Diving with Woody of Dive Talk!

Yesterday, I met one of my heroes. Yesterday, I took up a hobby that I love after setting it aside for almost a decade. I first started SCUBA diving while in Dahab, Egypt, at the tail end of a months-long research project on the political aspirations of rural Egyptian peasants in the context of the Arab Spring. My interviews with rural Egyptians had taken me all over the country, but I chose to end up in Dahab to transcribe my notes and take a breather because the beach town is very laid-back, relative to the rest of Egypt, it's cheap to live, and it lies right on the Red Sea. I chose Yalla Bar as my daily spot to eat lunch, smoke hookah, transcribe my notes, and to work on the first draft of my research project, which would become my master's thesis. As I wrote I watched a daily stream of divers trailing into and out of the water, and it reminded me of a childhood dream I'd had when we used to visit the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, which was about three hours' drive from where I grew up in rural Indiana. I loved watching the fish in the tanks, but what I really wanted to do was be the diver inside the tank feeding the fish. It's rare when you find yourself with nothing better to do than to realize a childhood dream, so I signed up for my Open Water course.

Diving in the Red Sea is amazing, and I couldn't have chosen a better spot for my first dive experience. A natural coral reef runs the length of Dahab, and the area is rich with other features: The Canyon, where you can dive in an overhead environment, the wreck of the HMS Thistlegorm, a British warship that sank during WWII, and a 120-meter-deep blue hole that punches straight down through the coral reef. Coupled with The Arch, Dahab's blue hole is known as the most dangerous dive sites in the world - it's estimated that as many as 200 divers have died there. It's a gorgeous place to dive, and it's also the main reason I stopped diving for almost a decade. 

The first time I dived in Dahab's blue hole, we accidentally dove a little too deep while watching a giant grouper and caught sight of The Arch. The Arch is a glowing, blue horizontal cavern punched sideways into the side of the blue hole, connecting it to the open ocean of the Red Sea. To dive through The Arch you must go to a depth of around 60 meters, far deeper than what is allowed on an Open Water certification (30 meters), or even a Deep Diving certification (40 meters). I had my Deep Diving certification at this point, but after seeing the glow of The Arch on that one dive I commented on the surface to my dive instructor that I'd like to get tech diving certified and trained so I could swim through The Arch safely. 

My instructor, an Austrian named Alex, waited for the other divers to leave before telling me in hushed tones that he and I could do The Arch on a single tank. Although I did quite a few more dives afterward, this brief conversation marked the beginning of the end of my diving. From then on, Alex became obsessed with taking us through The Arch. To determine whether I got "narced" at excessive depths on a single tank, he took me down to 60 meters on two occasions, but did not tell me his plan either time before we were actually under water at a depth of 40 meters. Then, he just gave the hand signal for "down," and we dropped another 20 meters. At the bottom, he did a series of tests to see how quickly my brain worked at 60 meters. According to him I did fine. Both times scared me, because it's not safe to go that deep with the gas mix that they put in a single tank. And I'm still mystified as to why anyone wants to take their life in their hands to do The Arch in that way, when it's extremely cheap to get dive instruction in Dahab, so why not just get tech trained, use the proper gas mixes, and do it safely? 

 I stopped diving entirely without telling anyone why. Almost all my friends in Dahab were divers, most of them instructors, and I considered Alex a friend as well. I knew that at the very least he would get into some kind of trouble if I told anyone what he was pressuring me to do, and although I had done four or five specialty certifications, I still was a very new diver. But two of my dive friends had a suspicion something was wrong, and, after a good many beers one evening, I finally told them. They were understandably furious with Alex and my dive center, because I'd tried to get a different dive instructor without saying why, and they'd refused. I had felt extremely conflicted, because you should feel like you can trust your dive instructor, and your dive instructor specifically should not be putting you at risk. That's, you know, THE OPPOSITE of his job. The real kicker was that during the last discussion Alex and I had about diving The Arch, Alex told me I would need to swim behind him, because he's heard there were stalactites, and I'd need to "have his back" in case his hoses got hung up. So wait -you're the instructor, I'm the student and I'M supposed to have YOUR back? 

 Long story short, I never dived again, and all that was in 2012. That is, I never dived again until yesterday. The last couple of years, I'd gotten hooked on this show, Dive Talk, on Youtube, where two veteran cave divers, Gus Gonzalez and Woody Alpern, break down diving videos and tell viewers in detail what divers are doing correctly and incorrectly. Almost every time divers get in trouble, it's because they've done something that went against their training. This of course applies to all of the dead morons who drowned trying to go through The Arch on a single tank. I'm including right here Dive Talk's video of one of the more famous Blue Hole deaths. Please keep in mind this is exactly where good ol' Alex wanted to take me back in 2012 on a single tank. 

The more I watched Gus and Woody, the more I kept thinking that if I ever dived again, it would have to be with those guys. Why? Because they believe in safety. They can explain in excruciating detail exactly how you should dive and why it's important to dive safely. In the years since I lived in Egypt, I moved to Georgia to do my Ph.D., and somewhere along the way realized that the only two divers I wanted to train with, Gus and Woody, are also based in Georgia (Marietta). What are the freakin odds? On a whim a couple of years ago, I'd put myself on a list to volunteer at the Georgia Aquarium, but then Covid took over the world and they put those programs on hold. Somewhere along the line I realized Gus and Woody already volunteer at the Georgia Aquarium, so I started asking them about a refresher Open Water course in order to work at the Georgia Aquarium. 

All of this is a very long way to say, after a decade I've finally gotten back in the water, AND I got to meet one of my heroes, Woody, who administered the refresher course. I am so excited to finally get back in the water, and to do it safely. Thanks, Woody!