Ten metres deep and John Stanfield catches sight of a crayfish — he begins honing in.
A long yellow hose undulates behind him back up to his mate’s boat, where a petrol engine powers a compressor sending him the air he’s breathing.
The engine’s noise is blocked out by the pressure of the ocean around him and the sound of his breath moving through the mouthpiece.
This is hookah diving, a popular method in Tasmania — but increasingly more people are dying while using this type of gear.
Unlike scuba diving, which requires a licence, training and regular gear checks, hookah diving needs no gear certification or licence — and divers are known to make their own apparatuses or self-service them.
Skilled recreational divers like Mr Stanfield, who grew up on the water, do not believe the gear is the problem, with fatalities sometimes put down to inexperience or irresponsibility.
Having strapped on his first snorkel at around age five, Mr Stanfield says he’s “never tired of it”.
To him, hookah brings more freedom underwater than when lugging around an air tank on the search for seafood.
“Using surface supply air, if you see a crayfish, you’ve got time to think,” Mr Stanfield said.
“You can weigh up exactly how you’re going to catch that crayfish, and then execute the plan.”
He said with hookah, he has never missed a cray.
The camaraderie, the hunt, and the enjoyment of local coasts and sea life, he said, was “a great part of the Tasmanian lifestyle”.
“Being able to access our coastal waters and you know, stick your head under the water and find a feed is really good.”
More deaths prompt talks of regulation
Four deaths in the first six months of this year in Tasmania have prompted calls for regulation of recreational diving, which currently has none.
The director of the Royal Hobart Hospital’s hyperbaric unit, David Cooper, has confirmed two of those deaths were hookah divers.
On average, one recreational diver in Tasmania dies every year while using compressed gas — scuba or hookah gear — which when compared to the state’s small population, is around four times the national average.
Just like all diving deaths in Tasmania since the 1980s, this year’s four fatalities were recreational divers.
Experts note an increasing percentage of deaths are of people using hookah gear.
Diving and medical expert David Smart has been at the fore of decades-long efforts to improve safety.
He says no professional divers have died at work in Tasmania “despite the fact we’ve got a huge occupational diving population”, including seafood divers, aquaculture industry, scientific divers and police who receive “excellent training”.
“The recreational industry, on the other hand, has had a death per year over 30 years. That’s 30 deaths too many in my book,” he said.
Without laws governing it, recreational hookah divers continue to “fall through the cracks”, Dr Smart says.
“People are using a device that they don’t have to show any training for when they use it, they just borrow a friend’s device.
“Someone can actually either buy a hookah apparatus and just use it without any checks and balances, or even make a homemade hookah apparatus out of very inappropriate equipment such as paint compressors and all sorts of things like that, which I’ve heard of over the years.”
Dr Smart said inexperienced divers using unsafe gear suffered drownings, entanglement, gas embolisms and lung ruptures.
“I am feeling quite low about this, myself,” he said, contemplating this year’s fatalities.
Education, not regulation, say divers
While agreeing familiarity with gear is important, to Mr Stanfield, self-maintenance is normal, with many divers being tradesmen.
“They’re either mechanics or electricians, so being able to service a petrol-driven motor is fairly run of the mill for them,” he said.
“If you don’t understand it then you should pay for somebody to do it.”
He said for all the divers he knows, safety is “common sense”.
“For those that don’t, is regulation going to change that? I don’t know, I’ve got my doubts.”
He’s worried added rules may compromise the freedom he and other divers value, without stopping an inevitable minority from being irresponsible.
“I think education is significantly more important than regulation,” he said.
“If people understand what the risks are and how to mitigate them, then it’s going to leave a community better informed than just, ‘OK, here’s what you have to do, and it’s going to cost you.'”
Yearly fatalities just the ‘tip of the iceberg’
Coronial investigations have shown in the past a range of factors have proven fatal for people diving in Tasmania’s cold and low-light water conditions.
Past deaths have been linked to rusted, outdated or unsafely made gear — sometimes missing crucial elements like air filtration.
In both scuba and hookah-related deaths, some divers had health complications, were intoxicated, and attempted excessively heavy catches.
One scuba diver was retrieved from the sea floor, having consumed alcohol in excess, and weighed down by a heavy bag of abalone.
Meanwhile, those who survive mishaps are not always left unscathed.
The deaths are just a glimpse of what Professor Cooper sees at work at the Royal Hobart Hospital, where every few weeks, multiple hookah divers present with decompression illness — also known as “the bends”.
“In fact the week after the most recent tragedy, we had a further three patients present, again from using hookah equipment inappropriately,” Professor Cooper said.
“And at least one of those had to be viewed as a near miss — somebody who almost became one of the statistics.”
The bends are gas bubbles in the body’s tissue, which can cause minor symptoms like sensory imbalances or flu-like symptoms, depending on where the bubbles are.
“[Symptoms] can vary from very non-specific symptoms through to sudden death,” Professor Cooper said.
To Dr Smart and Professor Cooper, the case for regulation is obvious.
A government spokesperson said the government “does not regulate recreational diving activities”, and that risk management and gear maintenance was the responsibility of the diver.
But Mr Stanfield, while cautiously open to talks, does not want the gun jumped.
“But really let’s not disturb it so much that it takes away that opportunity for the next generation or the people that are enjoying it now.”
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