ISSUE 15 ARCHIVE - QUIZ: ARE YOU FIT TO DIVE?

Rob Hunt

We’re breaking from the usual quiz format in this issue and expanding into exciting, experimental territory...

Not really. It’s the same as usual. Do the quiz and learn the truth about yourself at the end.

Q1) Physically Fit

How often do you exercise?

A) Once every few minutes.

B) Once.

Q2) Mentally Fit

What’s your biggest concern
when diving?


A) That a baby might be starving in Africa.

B) Coming down off the acid.

Q3) Fit As

Barmy Brussels Eurocrats have decreed that Britlandish divers must be at least 7/10 in terms of attractiveness in order to complete a Scuba course. How does this make you feel?

A) Good. Ugly people shouldn’t be allowed near water. It’s not safe.


B) Pubic.

Q4) Photo Fit

A chance amateur photograph seems
to catch you in the background, switching off your spouse’s air. How do you persuade anyone in the remand prison
to buddy with you underwater?


A) Proclaim your innocence. It wasn’t you, it was self-defence, and they deserved it.


B) Point out that, unlike other divers, your bloodlust is currently sated and therefore, like a lion just after feeding, you clearly pose no threat. If that doesn’t work, threaten to kill them.

Q5) Geometrically Fit

It’s day one of your Open Water course and the instructor expresses concerns that the pool is rectangular, whereas you are mainly humanoid in shape. How will you re-establish aesthetic principles?

A) Reshape the pool with power tools.

B) Reshape your body with power tools.

Q6) Misfit

You begin a twelve-step programme and are subsequently ostracised from the dive club for refusing to drink alcohol. How do you persuade them to reinstate you in time for the next club trip?

A) By showing them something shiny.

B) With pliers and a blowtorch.

Q7) Loose Fit

You’re due to dive in Loch Eyedanoo next month which, being in Scotslandshire, will probably entail water temperatures averaging -26°C. Unfortunately, the only drysuit you can get your hands on is the size of an average cottage. How will you compensate?

A) By eating chocolate every waking moment until the trip leaves.

B) By attaching a four tonne anchor to your neck.

Q8) Epileptic Fit

Everyone likes dolphins except for
you. In order to rectify this you’ve tried trepanning: the practice of drilling a hole in your own skull in order to assist with spiritual enlightenment. This has the benefit of causing several seizures and severe brain damage, but do you now like dolphins?


A) Yes.


B) No.

Q9) Shrink To Fit

You purchase a pair of fins that are not Avanti Quattros. During the subsequent psychiatric assessment, the doctor performs a Rorschach test on you. What do the ink blobs resemble?

A) Arterial gas embolism.


B) A diver sinking deeper, ever deeper, into the blackness.

Q10) Fit Of Rage

You’re idling through a corridor on the way to the engine room of the Ghiannis D when the diver behind you bumps into your fins. What do you do?

A) Nail their eyes together.

B) Forgive them like the baby Jesus. Then nail their eyes together.

Q11) Fit To Practise

Like any novice diver, you want nothing more than to practise mask floods and horizontal CESAs, but a whale shark proves a distraction during your Confined Water session. How do you dispense with this mindless killing machine?

A) Road traffic accident.

B) Assisted suicide.

Q12) Fighting Fit

It’s the weekly Dive Club Fight Night and you’re up against Maureen Savage, 58. What tactics will you use?


A) Stay on your toes to avoid the famous Savage haymaker, whilst steaming in with a flurry of punches after she’s swung.

B) Scissor and roundhouse kicks aimed at the weaker joints, primarily the knees, hips, and neck.

Q13) Fit In

It’s your first day at a new dive school, having been expelled from your two previous ones. How will you make yourself popular with the other divers?

A) Overfill some tanks until they explode and use the emergency O2 to help combust some wetsuits.

B) Get everyone to hum during the theory session and throw dive tables at the person with ginger hair when the instructor’s not looking.

Q14) Kwik Fit

You take the dive van in for a routine service. Twenty miles later, it breaks down. When you take it back to the mechanics, they say it’s a problem with the carbogaskorater and will cost twelfty thousand pounds to fix. What now?

A) Pay them.

B) Give them 600 pounds to take it off your hands for scrap.

Q15) Fit Up

Three days in to your tenure as treasurer, you started embezzling funds but soon realised the error of your ways and just straightforwardly stole the club’s money instead. Now questions are being asked and you need to act quickly. What do you do?

A) Implicate Terry, the young dive leader in training. He’s struggled with addiction issues in the past, and having the club take him on was always a trust exercise on the way to his rehabilitation. Therefore, planting drugs in his dive bag shouldn’t be too difficult or come as much of a surprise to some of the more cynical regulars.


B) Claim that it was a lack of regulation
that caused the problem and therefore
you can’t be held responsible for your own actions. Insist that your financial skills are unparalleled despite the unprecedented crisis you’ve caused and threaten to take your expertise to another dive club if sanctions are made against you. Point out that some public servants are reasonably well paid in order to take some heat off you in the interim.

Award yourself one point for every A) and one point for every B).

The Verdict

15 points or less. Get out. Get out of the water right now. Look at you. You’re a disgrace.

16 points or more. Consider this your certificate of fitness to dive*.

*Fitness to dive certificate not valid for use anywhere.