There are periods in history – take the Renaissance, for example – when humanity seems to slip its shackles and accelerate exponentially into a sort of warp drive of inventiveness and creativity.

2003 represented, in the world of diving, just such a Renaissance – though with less paintings and no Spanish Inquisition.

We were inundated with new products – a seemingly-endless cavalcade of astonishing innovations.

First there was the installation of the gargantuan immersion heater off Teesside, powered, ingeniously, by the harnessed depression of local divers.

To dive off Hartlepool in January wearing only a short-sleeved t-shirt was a remarkable experience, in spite of the fire coral and the Bull Sharks.

Less spectacular but equally significant was Suunto’s revolutionary merging of the dive computer and the technology of predictive texting.

Suddenly, we knew what the next dive was going to be like.  And so, nine times out of ten, we didn’t even bother getting into the water. One can only speculate upon how much this must have saved in boat fuel and compressed air.

Of course, a proportion of those savings were ploughed back into the sport through the Dive Aid Foundation.  The draining of Stony Cove must rank as the single most important contribution to human happiness after the discovery of the black Lycra thong.

The self-draining mask ended decades of misery for those of us who somehow managed to sneak through the course while never really mastering the mask-clearing bit.

And suddenly, whole battalions of people with weird, rat-like faces, were able to partake in a pastime previously denied them.

This hasn’t done much for the aesthetics of the sport, but hey, why should they be excluded from one of life’s most rewarding activities, just because they happen, through no fault of their own, to resemble verminous, mean-eyed little rodents?

As many of you will know, I have always despised the boat radio with a passionate intensity.

 In my experience it has always held out the alluring promise of communication. Then, at the very last moment and always in circumstances of direst necessity, the offer is snatched back.

 In short, the boat radio is an electronic prick teaser. However, it has finally met its comeuppance. Never again will we be forced to endure its humiliations.

The Voice Trumpet is of metal construction, often enamelled. It forms a truncated cone, open at either end. Grasping a handle conveniently soldered to the underside of the cone, one speaks clearly and loudly into – and this is important – the narrower end of the cone while inclining the wider end towards the object of one’s attentions.

Unlike the boat radio, the Voice Trumpet can be heard quite clearly, in calm conditions, by those with exceptionally acute hearing, over distances exceeding 10 metres.

One could go on almost indefinitely. The invention of the Bacardi Breezer Breather snorkel, for instance, has persuaded many of the mindless, overpaid parahooligans who can now afford to spoil the Caribbean to kick to pieces coral formations of staggering antiquity. Clearly a huge leap forward for our sport.

But time and space elude me.  So let’s look forward to an even more thrilling 2004.