Begun in 2011, TekCamp is an annual event to which divers from across the U.K. and Europe come to learn more about technical diving and improve their dive skills, but this year’s event had an original feature — a “popdown” shop at 25 feet. Upon arrival at the event, participants noticed various shop signs were emblazoned with the Fourth Element logo and a cave arrow pointing into the water.

“On the last day of TekCamp in 2014, I chatted casually with [instructors] Martin Robson and Tim Clements about how it would be a good thing to do something a little different in 2015,” says Jim Standing, marketing and sales director for Fourth Element. “After four years of supporting the proceedings with demo gear, I felt we needed to spice things up a bit.” Standing proposed using a habitat to set up the world’s first underwater pop-up shop, and recalls thinking, “That doesn’t sound too hard.” In reality, however, he says, “The logistics of rigging a habitat, making it safe for relatively inexperienced users and training us before we got into the habitat was something that required an almost unique set of skills.” After the initial idea was proposed, it fell to Robson to come up with a way to create the underwater dive shop.

“It took four divers close to 10 hours to set up the shop,” says Robson. “We spent a few hours on the surface assembling as much of the habitat as we could. We floated it out and over the anchor points, and using buoys and lines to control the descent rate, we let some air out via a valve, and the habitat slowly sank to the point where we could attach it to the anchors. Another dive to install the floor, fix a seat inside and recheck all the rigging and the habitat was set up.”

After setup, the temporary shop was stocked with Fourth Element T-shirts exclusive to the event, and was open for business as divers began to arrive.

“The rigging, anchors and gas quality inside (which was replenished twice a day) kept me quite busy on top of TekCamp workshop sessions,” says Robson. “But it was all worth it to see the look on the faces of the divers who went ‘shopping’ and to introduce them to a whole new world.”

What’s a Habitat?

A habitat is an underwater air bell that a diver can enter to decompress. It can be a solid construction, such as a bulk container, or feature a more flexible skin with a rigid frame to keep its shape. Habitats are anchored in place to a fixed object below, or sometimes into the ceiling of a cave, and then filled with air