You’re having so much fun on your dive trip that after
cocktails, you decide to have more wine with dinner, and
a brandy as a nightcap. Should you really go on the first
morning dive? It’s one thing to have wine with dinner, it’s
another to drink until 2 a.m., then wake four hours later for
the early-morning dive. And if you’re the sober dive buddy,
what is your responsibility?
Divers Alert Network (DAN) states that alcohol will
impair your physical performance, concentration and judgment
underwater, plus mask symptoms of decompression
sickness for many hours until your blood alcohol concentration
(BAC) level reaches 0.0 percent. (The American
Medical Association recommends the upper BAC limit for
driving as 0.05 percent.) So the more partying you do, the
higher your BAC goes, and the higher your risk for injury as
a hungover diver.
Look at it another way: DAN estimates that alcohol
metabolizes at an average of 0.3 ounces of pure alcohol per
hour. So say you drink a 12-ounce can of Miller Lite. It contains
0.384 ounces of pure alcohol, so you’ll metabolize it in
approximately 80 minutes. A domestic draft beer has 0.48
ounces, so it’ll take around 90 minutes. Drink four of those
and it’ll take six hours for a respectable BAC. That’s okay if
you stop before midnight, not so much if you’re drinking into
the a.m. hours - - and if you drink more than that.
There’s scant research about alcohol’s impact on diving,
but DAN won’t consider doing more, says senior research
director Petar DeNoble. “First, excessive drinking is related
to many health problems already, so conducting a separate
study would make it look like DAN is trying to provide excuses for drinking and diving. Second, the effects of drinking
on physiological functions are difficult to measure, especially
because most effects may be dose dependent.”
Dive operators vary on their view of handling heavydrinking
divers. We asked a few liveaboards for their take,
and it ranged from crackdown to laissez-faire. Mike Ball
Dive Expeditions in Australia is one of the strictest. Its procedures
manual recommends lights-out at 11 p.m., requires
parties to end at midnight and has a four-drink maximum
over 24 hours. “Guests who wish to drink beyond that are
advised they’ll need to skip the early-morning dive,” says
operations manager Craig Stephen. Crew records the names
and time of late-night drinkers in their log, and if those
divers insist on doing the first dive, they must sign a “diver
refusing advice” waiver.
On the other end is the Peter Hughes fleet, saying the “fit
to dive” decision is entirely up to its guests. “We treat divers
as responsible adults, capable of governing their own actions
and diving within their limits,” says vice president Larry
Speaker. “Our crews don’t have the expertise to diagnose or
judge the ‘quality’ of each person’s decisions. But during our
initial safety briefings, we do discuss responsible diving.”
The Aggressor Fleet is somewhere in between, with no
written standards about heavy drinking, but president Wayne
Hasson says, “Our on-board policy includes suspending diving
for anyone who is in question of being a danger to themselves
or another diver.” He says dive buddies should play
a role in keeping hungover divers on deck. “They should
inform the divemaster in such a case, but they should also
advise the diver not to dive under those conditions.”
Drinking and Diving: How Much Alcohol Is Too Much?