Pain, by its very nature, is a subjective experience—something felt. To argue that fish feel pain, but are not conscious, is to separate sensation from awareness in a way that collapses under scrutiny.

The spoiler in this column comes right at the beginning. There is no such thing as a perfect dive liveaboard. At least, I have never come across one, and I have been travelling on dive liveaboards pretty much ever since they became a thing.

The genesis of this article stems from the aftermath of a wonderful liveaboard trip, where the manifold inadequacies of the vessel my wife and I were travelling on were more than made up for by the positivity and camaraderie among our group, and the quality of the diving.

I have chosen to dedicate a column to this story, not because it is particularly dramatic, but because it is so mundane. A diver died, not through illness or because they did something wrong, and not as the result of a freak weather event, but simply due to a sequence of instances of casual negligence and the perpetuation of a myth about what new divers are qualified to do that needs to be debunked.