Without further ado, I must thank The Assistant Riting Team – T.A.R.T. – for stepping into the breach last month and going down on my behalf. There is only one point I’d like to clarify, however, and it’s honestly nothing to do with a misplaced sense of superiority, but since one sucks substantially more than one blows ones organ, wouldn’t the title B.O.S.S. be more apt than B.O.B.?

I just got back from the U.K. Dive Show in Brum. Two days of dive geek’s heaven, covering the A-Z of all and every diver’s wet dreams under one roof, which was fortunate considering the weather. However, after several hours of intense research it struck me that, in reality, nothing much has changed since last year, or even since the year before that. Yes, the cameras are smaller and have more pixels than a very pixellated thing. If you want to invest in the diving industry I’d recommend selling photography hardware as the underwater camera stalls were doing a roaring trade from morning to night on both days. Holidays in the Caribbean were deserted islands in a sea of stalls, shark trustees had taken to circling lone divers in the aisles, even the bars were empty, ( well, it was 10 in the morning ), but there were already big queues forming at the camera counters. Admittedly, I saw some rather nice twin tank tec regs, my favourite compressors, a most impressive C.D.W.S. stand and a really great ‘T’ shirt, but nothing seemed really new-new. Perhaps it’s just my cynical outlook on life, but divers seem to have stagnated. I guess that there’s only a certain number of ways you can suck air out of a tank and only two ways to keep warm whilst doing it. Even the methods of underwater propulsion, whilst plentiful in their options and prices, always come down to the same thing. Fins. I’m sure P.A.D.I. are doing their best to develop new and better ways for us to dive with them, for a fee, but when one considers that the most recent revolution in the diving industry was the introduction of the re-breather to the recreational diving market 10 years ago, it doesn’t give me much hope for our future evolution, buddy.

What we need is something ground-breakingly, earth-shatteringly new. Something so devastatingly life changing that the whole world will sit up and take notice. They were breathing oxygenated water in ‘The Abyss’ and, whilst it sounds far fetched, I’m sure there’s a US marine or two still alive out there who have had their lungs filled with pink liquids and told to breathe, sir, yessir. So why not an air pill? Or a nitrox pill? Or even a trimix pill for those deep dark trips to the depths? Why not indeed? Mind you, again it’s not that new. We’ve had pills to go on trips before, though preferably not deep dark ones. I seem to remember some Long Solid Diffusion pills back in the 60’s that even helped one to fly, so diving should be a doddle.