ISSUE 16 ARCHIVE - QUIZ: WRECKS OR REEFS, WHICH ARE YOU?

Rob Hunt

As well as being facile, juvenile and polemic, dividing people into one of two extreme camps also displays a cold-war mentality that can very easily become dangerous.

So, wrecks or reefs? Take the quiz to find out once and for all which type of diver you are.

Q1) You’re diving the Ghiannis D when a pod of dolphins unexpectedly appears on the horizon. What do you do?

a) Cast around for a weapon to defend yourself with.

b) Quickly try and align your chakras in order to facilitate some sort of mental connection with them.

Q2) You’re diving with a pod of dolphins when the wreck of the Marcus unexpectedly appears on the horizon. What do you do?

a) Carve a path directly towards the wreck, creating a line of turbid, foamy water in your wake, which resembles a torpedo (or, indeed, a rip current). Pinwheel your arms as you go in case you can take out any of the cetacean bastards that come near you on the way.

b) Organise an Occupy-style protest on the fragile reefing system nearby in order to let the world know you won’t stand for this sort of thing. Bring in a thousand chemical toilets and decorate the corals with political slogans to let the world know you mean (anti-)business.

Q3) It’s Tight-Arse Tuesday at the local Ritzy, and tickets are half-price. Which James Cameron film will you go and see?

a) Piranha 2, probably, or maybe The Abyss since it’s got a nuclear bomb in it.

b) Avatar.

Q4) You’re driving the club van down to Portland. What music are we all listening to?

a) Slayer and Megadeth. At the same time.

b) Pan-pipes and whale song. At the same time.

Q5) It’s surface interval time on a RIB in La Manche Anglais. What will warm you up?

a) Eight pints of bitter and a fist fight with some nonce from a rival dive school.

b) Herbal tea infused with lark-song.

Q6) It’s dinner time. Along with the usual thanks and blessings, what else do you pray for at grace?

a) A 747 to crash into Stoney Cove at a depth of 12 – 40 metres to suit divers of various abilities.

b) That the Emperor Penguins in Antarctica be kept warm as it’s their winter and you’re terribly worried about them.

Q7) And what’s for dinner, anyway?

a) Some delicious shark-fin soup with whale’s eye croutons served in Nautilus shells. Maybe treat yourself to some tiger cock for dessert.

b) A bowl of some sort of synthetic virus with the gene for pain removed.

Q8) Describe your perfect dive.

a) Plummeting 150 metres into the ancient and priceless wreckage of a hitherto undiscovered galleon from the Spanish Armada, then kicking your way through walls and decks in search of gold before smashing off the ship’s bell and power-inflating to the surface, tossing dynamite behind you as you go.

b) Floating peacefully in a birthing pool watching the miracle of life take place.

Q9) What’s in your aquarium?

a) Bits of car engines, soaking in oil.

b) Rescued cockroaches.

Q10) How did you perform in metalwork at school?

a) Made an Iron Man costume. Received a ‘B’ as the rocket boosters were only partly functioning.

b) Made a daisy chain. Decorated it with love.

Q11) You’re head of the selection committee for the World International Global Scuba Diving Championships at Leybourne Lakes. Which divers will top your list?

a) Anyone that wears at least 50 kilos in lead and owns their own hammer and chisel.

b) Bono and Sting.

Q12) You’re struggling with addictions to which illegal drugs?

a) Crack and crystal meth.

b) Smack and skunk.

Q13) What are you using for a dive computer?

a) An experimental device you hand-fashioned personally from an old TV, a detonator from a nuclear warhead and the flux capacitor from a DeLorean, programmed with a decompression algorithm of your own devising.

b) Hope.

Q14) A cloud of ash is emitted by an Icelandic volcano in revenge for us selling them out in a failed attempt to avoid the GFC. This causes all flights out of the Red Sea to be suspended. As a result, the one-week liveaboard you were enjoying turns into a six-week odyssey. The only DVD on board is Alien. As your delightful extended holiday turns into an acute form of cabin fever, it becomes your biggest fear that people will find out your dark secret. What is this secret?

a) That you’re an android with orders to extinguish all organic life in order to make way for a world of order and metal.

b) That you’re harbouring an alien life-form inside you. A baby which you will protect at all costs despite the fact that it will soon burst out of your chest and kill everyone on board.

Q15) The previous question was so long, contrived, and tedious, that you drifted off and started thinking about something else instead. What were you thinking about?

a) Jagged pieces of corroding metal.

b) Fondling urchins.

How did you do?

Eight or more ‘a’s: You’re an enormous fat bastard with a beard who wants to do nothing more than decorate the mantelpiece with bits of brass at the expense of the aesthetic and historic value of the wrecks you’ve taken them from. Nature is anathema to you; it smells, it excretes fluid, and it tastes bad when undercooked. You like pumping in your drysuit before getting trainee dive leaders to unzip it.

Eight or more ‘b’s: You’re a joyless, handwringing hippy with a beard that wouldn’t blow a bubble near a piece of dead coral for fear of destroying a fragile ecosystem. For many years you’ve been cultivating scabies as you take it as a compliment that the little mites want to live inside you; they are, after all, the only creatures that can stand the stench of your unwashed body. You fear wrecks like a wilting pansy fears the sun because they remind you of mankind’s power and ingenuity and your lack of same. You’re not very good with computers.