Hoods and boats

    I've said before that I don't like wearing a hood. I started diving with no wetsuit, and when I started using a wetsuit it was always without a hood. I've since tried wearing a hood a few times on cold days and always felt restricted and unable to sense the environment properly. This is probably partly psychological but mostly due to the inability to hear. I figure I lose about %90 of my hearing wearing the hood. I tried putting holes in the hood at the location of the ears but it didn't help much. Until now my reasons for not wearing a hood have been personal. I concluded that it's a trade off between feeling comfortable hearing stuff and being cold. I figured that when it gets cold enough the cold factor will override the loss of hearing and I'll do like everyone else. But I didn't take one thing into consideration.


    Diving out of Miami the biggest danger to us is boats. I've been buzzed by boats countless times, a few times as close as 30ft. Once I had to stay down longer to let the boat pass directly over me. My main defense against boats is early detection. I've developed a pretty good feel for when the boat is near, far, getting closer or moving further away by listening to the sound of the motor. I've learned to distinguish between the sound of airplanes and boat engines, sometimes they can sound similar. When I'm pretty sure the boat is far off I don't even raise my head out of the water. It's become somewhat automatic that I can distinguish the sound of a boat that can be a risk to me. It's important to never get complacent about the sound of a boat motor. This does impede relaxation and often does not allow diving to my full potential. It most often happens diving from the beach while crossing what I call no man's land; the line between the beach buoys and the second reef which many boats prefer to take. It is especially dangerous on weekends and holidays due to the increased boat traffic, I refuse to beach dive on such days.


    To make a long story short I was diving with a hood. I wasn't hearing anything and then suddenly I felt something which I perceived as a faint buzzing in my throat area. It didn't sound like anything I've ever heard before but it made me instinctively raise my head out of the water. What I saw was a boat at full speed heading right towards me. It was maybe 100ft away at that point and all I could do was stare at it in disbelief. The boat then passed 20 feet away from me and never slowed down. It was a surreal moment. I used to have thoughts of diving to avoid an oncoming boat in just such a situation, believe me when I say there was no chance of that. The best chance we have of avoiding a boat is noticing it early on, judging its trajectory correctly, and taking early evasive action. IMO the hood significantly cuts down the possibility of doing that. When diving in an area where boat boat traffic is a constant reality I believe wearing a hood is dangerous.

    good story, i dislike hoods also. i wear them when its really cold.


    as far as boats the best thing is to have 2 divers in the water drifting a reef and 1 person driving a boat that stays nearby from 50-100 ft away. person on the boat can react quick to bad situation either blackout or aggresive shark. and can collect fish. the only negative is that it sucks being the peron on the boat:)

    That's why you have buddies or girlfriends that don't fish and are willing to do the driving. I don't like hoods but it has saved me several times from jelly fish. You use it long enough you'll get used to it.

    I got burned by a Portuguese man of war really bad once. Since then I always dive with full protection even if it's only Lycra top and pants. Yet I see many guys diving in shorts and T-shirts. If you're wearing full protection, when you consider what's left exposed of your head between the wetsuit collar, hairline and mask it's not much really. I've gotten a mustache burn (under the mask on the upper lip) before and it's tolerable. If you're bald I could see the problem :)

    I once tried sunblock while diving, never again. Somehow it got into my eyes and I was blind for 15 minutes. We were switching drivers at the time and when my vision came back I had like 5 minutes left in the water before it was my turn to drive :(

    You´re right on what you say about boats, but I just can´t dive without a hood. Once yo get used to, you can´t go back.
    About the sunblock, try Coppertone Sport (not the cheaper Walgreens generic). It won´t run into your eyes and will last for about 3 hours into the water. That was the one I used when not wearing a hood.

    Marco Melis

    A bad day fishing is ALWAYS better than a good day at work.

