Saturday
12 Feb 2000
University of London Union, Malet St, London W1

Main Sponsor:

dg 2000 is the first ever conference dedicated to women in diving.

We had a good attendance and everyone who came, seemed to find the day to be interesting, useful and fun. We hope to repeat this event next year.

A massive thanks go out to our sponsors, all of the speakers, who were excellent, the Dive Girl staff who helped make the day possible and of course to everyone who made the effort to come.

Rather than give you our glowing report, here are some (slightly edited) comments that appeared in the scuba-uk mailing list.

From Teresa Telus:

It's not often that I bother to write about items related to diving but the DiveGirl Conference on Saturday was excellent and although well attended, many people missed an extremely interesting and informative day. So below is a summary (biased to the parts I found particularly interesting or unusual) of the talks and workshops I attended with a list of the other events.
The DG2000 conference managed to cram so much into one day in a venue where there were loads of bars serving drinks, coffee and food. Yummy. Whether you're male or female, if you missed DG2000 this year then don't next year, far better than any of the dive shows for workshops, information and talks and with a sense of humour.

The conference:

Main Hall: Jill and Paul Heinerth talked about their involvement in the Wakulla2 project, including the technology and techniques used by the group. It was interesting that although these guys have dived for years and are expert cave divers, they trained for hours as a team before going into the caves, simulating failure scenarios, diving with and testing the kit configuration. Jill explained the sonar mapping device they were using, drawing an easy to visualise analogy to throwing spots of paint out at regular intervals. In confined areas they had a dense coverage of samples (well painted) and in larger caves the signals were further apart (paint more dispersed). The resultant 3D map of the cave system transposed onto a photograph of the area was quite mind blowing.
The planning as well as the technology used in the project was awesome. Once their rebreathers had been assembled and thoroughly checked they were rechecked by another person, similar to the second checks performed in the aircraft industry. There was great physical stain on the divers, with long in water times and hours of decompression. When you read about these dives you often don't realise this and it was interesting that Jill said she often felt quite sick after long dives and decompressions. Jill is an entertaining speaker and her talk was excellent.

Workshop: Dr Ann Kristovich and David Crockford spoke about DCI, treatment and management. Both speakers saw DCI as a 'sports injury' that can happen to anyone and both agreed that divers should AGGRESSIVELY hydrate before diving (this means hydrating from the day before) as well as after diving. Dr Kristovich was particularly interesting. In her diving environment treatment of DCI by In Water Recompression is the norm because of the distance from hyperbaric chambers and she explained the procedures they follow and equipment used. She also spoke about management of DCI if IWR was not going to happen, including the drugs used for reducing swollen areas, the intravenous fluids they give to hydrate the casualty, and the use of oxygen. Interestingly enough when questioned, she said that if the journey time to a recompression chamber would take longer than 30 mins, then she would use IWR instead. She also said that during IWR they keep the casualty still in the water (there is always a safety diver with the casualty), but during regular decompression they maintain light movements and that they use full face masks for IWR.
David Crockfords presentation was also interesting, reinforcing Anns message of hydration and use of oxygen. He spoke about the tables they use at DDRC to recompress DCI casualties and the importance of recognising symptoms of DCI when casualties that are in denial that they have DCI.

Workshop: I want to go to Mexico. Jill Heinerth's workshop on getting into cave diving was so inspiring. Her slides of Mexico were beautiful, the water is warm, the caves can be shallow and there are places where you can snorkel for hours.... The front row was filled with a contingent from the British Cave Diving Group, including Rick Stanton and Martin Farr, who were supportive of this excellent day.

Main Hall: Christina Campbell spoke about her involvement with the 'Starfish Enterprise', a group of like minded divers that dive together. She, like Jill Heinerth, spoke in length about working as a team. The Britannic project was one of the examples she used of the different tasks that everyone in the group performed, both before the trip in planning, during the trip in logistics, on the boat and during the dives. The importance of team work was highly stressed and many clubs and divers should be inspired by the way they work. They had worked on the Britannic expedition for some four years before they dived it, had researched and planned it thoroughly leading to a successful trip. An interesting presentation with some good video of UK and overseas diving.

