Yup, have now spent over an hour researching scuba diving for Renawyn’s professional specialization. Learning about dry suits, equipment that lets you write under water, mosaic photography, sonar topography recording, decompression sickness and the terms for its symptoms (bends for joint/bone pain, chokes for breathing problems, and staggers for neurological problems).
The bends are the most common form (60-70%) and occur mostly in the shoulders, but can occur anywhere, especially around various joints. Next is the staggers (10-15%) with headaches and visual disturbances as common symptoms, skin manifestations (swelling, itching, mottled skin, usually around ears, neck, face, arms, and on upper torso) can also appear 10-15% of the time. The chokes are the least common. Paralysis and death can result. It is a rare, but real diving hazard requiring strict ascent control and decompression “rests.”
You should not fly immediately after diving, you can give yourself the bends. Spend an extra day on the ground at sea level to give your body time to outgass the nitrogen. No ports to Dalaran, Darnassus, or Ironforge either! Length of time at sea level depends on depth and length of dive.
Squeezes are damage caused to various areas of the body such as the lungs, middle ear, sinuses, and tooth cavities during decent. Overpressure is the corresponding problem during ascent.
Never hold your breath while scuba diving. It will cause your lungs to over-expand from pressure. Depending on depth and severity it can cause death.
Nitrogen Narcosis is a short term, immediate onset hazard that can occur in deeper dives (more than 60ft) that are taken too fast to properly acclimate to differing levels of available oxygen or how it’s absorbed in the blood. The effects are like diving drunk. You do not want to dive drunk! Slang includes drunk references and “narced.”
Air lift bags are commonly used to buoy items from the ocean floor, either by equipment on the surface (to generate the air in the bag), or a small handheld device. From the diver’s own air source is not recommended. They present hazards, especially if item is not properly secured, including, but not limited to damage on ascent that can cause the item to fall back down on divers, and getting tangled in equipment.
Dry suits have a valve to control the amount of air during ascent and keep it under control. They are necessary in extended or cold water dives.
buoyancy control device, BC, BCD, stabilizer, stabilisor, stab jacket, wings or ABLJ (named for design) are all a buoyancy compensator with a gas-filled bladder filled from the diver’s tank or mouth or released as needed to keep neutral buoyancy. They are not without hazards that can result in barotrauma and decompression sicknesses.
Lead-filled diving weights are worn to achieve neutral buoyancy and can be released in emergency situations that warrant the resulting risks of barotrauma and decompression sickness. For this reason, fixed weights are worn that cannot be accidentally dropped, thus losing control over ascent. Tools can also cause hazards with their extra weights and for this reason are normally lowered and raised on their own lines and occasionally need to be abandoned in an emergency.
charts and calculators that show how long you can dive at a certain depth and still be ok coming up. Generally, the deeper you go, the shorter dive time
Drift diving sounds like a fun thing Rena would totally be interested in, it can be used to cover large distances underwater faster. Mostly it is used to experience “underwater flying” and requires extra training and skill for safety reasons. A boat usually follows and surface markers are used. To avoid problems with currents and drifts, diving related to archaeological work requires a day of “slack water.” Unplanned drift can be dangerous for obvious reasons.
Divers can communicate via voice, video, and text. Nonverbal communication includes hand signals, line signals (rope pulls), light signals (with an underwater torch, can include morse code if skilled), cave line signals (exit location tugs, for example), sign language, tap codes on cave walls and submersibles, rattling with a tube filled with ball-bearings to attract attention, mirrors, sirens, whistles, colour-coded surface markers, dive flags and lights to indicate the presence of a diver.
So many diver hazards.
Trim is the relative position in water and weighting/buoyancy systems in terms of balance and alignment with the direction of motion. Accurately controlled trim reduces swimming effort, as it reduces the sectional area of the diver passing through the water.
Use of hands, arms, and similar “swimming motions” in propulsion is a mark of incompetence. Kicks are more effective. In particular: Flutter kick and modified flutter kick (most common), Scissor kick, Frog kick (less likely to disturb silt) and modified frog kick (most common for cave and wreck diving, less likely to disturb silt), Dolphin kick (powerful but not good for precision), Reverse , back, or backward kick (most difficult/advanced technique), and Rotation on the spot about a vertical axis is achieved by the helicopter turn. These are “finning techniques.”
I assume this results in divers actually having more powerful legs rather than a typical “swimmer’s physique.”
Other skills: Ascent, descent, and equalizing. Self explanatory.
Cave diving is one of the most challenging and potentially dangerous kinds of diving or caving and presents many hazards. However, it’s often home to unique fauna not found elsewhere. 5 safety musts: Training, guide line, depth rules (excessive depth is a frequent cause of death for cave divers), air/gas management in the rule of thirds (one for ingress, one for egress, and one for emergency supply to a teammate), and lights (3 independent sources per diver; critical as getting lost in the cave is a dangerous hazard). Ability to navigate in total darkness using a guideline is a necessary emergency skill.
Piddocks are a mollusc that can cause damage to underwater sites and artifacts by creating tubular burrows in soft rock, clay, and wood materials.
Water eductor, or water dredges are a long steel or plastic hose-pipe device that sucks out silt and sediment for better visibility at underwater archaeology sites. Basically, a more effortless wheel-barrow for better revealing “buried” artifacts.
Knowledge in paleoethnobotany and zooarchaeology are very handy areas of additional study for the underwater archaeologist.
Yeah, there is so much more, but this is what I’ve gleaned so far tonight on the slim off-chance someone gets Ren talking about her specialized archaeology work in RP >.>
If you know anything about scuba diving or underwater archaeology in particular, or anything mentioned here, by all means, pile it on me!
Final research count...4 hours >.> but now I know lotsa fun trivia and I also determined that I don’t have to change Rena’s more gymnast physique out for a swimmer’s one because traditional hand and arm “swimming motions” are the mark of a scuba diving noob and she’d have stronger legs instead because kicks and finning are where it’s at.
Also, entire passages were lifted off the wiki and not put in quotes. I’m way too sleepy to bother with proper citation. The original source page wiki I started with is linked as the source. I think that’s good enough for what is, essentially, a list of personal notes.
A few notes added/clarified, thanks telurin!
