Scuba Conversational - Issue #46
Enter the Dragon
We have now made the move to Taiwan and are beginning the process of settling in and deciding where we want to live, so I thought I’d begin this issue of Scuba Conversational with the story of some tiny creatures which have achieved iconic status in southern Taiwan and which made a rare appearance a couple of weeks ago as if to welcome us.
They are pelagic sea slugs belonging to the genus Glaucus, more familiarly known as blue dragons.
In my Dive into Taiwan book, I describe how they became famous in 2017, when dozens of them washed up in rock pools at a dive site called He Jie near the town of Hengchun, left behind by the retreating sea after a flood tide, along with dozens of the blue button jellyfish (Porpita pacifica) they love to feed on.
The next day, they were all gone, washed back out into the ocean at high tide, but not before members of the local diving community had taken pictures of them; images that now adorn tourist brochures and advertising billboards all over Taiwan’s deep south.
Two weeks ago, blue dragons appeared in the waters around the small island of Xiaoliuqiu off Taiwan’s southwest coast and photographers from A-Gui Dive, one of our hosts when we were doing research for the book were there to record the event. They posted pictures on their website, Facebook page, and Instagram account.
Also diving in Xiaoliuqiu that day was top Taiwan underwater photographer Peggy Chiang and she took some beautiful images of these amazing animals.
As you can see from the photos, there are a couple of types of blue dragon. This Wikipedia page explains the differences and this article on One Earth describes their behaviour and why, if you are ever lucky enough to come across one, you should resist the temptation to pick it up. They don’t only eat blue buttons, they eat Portuguese man o’ war jellies too.
The blue dragon stores the man o’ war’s stinging nematocysts within its finger-like appendages, making itself equally venomous to predators. One sting from this little guy can lead to nausea, pain, vomiting, acute allergic contact dermatitis, and post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation.
Ouch!!
By coincidence, Xiaoliuqiu was the subject of the latest in my series of Taiwan scuba diving destination articles in X-Ray Magazine. This is the link to the text. If you want to see some of Kyo Liu’s terrific pictures of Xiaoliuqiu diving too, you can download a free PDF of the article here.
These pictures didn’t make the cut for the article, but I thought you would like to see them anyway. The ocean around the south of Taiwan really is this blue!
My Dive into Taiwan book is now published in four languages in e-book and paperback versions.
Technical Diving
Also featured in X-Ray issue 116 was a piece in my regular Scuba Confidential column called Turning Tek. Here’s a clip
Contrary to common misconception, very few people come into technical diving drawn by the quest for a thrill or adrenaline rush. After all, rather than court danger, the whole ethos of the sport is to counter risk through the application of planning, training and technology. Most technical divers are thoughtful people who are attentive to detail, sometimes to an obsessive degree…
Technical diving is not for everyone. Some of the best divers in the world may use nitrox and may have adapted some of their equipment after seeing what technical divers use and how they streamline themselves, but they have no need to go deep or into flooded caves or wrecks, or encumber themselves with extra equipment. Being a technical diver does not mean you are necessarily a better diver than others.
There are also some people around who really should never go anywhere near technical diving because they do not have the right mindset. How can you tell in advance if this is you? Would you make a good technical diver?
Here are a few indicators…
Read more online or download the PDF
You can also download the whole magazine free of charge As usual, it is full of good stuff.
The sharp-eyed among you may have spotted that this image was taken by the same photographer, Andrey Bizyukin, and in the same cave, Orda, as the cover of my new book, Technically Speaking.
The book was published two weeks ago and I have had some great feedback. David Strike was very kind in his review on Nektonix.
If you have bought a copy, many thanks, and if you have a moment to add a short review on Amazon or whichever online bookstore you bought it from, I would be most grateful.
If you haven’t bought it yet, here is the book’s Amazon page. You can also find it on other Amazon sites worldwide, Apple Books, Kobo, and via many other online booksellers.
In my acknowledgements, I emphasise how much I owe to the writers who took the time to record what they and others were doing during the pivotal decade between 1989 and 1999 when technical diving burst onto the scene and spread all over the world - the period I call “Genesis and Exodus”.
Chief among these were Cathie Cush, Michael Menduno, Joel Silverstein, Bret Gilliam, Tom Mount, Kevin Gurr, Bernie Chowdhury, Michael Lang, Bill Hamilton, Bill Stone, Gary Gentile, Dick Rutkowski, Hal Watts, Lamar Hires, Bill Gleason and Curt Bowen.
They wrote it all down. I just had to piece it all together.
Scuba diving writers today of course are no less valuable and influential than their predecessors. Here are a few examples of their work that have crossed my radar screen recently and I think are well worth your while.
Safe Wreck Diving
Andy Davis, whose scubatechphilippines website and blog contain a wealth of good information and advice for divers, has produced an excellent guide to key wreck diving strategies and techniques - which he is offering completely free of charge in the interests of increasing awareness of the hazards and skills required to dive in and around shipwrecks safely.
Andy Davis's Guide to Advanced Wreck Diving
This twenty-minute guide is not a substitute for training, as he points out, but it does give you a good idea of what you would need to have in your locker, as it were, to go down that route.
Andy lives, works and dives in Subic Bay on the west coast of Luzon. As you see from his map, there’s a terrific variety of diving in the area.
