Divers Down has been a busy centre in Fujairah on the east coast for many years now, I on the other hand only joined the team at the beginning of 2016 after spending many years living in Malta.

Although I thoroughly enjoyed the diving in Malta, especially the tec diving, I began to really miss the fact that we never had any fish. Sure, sometimes in some areas but in general the life in the Mediterranean is very low, so when the opportunity came to start working in the UAE and the Indian ocean I was really looking forward to seeing some proper life! More than half of my life has been spent diving, but my biggest passion in the sport comes with the technical diving.

Technical diving is when you involve greater depths and duration than normal recreational diving and generally involves a range of different gases from high oxygen and even helium. Of course one of the most effective ways to Tec dive is to use a rebreather, rebreathers basically recycle your gas getting rid of the carbon dioxide in your breath and adding in the oxygen that you have used up.  It’s a silent dive with little to no noise at all from the equipment and of course no bubbles, meaning the animals underwater behave very differently around you. After having a few dives on rebreathers before, I was looking at this year finally purchasing my own one and the opportunity came up at Divers Down to look at the new improved Dive Rite O2ptima. A rebreather I had seen many times over the years used in documentaries and of course cave exploration. Dive Rite was established by a man called Lamar Hires many, many years ago, Lamar was one of the first cave explorers who discovered many cave systems in and around Florida when only few were able to join him. Dive Rite designed the O2ptima with the mindset to make the unit strong, but light and rugged enough to go through the caves without issues. What struck me about the unit was its simplicity and ease with its set up, weight was not too much and of course it comes in any colour you want, as long as that’s black. Lamar Hires came out to teach myself and a few others in March and the course went very well, everyone had a great experience diving the units in our various conditions. From the depths at Inch 1 surrounded by countless fish or spending a couple of hours diving around Dibba Rock in great visibility losing count on the stingrays. The silence of the diving was already proving its worth as we were all have much closer encounters with animals we see nearly every day, the fish just were not scared any more. During the course we would practice switching back to standard cylinders and breathing regulators and then you really notice how loud it is each time your blow some bubbles! After the course I spent the year diving the unit at every opportunity I got, even after work spending a couple of hours at a time off of the beach where I was bumping into incredible animals and having some surprising spectacular dives. I enjoyed it that much even on my days off I would regularly be in diving as it was addictive being so involved with the marine life, its as close to being a fish that we can get. You begin to realize quiet soon that it is not all about going deep, sure it is amazing spending an hour at 30ms and only a few minutes to come up, but completing shallow dives even as little as 5-10ms could be incredible with turtles and sharks brushing by you. Especially on the busy reefs we have such as Dibba and another site Hole In The Wall, if you do not move for only a minute or so you get covered in fish as they do not feel threatened and if anything look to you for some protection from others. My next goal was to give other people the chance to have the experiences that I was having, so next step was to begin teaching people how to use the rebreather. At the end of the year Lamar was due for his next visit and the next run of courses so this was the best chance I could have to teach along side him and learn from the man who built the unit. I conducted the entire course myself with Lamar over seeing and advising along the way and it was a fantastic week full of good long dives and many laughs every day. Courses will now be held regularly and more and more people are having interest in the O2ptima, so we have many great dives still to come. Plans for this winter will be to start introducing helium into the rebreather to enjoy these amazing moments on some of the deeper sites that we have here in the UAE.

Scott McGrath, Divers Down UAE.