Have you ever thought about being a dive master? For most folks just being certified is likely enough for them. It clears the way for some tropical vacation fun & some quick & easy local entertainment should the weather cooperate. Some of us get a little more addicted to our passion & just can’t stop there. I knew I  was in trouble last winter when the thermometer in my Explorer(aka “The Dive Rig”) dropped to minus 4F & I found myself giddy with excitement to get in the water & see how different things would look  in the frosty weather.

 My name is Michael Johnstone II. aka dieseldude aka MJ for those of you who may encounter me either professionally or through a dive club. I requested that our host allow me to start this blog to journal my quest for Dive master status. I have completed all the prerequisites to get myself started & have just plunged headlong into a commitment that may yet prove to be more than I bargained for . Don’t get me wrong when I say that. The orientation for the class is noncommittal & very clear up front. You are not likely to make any money for your services & there is always a potential to find yourself being climbed & half drowned making a rescue. The cost of the class alone makes me queasy & there are insurance obligations to be met as well.

 So why,you ask, would I even consider this. After all, I have plenty of cert’s to keep me diving in most places I would want to go. There is no real short answer for this so I’ll get my ego out of the way 1st. This friends, is a challenge. I know lots of divers that can do any of the things I will do as a dive master. The catch is how well they can do them. Have you ever stopped for a moment to think about how easy your instructor makes each demonstrated skill look? I know I never really did. I’d watch. Then I would think, “Piece of cake, I can do that”. Then I would fumble through the task with all the grace of a penguin on land & somehow manage to overcome the feat. So how does the instructor make it look so good? Ever wonder how many times they have had to demonstrate that same skill? We learn in our most basic training that repetition is everything. Then we get certified & most will never bother again. Think about it. On your last dive, what skill did you practice prior to dragging yourself out of the water? Did you even bother to make the optional safety stop even though your computer said you didn’t need to. It’s not enough for me to be able to say that I can do it. I want to be able to do it well, second nature, without struggle or thought, & with confidence. Right now I see this as the ultimate payoff for my services. While I assist other people with their learning, I will be learning & improving my own skills by repeating, under great scrutiny, basic skills over & over again.

There are other reasons to want to achieve Dive master status. Most shops have perks for the their DM’s & I have to say, I feel much more like a part of my LDS now than I ever have before. Sharing the joy of diving with others is another good one though, I believe I gain as much as the students do. Being able to help an instructor who has patiently nurtured my scuba abilities is also a very important reason for me. With that I’d also point out that in a class setting , dive buddies are pretty much built in so there is no worry about whether or not the only person you could get hold of will actually show up to dive. I can also see a potential for my list of dive buddies to grow exponentially.

As I go through the program I will stop here often to share my progress. Tonight  I will be in the classroom  and then the pool with rescue students learning my role in this environment. I am scheduled to do my tired diver tow tonight as well which is an endurance test I’m not especially looking forward to. 100 yards I believe & it is timed & requires a minimum completion time to gain a score. There are several swimming related skills that must be completed & I have already done my 800 yard mask, fins , snorkel swim.  The 400 freestyle & dreaded 15 minute tread are left. I’ll touch on the last 2 later.

This isnt your basic 2-3 week class that we are all used to. I’ve penciled in 6 months as an aggressive target time to go through all the books & complete all the tasks. If I did not have a wife, kids, mortgage, & a job, I would surely speed through it all but as most of us know, after the scuba fun is done, life must go on. Hope to see you follow me on this journey & welcome any comments along the way. Life is a journey that we all travel and the knowledge we gain is the fruit of our journey. Come share it with me.

MJ-11/18/09

So… your swimming along and you come across a wolf eel, cool stuff. You know one of their favorite foods is sea urchins, so you hunt one down and feed it to the eel. Great stuff right? You got to feed a wild animal in their own environment!

Although this scenario is tempting, please, please, please don’t do this!

There is a balance in nature, predator and prey, that exists in all the animal kingdoms.

This balance can and is usually thrown off by humans. Some of the cases are very innocent, but the impact can last a long time.

By feeding underwater sea life you could be putting yourself, the animals, or someone else at risk.

Here’s how and why:

Yourself –

An accidental bite can cause major damage to you and could lead to a panicked diver situation or a visit to a clinic, at the very least. In example, for years people have been baiting sharks so tourists can swim with them. When someone finally gets bit they are just amazed, sharks sure are dangerous, huh!? The bottom line is these are wild animals! They are not malicious, their goal is to fill their stomachs.

