The arrival paperwork

You will fill out forms. They will be in three colours. You will fill them out three times.

What the forms actually do

The arrival paperwork serves four discrete purposes, none of them obvious from the form itself. The first is a manifest: the surface tender is required to log who and what it brought down. The second is a depth declaration: the receiving anchorage records the deepest tier you are certified for, and your depth privileges in the cluster are derived from that line. The third is medical: the saturation-depth modules want a baseline, and they are not interested in your judgement of your own fitness. The fourth is liability: the Conservancy is funded by treaty, and the treaty has lawyers.

What to bring

A printed copy of your dive log if you have one — not because the certifying body cannot retrieve it, but because the link to the surface registry is intermittent at saturation depth and the office prefers paper. A photograph of yourself taken under fluorescent light, not under sun. A patient temperament.

What you will be given

A coloured wrist tag, which you will not remove for the duration of your visit. A schedule of your decompression obligations on departure — which you will read on arrival, not on departure, when it will be too late. A short briefing on what to do if a module loses pressure, which you will, in fact, never need.

On the slowness

The first time, the paperwork takes most of a day. The next time it takes an hour. The time after that you have learned to bring a book.