Part 6 – And He Said, “Let There Be Light.” And There Was Light.

And on one of the days – I forget which one – God said, “Let there be light.” And there was light.

I just googled it and it was the first day, which makes sense otherwise He’d have been working in the dark, and that may have been quite problematic. The light He created came in the form of a very hot ball in the sky, and for thousands of years we happily basked in its wondrous light.

The problem with this fiery ball of light is that it cannot be taken diving. It also transpires that it is simply not bright enough for our modern day needs so, after many cave and wreck divers had said many “Hail Mary’s” and knelt at the side of their twinsets, God listened. He then popped out to his shed, much to Mrs God’s annoyance, and designed the Umbilical dive light! (Um… not sure that was God actually, Paul – I’ll check. – Ed)

It’s obvious that lights are as important to a wreck diver as wheels are to a car. When we plan overhead environment dives, we place as much scrutiny on our lights as we do on our gas supplies. We work our gas into thirds so we have a safety margin. We do exactly the same with lights. We carry three lights, thirds if you like. One primary light and two backups.

There are many different designs available. I am not going to look at manufacturers per se; I am rather going to look at design features. Dive lights also have many problems related to them.

Bulbs have been one of the major weak points in lighting but they are however getting more resilient and with the advent of LED technology we are now seeing fewer problems with bulbs disintegrating. To take a light underwater you have to seal it, and we normally use O Rings. They are more often than not a rubber derivative, and unfortunately they fail every now and again; and as we know, electricity and water are not really good friends. Batteries have a limited burn time and they do run out of power while on dives. Short of wiring the light to the national grid, this is a real problem. However, we have contingencies put in place for all these failures, and these days the dive kit manufacturers are really on the case with underwater lighting. It’s bloody big business after all!!!

Over the next few instalments of Wreck Head we will discuss bulb technology, torch design, batteries, primary and secondary lights, usage and storage. I am going to keep it simple though, I am not going to blind you with science and reams of nonsense about how a battery is made. I simply want this article to give you, the reader, a little more understanding when purchasing your next light.

So I guess we should start with the primary light. This is the “Daddy” in your lighting arsenal. It does however have quite a few requirements to enable it to be safely used in a wreck.

Right now you should be pulling your dive bag out from under the bed and unpacking your array of lights. This is where things may get a little tricky for me so I’m going to be diplomatic. If you answer, “YES” to these questions I’m afraid you are about to spend more money.

1)    Is your torch yellow, green, lime, pink or anything other than predominant black?

2)    Does your light have a pistol grip?

3)    Does it have a lantern grip?

4)    Does it have one of those nice lanyard things attached to it?

5)    Does it fit in your BCD pocket?

6)    Did it cost £5.00 from the dive show?

7)    Did it come free with a dive magazine subscription?

If you answered YES to any or God forbid, all of the questions, it’s time to go torch shopping!

We use umbilical lights for our primary lighting. These systems have a lightweight light head that is attached to an umbilical wire, which is then attached to the rechargeable battery canister. On the light head we have a “Goodman’s Handle”. This handle basically wraps around the hand enabling us to use our hand while the light is perched over the knuckles.  These lights are not just good for technical divers but are ideal for recreational divers too. I assure you, having a good light makes diving so much more fun. Of course it fulfills its main goal which is to see where we are going in the dark, but it’s also a great signaling device and enhances group dynamics as we can signal from further away than we can using simple hand signals. Also, you will not believe the fish life and colours you are missing not using a light, and I mean even in broad daylight.

I, like many other technical divers, like to wear my canister on my right hand waist strap. Most canister lights come with a belt attachment as standard. I use an extra weight belt buckle to stop the light from sliding on the belt especially when I’m preparing my kit. As a nice little tip, if you don’t want to buy another buckle or you forget yours at home, simply extend the webbing of the left hand waist strap thus moving the buckle towards the right. This will trap the canister and stop it moving.

I don’t like having my canister attached to my plate or especially my twinset, as if I needed to dump the light, entanglement etc, I can simply slide it off my belt and drop the light. It makes me that little bit safer. Plus I have access to all parts of my light throughout the dive. If the light were on my twinset I would struggle to get to it. When securing a light to the twinset you stand the chance of smashing your lights when penetrating though small gaps as sell.

I recommend putting a piston clip on the light head so you can secure it to the right chest D Ring when you are not using it. There are many conflicting ideas about which hand to wear the Goodman’s Handle on, right or left. I wear mine on my right hand as wearing it on the left requires that you switch to light to the right hand when gas sharing in a twinset as you will cover the long hose. You could feed it under the long hose when you put the light on, then deploying the long hose in the event of an emergency is easy. It does however sit over any stage bottles you may be carrying as most of us wear all our stage cylinders on the left hand side. The only time I wear my light on the left hand is when I am scootering, as I need that hand clear.

So there you have it. Primary lights in a nutshell, so to speak.

As ever, all opinions expressed are my own. I am in no way trying to replace proper instruction. My opinions may differ from agency to agency and instructor to instructor and I do not wish to disrepute any of them.

As a final note, could anyone tell me what day God and AC/DC created ROCK???

Paul is the Director of Training at RAID. To find out more about the courses that RAID offers, visit www.diveraid.com.