The underwater critter-

Feeding an underwater animal is not good for the animal, because they learn to trust humans. Part of the problem is, not all humans are so kind to animals. Some people hunt for food and you are teaching the animals to be easy targets. Others will harm an animal out of their own ignorance and fear because the animal approached them, simply looking for the handout they have become accustomed to.

By feeding them you are changing their natural habits, training the animal to come to you for food or come out of hiding when they know divers are around. Many of the foods that have been fed to fish are not healthy for them, pizza and frozen veggies are, I’m sure, not usually found on their menu.

As a result of feeding fish, the fish are not doing their jobs. People have been giving them easy snacks, so they can get a close up photo or show a buddy or maybe it is your “underwater pet”. This hurts their environment they live in because they should be finding their own food and eating what is natural to them. They are part of the clean up crew. When they don’t feed on natural diets, an imbalance occurs as their prey move toward destructive overpopulation.

Someone else-

What if the next person diving in that area doesn’t have that snack? The animal has learned from humans that they are a food source, and may be become aggressive.

Thinking back on my first dive in Mexico. While we were waiting for our dive master on the bottom we saw a school of blue fish. (WOW COOL!) They swam past, then a minute later they were back- except this time they were all over my head biting and pulling my hair. I had gotten my hair braided, and when they did the braids they put beads in the ends of them. I don’t know if this could have happened anywhere, or if I looked like a feeding station for fish, but we were in a common dive area where there are a lot of tourists. It makes me wonder if the fish in the area were used to human interaction by being fed? They obviously were not the least bit concerned by me being there!

Conclusion

Many areas around the world had been selling food to tourists to feed the fish. The adverse effects it has had on the fish and the ocean environment has taken many years to discover. In these areas the corals were suffering, the fish more aggressive and people had been bitten. Hopefully the effects of fish feeding can be reversed. Some of these areas have stopped selling bait food and have put up signs for no feed zones.

Everybody dives for their own reason, mine happens to be because I love the critters. I look forward to seeing them every time I go down. I want it to be in a natural way though, not where I’m baiting them to me. It took me two years to see my first eel while diving, but it was worth the wait.

I’ve been trying to remember an old environmental saying and relate it to diving-

“Shoot only photos, don’t muck up the bottom, and take only memories.” or something to that effect.

If you love the animals and want to feed them, I would suggest volunteering at your local aquarium or a sea life rehab clinic where the animals need to be fed. This can be both rewarding and educational for you and others, and you will be making a positive impact!

Stay safe and Happy diving!
Christy Longdon

Here are a few web sites to check out for more information.

http://myfwc.com/RULESANDREGS/Saltwater_Regulations_FishFeed.htm

http://www.cdnn.info/special-report/sharkbyte/sharkbyte.html

http://www.coral.org/where_we_work/asia/pacific/hawaii/fish_feeding_campaign/more

When do you graduate from a diver-in-training to a good buddy (or what others call a “team diver”)?

SCUBA is a fun and relaxing sport, but the reality is that we don’t “belong” in the underwater environment. For this reason, we have to ensure that all our systems are working properly and that our dive buddy will not cause us stress, but rather be there to assist us competently in the event of an emergency.

How comfortable would you be if your buddy was constantly leaving you behind, changing positions and speed, and you never knew where they were? What if they got disoriented and headed the wrong way, but made no attempt to find you? How about if they were always running out of air or their equipment was so poorly maintained that it was not reliable? These are not comforting thoughts to me and I hope they are not to you, either!

When our sport first came to be, the original underwater explorers were single/solo divers. These brave and adventurous men made incredible dives, and some of them lost their life as a result. Many new explorers have found that when diving with a well trained team that shares a single common goal, exploration dives are safer and the explorers get to go farther. They also get to go home! Many in the sport diving community have watched the success of theses explorers and have tried to translate the philosophy to non-exploration/recreational sport divers.

So what exactly is a good buddy?

• A diver that actively participates on the dive planning.
• A diver that will agree to assign a dive leader, but will still be self-sufficient during the dive.
• A diver with well maintained equipment that is suitable for their type of diving and their area conditions.
• A diver that will follow the plan, and maintain a position in the water in relation to the dive leader (so that he does not have to always be looking for the buddy diver).
• A diver that would not hesitate to call the dive if they had a problem.
• A diver with good gas management and buoyancy control.

All of these are qualities for a really good buddy. You may never appreciate the skills of a good buddy if you always dive with one person, but if you don’t have a regular buddy, you will most definitely appreciate good skills when and if you should ever need them!

Information and communication is the key: agreeing before the dive on dive plan and the “what ifs”, and checking gear and reviewing hand signals before starting the dive. There is nothing more difficult than trying to deal with a problem when you are not able to communicate with your buddy underwater.

