Underwater Wakulla
By RUSTY MILLER
By the time this article comes out we will have almost hit the middle of January 2023. Most if not all the reef species will be closed to fishing and spearfishing. So this begs a question: What do we do for the next three to four months? I know several who are hunters but even that is a very short season. I have some suggestions. While you have this down time my first suggestion is spend more time with your family. Then my other suggestions are get your regulators and BCD serviced so you will be ready to hit the water when the fishing season opens.
For me, even though the dive season has slowed down, I find myself very busy at the dive shop with servicing regulators for customers. I really enjoy doing the mechanical work on the regulators making sure they are safe to use. The spearfishing folks in our community are in the ocean on a regular basis when the seasons are in. I can’t stress enough to get your regulators serviced at least once a year.
Another suggestion is get more education and training in diving. Most diving accidents are because open water divers go beyond the limits of their original open water training. I fully understand the excitement after you get your basic open water training and certification, but don’t let that take you in to a dangerous situation that you’re not trained for. One example I can give is what is called an overhead environment. Basically it’s when you’re diving in a spring that has a cave system and you go into the opening or cavern. If you have done this, you might say to yourself that I’m not going very far into the cavern let alone the actual cave that’s connected to it. The problem is you find yourself a little further than you planned and when you turn around to leave you realize the entrance has been silted up by your kicking and now you’re a statistic. About 90% of cave deaths are open water divers who are not trained for it.
Another area of dive training is advanced diver. This training will teach you to understand what pressure can do as you go deeper into the water column. An advanced trained diver is taught the dangers of the deeper water from 60 feet to 130 feet. You learn a small part of decompression diving and what you need to do if you go longer at the deeper depth than your dive tables and or computer say to. The other area of training is the use of a Nitrox mixture like 32% and 36%. This means that instead of breathing normal air that has the 21% oxygen to breathing gas with 32% or 36% of oxygen. A good example is if you are on a spearfishing trip with your friends and they have standard air and 32% Nitrox and you grab a 32% tank you’ll jump in the water and see a big gag grouper. You go and spear it and just before you go into uncontrollable convulsions your last look at your depth gauge says 135 feet. You basically drowned if your dive buddy is too far away from you. Standard air the maximum depth is 218 feet, the maximum depth on 32% is 130 feet. Now you can see for the training for Nitrox.
This brings me to my last suggested training that is a diving rescue course. Let’s use the last example of diving to deep on Nitrox32. If your dive buddy does go into convulsions and passes out without the regulator in their mouth, rather than panicking and trying to bring them to the surface too fast causing even more issues, you will know the correct technique to bring them to the surface increasing their chance of survival. A dive rescue certification gives you the techniques to assist a fellow diver who is in distress. You will learn CPR, O2 use, and diving first aid. You will learn how to help a panicked or near panicked diver at the surface and underwater. In the classroom you will learn the legal aspect as well as dealing with the family of the diver you save or not. You have to remember that if you’re not trained in certain situations then you don’t try to help because you could become the second victim.
I hope this will give you some things to think about because the ocean is vast and very unforgiving. Keep making bubbles.
Russell Miller is the manager at Wakulla Diving Center in Medart. NAUI Instructor #59999