Diving — conquering the depths

“Div­ing” — trans­lat­ed from Eng­lish means “dive”, “dive under water.” This Eng­lish word entered the Russ­ian lan­guage rel­a­tive­ly recent­ly, but has already gained pop­u­lar­i­ty among divers and tourists.

His­to­ry of occur­rence

Despite the rel­a­tive “youth” of the name of this sport and recre­ation, peo­ple began to be inter­est­ed in scu­ba div­ing as ear­ly as 480 BC. This is evi­denced by the his­tor­i­cal evi­dence of Herodotus. Accord­ing to them, dur­ing the war, Greek sol­diers used div­ing as a kind of method of fight­ing ene­my ships. They cut the anchor ropes under water, after which the “affect­ed” ships set sail freely with­out an anchor or were washed ashore by a storm.

How­ev­er, it should be not­ed that those very ancient dives rather served as a pro­to­type for the devel­op­ment of a free-div­ing cul­ture. This type of scu­ba div­ing is based on hold­ing your breath. It is used for both com­mer­cial and recre­ation­al pur­pos­es. An exam­ple of mod­ern free div­ing is the dives of famous pearl divers. One dive of a div­er can last a few sec­onds, and can go up to 11 min­utes. The main dis­ad­van­tage of such a dive is the lim­i­ta­tion of oxy­gen and time to hold your breath.

Mod­ern div­ing equip­ment with an open breath­ing sys­tem — scu­ba — was invent­ed in 1943 by the French engi­neer Emile Gag­nan and Navy Cap­tain Jacques-Yves-Cousteau. Thanks to these peo­ple, div­ing became avail­able not only for pro­fes­sion­al divers, but also for all div­ing enthu­si­asts.

Types of div­ing and their fea­tures

Cur­rent­ly, sev­er­al types of div­ing are known: recre­ation­al div­ing, pro­fes­sion­al div­ing, sport div­ing, free div­ing (or apnea).

Recre­ation­al div­ing

This type of div­ing is div­ing for recre­ation or enter­tain­ment. It is one of the sim­plest types, which is car­ried out for the pur­pose of ama­teur acquain­tance with the under­wa­ter world and its inhab­i­tants. This is the only sport for which you do not need to have spe­cial train­ing and take heavy equip­ment with you. Div­ing depth is lim­it­ed to 40 meters.

A sub­class of recre­ation­al div­ing is tech­ni­cal div­ing. This is where a high lev­el of div­ing tech­nique is need­ed. The main pur­pose of such a dive is to explore caves, mea­sure the depths of depres­sions. Div­ing is car­ried out to a great depth. Great atten­tion is paid to the safe­ty of divers. A pre­req­ui­site for tech­ni­cal div­ing is addi­tion­al equip­ment with spe­cial gas, etc. The types of tech­ni­cal div­ing are:

1. Cave div­ing (hydrospele­ol­o­gy)

In this type of div­ing, an impor­tant con­di­tion is not only the avail­abil­i­ty of spe­cial equip­ment, but also the abil­i­ty to work in tight spaces. With such a fear as claus­tro­pho­bia, div­ing is strict­ly pro­hib­it­ed. Prepar­ing for a dive usu­al­ly takes a long peri­od of time. Divers pre­pare both phys­i­cal­ly and men­tal­ly. Hydrospele­ol­o­gy is very dan­ger­ous, first of all, because there is no pos­si­bil­i­ty of a quick ascent to the sur­face, there is an over­head envi­ron­ment. Swim­ming is car­ried out in con­di­tions of poor vis­i­bil­i­ty, and some­times in com­plete dark­ness.

2. Swamp div­ing

Swamp div­ing is car­ried out in flood­ed quar­ries and neglect­ed reser­voirs. It is believed that this type of div­ing belongs to the cat­e­go­ry of extreme types. An impor­tant char­ac­ter­is­tic of swamp div­ing is that when div­ing, vis­i­bil­i­ty is very lim­it­ed, and the water is sig­nif­i­cant­ly pol­lut­ed.

