I have been a diver since 1970 and held a "goldfish" certification card for 200 feet at Scripps Institution of Oceanography when I was a graduate student at UCSD back then. On those work divies we always liked to carry a big Voit Swim Master knife on the inside of the lower left leg. That way it didn't catch on any kelp (in San Diego) swimming on the surface and could be pulled out by reaching across with the right hand (left hand busy with cameras, inflator hoses, holding on to line for dear life, etc.) At that point the trick was to use it for whatever rather than drop it. The standard yum-yum yellow handle displayed on your leg was also good for shark stories. The yellow ones were easier to see than the black ones as they disappeared into really deep water.
The Swim Master was a big heavy knife that was just right for beating and prying open the slots on lead for weight belts, and doing other crude tasks with the hammer head on the end of the handle.That was what you did most with it, and usually as hard as you could. When you really put your back into it prying something like a jammed anchor chain the knife stayed slightly curved when you were done! Then next time you just pulled it the other way to straighten it out.
It was not much of an edge holder but it didn't rust when you went diving in Mexico and had no fresh water to rinse everything off. And it looked really great suiting up on the beach for the tourists asking about sharks. I would like to see the modern day knifeknut pound on those lead weights with his $400 Mission titanium!
But the Mission would be great for illustrating dive stories for the beginners. I remember the new divers listening to stories from the old sea dogs at SIO about "how I saved my own life by using my dive knife to push it in between my own ribs and let out deadly high pressure gas that would have caused air embolism upon surfacing..."
Now I use a little knife designed by Blackie Collins made by Wenoka with a neat Z-lock button to release it from its hard plastic arm sheath. The ladies can buy one in pink now. The most important feature is a big fishing line cutter slot. I use it often when diving in locations popular to boats with fishermen. They leave big tangles of line on the bottom after cutting it loose. Typical situation is to get some almost invisible nylon monofilament snagged around your tank valve or something else you can't see. You don't even know you are caught until forward progress underwater mysteriously stops. Hopefully a few blind slashes behind you with this line cutter will catch the line and cut it, at which point you can see you have been hauling along a dozen feet of nylon and everyting else tangled up in it.
Having a knife while diving is especially important for helping yourself out of an underwater situation when using the famous California buddy system: two people, same ocean, same day. But it still doesn't offer much protection from being wounded in the ankle or the elbow by the most dangerous animal in the ocean... the lowly spiny sea urchin. We never did figure out how to tell an underwater knife story about how we got stabbed by those little guys.
[This message has been edited by senpai (edited 24 January 1999).]
