Training and Camaraderie.

I wrote in my previous blog that there is a perpetual ethos intertwined with the discipline of maritime archaeology.  While I love to go sport diving, few people know how uncomfortable commercial diving is.  The equipment is heavy and the hours are long.  Maritime archaeology is more akin to commercial diving than sport diving and you need to love the discipline in order to tolerate it.  Diving is a tool by which the archaeologist is enabled to answer the questions he has asked through careful planning and research on land.

 This being said there is a great camaraderie here at The University of Southern Denmark as many of the students work together to earn our Danish commercial diving certificates.  The best dives I have taken in my life have always been night dives, and here in Denmark has been no exception.  Being in a blackout is perfect training for the near zero visibility which can be expected on many wrecks.  A wreck didn’t end up where it is usually because it sprang a leak, but rather because the bad conditions on a bad day of diving are a sunny day in comparison to whatever sank the vessel you are diving on.  I enjoy a night dive in that it really makes you focus on your surroundings.

On a normal dive you’ll probably have several meters visibility, whereas with a night dive you have two meters of visibility in a sphere which is your world for the dive.  You begin to notice things you’ve missed on other dives due to this limited world view.  The bottom is covered with snails and starfish you ignored on other dives, and they appear to race across the bottom more quickly.  The amount of time you have to work is the same, and I’ll note to the land archaeologists who might read this, that it takes ten times as long to do anything underwater.  The colors are muted and the darkness is scary to some, but to others like myself it is peaceful.

While the hours limit my time to study, diving will be portion of my work as a maritime archaeologist.  A smaller portion than many who watch popular television will know, however, this is the mystique which is part of the before mentioned ethos.  I plan to do some pleasure diving if possible in the two weeks I have on the East Coast of the US when I return home in July.  I want to see the coast and water of my youth with fresh eyes after I have learned so much from the incredible students and faculty here in Denmark.  Diving in Virginia is probably worse than the diving I have had here, however; the lack of visibility and the presence of strong currents are to a certain degree comparable.