All these dive accidents are making me wonder....

[Thalassamania]

Alberta, "Northwest Scuba would not say what kind of dive the man was doing." - recreational training dive
Yucon, Ship wreck penetration at 100' - 9/11/2010? No penetration of wreck, diver was out on the sand.
Spiegel, Ship wreck penetration at 93' - what case?
Lake Tahoe, Diver last seen at 130', found at 265' - recreational diver, found something like 17 years later on a ledge that he sunk to at 265.
Tragedy & Happiness, Trapped at 70' for 4 days, lost one out of three.
Would your equipment and gas plan cover this? - Commercial accident in India

What on earth are you talking about?

 

[finbob]

How do you know when you are "ready" ..

- when taking a reg out of your mouth and replacing it with a different reg isn't a big deal
- when removing and replacing your mask isn't something you dread
- when you can ascend while sharing air, maintain a controlled ascent rate, and stop when you want to
- when you can stop and maintain your buoyancy without finning
- when you can descend without crashing into the bottom and consistently hold your safety stop on the ascent

... then you are (minimally) "ready" to progress from OW to whatever next class you should choose ... these are all skills you supposedly "mastered" in your OW class ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Bob: You have obviously been diving a long time, may I suggest you have forgotten what it was like to start?
I may be a slow learner but it took me over 20 Dives just to be able to maintain buoyancy for a safety stop!
Even after 100 dives, I still need a dive or two to sort out my buoyancy for a safety stop.

Now in my travels, I have met many who only manage to squeeze in 12 dives/year on vacation - I know many on Scubaboard will be astonished but it is true!
I believe we all agree that no one can reproduce skills, let alone 'Master them,' without maintenance. This is very hard to do with 12dives+/year.
You will readily agree that number of dives/year doesn't cut it. The truth is many are re-learning basic skills over and over again.

You have logged around 3,000 dives, it all comes very natural to you but not to a newbie! I suggest your criteria for 'Minimally ready' although ideal is out of touch with reality for the average vacation diver.

In addition, some skills are quickly learned others take 50+ dives which I suggest may represent a few years for some vacation divers.
According to your criteria "How do you know when you are ready" - I suggest many divers will take years to 'be ready.'

Sincerely, Finbob

 

[JeffG]

Are you sure you're not confusing ScubaBoard with The Deco Stop?

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

They have threads there that are not for selling gear? Who would of thunk.

 

[RonFrank]

How do you know when you are "ready" ..

- when taking a reg out of your mouth and replacing it with a different reg isn't a big deal
- when removing and replacing your mask isn't something you dread
- when you can ascend while sharing air, maintain a controlled ascent rate, and stop when you want to
- when you can stop and maintain your buoyancy without finning
- when you can descend without crashing into the bottom and consistently hold your safety stop on the ascent

... then you are (minimally) "ready" to progress from OW to whatever next class you should choose ... these are all skills you supposedly "mastered" in your OW class ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

I don't think having perfect Buoyancy is part of OW... If it was no one would ever pass, and I'm guessing that includes yours truly. I practiced during OW and tried to hold my stop with fining, is was successful some of the time....

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I do not study the Incidents and Accidents but I did check just now.

Alberta, "Northwest Scuba would not say what kind of dive the man was doing." (it was an AOW class)
Yucon, Ship wreck penetration at 100' (the report says nothing about a penetration ... it does say he was found "near the wreck, on the bottom" ... the bottom is outside the wreck)
Spiegel, Ship wreck penetration at 93' (the person involved posted that it was his first deep dive, first nitrox dive, and 17th dive ever ... hardly what I'd call a tech dive)
Lake Tahoe, Diver last seen at 130', found at 265' (archives show that Windecker, then 44, and a friend had dived down about 100 feet in the lake south of Rubicon Point, when Windecker apparently lost consciousness while trying to ascend. Sheriff's officers reported at the time that Windecker was last seen at a depth of 130 feet, descending and with his breathing regulator out of his mouth)

Tragedy & Happiness, Trapped at 70' for 4 days, lost one out of three. Would your equipment and gas plan cover this? (these were commercial divers ... this accident had nothing to do with recreational scuba diving ... they were on surface supplied air!)

