Status Penelitian: DAN Ada untukku

Saat berjalan dari truk ke pintu masuk lokasi penyelaman di Bonaire, istri saya, Deborah, tersangkut di bawah akar dan kakinya terulur saat melepaskan diri. Saat jatuh ke tanah, dia berseru bahwa lututnya patah.

SAAT MENURUN PADA PENYELAMATAN KEDUA, saya berada di ketinggian sekitar 60 kaki ketika tiba-tiba saya mulai naik dengan cepat ke permukaan.

SUAMI SAYA, BARRY, DAN SAYA mendapatkan sertifikasi menyelam di Cozumel, Meksiko, pada tahun 1994, dan sejak saat itu menjadi salah satu tujuan favorit kami. Kami menghabiskan tiga minggu menyelam di sana pada musim panas 2001, mengikuti rutinitas kami berlari, berolahraga, dan menyelam dua kali sehari. 

AFTER I SPENT ALMOST 20 HOURS in a hyperbaric chamber over five days, life there had grown tedious. The last 15 minutes, however, were not only exciting but highly instructive. I learned that if you don’t know what you’re doing, don’t touch anything or do anything without first asking permission.

I was diving with my wife, Kristy Hiltz, in remote Kimbe Bay, Papua New Guinea. We had taken all the necessary precautions and dived according to our computers. On what turned out to be our last dive, we sat on a rock ledge at 70 feet for 15 to 20 minutes and then made a slow ascent, completing a full safety stop.

It was 2004, the dawn of digital photography, and I was conflicted about whether to shoot film or digital. I had brought housings for both cameras with me to Thailand. Carrying two housings on a dive was ponderous, but I could manage it if I didn’t take two sets of strobes. My solution was to rig both housings with wet connectors called EO pigtails, which went into the regular sync socket, allowing me to connect and disconnect my strobes underwater.

I am grateful for the safety information DAN publishes, their recommendations for dive medicine physicians, and the peace of mind their insurance coverage provides. 

About 12 years ago, a pair of commercial dive operators began offering adventurous divers a chance to go blackwater diving off the coast of Florida. Since then, blackwater dives have become an established fixture in the Palm Beach dive community, and I have been fortunate to log more than 1,000 such dives without incident.

I always get DAN Trip Insurance for overseas trips, which gives me peace of mind should the unexpected happen. There is a modest upfront payment based on the total trip costs and your age, so I considered skipping it for a Raja Ampat trip since I’ve had many trips without having to file a claim. I’m glad I chose otherwise.

I have been a diver for about 35 years and a dive instructor for about 30 years. Some instructor friends and I run the Buzos del CAE and Paraná Divers […]