Splashdown- Why I Dive

As I stood at the edge of the boat, rocked gently by the sea three feet below me, I could not help but think that there is nothing inherently rational about stepping from a perfectly good boat and into the ocean. My objective, the wreck of the Indra, lay waiting 40 feet below and the sandy bottom beckoned from 30 feet beyond that. But at that moment, all I could think about was that I was preparing first to leave the boat and second to descend into an environment where the only thing keeping me alive was the equipment I was wearing and the training I had received. Again, not the most rational of acts.

I was newly certified, having just six days previously finished my checkout dives in the quarry. Flush with that success, I rushed to sign up for this trip- two quick dives that would get me 40 percent of the way to my Advanced Open Water certification. But the ocean isn’t the same as the quarry. It’s not the depth, mind you. There are places in the quarry deeper than where we were anchored that moment. It's not even the waves, unless you are prone to seasickness. It’s the distance. At the quarry, you are always a short distance from safety. In the ocean, you could be swept away by the current and you were decidedly not going to swim to shore. Never mind that it was unlikely. This is what I remember.

The boat rocked gently beneath me.

I held my regulator and my mask with one hand, my weight belt with the other, and extended a foot into the open air.

Splashdown.

Immediately, I was free of gravity, mentally and physically. The apprehension of the moment before vanished as I prepared to vent the BC and descend. My diving buddy splashed down when I had moved a few feet and I could tell by the look on her face that whatever nervousness she might have been feeling was fading as fast as my own. We dumped our air and made for the anchor line.

Every time it is like this, at least for me. Since that day I have gone on dives that were deeper and in more arduous conditions. True there is less fear, but there remains a frisson that makes every giant stride thrilling. I leave the workaday world behind because I have to. To worry about things other than what is in front of me is to court disaster. No matter how much I do this thing, no matter how proficient I become, I am always at risk.

Divers willingly enter an environment that would kill us without technology. We put a kind of faith in the equipment we wear and the engineers who designed it. We trust in our training and in the training of our buddies. But none of this ever bothers me after the splash, when I slip free of weight and fly to the bottom.