On some dives, it is very possible to have a buddy assigned to you by a DM on a dive boat. It may be difficult to assess this diver’s ability. Here are some questions should you ask this diver up front, BEFORE you enter the water with them:

• What are they hoping to get out of the dive (cover and see as much territory as possible, slow dive to take pictures, etc.)
• What is their training level, and how recent is their experience?
• What is their air consumption rate, and are they willing to end the dive as a team, based on a pre-agreed gas limit?
• What parameters do they see for the dive – How deep, how long, and what activities? If they propose things you’re uncomfortable with (like penetrating wrecks) are they willing to forego that to keep the team together?

Remember, you can’t ask to dive with a good buddy if you are not one yourself. If your buddies always have to look for you because you get easily distracted, easily lose the group, tend to lose your buoyancy, or you run low or out of air, you should do everyone a favor (ESPECIALLY YOURSELF!) and get some more training!

Here are a couple simple training recommendations:

• Practice your basic skills on every dive, even when you are diving on your favorite spot where you have 100 logged dives. Skills include good buoyancy control and hovering quietly, as well as mask flooding and gas sharing.
• Take some entry level tech diving classes even if you’re not interested in tech diving. The skills you learn will help you on every dive and may just save you or your buddy somewhere down the road.

I’d like to thank my friend, Christy, for sharing her thoughts on sharks. Originally she wanted to post this as a comment to my shark blog, but I believe this text merits it’s own space:

First I would like to thank you Sandra for sharing your knowledge about sharks.

Even with the information I have learned I can’t say that if during a dive I came across a shark  that I wouldn’t be nervous, excited and even scared, but I know I’m going into there home as a guest and must be respectful, because it is me that doesn’t belong, otherwise I would have flippers instead of fins and gills instead of a big tank full of air on my back.

The movie SHARKWATER was incredible, the cinematography was beautiful, and the story came across very clearly.  It did a wonderful job showing all sides of the spectrum and not just coming across as a bunch of crazy nature radicals .  Before watching it I had no idea the problems sharks were facing.  My first thought was “this is as bad as a drug trade”

We as humans always manage to throw off natures balance, the fact is when we enter the oceans we are entering a fourin and beautiful world, sharks and all.  Sharks are on the top of the food chain down below and are needed for many reasons.  Bottom line- we need sharks they don’t need us.

It’s sad to think that one day we may need to tell our children and generations to come that there used to be  this shark called the Great White, or the Tiger Shark.  How many animals have been driven to the point of endangered or even extinct during our life time?  Because of our greed and ignorance.

We also need to note all the other animals that are being destroyed during this horrific fishing process.

Animals like Sea turtles, Rays and many other fish that have been caught, killed and thrown overboard without a second thought because they weren’t the money maker.  This issue is beyond just helping the sharks it is about helping many other sea creatures and in the end helping our selves.

Education,Education, Education!

For more information about Oceana’s campaign to safeguard sharks, please visit www.oceana.org/sharks

After reading about all of the shark attacks occurring recently I began thinking about 2001, aka the “Year of the Shark.” I was working in the Florida Keys that year as a Divemaster and Instructor and can remember getting a lot of cancellation calls from customers who were too afraid to dive in Florida waters because of the number of attacks occurring there. I also fielded a lot of questions from folks who wanted to know more about sharks and shark attacks.

Folks, here’s a cold hard fact: Most shark attacks are caused by a case of mistaken identity on humans who are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time! Most “attacks” consist of just one bite. Once a shark realizes they’ve got the wrong prey, they let go (because frankly we taste like crap to sharks and they prefer a more tasty diet!) The problem is that when a large animal takes an “exploratory” bite on a mere human it tends to do a lot of damage, often the fatal kind.

Let’s also take a look at the location where most attacks have happened…near beaches. A few species of sharks actually hunt for prey in shallow waters. Guess what? That is also where most of their interactions with humans occur. When the attacks happened, what were the conditions in the water, the visibility, and the proximity of bite fish? In bad water conditions can we honestly justify blaming these fish for a case of mistaken identity…especially when we are mere guests in THEIR HOUSE?!

Granted, some sharks are known to attack humans “on purpose.” According to research statistics, of the more than 350 shark species swimming the world’s oceans the Bull, Great White, and Tiger sharks are the three most likely culprits. That sure leaves a large majority of innocent species with an undeserved bad rep.

