Why Do We Dive?

by David & Dana Sawatzky

Why do we dive? What factors determine how we respond to risk? What determines our response to being bent? Why do we as divers tend to ostracize or put down a diver who does get bent? At Underwater Canada this spring I was asked to write about these types of issues but have been hesitant to do so as this is not my area of expertise. However, I believe that the answers to these and related questions are very important, both for the enjoyment of the individual diver and for safety in the sport. My wife Dana is finishing her PhD in clinical psychology, is an active diver (ex commercial diver), has been bent twice, and is an insightful and perceptive person. Therefore, most of the ideas in this column are hers and I will gladly direct any questions you may have to her.

In this column we will look at why we start diving, why we continue to dive and how these factors affect our attitude towards risk. Next time we will look at how divers respond to being injured themselves and the injuries of others. Most non-divers (including divers before they took up diving) and certainly insurance companies, see scuba diving as a high risk activity. We have all been asked how we can do something so dangerous. Divers typically respond by saying that "diving isn't dangerous", "you are more likely to get hurt bowling than diving", "diving is safe or I wouldn't do it" or "if you follow the rules you will not get hurt". In reality, the drive to the dive site is usually more dangerous than the dive. However, divers do get seriously hurt and die, and when they do, it is always given lots of attention in the media.

So why did we take the initial diving course? There are a multitude of reasons beyond seeing what's down there. Some of us were trying to face our fears or change how we saw ourselves. Some took the course to spend more time with another person or to appear more attractive to another person (wife or husband, potential girlfriend or boyfriend). For some individuals it was a need for success, courage, accomplishment, satisfaction or something to be proud of. Some needed to master a physically and psychologically challenging task to build their sense of self-worth. Learning to dive results in a significant change in how we see ourselves and how we present ourselves to others. Whatever the reason, we all eventually completed our basic course and gained many personal benefits from diving. It is important that we understand the reasons we personally took up diving so that we can decide if the benefits we get from diving justify the risks we are taking by diving.

The benefits we get from diving can be divided into two broad groups, internal and external. Internal benefits are experienced within us and include increased self-esteem, confidence, a sense of mastery and feelings of control, competence and strength. External benefits involve our relationship with others and include acceptance in a new group of friends, increased standing with old friends, special recognition for skills in a unique activity, etc. External factors often result in increases in pleasure and social skills, so they will also result in internal gains later on.

It is important to distinguish between internal and external factors because psychological research has shown that for individuals, internal factors are more motivating than external factors. They allow us to feel more independent and self-determined. The diver who develops internal motivations for diving is in control of himself and his dives while the diver who has only external motivations for diving is controlled by the external factors. If he dives because his partner has asked him to or because he wants another person to think well of him, he has given control of his pleasure in diving to another person. This is a dangerous situation because he does not receive any direct personal benefits from diving and the diver can easily loose his motivation to dive.

What happens when the partner or significant other is critical of the person's diving? What happens when the dive is more difficult than expected and the diver becomes anxious or senses that they are losing control? If the diver has several of these experiences, he will quickly develop feelings of failure and want to stop diving. Therefore, it is vital that all divers develop enough skill and control in their diving that they will have internal reasons to enjoy diving. If you are not diving for yourself then you may be missing out on the many personal rewards and pleasures that diving has to offer.

I am not saying that external rewards are not important in motivating us to dive and in increasing our enjoyment in the sport. However, if the only or the major reasons that you are diving are external, you will neither enjoy diving nor continue diving.

All instructors have an understanding of this concept. Remember students where the husband or wife was only taking the course because they wanted to be with their spouse? Instructors, are taught to separate them, force them to dive with other partners and to become self-sufficient as divers. The reason is so that they will not become a dependent buddy pair where, if the more competent diver gets into trouble, the dependent diver will not be able to take care of their buddy or themselves. It is also important to force the dependent diver to become independent and self-sufficient so that they will be diving for internal reasons and will not only be safer but enjoy diving more.

We have seen that people take up diving for many varied reasons, but that only those divers who have achieved internal benefits will continue to dive actively and with pleasure. Perhaps those of us who are instructors or on dive club executives should pay more attention to helping students and new divers achieve more internal benefits from their diving so that more of them will continue to dive.

The final area we will examine in this column is the relationship between the above factors and how we respond to risk. Lets assume we have a group of internally motivated divers who have gained mastery and control of their diving, high self-esteem, confidence and competence. They have taken several diving courses and have acquired significant diving knowledge and experience. Diving is fun and they are benefiting from both internal and external rewards. How can this activity be harmful or personally threatening? Let's look at the concept of risk.

Two well known and common risks in scuba diving are Decompression Sickness (DCS) and Arterial Gas Embolism (AGE). Most divers believe that if they follow all the rules (stay within decompression tables, use the right equipment, dive within their skill level, stay with their buddy, ascend slowly, etc.) they will never suffer from either of these problems. Therefore, when a diver is injured, how do we respond? The first thing most of us do is to examine history to see if the diver has broken one of the "rules" or done something "foolish". We are trying to "quantify" or "control" the risk by looking for a logical explanation, a reason or reasons that explain why the person was injured. This makes perfect sense because if we can determine the reason the person was injured, we should be able to change (control) our diving so that we do not make the same mistake. If we find an obvious explanation for the injury, we feel assured. We know that we would never break the rules or do such a foolish thing and therefore we should never suffer from DCS or AGE.

In fact, many of us go so far as to say that the person "deserved" to be injured. What we are doing is trying to "control" the risk so that we can justify continuing to dive. The motivation to do this is so strong that most of us assume that the diver "must have done something foolish or broken a rule or they would not have been injured"! Unfortunately, reality is much more complex. Many divers get bent even though they followed all the rules and made no obvious mistakes.

How do I respond as a diving medical specialist when I hear of a diving injury or I am treating a patient? I respond like most other divers by looking for reasons to explain the injury. Unlike many divers, I know that divers often develop DCS or AGE even though they followed the rules. I also know that decompression tables are not perfect but are designed to work for most divers most of the time. Therefore, I look for things in the diver or in the nature of the dive that could result in the diver having an increased personal risk of DCS or AGE and therefore explain why the accident occurred. The problem is that we are moving from a fairly black and white explanation (he held his breath and ascended from 30 feet and therefore burst his lungs) to far less obvious and less defensible explanations. For example, if a diver who was grossly obese, age 60, dehydrated and tired before the dive, did a hard working dive to 60 feet for 50 minutes, surfaced without doing any decompression and then worked hard putting his dive gear away and developed DCS, most of us would conclude that he deserved to be hit because he had so many risk factors for DCS. The problem is that most of the accepted "risk factors" have little scientific evidence to support them and every diving medical expert will have a different set of risk factors and a different belief in the relative importance of each. The motivation to "find an explanation" is so strong that I frequently hear of diving medical specialists who have told a diver they where injured for reasons that have absolutely no justification in the literature and which the most senior and experienced specialists would not support. The bottom line is that divers are sometimes injured even when they have followed all the rules and there is no reasonable explanation for the accident. There is no way to avoid these accidents and as a result, there is a possibility that a diver will be injured on every dive that they do. This kind of risk is very difficult to deal with psychologically and next column we will examine how we as divers respond to this, both individually and as a group.