Karl Holford
Karl belongs to: The Diving Centre Ltd
Karl learnt to dive through his father Stan. He grew up with diving with his brother Michael. Karl manages The Diving Centre Ltd, providing the diving community with equipment, training and advice.
Karl was interviewed by Carl Greenwood on 17 January 2006. The interview took place at Discovery Museum History office and lasted 38 minutes and 50 seconds.
Diving routines
"Yes, there’s a big routine, there’s a big code of etiquette"
Yes, there’s a big routine, there’s a big code of etiquette, there’s a big safety system that’s in the, like. Diving is one thing, being in the water, going in the water, swimming in the water, that’s, that’s probably the easiest part.
The biggest part is the planning of it, where you’re going to go, where, what equipment you’re going to use, and then you put everything together. So you run through everything, you assemble a set of equipment which basically is mask, snorkel, fins, your suit and then you have what’s called the aqualung which is the tank which holds the air, you then have a device called a regulator which feeds you with the air from the tank, and then you have, what’s called a buoyancy device as well, buoyancy compensating jacket which you wear and that would put air into the jacket and make you more or less buoyant. So you can displace more or less water in the…and all these things you check, put, take together and make sure everything’s working before you actually go in the water, and then when you put it on, you check it.
So you’ve got something like four, five, six series of checks before you actually hit the water, so you know when you go into the water, and this is something which is indoctrinated into everybody, so that when you go in the water, they can then relax to a great extent and be confident in the fact that everything works.
Karl has 17 memories in the memorynet:
Karl's memories with a Safety theme:
Diving routines
Karl's other memories:
- Growing up in the diving community
- Learning to dive in the North East
- The Dive School
- Sea life in the North East
- Weather and conditions
- Development of diving equipment
- Sounds
- Smells
Diver and jellyfish- St Abbs Head
- Cawfield Quarry
- Moving the Diving Centre
- Scapa Flow
- Freddy the Dolphin
- The Diving Centre Ltd
- The Diving Centre Ltd
This memory has these themes:
Equipment | Roles and Routines | Safety
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