When it comes to sharing the water with sharks the best thing you can do as a SCUBA diver is to educate yourself. And I am definitely NOT suggesting you watch the garbage and falsehoods put forth in “shock value” Hollywood movies! Research the subject by listening to, and reading reports and books by, scientists and other experts in the field. You can also gain valuable knowledge by watching respected and fully researched programs like the ones featured during the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week.

Photo by Dr. Mathew Gilligan/NOAA

I’d like to share a few of my encounters with sharks in the hope that you will learn to share my appreciation, love, and respect for these magnificent creatures:

On one of my first dives as a newly certified open water diver I came upon a nurse shark resting under a ledge on a coral reef. I remember being scared, but curious at the same time. After the dive I started researching sharks and was shocked to discover that nurse sharks are responsible for quite a few bite encounters. The nurse shark will bite in self defense if stepped on or bothered by divers who assume they’re docile. As I continued studying, I found out that most of the attacks happen to divers that find a nurse shark sleeping under the coral and then proceed to pull on their tails or otherwise harass it. One diver actually picked a shark up to get a picture with it in his arms! Can you blame the poor shark? How would you feel if some stranger showed up in your living room and picked you up? I bet you’d beat the crap out of them!

Years later I was working as a Divemaster, conducting a local orientation dive, when I saw the biggest fish I had seen yet. We never got close to the animal and it just kept moving slowly away from us. It wasn’t difficult to identify that this was a Bull Shark. Now, I had heard from other local divers that Bull sharks were really “bad” sharks and should be killed before they had a chance to kill us. Based upon the behavior I had witnessed during my dive, I again got curious and started asking more questions about them. Turns out that most times these sharks had attacked a diver, it was because they were following the bloody trail these people left from speared fish they were carrying on stringers attached to their sides! Bull sharks are also hated by charter boat operators because they routinely attack hooked fish like Marlin and Mahi-Mahi and a half eaten trophy fish doesn’t make for a good picture. Yeah, it’s the shark’s fault he was hungry. I so get that as a valid reason to hate them…NOT!

Over the years I continued to see Bull sharks while diving in the Florida Keys and every time it was the same, the animal was more interested in getting away from the divers than interacting with them. On one occasion we had unusually good visibility during a wreck dive. As the divers were descending, a group of Bull and Reef sharks moved away from the wreck and hung out about 100 feet away. They stayed there, just circling the perimeter, until the last diver left the wreck. Let’s not forget what I mentioned earlier…statistically Bull sharks are in the top three most likely to attack humans. If they are THAT dangerous, how come I’m still here to tell you first-hand details about my many encounters with them?

Are you getting my point yet?

I could probably go on for hours about my shark experiences but the last story I want to share happened not long after the so-called “Year of The Shark”. I was the Divemaster on a snorkeling boat (with about 30 snorkelers on board.) On the way out to the reef I saw a Hammerhead and several Nurse and Reef sharks. Once we arrived we got busy helping our customers get into the water and I didn’t think about the sharks anymore. At the reef, it was my job was to monitor the snorkelers in case anyone got too far from the boat or needed assistance. Some time had passed and I began to see a number of shark dorsal fins about 100 feet away from my snorkelers, on the other side of the reef. They were in an area that is very shallow, about 10 feet deep with a sandy bottom and turtle grass beds. I got the captain’s attention and we started counting sharks. I lost count at 50 animals. They were moving very slowly and several times got as close as 25 feet away from the snorkelers. When it was time to go home and everyone was back on the boat we made a big announcement about the unusual number of sharks in the area and moved the boat closer so the customers could see them. There were several species in the group (Nurse, Bull, and Reef,) in varying sizes. To this day I still don’t know what these sharks were doing in the area but, if Sharks were the “man-eaters” many would have you believe, I would have a very different story to tell!

The sad fact is that humans, whether out of ignorance, fear, or both, kill more sharks every year than can be reproduced. Just take a look at the endangered species list and see how many shark species are on it. Through habitat destruction and overfishing, we’ve become more dangerous to sharks than they are to us. And folks, if we allow them to disappear, all ocean life will suffer!

Shark specialists estimate that 100 million sharks are killed for their fins alone, annually. It’s a horrible and gruesome way for these animals to die and over what? GREED! One pound of dried shark fin can retail for $300 or more. It’s a multi-billion dollar industry that is going to take some serious efforts to fight. For more on this subject, I would recommend you watch the multiple award-winning movie “Shark Water.”

If you’ve ever been afraid to share the water with sharks, or believed the Hollywood version of their behavior, please do yourself a favor and get educated about them. I have no doubt that you will find them to be fascinating animals. It’s high time that everyone understands that WE are the real predator, not the shark!

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