Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!yale!bunker!wtm
From: GE0013@SIUCVMB.BITNET (Roy Miller)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: Avoiding Things That Sting In SCUBA
Message-ID: <10399@bunker.UUCP>
Date: 27 Feb 90 05:07:23 GMT
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Reply-To: GE0013@SIUCVMB.BITNET (Roy Miller)
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Index Number: 6958

Pat Goltz has written:

   >A blind scuba diver feeling the bubbles coming out of his breathing
   >apparatus to tell which way is up.  Why didn't I think of that? ...
   >Now, a bigger question is, how does a blind person avoid touching
   >something that stings?

Well, I can't speak as a blind person (because I'm not--I'm deaf), but I
can speak as a diver.  Even a sighted person often doesn't know whether
or not something "stings,"  especially when diving in unfamiliar underwater
habitats.   For me, however, that doesn't produce much of a problem.  The
underwater world is such a fragile ecosystem that when diving I (and all
of my diving buddies) try not to "touch" anything.  Much like the caver
who tries to "leave nothing but footprints, and take nothing but pictures,"
the ecology minded diver trys to "leave nothing but expelled air, and take
nothing but pictures."  By not touching things, we don't run the risk of
damaging a fragile ecology, and we leave it just as we found it for others
to enjoy.  (And we don't have to worry about whether or not things sting!)
                                Roy Miller
                        The Professor Who Never Listens,
                           But Whose Eyes Hear A Lot