Most of the articles that I write have a bit of humour in them, this really does not, it is the most serious diving accident I have been involved in, and if I was honest I have probably have not got over it, so in a way this is a bit indulgent, and possibly a way of getting rid of demons.

It is important to understand the level of trust my buddy and I have in each other, for a number of years she and I were partners on the Regional Crime Squad, in fact we were partners on the firearms unit within that squad, our kit bag bore the label Distemper and Makeshift, (you will work it out).

As the time has finally come to change my wetsuit, I felt it would be a good moment to write about my experiences with my current suit, a standard, off the shelf 7MM budget suit manufactured by Scubapro.

This is one of those email funnies that was sent to me by Aussie Diver. It’s just so funny, we both agreed it should go on the site. With apologies for the language, but rather than edit it, I felt it added impact!

Next time you have a bad day at work think of this guy. Bob is a commercial saturation diver for Global Divers in Louisiana . He performs underwater repairs on offshore drilling rigs.

Where I regularly dive, there are any number of interesting caves to visit. They range from the very small and tight “Grouper Cave” where a family of grouper live to the massive “Baldies Cave” which is the size of a church.

One of the treats of diving here in Lanzarote, is that we have “forests” of black coral in various parts of the island. Black Coral is typically found at 45 meters or more, so it’s right on the limit of air diving, but we quite frequently dive to those depths to look at the coral.

The sea bed close in shore here consists of lava reefs, which drop gently to around 40 meters, and in most places there is then a steep drop to 300 meters. The coral lives just before the big drop offs.

There’s a well known training matrix which can be applied to any learning, but which lends itself particularly well to learning to scuba dive. Essentially, everyone, in learning new skills goes through the same process, so I thought it would be interesting to explore it and relate it to the sport we love.

I used a random number generator to select a winner of the Gordonisimo diving holiday in Lanzarote prize. But before I tell you about the winner, let me remind you what the prize consisted of:

I was recently contacted by Mike, whose parents own a dive school in The Dominican Republic. Mike has set up their website, which is excellent, and I promised to feature the school here on Gordonisimo.

Diving DR

Vlad runs the dive school, together with the whole family and they are Canadian. He’s a PADI instructor in various disciplines. Diving DR specializes in groups of 4 or 5, and caters individually for their small groups, designing a dive program to suit. The school uses it’s own boat. a 21ft hard boat called Sharky.

Most divers are statistics junkies – that’s why we love our logbooks so much! I was chatting to a reader of this site online the other day, and she was curious to know about my type of diving, so I thought I’d share on this page. I’ll ask our staff writer’s Aussie Diver and Medical Mick to do the same.

I don’t know about you, but I’m weary and fed up with the whole PADI versus BSAC versus CMAS debate that seems to have been going on since the first dive organizations were conceived.

At the end of the day, all of them, including those I haven’t mentioned, offer a good level of dive tuition and support for their members. None are “bad” organizations. They each have their pros, and they all have their cons, so choosing one should be down to personal, and in some cases geographical preference.