DM not helping students
- Thread starter Antagonist
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VooDooGasMan
Contributor
Naick, not so, there is a difference in BCD for surface activities. You are scuba diving not swimming. When I would water ski when I was a kid, I would not wear ski vest. After several outruns to dock and discussions with water patrol that I only use ski's to start out my barefoot skiing. Then go get my photos off wall of me at sea world in a wet suit. Having flotation is all you need, for some it is hard to realize a life vest is a flotation device and not the only one, but uncommon in warm water lakes.
If you have to tow your buddy in then the buddy is a danger, remember one victim not two. Thats why SOLO diving is by far the safest way to dive.
I been diving in Shipping lanes, and the first thing is that the ship moves fast, If you can see it, it will be there when you surface. There is no out swimming a ship. Although if you use the current you can be taken out of path.
And besides if you can't swim thats what a DPV is for.
Happy Diving
If you have to tow your buddy in then the buddy is a danger, remember one victim not two. Thats why SOLO diving is by far the safest way to dive.
I been diving in Shipping lanes, and the first thing is that the ship moves fast, If you can see it, it will be there when you surface. There is no out swimming a ship. Although if you use the current you can be taken out of path.
And besides if you can't swim thats what a DPV is for.
Happy Diving
I can no longer count how many times I have done those swims WITH my students. If one is struggling a little, I will get in & do the swims right beside them & encourage them along the way. Surprising what a little encouragement can do to help them out.
Solo diving is another discussion altogether. 6 in one half a dozen in the other. As a diver that embraces the DIR philosophy of diving, I believe team diving contributes to an extremely elevated level of safety and pure enjoyment. I do, however dive with a gentleman who dove for many years as a Navy ordinance disposal diver and believes he is better off solo. In comparison to diffusing sea mines, I think a casual romp in the quarry will be manageable for him. As for the swim test...TSandM hit the nail on the head. The test has more to do with measuring your level of cardiovascular fitness rather than your competency as a swimmer. Sudden cardiac emergencies are not uncommon and the worst place to have one is under water. You become a danger to yourself and your buddy. Divers have an obligation to themselves and their dive buddies to stay in reasonable physical shape. Does this mean you have to go out and run a marathon tomorrow, no. You just have to make an effort to condition your body to operate under strain. Remember it's not just the activity in the water, you are carrying dive gear to and from your vehicle, sometimes traversing across sketchy entrances, battling current, swimming against large swells to make it back to the dive boat etc... Poor fitness can also lead to an increased likelihood of getting bent. If you make the jump to rebreather, poor cardiovascular fitness can lead to death on the unit from labored breathing.
Bottom line, it's an important part of the certification process. I can teach someone how to assemble gear and breathe from a reg and achieve trim and buoyancy. What I can't teach is fitness. You have to do that yourself. I hope your father will continue with his scuba training. I used to DM for a local shop and had a couple of people have difficulty with their swim test. As a former swim instructor, I was able to help them improve their technique a bit and they found the swim a lot more manageable. One common mistake that a lot of non swimmers do is attempt to "bicycle kick" when they swim. A proper flutter kick will greatly assist in the efficiency of the stroke. Have him practice on a chair with his legs straight out and feet flexed with toes pointed. The kick should originate from the hip and glutes. This will help him keep his body in a streamline position and make the stroke immensely easier to do.
Bottom line, it's an important part of the certification process. I can teach someone how to assemble gear and breathe from a reg and achieve trim and buoyancy. What I can't teach is fitness. You have to do that yourself. I hope your father will continue with his scuba training. I used to DM for a local shop and had a couple of people have difficulty with their swim test. As a former swim instructor, I was able to help them improve their technique a bit and they found the swim a lot more manageable. One common mistake that a lot of non swimmers do is attempt to "bicycle kick" when they swim. A proper flutter kick will greatly assist in the efficiency of the stroke. Have him practice on a chair with his legs straight out and feet flexed with toes pointed. The kick should originate from the hip and glutes. This will help him keep his body in a streamline position and make the stroke immensely easier to do.
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If he was fatigued after the swim, it may not have been appropriate or safe to continue in the pool that night.
While I agree that you can continue with the confined water training while a student works on improving swimming skills, without being there it is not possible to say whether that was a good choice for this particular student or if the right result was to stop training till physical conditioning improves.
While I agree that you can continue with the confined water training while a student works on improving swimming skills, without being there it is not possible to say whether that was a good choice for this particular student or if the right result was to stop training till physical conditioning improves.
flots am
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The "swim test" just is a hold-over from the old para-military training. While it's nice to be able to cover some distance, I don't really think it's a deal-breaker.
The is recreational SCUBA. The worst that should happen is that the diver surfaces and waits for the boat. As long as they can manage to hang out on the surface and not drown, that should be good enough.
flots.
Flots
You make some assumptions, one that all recreational scuba divers dive from a boat. Second they will be able to float while waiting. If they have a malfunction in their buoyancy device and say are warm water diving without a wetsuit for additional buoyancy then they would be in a pickle.
Remember the open water cert allows a diver to dive all over the world so there may be times they need that swimming skill. Up here wearing a drysuit and BCD/Wing I have a hard time swimming anywhere lol but down south with very little exposure protection I can see the need for strong swimming skills.
No skill is every needed so much as when an emergency is taking place, that is a bad time to realize you should have prepared more.
You make some assumptions, one that all recreational scuba divers dive from a boat. Second they will be able to float while waiting. If they have a malfunction in their buoyancy device and say are warm water diving without a wetsuit for additional buoyancy then they would be in a pickle.
Remember the open water cert allows a diver to dive all over the world so there may be times they need that swimming skill. Up here wearing a drysuit and BCD/Wing I have a hard time swimming anywhere lol but down south with very little exposure protection I can see the need for strong swimming skills.
No skill is every needed so much as when an emergency is taking place, that is a bad time to realize you should have prepared more.
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Antagonist, I'm not clear on your wording. Did he pass the test the first try or not? He was sent home to practise, so I assume he didn't pass. You say he has the tecnique, so everything should be fine unless he is in really bad overall shape. Ei.:He shouldn't need a whole lot of rest to recover from fatigue after the first try, so perhaps another attempt should be allowed before he is sent home--or, maybe he needs to polish up his swim technique a bit and/or excersise more to get in better overall shape? As pointed out, swimming has very little to do with scuba, and the test probably was just included way back when sometime. I don't know what kind of safety factor swimming ability has re scuba. If you are in a bathing suit only with a busted BC, you take off the unit and go--but you have your fins on. That is not swimming-that is related to snorkelling, or the 800 meter DM mask/fin/snorkel test.
DennisH
Contributor
Man, a lot of you folks must be diving in paradise not to need to be able to swim for 200m. Where I dive, we often have significant tidal exchanges that mean covering 50m back to the shore takes 10 to 15 minutes of constant finning. Even without current, some of our shore dives are a l-o-n-g swim before descent. My thought is that the swim test really does test for two useful things: 1) do you have the fitness and technique necessary to handle physical stress in an emergency (gear failure, caught in a current, towing an injured buddy, etc); and 2) are you reasonably comfortable in the water. Both seem necessary to me.
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