Pro­fes­sion­al div­ing (div­ing work)

This is a type of div­ing, the main con­di­tion of which is spe­cial edu­ca­tion and work expe­ri­ence. Com­mer­cial dives are main­ly car­ried out for the pur­pose of instal­la­tion / dis­man­tling (weld­ing, lift­ing under­wa­ter objects, etc.). There­fore, in addi­tion to the stan­dard equip­ment for div­ing, this type of div­ing uses addi­tion­al equip­ment (suits with cir­cu­la­tion of very hot water, cylin­ders with gas mix­tures, spe­cif­ic equip­ment, etc.).

The most com­mon types of div­ing work are:

• Civ­il div­ing (a wide vari­ety of under­wa­ter activ­i­ties that are car­ried out exclu­sive­ly for peace­ful pur­pos­es)
• Mil­i­tary dives (secu­ri­ty and pro­tec­tion of objects, recon­nais­sance, etc.)
• Com­mer­cial div­ing (most often rep­re­sent­ed by div­ing with groups of tourists and ama­teurs, to pass cer­tain routes)
• Media div­ing (div­ing for the pur­pose of film­ing used for the media).
• Sci­en­tif­ic div­ing (div­ing for sci­en­tif­ic research)

and oth­ers.

sport div­ing

A sport, the essence of which is under­wa­ter div­ing using spe­cial equip­ment. Unlike recre­ation­al div­ing, it has sev­er­al lim­i­ta­tions:

• The div­er must have an appro­pri­ate cer­tifi­cate with a cer­tain clas­si­fi­ca­tion
• Accord­ing to the diver’s clas­si­fi­ca­tion lev­el, his max­i­mum div­ing depth is set.
• It is strict­ly for­bid­den to exceed the no-decom­pres­sion lim­it
• For breath­ing, use only com­pressed air or nitrox (a mix­ture of oxy­gen and nitro­gen)
• Div­ing should only take place in “open water”.

Sports div­er train­ing has sev­er­al stages (Open Water Div­er, Dive Mas­ter in the PADI sys­tem, or NAUI or NDL). With the pas­sage of each lev­el, the div­er increas­es his clas­si­fi­ca­tion and receives a cer­tifi­cate of com­ple­tion of the course.

Equip­ment

If you are only inter­est­ed in recre­ation­al sur­face swim­ming or free div­ing, you can eas­i­ly get by with a basic kit that includes a snorkel, mask and fins. But if you real­ly want to try your­self as a div­er, then you need to take care of the full set of equip­ment. It includes:

Wet­suit

A wet­suit isn’t just for cold water. After all, its func­tion is not only to pro­tect you from tem­per­a­ture changes, but also to reduce oth­er types of expo­sure to the aquat­ic envi­ron­ment. In addi­tion, it is he who will help pro­tect your body from var­i­ous kinds of dam­age. If the suit does not pro­vide a glued hel­met, you should stock up on an autonomous one.

Flip­pers

The func­tion of the fins is to increase your speed and maneu­ver­abil­i­ty under­wa­ter. If your fins are designed to have an open heel, include spe­cial boots that pro­tect your foot.

A mask

Allows you to observe the under­wa­ter flo­ra and fau­na sur­round­ing you.

Buoy­an­cy com­pen­sator

Helps reg­u­late your lev­el of buoy­an­cy. This hap­pens due to the adjust­ment of the vol­ume of air that is between its walls.

scu­ba div­ing

Allows you to stay under­wa­ter for extend­ed peri­ods of time. Before div­ing, be sure to check if the cylin­der is full, if there are any leaks, if all the com­po­nents of the appa­ra­tus are in order.

Belt with weights

Gloves

Depth gauge

Times

Also, depend­ing on the wish­es and need, you can take a flash­light, a tug­boat, a com­pass, a knife and oth­er use­ful things for scu­ba div­ing.

Tips for begin­ner divers

If you want to do any of the above dives, then you need to know that div­ing is not just fun. Div­ing under water is always asso­ci­at­ed with a great risk to life (drown­ing, baro­trau­ma, gas poi­son­ing, decom­pres­sion sick­ness). There are also cer­tain con­traindi­ca­tions for div­ing. Among them:

• Preg­nan­cy
• var­i­ous types of viral dis­eases
• chron­ic infec­tions, etc.

Also, if you are not a pro­fes­sion­al, you should def­i­nite­ly be instruct­ed before div­ing.

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