OK, you asked, so here goes answers to some of your questions, but not all of them. The ladies can answer what they do during "that" time of the month, but for the rest here goes:
Watch what you eat the night and morning before diving, and empty bladder and bowels (if possible) while at home, prior to dive.
When you are boat diving with a wet suit (and TWO-PIECE bathing suit) and there is no head (toilet) on the boat, and you absolutely have to go #2, you can surface, remove wet suit, hang off one of the lower rungs of ladder with mask and snorkel in place (to keep from getting beat up), lower your bathing suit bottoms to your knees, or slightly below, and then just do your thing. Keep your head and shoulders stretched out in front, and your rear end stuck out as far to the rear as possible. Try to get horizontal occasionally to help move things along. Laying back in the water is easier, and works well, but everything that comes to the surface will come up in the front, on your neck and under your chin. You will have to swim backwards a little away from it, and then re-gain your ladder hold. All of this does take some coordination, especially when the waves are up.
You will learn several things from this experience:
1. Even the slightest amount of water pressure against your rear orifice will make it a little hard to push out what you are trying to get rid of, especially when you are in the verticle position instead of horizontal. But, it will eventually come out because it really wants to. You know this because you ended your dive early when it called.
2. When you get rid of what you are trying to get rid of, a lot of it will float to the surface around you, so you will have to keep moving, swishing your arms and hands around, bobbing up and down, etc. to keep it off of you. Some of it will automatically sink, instead of float. Reason for mask and snorkel is so you can do all of this and see and breathe at the same time, but try to keep your face out of the water as much as possible. If the boat is rising and falling with the waves, it keeps things even clearer and cleaner. In water, it's actually not as foul as it is on land, believe it or not.
3. The fish will absolutely love you, and will appear from nowhere all around you to enjoy a free partially digested meal. The larger fish will follow the smaller ones, and soon you will enjoy a lot of activity in the water. Just think of your "contributions" as fish food, and the experience will go much easier for you. (LOL!)
4. When finished, you can swish water around underneath you and move forward and backward while hanging onto the ladder, and it does a great job in cleaning things up so you don't soil your wet suit or bathing suit when you get back into it.
5. You will probably return to the boat a little embarrassed, but feeling much better, with a sense of pride just knowing you can improvise in a pinch.
6. You will understand why wearing a two-piece bathing suit comes in handy under a wet, or dry suit. With one-piece, you'll have to post a trusted guard to screen you while you pull everything down. This can get very complicated.
7. If you can find a private spot on the boat, you may want to seriously consider finding a bucket and putting about a foot of water in it, and then sitting on top of it. This is much easier than the in-water method, and I have known other divers to do this when they could go behind a cabin door and close it. Post a guard, and just hang on tight in case a wave rolls the boat! You don't want to be found unconscious with your bathing suit down! (LOL!)
8. You will try very hard to avoid all of this hassle the next time, and you will sit for a long time at home to make it happen before you leave.
When diving with just your two-piece bathing suit (no wet or dry suit), and you are still at depth, you could probably pull the bottoms down while in a horizontal, or slightly head down position and then do your thing, but I cannot speak from experience on this one.
Concerning #1, just go in your wet suit. If you aren't wearing a wet suit, then you can pull the bathing suit bottoms to the side and go, or just go with them on. The water will quickly flush things out for you. In a dry suit, I don't get the urge as bad, but adult diapers, etc. could always be an option. Thankfully, I have not experienced that problem.
After all of this, I guess you can tell I've been there and done THAT. Yep, twice as a matter of fact. Happened one time after eating and drinking the wrong things the night prior to diving, and happened the second time when I was on medication that didn't agree with me. I was so discreet about it, nobody on the boat or in the water ever knew what I was doing, even the ones way below me in the water. Most of the time there is something about water pressure and diving in general that holds back certain urges, so it's not usually a problem anyway.
Am I embarrassed now? Nope, not a bit. S@#t happens (pardon the pun), and we all need to think ahead about how we are going to deal with it.
I can't believe I just discussed "answering the call" in such detail, but what the heck, I hope it helps!.....
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