Choose your Character

The boat can be a strange place.

Full of people from different backgrounds, often having never met.

Everyone is quietly working each other out.

Who has the nicest buoyancy?

Who's going to kick up the most sand?

I bet I can set my gear up quicker than them...

Will I be the first to 70 bar?

Always a tense moment.

It's all wonderfully silent.

Nobody says it.

Everybody thinks it.

Then the first dive ends.

You've established that everyone is, thankfully, capable of breathing underwater.

Some have already decided they're qualified to have opinions on your dive gear.

Now comes the truly difficult part.

Conversation.

For about an hour, twenty divers occupy the same boat.

Nowhere to be.

Nothing particularly urgent to do.

Yet within minutes, everybody quietly returns to their natural habits.

In that hour, you can learn an alarming amount about someone.

Where they're from.

How long they've been diving.

Which fish they'd most like to have a beer with.

Whether they're the sort of person who dismantles a perfectly functioning regulator for fun.

The pretending stops.

Nobody is trying to look like the best diver anymore.

Everyone simply becomes... themselves.

And that's when the personalities appear.

The Host

Arrives with enough snacks to supply the entire boat.

Claims they "brought too much."

Nobody believes them.

The Engineer

Has removed at least one hose from the first stage.

Is "just checking" everything is perfect.

Everything was perfect before they started.

The Marine Biologist

Knows the Latin name of everything.

Has already identified three fish nobody else noticed.

Quietly disappointed everyone keeps calling them "the blue one."

The Sunbather

Wetsuit around the waist before the ladder is even clear.

Can usually be found on the roof.

Would quite like everyone to leave them there.

The Quiet One

Perfectly happy listening.

Laughs at everybody else's stories.

Strangely, usually the best diver on the boat.

The funny thing is, nobody consciously decides to become "The Engineer" or "The Coffee Diver."

It just... happens.

Every trip.

Every boat.

Every surface interval.

Like clockwork.

The Volunteer

Already carrying three BCDs.

Nobody asked.

They're halfway through loading the boat.

The Journalist

Has started documenting the dive before their fins are dry.

Will remember details nobody else noticed.

The Computer Analyst

The dive has already been logged.

SAC calculated.

Maximum depth.

Average depth.

Water temperature.

Possibly the moon phase.

The Coffee Diver

Nobody saw them make it.

Yet somehow they're already holding a fresh cup.

This is their third.

The Organiser

Has arranged their equipment with military precision.

Can find anything in under three seconds.

Probably packed yesterday.

The Storyteller

Has begun the sentence,

"So... did you see..."

At least six times.

Every retelling somehow gets slightly better.

Underwater, we're remarkably similar.

Same equipment.

Same bubbles.

Same hand signals.

It's only once we climb back onto the boat that everybody quietly returns to the version of themselves they've always been.

The Engineer reaches for a spanner.

The Coffee Diver has somehow acquired another cup.

The Storyteller starts another tale.

The Quiet One smiles politely.

And the Journalist is already writing about all of them.

Officially, the surface interval is for off-gassing.

Unofficially, it's where twenty divers stop being divers for an hour...

...and quietly become themselves again.