Swimmin' with the Fishes (Part 1)
Hands Across the Water
Kathryn comes from a family of divers. It all began with a man by the name of Bond... James Bond. A young Jeff (Kathryn's father) found himself engrossed in the film Thunderball, in which the legendary Sean Connery explores the depths with this fancy technology they call "scuba". This inspired a new goal in the future marine biologist to pursue his scuba certification: an achievement he completed shortly thereafter. Many moons later, Jeff had not only expanded his family but also his fascination with the aquatics. Lisa (Kathryn's mother) obtained her certification, and their two daughters followed suit. Now on the precipice of joining the family myself, it is my turn to learn the ways of the water and endow the future generation with the same passion.
I completed the online portion of the education a month ago, though it need not be explained that much of the learning needed to be completed in person. The in-person portion consists of four sessions in the pool, and one or two "checkout dives" to finally be awarded open dive certification. The pool sessions are divided into two weeks, and as of the time of this post, the first week has been completed. It has occupied much of my free time, as any time not working was spent doing the training and driving the hour & a half, one way, to and from the pool.
"How dreadful!" I hear you say. I assure you, dear reader, it is not so. I sense a new realm to call home has been unearthed.
School of Fish
The basics of scuba introduce you to the unnatural experience of nautical respiration and how to adapt if your respiration goes awry. I sat amongst eight others in the pool to learn about these things. My classmates include a father and his preteen son, a father and his collegiate daughter, a freshly married couple, a retired firefighter, and a legally blind man named Steve. Since most of the students were attending with their presumed dive buddy, I was introduced to my new teammate Allan, the firefighter (the nature of Steve's impairment required special instructor pairing). Allan is better than me at remembering the details instructed to us, perhaps due to the similar processes required of firefighter preparation.
If there’s one thing that made me anxious about diving, it was the fear that my body would initiate drowning response while underwater with the very equipment designed to specifically avoid drowning. As we put our regulators into our mouth and allowed our weights to drag us to the pool bottom, I was relieved to realize that breathing in this environment was hardly more effort than breathing on land. I basked in the serenity of the depths as we practiced exercises like draining our masks of water, recovering our regulator should it leave our lips, and equalizing under the increased pressure. We ended the week’s session with a free swim test of four laps around the pool; I’m happy to report that I succeeded, even if I was deprived of my breath by rushing to be the first to finish (which I was, by the way!).
Next week, I’ll report on how the remaining pool sessions go. I’m not quite sure what is taught going forward. To quote my instructor…
Next time, we’ll be learning how to scuba dive.