Getting There Is Half The Fun
Packing for a Scuba Expedition
By ADM Staff Photojournalist Jeff Toorish
What to Bring?
Before there can be any discovery or exploration, there must be travel. Simply getting to any remote dive location can be almost as great a challenge as some dives themselves. Often exploration diving is near familiar tourist locations; for example, recent ADM expeditions to Yucatan, Mexico. If you mention the Yucatan to most people, they conjure up images of Playa del Carmen or Cancun. But remote diving in the center of Yucatan’s scrub jungle is anything but a tourist resort. Knowing how and what to pack; negotiating the shifting mosaic of airport security and airline baggage rules; and, making it through customs can make the difference between a successful expedition and a disaster.
Technical diving has been called the most equipment intensive sport on earth. I’m not sure it is technically a sport, but it is clearly equipment intensive. Add climbing gear, photography and video equipment and international travel and the journey becomes extremely tough. Most exploring divers pass on the regular rolling gear bags for more utilitarian hinged and locking plastic boxes (like these). Plastic zip ties serve as the locks, easily replaced airport security wants to take a peek inside.
When packing for any trip, it is important to know as much about the location as possible. What is the availability of tanks for example; are they DIN or yoke? Is there a dive shop near the prospective dive locations and does that shop normally stock any gasses other than
Below: The ADM team goes through the standard airport inspection screening, “anal probe as we call it”. This is normally conducted by airport employees that have zero clue what the heck a standard dive regulator is, let alone a radial rebreather scrubber canister or a sealed Green Force video battery pack. “Allow extra time and be patient”
Air? Will the dive be standard scuba, side-mount or perhaps rebreathers? This is critically important information that one member of the team should be responsible for learning. Gas testing equipment is extremely important even if you are planning to dive only air.
Water temperatures vary widely and will determine exposure protection, wet or dry. If you regularly dive warm water then you might want to consider a hood and gloves for your trip kit just in case the water temperatures are colder than anticipated.
On ADM expeditions, every diver carries a cave diving cylinder light and appropriate back up lights which are usually clipped to the air bottles when side mounting or the harness when back mounting.
On many expeditions climbing equipment is necessary, normally one or two people bring rope for climbing but everyone has their own climbing harness and basic climbing gear including helmets and headlamps. The photographers bring their own gear including cameras, lenses, underwater housings, underwater lights and spares.
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Once you have successfully transported all your stuff half way around the planet, you then have to sort through your stuff, so it does not get mixed up with other divers shit. You leave some of your stuff behind and take only what stuff you may need for the days activities. Of course sometime during the day you will need to find one of those small items packed deep in your stuff, but under everyone else’s shit. Then you can yell out, “Who has their shit on my stuff!”
Traveling with all this equipment makes an expeditionary dive team look like some sort of non-covert military unit. There are often grumbles and moans from other travelers as we bottleneck airport security or customs and immigration checkpoints.
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