Closed-circuit tragedy
A writer I mention frequently in these newsletters is Steve Weinman, and for good reason. His Divernet blog is a must-read and features reports from the diving world that nobody else picks up. Earlier this month, he wrote a story about the tragic and avoidable death of a diver during a rebreather training course in the UK. It begins…
A diving instructor who led a Stoney Cove rebreather training dive on which his student drowned has been sentenced, after a Health & Safety Executive (HSE) investigation found him responsible for multiple failings.
Technical instructor Lance Palmer, who runs LP Diving & Marine Services of Penkridge, Staffs, pleaded guilty at Leicester Magistrates’ Court on 25 January to breaching the Health & Safety at Work Act. He was ordered to carry out 50 hours of unpaid work and pay £3,085 costs.
Here’s the full story.
https://divernet.com/scuba-news/instructor-given-community-service-order-after-ccr-trainees-death/
Something that struck me in Steve’s report was that not once did he mention the model of rebreather the diver was using. It was not a necessary piece of information, which is often the case in rebreather accidents, just as the brand of regulator a diver was using is rarely a relevant factor in open-circuit diving accidents. However, typically, in the past, rebreather accident reports have tended to focus on which unit was involved, no matter whether it was a factor or not, taking attention away from the real issues that led to the incident.
In this case, Steve stuck to the story and picked out the main points, as he always does. Good, solid journalism.
Closed Circuit Safety Strategies
I mentioned The Dirty Dozen Expeditions a couple of issues ago in relation to the Bikini Atoll liveaboard trips they run.
Their website includes something they call their knowledge base, which consists of a first-class, free-to-use library of papers on subjects connected with rebreather diving, technical diving, diving physiology, emergency procedures and accident analysis.
Just like Andy Davis, they have a commendable policy of making safety strategies available and accessible to all.
They also provide a whole range of dive travel videos on the Galapagos, Truk Lagoon, Bikini Atoll and Palau, including some historic footage of the Truk and Bikini wrecks and some astonishing film and photogrammetry images of Palau’s legendary USS Perry shipwreck.
What really got my attention though was a Splash Checklist they have developed for the rebreather divers they take out, which their boat deck master or dive supervisor uses to confirm that a rebreather diver is ready to enter the water.
This is an image from their Facebook page and it makes me smile. I am sure this is the expression they get from many divers when they are asked to confirm they have run through all their checks. But I am equally sure that this “just-in-case” approach picks up a lot of things that have been missed in the flurry of activity on a busy dive deck in moving seas. And I bet the divers grow to appreciate it. Obviously, knowing that the guy with the clipboard is going to double-check you makes you even more attentive to preparing your unit properly, to ensure he gives you the green light to dive first try and doesn’t send you back to your gearing up bench to “do it again”, while your fellow divers look on - (oh, the shame of it!)
It’s great that the Dirty Dozen people have created this, it’s great that they ran it by Human Factors whizz Gareth Lock first and it’s great that they are giving it away to anyone who wants to use it.
Everybody should! This sort of thing saves lives.
Here are the links
The Dirty Dozen Knowledge Database
The Dirty Dozen Rebreather Check List
And this is what they have to say about their check list.
Our CCR splash checklist is a last-minute check that EVERYONE has to complete before every dive by a trained #teamdd staff member that can spot errors before jumping in the water. It takes about a minute and covers the following:
Scrubber time remaining? (Check Stack Time remaining)
Has the unit passed its pre-dive check?
Is the handset on? Backup Handset on? (Show)
Is DIL on? (Show SPG, Purge Gas)
Is o2 on? (Show SPG, Purge Gas)
Computers set to correct gas? (Show Handsets)
Off-Board Bailout on and Functioning? (Visual Confirmation)
PPO2 in the LOOP SAFE? (Show handset and breathe loop)
With 12-14 rebreather divers conducting a total of 20+ CCR dives a day on our trips with multiple units, this really simple checklist can and HAS prevented possible accidents. We want to underline that this is only a supplement. The diver is STILL responsible to follow their unit-specific checklists and pre-breathing protocols as per their training organization.
Sometimes people complain about it the first couple of days, but then, always at the end of the trip, they thank you for it, because they feel safe. At the end of the day, we are there to give you a safe and enjoyable experience.
Anyone that is interested in the checklist can download it in our Knowledge Base. Also, feel free to contact us if you are a diving operation that wants training in how to use it.
Only Fans
GUE’s InDepth blog is another reliable source of great reading on diving issues. One piece recently provided a good reminder that going deep is not only about caves and wrecks or depth just for the sake of it.
Dr Sonia J. Rowley is a marine biologist and the recipient of the Sir David Attenborough Award for fieldwork for her pioneering research on gorgonian octocorals at mesophotic depths. She begins her article by saying
Gorgonian corals are some of the most conspicuous and highly diverse creatures in the marine realm. Evocative images of exotic dive locations typically sport colorful fans amidst an array of reef fish. Yet, despite their splendor, this group of corals is remarkably overlooked. Why would this be?
And then goes on to explain how astonishing these beautiful creatures are and shows us her images of these ultra-deep gorgonians in all their spectacular glory. What do we see all the way down there of the reef walls of Micronesia, West Papua, Okinawa, the Philippines and Papua New Guinea? This is what we see…
Those wrecks look fantastic, my favorite wrecks have been the Yukon out of San Diego with Waterhorse Charters and the C53 in Cozumel with bluenotescuba.com