I was recently asked why I like scuba diving and I thought I’d share my answer here.
Wreck diving is the best kind of diving in the UK and there are lots of reasons why I love it. On the well preserved ones, its like flying around the actual wreck and you have complete control of where you go and swimming around in the holds and cabins is other worldly. You feel kind of ghostly, like you’re from another dimension, one that is partly in the same place, but the normal rules simply don’t apply. Having said that, the experience starts right at the beginning when you’re swimming down through the green murk, feeling the anchor rope slip through your hands, not seeing anything apart from greeny blackness below. But then you start to see a change in the gloom and slowly up out of the depths, you start to see encrusted bits of metal with soft corals and as it comes towards you and you start to piece it all together and you suddenly realise that you’re looking at the wheelhouse! And as you look about, you can suddenly recognise the rest of the hulk and spot likely entrance ways into the hull. If you’re not paying attention, you might have to find another entrance because there’s a 12ft conga slinking in and out of the holes. Like a lace being pulled through a corset.
Everything is quiet and you feel stilled, relaxed and acutely aware of your breathing. When I was a member of the Southampton club, I used to lie on the floor of the diving pool on club night, just breathing in and breathing out: floating up a little with each in breath and sinking down again with each out breath. The most meditative and relaxing state I’ve ever been in.
The technical diving stuff didn’t really appeal to me, so I left the club when they all started doing seriously deep stuff with hours of deco. Not that I’ve done serious cave diving with string and specially mounted tanks, but I have been into various caves and of course inside wrecks and there’s always interesting stuff to sea or treasure to find. I remember swimming into a really massive cave in Lanzarote and looking back out towards the light and seeing the walls of the cave move out of the corner of my eye. On closer inspection with my torch, the walls of the cave were entirely covered in shrimp! I could hardly see the rock there were that many. Or the drift dives off Lulworth cove over the scallop beds where we’re drifting along in the tidal current at 5 or 6 knots and all the scallops are leaping up off the bottom and we’re simply picking them out of the water and stuffing them in our bags to have for supper. Can’t beat fresh, diver caught scallops wrapped in bacon on the bbq. There are always incredible and yet unexpected surprises like that and I’ve got a small collection of bits of treasure I’ve collected from various wrecks and other sites I’ve dived on around the world.
Well I think I’ve waxed lyrical about diving quite enough now so I’ll sign off for now.
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