So explain to me how you can post "In the six months I have been on this site every death notice I have seen with one exception has involved some sort of tech diving."

Look, you're welcome to whatever prejudices you like ... but if you come on ScubaBoard and spread bullsh!t, expect to get called on it.

You either aren't reading these reports, or your prejudices are preventing you from comprehending what you're reading.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[RonFrank]

Alberta, "Northwest Scuba would not say what kind of dive the man was doing." - recreational training dive
Yucon, Ship wreck penetration at 100' - 9/11/2010? No penetration of wreck, diver was out on the sand.
Spiegel, Ship wreck penetration at 93' - what case?
Lake Tahoe, Diver last seen at 130', found at 265' - recreational diver, found something like 17 years later on a ledge that he sunk to at 265.
Tragedy & Happiness, Trapped at 70' for 4 days, lost one out of three.
Would your equipment and gas plan cover this? - Commercial accident in India

What on earth are you talking about?

Thal, where do you get this stuff? I have no clue if you are correct, but generally there is a lot of speculation on a divers death and most of the time we do not know....

There have been a number of deaths on the Grove, and most of those have been penetration dives. There was a bunch of re-breather accidents a few years back... Call the divers what you will (tech/rec) they died. Andra Doria always kills a few every year or so...

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I don't think having perfect Buoyancy is part of OW... If it was no one would ever pass, and I'm guessing that includes yours truly. I practiced during OW and tried to hold my stop with fining, is was successful some of the time....

Oh ... I quite agree. Very few people come out of OW with very good bouyancy control, much less perfect.

Then again, you don't need perfect buoyancy control to be able to stop, hover, descend, or hold a safety stop. In fact, if the class is taught according to standards, you are required to demonstrate reasonable proficiency in all of those things in your OW class ... which means you should have reasonable proficiency before the instructor certifies you.

But the learning doesn't stop at the class ... in fact, it only BEGINS there. A newly certified diver who makes a conscious effort to improve these skills can do so in a surprisingly few dives if they apply themselves.

And that is my point ... if you enter AOW while you're still struggling with those skills, you'll go through the motions of following an instructor or DM on dives in new situations that you have little to no bandwidth to concentrate on, because you will still be struggling with the skills you were supposed to have learned in OW.

And that is why I encourage people to go get in a few easy dives before taking that next class. Get comfortable with what you're doing at the BASIC level ... then go for the new stuff they're supposed to teach you in ADVANCED ... otherwise, the chances are very good that you're gonna come out of that AOW class feeling like you didn't learn anything.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Bob: You have obviously been diving a long time, may I suggest you have forgotten what it was like to start?

You can suggest it ... but it wouldn't be true. I make a conscious effort to get out and mentor new divers ... and not as part of any class, just to have some fun and give them a stress-free environment in which to improve their skills. I do this specifically so that I will never forget what it was like to start.

In my "real life" I write manuals for a living. One of the cardinal rules of tech writing is "know your audience". This is also a cardinal rule for teaching scuba diving ... if I ever forget what it was like to start, I would lose my ability to be an effective scuba instructor. If that ever happens, I will quit teaching.

I may be a slow learner but it took me over 20 Dives just to be able to maintain buoyancy for a safety stop!

Me too ... and I am most definitely a slow learner. But my OW instructor would not let me begin AOW until I could demonstrate to him that I'd practiced that skill to the point where I could stop on demand. It was the best thing he ever did for me ... because AOW is when you do your deep dive ... and if you can't manage a safety stop, don't you think it would be unwise to be going deep? I certainly do.

Even after 100 dives, I still need a dive or two to sort out my buoyancy for a safety stop.

Of course! Lots of people do ... diving isn't like riding a bicycle, after all ... your muscle memory needs a bit of "warmup" time to remember how it's done. But you still should have learned those skills ... because you can't "remember" something you never knew in the first place.

