The cool pool water enveloped me and I sank down heavily to the bottom of the pool. Immediately, I saw a different aspect of the pool – from below up. There on the bottom, in little groups of two or three, were other novice divers being trained by instructors. I was able to swim around them easily and choose at what depth to swim – the feeling of weightlessness was akin to floating in space. I could move easily in every direction, up, down, left or right. I tried turning a few cartwheels, which seemed hysterical until I realised that I had lost control of my buoyancy and floated up to break the surface. Red faced I sank back down to my instructor.
I was hooked for life - and continued at my training, turning up for weekly lectures. I began to understand the mechanics of how all my equipment worked, what it was for and started to learn something of the physiology of diving - what was happening inside my body as I dived.
After 6 months of training and a move to Ellon, I joined the local branch of the British Sub Aqua Club (BSAC) there. There were number of very experienced divers at this branch and the club dived regularly and went on expeditions to far flung exotic parts of Scotland. It all seemed extremely daring and exciting.
Soon after joining the BSAC in Ellon, I turned up at my local dive shop in Aberdeen, Sub Sea Services to buy my first wet suit. At that time everyone was still diving in wet suits – the dry suit revolution had not yet happened in sport diving. With great relish I bought the biggest dive knife money could buy, a wet suit, a 72 cu ft. aluminium dive tank and harness, weights and a weight belt and a Fenzy ABLJ. The Adjustable Buoyancy Life Jacket (ABLJ) was a large, bright orange horse collar life jacket that went over your head and was secured by a couple of straps, one round your back and one under your crotch - so you didn’t drop out of it.
Equipped with all this new gear, I went on to scrounge or pick up cheaply, the other essential pieces of diving equipment, a torch, dive watch and an old-fashioned capillary depth gauge. This clever yet simple device was the size of a large watch and fitted over your wrist. It had a round face with numbers all the way round. A thin transparent pipe, open at one end, circled the outside of the face – and it worked very simply. The deeper you went, the more the increasing water pressure compressed the air in the thin tube - as it tried to force its way into the open end of the tube. You read your depth from the numbers at the point where the air bubble was compressed to.
Even with all this equipment, under the prevailing club system of the time, it took me about six months before the time came for my first sea dive. Swimming around in the safe confines of the pool environment was one thing – but diving in the sea would be completely new to me.
I drove to Aberdour Beach to the west of Fraserburgh on the north-easternmost corner of Scotland. The regular Sunday dive had been planned as an easy shore dive for the novices like myself coming through the club system.
About 15 divers in total turned up, some experienced, some, like me, completely new to the sport and under instruction. I was paired up with a very capable and experienced club diver called Colin Rivers. Colin was a very genial tall bearded diver, unassuming but very capable.
We got dressed into our wet suits and rigged up with our dive gear. Colin, knowing that it was my first sea dive had a good look over my shiny new kit to make sure that I hadn’t forgotten anything obvious, like turning my air supply on.
I knew how buoyant my wet suit was without weights, and never having dived in the sea before, I wasn’t entirely sure how much weight I should carry in my weight belt to counteract that buoyancy. Sea water is more buoyant than the pool water I had practised in so I knew I would need some more - but how much? I was also concerned at what might happen if the seemingly fragile plastic clamp on my weight belt were to fail or be knocked open.
To avoid such a calamity, I thought it would be a good idea to put a half hitch knot in the excess length of my weight belt to secure it to the main section. Colin saw this straight away and patiently explained to me the error of my ways. If he had to recover me from the water and had to get my weight belt off to get me into a boat or onto rocks at shore, he would be hampered as he would not be able to untie the knot quickly. He might have to cut the belt off me. Weight belts were designed to be quick release for just such an eventuality - and I was complicating the position.
With my buddy check completed I took a few trial breaths out of my breathing regulator. It was working fine, so, tank on back, mask on forehead, fins in hand and the all important “I’m a diver” knife strapped to my leg, I walked with Colin down from the car park to the water’s edge over a shingle beach. Some large rocky spurs ran out to sea from the beach for some way before disappearing underwater.
We walked into the water up to our chests then pulled our masks down and ducked down and pulled our fins onto our feet and secured the straps over our heels. With trepidation I then let myself fall forward into the caress of the water - wondering weather I would sink or float. As it turned out, with air in my ABLJ, I was quite buoyant.
We kicked our legs and snorkeled out from the beach on the surface until we had got into a depth of about 20 feet. The sky was a rich summer blue and shimmering bright shafts of light were penetrating down through the water lighting up a wondrous seascape below of sand, rocks and kelp forests. The north east of Scotland has very clear seawater and I could easily make out the seabed and rocky spur in great detail.
Giving each other an OK hand signal, I took the snorkel mouthpiece out of my mouth and stuck the breathing regulator 2nd stage into my mouth. I took hold of the mouthpiece and corrugated hose from my ABLJ and held the mouthpiece up as high as I could. Pressing the dump valve on the end allowed all the air in the ABLJ to escape. The air rushed out from my ABLJ and, from having been positively buoyant on the surface, I now became heavier - negatively buoyant.
I sank down, slowly at first but with increasing speed until I landed on the seabed kicking up a cloud of white sand like a helicopter landing. Colin arrived down beside me gracefully and gestured that I should now get back neutral buoyancy. I took a long draw on my regulator and then took it out of my mouth and inserted the mouthpiece for my ABLJ into my mouth. Pressing the open/dump valve on it I then breathed exhaled air into it and it puffed up a bit – but I was still too heavy. I replaced my breathing regulator back in my mouth, took another long draw to fill my lungs and then repeated the laborious process of breathing out and into my ABLJ mouthpiece - giving it a bit more buoyancy. (In the following years this laborious process, something of an art form at the time, was ended when a direct feed whip for air was introduced which ran from the 1st stage straight into the ABLJ. Then, at the touch of a button, air could be bled directly into the ABLJ without having to remove your regulator from your mouth.)
After repeating this process a couple of times, I felt myself lift slightly as I breathed in, and sink slightly as I breathed out. I had achieved neutral buoyancy and it was time to head off on the dive.
Colin had a wrist mounted dive compass and had taken a bearing for our route from the shore. Whilst sorting out my buoyancy I had ignored my underwater bearings and not having acquired a compass as yet, had no idea of which way to go. Colin checked his compass, got our course and gestured for me to follow. We were off.
We swam over to the spur of rocks, which had assumed a totally new perspective. Now there was a wall of rock that ran all the way from the seabed up to the surface. It was an underwater cliff face and I was at once mesmerised by everything that could be found on this cliff face. In the nooks and crannies, crabs and squat lobsters hid. Large fronds of kelp drifted up from their fixings on rocky outcrops. Anemones and sponges competed for space. Large starfish lay on the bottom and fish drifted in and out of my vision. I was completely spellbound and followed Colin as we moved along the seabed beside the wall out into deeper water.
As we moved deeper I could sense my surroundings getting a bit darker and