to diving deeper.

- Don’t bore your friends with diving stories.

- If Cressi’s are the only regs left in the box – sit out the dive*

*Cressi regulators are good regs, it's just that the ones at the school could have done with a service about a decade previous to my use!

What? - I can’t see you, in fact, I can’t hear you either!

Diving in Northern Ireland is always a bit dull. I don’t necessarily mean boring; I mean there is a definite lack of light when descending below, em, ........oh ....about a metre. I’ve become quite used to diving in low light and actually quite enjoy it, mainly because I get to use my rather cool Halcyon Pro 3 canister light. My trusty dive light is one piece of equipment I wish I had acquired at an earlier date, in fact I can tell you the exact date and time I wished I had said can light; my first night dive. 

Pro 3 HID light

I had just finished my PADI course and was accompanying fiancée-buddy on the final dive of her AOW course. This was actually my first dive as a qualified diver. Needless to say it didn't go exactly according to plan. Kerri was doing a night dive as one of her PADI specialities; I was merely coming along to clock up some dives. It wasn’t really a night dive in the true sense of the word, more of a late evening dive. It was about 7pm when we reached the dive site but as it was still the winter solstice the light was fading fast.






It was a familiar wreck dive for us as most of our training had taken part on this lump of rusting metal, known as “The Outer Lees.” Our instructor made a big deal of the preparation involved in the pending night dive and had an impressive slate with all the procedures and stuff we had to abide by.

Oh, the irony.

We were then educated on to how to care for a diving torch, lube the 'O' rings and clean the contacts. This was all very fascinating but I just wanted to get in and do my first real dive, in the dark no less – how exciting!

There were a number of divers aboard all crowding forward eagerly as the torches were hastily being handed out. Being an awfully polite fellow I waited my turn, but in fact found myself empty handed. I simply presumed I wouldn’t be diving after all. How annoying.

It appeared I knew nothing of night diving as I was told I would indeed be diving, but would be "sharing" a torch. How in the name of all that’s precious do you “share” a torch under water?

You can’t.

I was partnered up with the instructor and wife-(to-be)-buddy. This gave me a bit of security but I still wasn’t particularly thrilled about not having a torch. 10 minutes later I jumped in, descended, and our buddy team made way around the wreck.

Night vision bunny

I recalled as a child my mum telling me to eat my carrots as they would help me to see in the dark like the rabbits do. If I had known 20 years later I would be underwater, in the middle of Strangford Lough, at night, I’d have eaten every bloody carrot I could have got my 10 year old mitts on, because unlike the rabbits, at that moment in time I couldn’t see a fucking thing.

Our instructor was leading, he had a light. I was in the middle, I didn’t have a light. Kerri was following up the rear, she had a light. You got that? I can’t remember exactly whose light I was supposedly sharing, but it seemed that it wasn’t a “fair share” just at that moment. Then the inevitable happened – we got separated.


Yes, I turned around to signal fiancée-buddy and she was gone. Well that was amazing, I finally met a girl I liked and she had promptly drifted off into the blackness of the Lough. Not your average method of being dumped and certainly a first for me.

I hastily made the decision to stick with the instructor as he was "sharing" the light at that time. I finned over to him and practically ripped his arm from the socket, he seemed to get the picture quite quickly. He handed me his spg to hang onto and we sped off around the wreck. I was now being trailed around in complete darkness.

It turned out Kerri had problems equalizing, subsequently surfaced, waving her light, as trained, and putting it against her chest so that she could attempt to see other dive lights. I didn’t have a light so that was impossible and poor Kerri had to surface alone in the pitch black.

In the mean time I was now properly upset and we eventually gave up searching. I was becoming accustomed to the fact Kerri was obviously lost forever and was glad I hadn’t really met her parents at this stage, therefore could probably get away with not being the one to tell them their daughter was dead. I wasn’t sure of the legality of the whole thing but was also pretty confident the instructor would be going to prison and, I hoped, that would appease Kerri’s parents’ probable bad mood.

As we began to ascend my ears began to hurt and I got a little light headed. When we finally broke the surface I felt rather peculiar and it took me a minute to get my bearings. We boarded the boat and amazingly Kerri was alive, although looking rather unhappy. As I quickly readjusted my thought patterns to the idea I would be getting married after all, I too became a little unhappy. Not at the prospect of marriage of course, that still seemed a good plan, but at our so called night dive disaster.

We doffed our kit and Kerri explained she had gone quite deaf and was convinced her ear drum was perforated, thankfully that wasn’t the case. My ears felt a bit woolly, but I’d felt it before and wasn’t too concerned.

We had survived our night dive, which was some achievement all in all, but not one we cared to repeat anytime soon. Three days later the problems really started.

