Our small group of 6 divers drove to a car park high up on the top of the plateau surrounding the small bay - arriving as usual at about 10 am. We got dressed into our dive suits in pleasantly warm conditions. The rolling farmland and woodland of the Buchan countryside seemed stunningly green, the water a deep blue. Once fully kitted up, we then walked gingerly and in a rather ungainly manner, weighed down by our heavy gear, down a small path that meandered across the hillside down to the rocky beach.
Once at the bottom we strolled past a few startled holiday makers sending their groups of children into an excited chatter about the ‘deep sea divers’ that were walking through them en route to what they thought was a terribly exciting adventure.
Walking into the water to a depth that supported my body weight I bent down and pulled on my fins. One by one we flopped onto our fronts and started to snorkel out into deeper water, following the side of the cliffs on the west side of the bay.
Once we had got into about 10 metres and were approaching the end of the headland, we grouped up and then dumped all the air from our ABLJ’s. I sank slowly towards the bottom, a boulder field and kelp forest which, in the good visibility, I was able easily to see beneath me. Long kelp stalks were anchored to rocks, the fronds at their extremities waving in the gentle current.
As I sank I sensed the familiar increasing pressure on my sinuses but no matter how hard I tried to ‘pop’ my ears to equalise the pressure, I couldn’t. As I dropped down to 3 metres it became uncomfortable. By 5 metres down it was sore and I struggled to pop my ears to alleviate the pain.
The pain grew worse and worse as I sank deeper, becoming a numbing intense pain that filled my forehead inside my skull. I didn’t want to hold up the dive and with the ‘save face at all costs’ arrogance of youth, didn’t signal to tell any of the others that I was having difficulty.
Eventually we landed on the bottom. The pain was excruciating for me but I still managed to take a compass bearing to head out to the end of the headland where the cannon was rumoured to be.
We set off, heads down, finning out to sea. As we moved out to sea, so the seabed dropped away and it got slowly deeper. As the depth increased, so did the water pressure – and the pain in my forehead. The pain became the focus of my thoughts – but as I worked down the shelving bottom as the dive progressed, I found that the pain slowly eased. Perhaps, I thought, the effort of finning vigorously had helped clear my ears – or perhaps the increased pressure of air had forced its way through whatever sinus blockage I had.
‘Nature always tries to equalise’ was a rule taught to me at secondary school. The higher pressures now working on me, had strained to equalise with the lower atmospheric pressure in my sinal cavity. Eventually, somehow, the higher-pressure air had forced its way past the blockage and the pain left me.
We finned forward, winding our way through the large boulders. Here and there we encountered large kelp forests blocking our way. The large 10 feet long fronds at the uppermost ends of the kelp billowed in the gentle current and snagged at everything that protruded from your rig, wrapping themselves around your knife or your tank. We swam right down to the bottom of the kelp stalks and found that once you got below the 10 feet long waving fronds and got in amongst the stalks, there was plenty clear space between the stalks to swim through with your chest close down onto the rocks, underneath the carpet of fronds.
Although we searched in and around the large boulders and potholes at the end of the headland, we didn’t find the fabled cannon. Eventually we turned and made our way back into the bay and headed towards the shore. As I moved back up into slightly shallower water the pain in my sinuses returned. This time it seemed that the air in my sinuses was at a higher pressure than the water pressure around me. It wanted to get out to equalise but couldn’t because of the same blockage that had caused the trouble on the way out. It was exact the opposite situation from the descent.
Once we got back into a depth of about 10 metres, the dive leader decided that the group would surface, check where we were and snorkel back the last part to the shore. Rising straight up slowly from the seabed, the pain suddenly got so intense that I almost bit my mouthpiece off. In silent agony I screamed into my mouthpiece.
As I slowly approached the surface, the pain suddenly disappeared in a palpable rush of air inside my sinuses. I felt as though my forehead was emptying of all its contents, including my brain. I felt light-headed at first and then I felt a wet, clammy sensation on my face inside my mask.
There were lots of strange effects competing for my attention inside my head but the main problem, the intense pain, had gone. By the time I hit the surface however I was feeling distinctly dizzy and a little queasy.
The head of my buddy diver appeared beside me, water cascading from his wet suit hood. He looked at me and immediately I registered concern in his face. Pulling his regulator out of his mouth he said casually,
“Your mask’s full of blood, Rod. Are you OK?”
“I’m not sure….” I replied, my words hanging in the air as I tried to work out what was happening to me. The pain had gone - and as the time passed on the surface the faintness and dizziness were abating. At least I knew what the strange wet sensation inside my mask. I had never had my face in a pool of blood before – the wetness of blood had a different more clinging, oily feeling compared to water.
I lifted both my hands up and taking hold off both sides of my mask I gingerly lifted it off my face breaking the watertight seal. Instantly a pool of blood spilled from it into the water around me spreading outwards in a dark, red/black cloud like the ink of a startled octopus.
A shock of alarm ran through me as I watched the cloud spreading. This was beyond my limited experience and I didn’t know if I was in trouble or not. I didn’t feel in any great difficulty now – but the sight of so much of my own blood was disconcerting. I had perhaps a few hundred feet to snorkel back to shore - so even if it was serious, I wasn’t in any immediate danger given that there were five other divers around me to assist.
My buddy, who was equally as inexperienced as me, didn’t know what was up and called over the Dive Leader, a veteran diver. He took one look at me and asked me,
“You had pain going down in your sinuses, right?”
“Yes – as I got deeper it got worse – and then went away. It’s only as I came back up to the surface just now that something went high up inside my nose.”
“Don’t worry about it, Rod – you’re OK. You’ve just had some sort of blockage up there – gas has gone in and got stuck. When you came up at the end of the dive, the air had to get out somehow and ….. Boom….. all those psi’s had to go somewhere.” He thrust his hands upwards as he opened them simulating an explosion with great eagerness.
“It’s burst its way through some sort of membrane. It’s not the end of the world and you ain’t gonna die – so get your mask back on and let’s get you ashore.” I must have looked unconvinced – or worried,
“It’s OK, Rod, you’re not in trouble.” he reassured me more sympathetically – and right enough, the rest of the snorkel back was easy enough.
Other than looking a bit white and drained (literally), back on the beach I didn’t appear to suffer any other repercussions from the incident. But I had had felt another of those surges of panic, the sort that shoots through you when something goes wrong and you don’t know how to handle it - a gnawing fear that turns your stomach and makes you feel almost physically sick. It is a sensation that most divers will feel at some stage of their career.
In October that year