Dive safety

Saturday 30.7.2016

It is interesting to see how this type of "professional" diving environment differs from that of the recreational diving I am used to. The differences will materialize only in practice at the site, but already some notes can be made.

Everyone must fill in the Dive Medical Self Certification Statement from the World Recreational Scuba Training Council (WRSTC).  If you answer "no" to any of the numerous health questions, then you must go through a proper physical and provide doctor's certificate for being fit to dive. This form is very similar to the form (in Finnish) used in Finland. Nothing new here.

We all bring our own dive gear, except for the tanks and weights. Dive gear must be properly serviced and must have minimum service life of three months before the fieldschool begins. In recreational diving everyone takes care of his own gear for pure self preservation, but this time the service records may actually be checked. Everything is clearly done so that in case of an accident you have a paper trail to prove that proper procedures have been followed.

All divers must have redundant source of buoyancy. This sounds simple enough, but turned out to be difficult for me. I was planning to use my wet suit, which I know from previous experience to be quite suitable temperature-wise to 45m Cyprus waters in August. However, that would now require leasing a twin bladder wing (Buoyancy Compensator Device, BCD), because my own wing has only one air bladder. You do not need twin bladder wings when diving with dry suit, because the dry suit is itself a BCD. I did not want to take my cold water Loitokari dry suit to Mazotos, because it would be too warm with fixed wool-lined hood and integrated mittens, and it would be cumbersome to do precise work on the wreck with those mittens. Also, leasing a twin bladder wing for 4 weeks would cost real money, and I really wanted a good reason to have a new dry suit. So, after careful thinking I ended up buying a new Dive Rite 905 trilaminate dry suit with neck and wrist seals. You can use a wet suit hood and gloves with it, but I also got the attachments to use dry gloves. Now I need to practice using it before the fieldschool begins.

Everyone must have proper insurance. In practice this means at least DAN Sport Silver level, which covers technical diving and has no depth limits. This is what technical divers need anyway. They wanted to see our diving certificates in advance, and collected next of kin contact information for emergencies. All this feels very professional and gives you a nice feeling of being well taken care of.

NAS  uses well a defined Code of Practice for safe diving (see NAS Archaeology Underwater - Guide to Principles and Practice), and no doubt it will be followed, with local adjustments. There will be stringent bookkeeping, and possibly a standby diver with full dive gear on at the surface vessel at all times. We use relatively good bookkeeping with dive club trips, but safety divers are not always there, and even then only for surface rescue purposes with no dive gear on. So, this will be different. I can already envision me sitting there for an hour in nice 40C weather with full dive gear on in my dry suit. At least I can console myself that it could be worse - I could be in my Loitokari.

Location of the Mazotos wreck. Modern Larnaca is just south of  Ancient Kition.
(Demesticha, The 4th-Century-BC Mazotos Shipwreck, Cyprus: a preliminary report, Int J of Nautical Archaeology 2010).