Sucking Carbogen

The 3rd day after the dive I went completely deaf in my right ear. I went to hospital after work one morning and was admitted instantly. Needless to say the hospital wasn’t convinced it was diving related and put me on some crazy mix of carbon dioxide and oxygen. It was called “Carbogen,” and had little or no effect on my recovery. Three days of hospital mistreatment later, Kerri lost it and basically demanded that I was sent home. I was still completely deaf at this stage and just nodded to everything. I found this kept everyone happy.





Once at home Kerri had me on the road to full health having sought advice on the World Wide Web combined with her super nurse knowledge. Decongestants and steroids fixed me right up. Two weeks later I could hear just fine, except for certain phrases including, but not limited to; “Will you feed the cat army?” and “Are you making tea?”

Hospital hearing tests did ascertain I had lost certain frequencies, but being in a heavy metal band, I figured I’d lost those frequencies years ago and it was nothing to worry about.

I ended up out of diving action for a few months just to be safe and we came to the conclusion that I had suffered a reverse block as I had recently recovered from a cold. At the time of the dive I felt fine, but i guess these things just happen.


Lessons learned:

• Don’t dive too soon after a cold. 

• Doctors have no appreciation or knowledge of diving accidents. 

• Carbogen is stupid. 

• Join the Divers Alert Network. When it comes to diving accidents these guys are shit hot. 

As a side note; I always dive with at least 2 torches irrespective of the dive and I continue to play heavy metal, but still have problems hearing certain phrases like;“Will you feed the cats?”

I'm not getting into that. It's dark and looks cold - my 1st dive.

Having completed all my pool sessions successfully, with the exception of a little mask removal drama, i was ready for the depths of the ocean. The pool sessions were great. Kerri and i spent hours after each pool dive discussing how far our diving had progressed and how much more confident we were feeling. We were so enthused that Kerri even came into work with me for my night shift to chat about it and then go to work the next day. She regretted that manouver.

My open water dives were to be conducted in Strangford Lough, Northern Ireland. The Lough is dark, murky and pretty cold - not really an ideal spot for new divers but you have to start somewhere, so why not? I was nervous about this but my instructor told me i was ready,  i had done all the pool skills so what was next otherwise?

On a brisk Sunday morning in October i went on my first ocean dive. By the time i arrived at the boat i had decided i was no longer Jacque Cousteau, screw the money, scuba diving was stupid and The Maldives didn't seem that great anyway. But it was too late. I was beginning to poo a little. I stepped onto the hard hull boat and looked at my future wife for what was probably the last time. I could tell she felt the same. What were we doing? This was madness. Should we run? We climbed aboard.

the outer lees, strangford lough

A 20min boat ride later we were moored up on the "Outer Lees" an old ship wreck in the middle of Strangford Lough. It loomed up from the darkness and looked like something you just shouldn't be hanging around. It was all rusted metal, old and dangerous looking. Our instructor said, "Ok, get your kit on and jump in there and move round to that ladder, hang on and wait for me."

You have to be kidding mate.

my first dive

Nevertheless i struggled on an ill fitting dry suit, hood and a weight belt with enough lead to sink the Bismarck. I felt really restricted. I couldn't see with this stupid hood on, i couldn't walk in the big bin liner and why did i have 3 breeze blocks strapped around my waist? I was going to drown.

I smiled for the camera, loaded a 12l cylinder onto my back, signed over the house to Kerri and jumped in. Oh God.




I managed to claw my way around the wreck to the meeting point doing everything in my power to ensure i DIDN'T go underwater. I gingerly lowered my face into the water holding my breath and looked beneath. I could see stuff, this was pretty cool. I then received the thumbs down from my instructor and we descended into the gloom. I plummeted to the sea bed 8m below.

My first breath under the sea was a strange experience. I was definitely scared, but also excited and curious as to what i was going to see. I sat on the bottom staring at my instructor. I could tell he was gauging whether i was about to fly into full scale panic and make a bolt for the surface, which was considered, but i started to feel stable and concentrated to stay calm and focus on my breathing.

I stared around me. This was unbelievable. I looked at some sea weed waving around the sea floor like they were blowing in the wind, and i could see Kerri a few meters away with another diver doing some skills. She was still alive too, this was turning into a good day out. We went for a bit of a swim, well, my instructor finned about, i mainly clawed my way around but at least i was UNDER the water now - being a scuba diver.

I think this lasted about 15-20mins and then we surfaced. Although i did enjoy my first ocean experience i was glad it was over. I needed to regroup my thoughts, get my shit together and reflect. Kerri and I would be having a serious debrief about this! Which we did. We went home and Kerri described how she was working out how to tell me she couldn't scuba dive ever again. We both worked out our fears and continued with the program!

I had successfully survived and enjoyed, to some degree, my first real scuba dive.