Main Hall: Dr Ann Kristovich and Jim Bowden spoke about the diving they are doing in Mexico and the exploration of the area. They have set many deep diving records. They had some fabulous slides of caves (both dry and flooded) in Mexico, which were inspiring. Interestingly enough their dive team has a large contingent of women.

Workshop: I took the opportunity of going to a workshop about Womens Diving Research at the DDRC, given by Marguerite St-Leger Dowse. This was divided into three main sections:
- do women have a higher incidence of DCI than men
- does diving effect the unborn
- how does the menstrual cycle effect diving.
Statistics is a science on its own and it has been difficult to get meaningful statistics for these three areas however the DDRC is considered to be the world leader in dive statistic on these subjects. To summarise it would appear from statistics that there is no evidence that wome have a greater incidence of DCI than men. They dive as deep but their dive profiles would seem less aggressive. There are no proven statistics about diving while pregnant, but the DDRC recommend that if you want to make certain that diving is not going to effect your pregnancy or child then don't do it. Finally it appears that statistics seem to be suggesting that you may be more prone to DCI during the first 3 (or was it four) days of your menstrual cycle, where the first day is the day you start your bleed. I do not know how many examples that have, but it can not be a very large sample. More work is currently been done on this and results are likely to be published in 2001. During the discussion people asked about whether there was any further data about the incidents of DCI on the first days of your menstrual cycle, did the DDRC have information about whether pain killers were being taken, were they taking the contraceptive pill, did they have large blood loss, poor sleep patterns, etc. This information is not known, but further research and analysis of research is being performed.

(MH) Close of the proceedings and an opportunity for anyone to talk to manufactures and agencies in an open forum.

[DG comment: as far as we are aware, this is the first occasion that all of the main training agencies: BSAC, PADI, SSI, SAA, IANTD and TDI have been brought togather to talk to divers in this way.]

Tony Jay added: > > (WS) Jeanette Plant, Rebreather Instructor talking about Rebreather diving
> A good speaker, taking people through the basics of the Inspiration and on to diving it with TMX. She seemed open minded and a thinking instructor - apparently the only CCR woman instructor (in the UK or at all , not sure)
> > > (MH) Linda Dunk, underwater photography
> I'm not into photography, but this was an interesting talk on technique (from the basic and touched a couple of times on more advanced things like double exposure) some really nice slides and a very amusing public speaker.
> DG2000 Conference
> > (MH) Natasha Abels, video of her 180m dive
> [DG comment: this was a late addition to the programme and as no formal presentation had been prepared we did an interview with Natasha on stage, followed by a 10 minute video of the dive]

Putting my neck out here....
All she did was go down to 180m with her buddy, Mark Elyatt (boyfriend). she got bent on the way up (a recurring bend she said) Nothing was cutting edge. She appeared to be a rich girl using raw proplanner and 5 cylinders, Kevin Gurr may have more to say on it but I don't think is well validated for 180 metre bounce dives.

I think (probably wrong) getting bent on a record dive invalidates it a little. (like getting helicoptored off the top of everest ?). I think it is probably a 'sport injury' but when you are pushing the limits you should really do more than just use a program (my view) What was was very impressive was that she qualified for the british triathlon team after coming out of the pot ! with a decent publicist she could go very far, she has yet to develop as a public speaker (louise did a wonderful job of interviewing her on stage)

Other speakers included:

(MH) Lizzie Bird the BSAC National Diving Officer talking about 'Getting to the top'
(WS) Nigel Jarvis, conservation in the Red Sea
(WS) Kevin Gurr, head of IANTD UK talking about technical training.
(WS) Donna Hicks and Lindsay Fricker, between them PADI, IANTD and BSAC instructors talking about becoming an instructor.
(WS) Erica Hoffman of PADI on becoming a scuba professional

[DG Comment The evening event was held in the Grafton Hotel, with some great food and music. The highlight was the performances of Fay Presto, magicienne, diver and Dive Girl fan. Her close up magic is amougst the best that you will ever see. An enourmous thanks goes out from all of us at Dive Girl, for helping to make this fantastic evening.]

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