You have logged around 3,000 dives, it all comes very natural to you but not to a newbie! I suggest your criteria for 'Minimally ready' although ideal is out of touch with reality for the average vacation diver.

In addition, some skills are quickly learned others take 50+ dives which I suggest may represent a few years for some vacation divers.
According to your criteria "How do you know when you are ready" - I suggest many divers will take years to 'be ready.'

On the contrary ... it's quite doable. I've been teaching an AOW class that's well above "typical" for seven years now ... and some of my students have been "vacation" divers. Some dive locally ... but just not very often. And many are ... like you and me ... slow learners. No problem. We go get in a dive ... or two ... or five ... before class begins, and then we do the class dives. In my class, there are no "elective" dives ... every dive is skills-based, and I have yet to have a student who couldn't manage it.

It all boils down to (a) understanding what it is the instructor expects of you and (b) believing that you have the ability to achieve that objective. Once those two criteria are met, you can do surprising things.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[markmantei]

Bob: You have obviously been diving a long time, may I suggest you have forgotten what it was like to start?
I may be a slow learner but it took me over 20 Dives just to be able to maintain buoyancy for a safety stop!
Even after 100 dives, I still need a dive or two to sort out my buoyancy for a safety stop.

Now in my travels, I have met many who only manage to squeeze in 12 dives/year on vacation - I know many on Scubaboard will be astonished but it is true!
I believe we all agree that no one can reproduce skills, let alone 'Master them,' without maintenance. This is very hard to do with 12dives+/year.
You will readily agree that number of dives/year doesn't cut it. The truth is many are re-learning basic skills over and over again.

You have logged around 3,000 dives, it all comes very natural to you but not to a newbie! I suggest your criteria for 'Minimally ready' although ideal is out of touch with reality for the average vacation diver.

In addition, some skills are quickly learned others take 50+ dives which I suggest may represent a few years for some vacation divers.
According to your criteria "How do you know when you are ready" - I suggest many divers will take years to 'be ready.'

Sincerely, Finbob

I have been reading this board for a few years, and while I may not always agree with Bob, I can't think of any posts that have made me think Bob does not empathize with what a new diver goes through. Being demanding of the skills necessary to survive may not be coddling new divers but is critical to having proficient divers walk out of the door.

We all need to work on our skills, I imagine even (or especially) those with 1000+ dives are still practicing various skills on a routine basis. Most of the 12 dives a year vacation divers could still practice skills in a pool before their vacation, not as good as open water, but that's what I have my wife do (who doesn't "like" to dive in cold water with nothing to see). Its a question of priorities, maybe if those divers had the dangers rather than the safety of diving emphasized more in their classes they would put a higher priority on skills training. We don't need every vacation diver to be qualified tech divers, just dive within their training and abilities so they can SAFELY complete their dives.

 

[Rich Keller]

So explain to me how you can post "In the six months I have been on this site every death notice I have seen with one exception has involved some sort of tech diving."

Look, you're welcome to whatever prejudices you like ... but if you come on ScubaBoard and spread bullsh!t, expect to get called on it.

You either aren't reading these reports, or your prejudices are preventing you from comprehending what you're reading.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

As I said from the start I do not study the Incident and Accident thread, this is just what I have picked up from the Northeast and Southeast threads that I do look at as these are the areas I am interested in diving. The examples are ones you brought up, I am not spreading anything. My responses came from looking at each example for about 30 seconds to see what was left out of your examples, that seems to be where the spreading came in. What you call my prejudices come from my time as a commercial diver. I look at the types of dives tech divers are making and figure out how much I would have charged someone to make that dive and all the support personal and additional equipment that would be required and it comes to thousands of dollars per dive and that is 1980s dollars, I have no idea how much more they would charge today. My opinion is that these types of dives are reckless and the industry for the most part seems to be pushing more people toward this type of diving. This is good for selling more training and equipment but is it the right thing to do?