Women Underwater reached out to dive professional Rosemary Lunn of The Underwater Marketing Company to ask about challenges in learning how to dive a new rebreather. She offers some personal experiences and candid advice for others who want to take the plunge.
Rosemary Lunn:
My greatest challenge with equipment has got to be with rebreathers. I seem to be fortunate to be in the right place at the right time on many occasions when it came to rebreathers. I have a definate love / hate relationship with this piece of kit.
My first rebreather dive was in Stoney Cove in 1996 on a Drager Dolphin. It may seem hard to imagine now, but at that time rebreathers were rarely, if ever seen by recreational divers. Technical divers were all diving doubles / twins. Depending on which training agency you listened to, nitrox was considered a technical or voodoo / devil gas; and the first mass produced rebreather, the Inspiration, was still on the drawing board. The only people with access to rebreathers were the military for covert opreations, therfore you never saw them. A lot of heads turned as I walked down the car park to the water, as everyone oggled the Drager Dolphin.
Rosemary Lunn at InnerSpace in Grand Cayman. Photo: Courtesy of Peter Den Haan
I think it is fair to say that Drager created a game changer when they launched the Dolphin. A few years later they followed it up with the ill-fated Drager Ray. This was a 22 metre rated semi-closed recreational rebreather and was to pay a part in my rebreather education. It was one of those ‘right place, right time’ moments again. I was offered the chance of working for Drager Dive and given 24 hours notice to leave the UK and join the team. My boyfriend at the time gave me the choice of him or Drager. I cried all the way down to Dover. How could I turn up an opportunity like this? I spent the summer of 1999 as part of an international team taking divers diving on rebreathers all over Europe. It was an amazing job. I remember ringing my Mum with the news I had the job and saying “it was better than winning the lottery!”. Money could not buy this job.
When we were not travelling to incredible destinations in Holland, France, Spain, Italy, etc, we were diving. We stayed in everything from grand luxury hotels to wooden bunks in basic huts. We lived on chocolate, diet coke and listened to Cher’s ‘Believe’ album on repeat for three months. We spent our days building and checking units; going diving; and then cleaning and packing up units. I was in 7th heaven. Until the one day I was task loaded. The one day I made a mistake. It was my own stupid fault. I built and carefully check 12 Rays and then ran out of time to get my unit ready. I slung my Dolphin together. I thought I’d tightened down the scrubber canister properly. I hadn’t.
I took a caustic cocktail at 20 metres. It felt as though someone had poured liquid concrete down my throat and it had instantly set and changed into a steel scaffolding bar. My esophagus was rigid from throat to stomach. I was very lucky I’d ingested it, not breathed it in. At the time I didn’t know this. I must admit I was quite scared and not happy wondering just how badly I had damaged my lungs. (I hadn’t). I was escorting a pair of diving professionals whose idea of buddy diving was ‘same ocean, same day’. Trying to get them to dive in roughly the same area, let alone surface because I’d taken a cocktail, was hard work. The cocktail hospitalised me and destroyed my confidence in this amazing technology in one stroke. It took years to rebuilt my confidence.
Rebreathers are an amazing tool. They have opened up exploration and enabled certain dives to take place that would have been impossible on open circuit. Not everyone should be diving them however. You need a certain mindset and attitude and you need to dive them regularly. They require the three “C’s”. Checks, care and concentration.
Time passed and I did some training on a couple of other units, but I never trusted them. I couldn’t relax. And I have never really had a head or natural feel for maths. So when I checked my handsets I wasn’t always confident it was safe or about to kill me. I have lost too many friends and colleagues diving on rebreathers, so my first thought was, “so when are you going to kill me then”?
Photo of Rosemary Lunn by Karl Shreeves
Although I have not got hundreds of hours of diving time on rebreathers, I have a fair knowledge of them. I found this invaluable when I was asked to organise the logistics on an international safety conference called ‘Rebreather Forum 3’. This three day event took 3 years of development and organisation, and two years of editing the proceedings. The proceedings and a number of lectures are available online, for free, for anyone who wants to access them. If you have any interest in rebreathers then check out www.rf30.org.
It wasn’t until 2013 when I was working the renowned “Inner Space” week hosted and organised by Divetech in Grand Cayman, that I finally began to get my mojo back for breathers. I was fortunate enough to be trained by Matthew Addison on the Hollis Explorer. If truth be told I had no idea why Hollis had gone down the line of developing and building a recreational unit. There was so much choice in the market place, why on earth would you want to dive an Explorer? My head turned 180 degrees during my training. This unit was basic. This unit was simple. Above all this unit was fun! Even I could understand it. And now I see its place. If you want to get into rebreathers, this is a useful unit to learn how to dive one, and how to become disciplined in your checks, care and concentration.
Twelve months later I wanted to expand my rebreather education and trained on the Poseidon Mark VI with Steve Newman. My courage and my mojo returned in spades. I fell in love with the unit. This too was fun. This too was simple. But what this had over the Explorer was it had legs. Whereas the Explorer is a recreational breather and so therefore limited, the Poseidon is a marmite unit. “The growing up spread you never grow out of”. As your diving develops, so does this unit’s capability. I like the fact that one day I will be able to take it trimix diving and to technical depths. Am I cautious when I dive it? Yes. Do I respect it? Yes. Am I happy and relaxed diving this? Yes. It has taken me 15 years to find the rebreather I want to have a long term relationship with. Today I am proud to say I am an ambassador for Poseidon Rebreathers.
The moral of the tail. If you are interested in getting into rebreather diving, and you find that one unit is not to your liking, there is choice out there. You may well find that another unit suits your diving, and you too will fall in love with this extraordinary piece of technology.
