A break from the norm.

I feel like doing a serious blog today. I’m not going to count this in my normal way as that would only tempt me to be funny (or try) and I don’t want everyone thinking that’s all I can do.

The reason for this seriousness is probably a conversation I had with Mr Kirton (the teacher at my school who organises the SCUBA diving). I am taking the rescue diver course very soon and we were just chatting about various things. I was asking him about the depths we are allowed to dive to; 30m recreationally, 40m for rescues. When he told me this, I suddenly had a thought; what if someone goes down deeper than 40?

The horrible truth is, that if this were to happen, you would have to leave them.

Just think about it for a second (horrifying stuff). You are diving with a buddy (you have to) who is most likely a friend, or a relative. In fact, considering that you are presumably on holiday with this person, you are most likely to be very close.

So your underwater, and at these depths it’s likely just to be the two of you, it’s dark, it’s cold and suddenly something goes wrong. It might not be sudden, but for whatever reason, your buddy falls unconscious and sinks to below 40m, or worse, they remain concious but are trapped below this depth. You, a trained rescue diver, have been told never to go below this depth for your own safety. What are you supposed to do?

You can’t help the person, they are below the depth your allowed to go. So in essence what you must do is watch your friend or relative while they either panic, or lie unconscious beneath you, until you have to return to the surface, leaving them to die. What’s worse, if they had been a few metres closer to the surface they would have probably survived with no permanent harm.

Now this is a very rare case, I hope I will never come even close to this, but it does throw up another issue. Could you really put your safety above others? I for one don’t think I could let someone die without trying to help. Honestly? I don’t know what I would do in that situation, but something tells me that instinct would take over and I would be powerless to stop myself from diving deeper.

I hope that most people will see this and have to think long and hard before deciding what they would do. To me, if you would put your own life first, without a second thought, it’s not the sort of life that’s worth keeping on this planet…