In Cape Town waters, we often dive on reefs where there is fishing activity. Hooks get caught on rocks, breaking the fishermen’s lines and leaving the lines strung from rock… to rock… to kelp … and across the path of the unassuming diver.
Fortunately, some of these lines – usually the thicker or luminous green ones - are reasonably easy to spot and avoid, but it does sometimes happen that a diver can become unexpectedly entangled. This is where you and your buddy will find your dive knives pretty useful!
Whilst checking out a dive site a few years ago, we noticed there were a number of people fishing from the rocks close to where we were going to be diving, so we knew we had to be on the look-out for fishing lines. As luck would have it one of our divers Graham, happened to swim across the path of a just-cast hook and sinker without noticing. We watched in disbelief as the float bobbed above his head and the hook lodged itself in the rubber mouthpiece of his regulator. Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I grabbed Graham’s arm and told him to stop and Deon, having anticipated what would happen next whipped out his dive knife, grabbed the line and cut it before Graham’s regulator could be yanked out of his mouth. At one point, the line was being pulled quite tight, so the poor fisherman must have thought he had the catch of his life at the end of his line!
We were just thankful that the hook found Graham’s regulator and had not landed in flesh! Ouch!! From that day forward, Graham has been known as “Graham Galjoen” (Galjoen being a type of fish!).
About 9 years ago, whilst kitting up for our first boat dive in Mozambique, we strapped our dive knives onto our calves as we always do. Once on board, there was much sniggering and the words “Rambo” floated down the boat towards us. Our fellow divers were nudging each other and everyone was looking pointedly at our knives and I soon realised that nobody else was wearing a dive knife. I wasn’t sure whether to feel embarrassed or surprised.
This was a double-tank dive so during our surface interval, I chatted to the DM about this and he said that nobody needed to dive with knives in Mozambique. We kept ours on for fear of losing them on the boat and were glad we did when, during the safety stop on the second dive, we had to free the DM’s cylinder net from a rather large hook and line - belonging to the boat’s skipper who had been catching fish whilst we were diving!
So, regardless of where we are diving, I always take a dive knife with me. To avoid the sarcastic “Rambo” comments in Mozambique however, I prefer to use a small dive knife attached to my BC… just in case! You never know when your knife will come in handy!