    very intresting thread, and you making a good point here.
    i will take the recent events (another diver run over by a boat) and this
    thread here, to write about my own boataccident.
    over the past years me and my divingpartners expierienced a good bit of boat incidents. most of the boatdrivers in trinidad and tobago dont know what a diving float and flag look like. most of the fishingboats even accustomed to pass close at anything floating in the sea. could be a
    fishpotmarker or else that attract fish to be around, or whatever lost in the sea. some tourist on jetskis obviously think that a nice float with flag is something for them to race around.happen to me some weeks ago, 300ft from a beach, i was on the bottom, hear them come close fast, and finally saw them on top of me passing fullspeed 30ft, one left and one right of my float.another big danger are touristcruise and speed boats.
    these drivers getting drunk and what else, getting busy dancing with some
    touristgirls on the boat, and dont care where the f... they driving.
    happen to me 2007, 1km offshore, big float/flag, speedboat with tourist
    driving straight at me. duckdive, 2-3 fin kicks, rolling upside down and watching the two 250hp props cutting the water 5-6ft on top my head.
    but it was in march 2008 when i was diving with some friends in trinidad.
    the vis 20ft, 3 of us was diving with no floats close to shore and to each other, with 2 man in the inflatable driving and watching us.
    there was a lot of boattraffic around, but after a while we was getting accustomed to always hear some boats in the distance. at one point i ended up about 200ft from shore while my buddys was still checking some rocks.
    so the boat drove over to pick them up. instead of floating on the surface waiting, i decided to make a next dive. down for a minute, i start hearing this engine coming closer fast. i decided to speed up and look for the boat. pushing my head out of the water the bow from a 32ft piroge driving at 50kmh with a 150hp outboard, rising 3ft in front my head.
    pushed under the boat, i remember to try pushing myself off the boat with my left arm, trying to get out of the line where the engine will pass.
    then silence until i surfaced again and start to scream. filled with adrenalin i knew i was hit but couldnt say where or how bad.
    to the boat, to the next hospital, and after checking and x-ray the good news. i should be able to recover all my injuries.
    the enginefoot caught my right arm, the prop leave some skin, muscles and tendants cut. the wing on top the prop hit my chest on the same side, leave some broken ribs and so.
    i was back in the water after 6 weeks, diving 90% after 4 month,95% today.
    my diving is very different today. i am much more focused and relaxed,
    i dont dive more then 3 days in a roll,and i can hear boats as far as grenada and will stay on the surface until they gone for sure. and most of all i am much more thankful that i am able to dive.
    the day of the accident,i was far the most expirienced and fittest diver in the water. diving 4-5 days a week, under all conditions, many of the diving alone. here is where the problem started. i wa getting so accustomed dealing with all the problems that spearfishing involves, that i got so overconfident. if something would happen, it would happen to anybody else but not to me. i lost completly the focus for the most obvious
    danger that day. this chain of sensless mistakes, that probably every rookie would trying to avoid, was teaching me the biggest lesson of spearfishing up to today.
    NEVER EVER TRUST A BOATDRIVER !!!! dont matter how big your float, how good your ears and eyes, DONT TRUST THEM !
    but even more important to me : NEVER TRUST YOURSELF !
    doesnt matter how good you think you are, how safe you are, never start to feel bulletproof. spearfishing never ends, ther are always new problems to expierience, and old ones you may tend to forget.
    to come back to this thread, i agree with dan. i think hoods are increasing the possibility of boat accidents. i had to wear one in the azores because of cold water, and i couldnt hear boats close as 200-300ft.
    today i using a lycra hood wich allows you to hear almost as good as without one. and it still gives you good protection of sun and jellys.
    ps. lost my riffe comp.4 at that day. 3 weeks later another diver found it still loaded, and returned it.
    took it as a sign to keep on diving. ;)
    safe dive, happy live

    Thanks for sharing your story. I'm very sorry to hear about your accident. I never let myself slip into the mindset "whatever will be will be" or "it's not going happen to me", but I'm aware that the tendency to do so is there. The closest I've come to doing so has been with regard to boats. It's so difficult to relax hearing boat motors in the background that it's very tempting to just disregard it, but like I said I still never have, fear of getting hit outweighs everything. The only time I allow myself to do that is when the situation is truly beyond my control, but this has not yet happened to me with spearfishing that I can remember. The shit thing is with all the precautions one can still get hit by a boat. Thinking about what happened to you the only thing you could've done different is not take that dive until ascertaining the location/trajectory of the boat, but then you were never aware of it until you were underwater.. Truly the only decision that could've been made different was not to dive that day at all.


    One factor that can lead do complacency is that the result of getting hit by a boat is out of the experience of the average diver, myself included. This makes it easier to disregard the possibility. A couple of years ago a local diver (Miami) was killed when run over by a boat, his diving partner narrowly escaped by diving, his fins got run over from what I remember of the incident description. According to one of the accounts the diver's was almost cut in half. One of the people present was a local dive store owner. Seeing him and imagining what it must have been like for him to hold his injured and dying friend gave me a mental image that surfaces every time I'm edging towards becoming complacent.

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