Scuba Divemaster And The Sixth Sense

Posted by Bruce Iliff Feb 25, 2009

I have many stories of my times as a scuba divemaster. The following is one I found satisfying in that it used all the skills I had learnt in theory and in the ocean of hard knocks, and had a good outcome.

This occurred on a dive trip to Flinders Reef out from Brisbane, Australia. I was the divemaster and the skipper Barrie was in charge of the boat.

There were about ten divers on the boat for a two dive day. On our second dive, I ended up with an older couple who were quite inexperienced. As we were the last in the water, we were also the last to finish our dive.

We ascended, but there was a bit of a current, some choppy waves and we got separated. I stayed with the man while the woman drifted off. I chose to stay with him, as he was starting to panic and obviously tiring.

The skipper Barrie picked up the last of the divers and headed over to us as we were being swept off across the Pacific. As we drifted, and I worked on keeping the man calm, I waved to Barrie to pick up the woman first. All it took was a quick signal in her direction and Barrie immediately knew what I meant.

I wanted her collected first as she was alone and could be on the verge of panic. I knew I had my situation under control, but had no idea what she was going through, so wanted her picked up quickly.

He collected her, with the other divers keeping an eye on us. It was starting to get a bit difficult to keep in eye contact as we had drifted around the side of the reef and were in some large swells. The boat disappeared from view whenever we dropped into a trough.

Once Barrie had the woman on board, he motored over and picked us up. It was all handled simply and easily, but had the potential to escalate into something much worse if things got out of hand.

The main thing from this experience was the rapport between Barrie and myself. In my article “What Is A Scuba Divemaster” I write about divemaster having a “sixth sense”. In this situation, there was a type of psychic communication between Barrie and I. We had done quite a number of trips on the same boat to the same dive site so worked well as a team. He seemed to know exactly what I was thinking when I signaled to get the woman first. She was alone and had the potential to panic, whereas I had the man under control.