Scuba Diving and scuba Language

This weekend I completed the PADI Open Water Diver course.  I am now certified for recreational dives up to 18m in depth.  The course was taught split between Singapore and Dayang Island, Malaysia.  In Singapore, I attended two classroom theory sessions – studying the basics of scuba diving – and then attended two ‘confined water dives’ in a swimming pool at a secondary school in town.  The pool sessions let us practice the basic scuba skills, and experience breathing and movement underwater in a safe environment.  The course ended with a packed weekend trip to Dayang Island.

On Friday at 6pm I met the instructors and other students to board a bus for the 4 hour journey, across the Singapore-Malaysia border and to the town of Mersing – a coastal ferry terminal on Malaysia’s eastern coast.  Arriving late, we boarded the ferry in the darkness and set off to sea.  Leaning my head out the window, I appreciated the stars visible in the dark night sky.  I slept most of the three-hour ferry ride.  We arrived at 4am.

Dayang is a very small island with little activity but a few small dive resorts that cater to diving schools. The accommodations are quite simple – bunk-bed dormitories, communal toilets, and an open air mess hall.  There were probably 150 students there from a variety of schools in Singapore. 
The weekend consisted of five dives – three on Saturday and two on Sunday.  After four hours of sleep and a surprisingly hearty breakfast, we set off for our first dive on Saturday.  My instructor, Irvin, was the same as who taught me in the classroom and swimming pool sessions.  We had only four students to our group, so the instruction was quite quick.  The first dive made use of a buoy tied to the ocean floor at a depth of only five meters. This allowed us to hold the line as we descended on our first dive.  On the shallow sea floor, we practiced the basic scuba skills related to retrieving a lost regulator (respirator), cleaning our mask under water, and controlling our buoyancy with our breathing. 

I really enjoyed the experience.  It was as much fun as I expected it to be.  I could see why people enjoy diving so much.  It is a really unique experience to breath and move underwater with all of the fish and a muted sense of gravity.  Through the four other dives during the weekend, I got more used to the movements and balance underwater.  Our dives were a mixture of skills practice, navigation, and leisure. 

One thing that I was thinking about under water were the various official and unofficial hand signals that dive ‘buddies’ use with each other.  Having recently spent some time studying Chinese, and thinking a lot about very different kinds of language, I was interested to view the scuba hand signals as a very simple kind of language.  There is only very primitive “grammar”, but mostly symbols.  But given the relatively limited amount of communication required under water, it made a lot of sense.  There are many signals to communicate the condition of yourself or your buddy.  Signals of affirmation, negation, and inquiry.  Signals for direction and movement.  And of course signals for all the different kinds of marine life – I saw barracuda, sea turtle, cuttle fish, snails, and others.

I got to thinking about the symbolic nature of Chinese characters.  How each character represents a distinct idea.  And there are thousands of characters for so many thousands of things.  The most primitive things still have a strong visual representation in their character: 火, the character for fire looks like pointed flames; 人, the character for person resembles a walking man; 山, the character for mountain evokes staggered peaks.  Scuba signals are a very primitive language, and will probably always remain so. There is not much need to add complexity to the language for nuanced meaning or for abstract philosophical points.  Scuba signals are about communicating essential information in the here-and-now.  Dives typically last around an hour, and there are limited safety, condition, or movement ideas the need be conveyed.

Anyway… it was a wonderful trip.  I am now certified, and I look forward to exploring more of the world’s underwater places.