Late to this thread but agree with the lack of respect for overhead environments by certain shops. It seems that the limitations outlined by agencies (depth, overhead, etc) aren't necessarily followed by instructors when they are actually teaching as some shops are more worried about giving people a fun dive/taking people to see cool things so they are more likely to return and recommend others.
Example 1: I completed my class/pool sessions for open water with one shop, but then flew south to do the actual OW dives as it was winter. Training dive #2, my second ever dive in open water, instructor took us down 100 feet to a wreck. At the time I thought it was the coolest thing ever and post dive and post trip was happy, but looking back, I'm terrified by how many things could have gone bad on a wreck at 100 feet on my second ever time in OW. I had no idea what I was doing. All of our buoyancy was all over the place, kicking stuff up, crashing into things. I was probably narc'd from anxiety, excitement, and mental overload. No business being down there.
Example 2: Up here, many shops will roll nitrox, drysuit, and AOW all into one package and teach them all at the same time. My first time in the water with a dry suit my instructor takes us down to around 70 feet since it's AOW, the deepest the students had ever been. we looked like trapped underwater buoys bouncing up and down 10+ feet at a time, constantly adding/dumping air from the suit, attempting to control our buoyancy. At the same time as this, we are fiddling with computers and learning what nitrox will now look like on our computer while actually diving (ppo2, etc). Huge mental overload. Looking back completely unsafe to throw nitrox, a dry suit, and new depths in a cold dark quarry and novice divers all at once. But the shop was pressured for efficiency/time and touted being able to certify divers in all these 3 specialties in only a short weekend. Rather than focusing on training us properly and safely, we spent the entire time quickly checking everything off as fast as we could so we could fit everything in.
Example 3: When I first started diving I had a fear of overheads. As a new diver, as much as I wanted to explore overheads even if I wanted to just "peek in a little," i didn't. Partly because I thought there was a scuba police that would come take my cert away, and partly because I was taught never to do that initially and was terrified of them. But as my training went on, I found it more and more common for instructors to signal me to follow them through short overhead pass throughs in quarries (old trucks, big cement tubes, etc) even though I (and now I know they) were not trained to do that. Being a student and not wanting to say no and wanting to do what the instructor says, I'd follow them. Slowly, deviance from the norm became accepted and looking back I found myself allowing overhead environments to creep into my diving even though I wasn't trained for them. Mainly because I had done them so many times with instructors as just regular dives and the fact that they were overhead was never brought up or a concern. I had a very large false sense of security about them since nothing had ever gone wrong even though I was not trained at all about what to do if something did. It was only later when I was actually trained for overhead environment/wreck diving that I realized how risky what I was doing before was.
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Looking back on all this stuff when I started scares me now, and makes me reassess if my current diving practice is allowing creep of things I'm not trained for because of potentially bad examples around me. I feel that a lot of shops/instructors out there become more concerned with ratings, business, referrals, and money and relax too much on safety. At a quarry around me, I regularly see instructors take students in the process of completing their OW training dives through a sunken 747 approximately 50 feet long entrance to entrance, complete overhead without a way out except those exits on each side of the 50 feet. People do it all the time like it's no big deal. Students come out of the water ecstatic at what they just did and talking about how much fun they had. No clue about how dangerous going into an overhead untrained is.
It's so easy to be peer pressured into diving a site or enviro or conditions you are not prepared for. I could easily see how a cavern diver could get sucked into diving a site he's not prepared for because he's with 3 other experienced friends who have been there many times. Thinking about some of my own technical dives, even though I try to be very conscious about risks and am usually overly particular about safety, I can think of a few times that I probably should have said no to a dive someone else really wanted me to do with them. Sometimes it's really hard to be humble and properly assess what your own limitations and weaknesses are.
Example 1: I completed my class/pool sessions for open water with one shop, but then flew south to do the actual OW dives as it was winter. Training dive #2, my second ever dive in open water, instructor took us down 100 feet to a wreck. At the time I thought it was the coolest thing ever and post dive and post trip was happy, but looking back, I'm terrified by how many things could have gone bad on a wreck at 100 feet on my second ever time in OW. I had no idea what I was doing. All of our buoyancy was all over the place, kicking stuff up, crashing into things. I was probably narc'd from anxiety, excitement, and mental overload. No business being down there.
Example 2: Up here, many shops will roll nitrox, drysuit, and AOW all into one package and teach them all at the same time. My first time in the water with a dry suit my instructor takes us down to around 70 feet since it's AOW, the deepest the students had ever been. we looked like trapped underwater buoys bouncing up and down 10+ feet at a time, constantly adding/dumping air from the suit, attempting to control our buoyancy. At the same time as this, we are fiddling with computers and learning what nitrox will now look like on our computer while actually diving (ppo2, etc). Huge mental overload. Looking back completely unsafe to throw nitrox, a dry suit, and new depths in a cold dark quarry and novice divers all at once. But the shop was pressured for efficiency/time and touted being able to certify divers in all these 3 specialties in only a short weekend. Rather than focusing on training us properly and safely, we spent the entire time quickly checking everything off as fast as we could so we could fit everything in.
Example 3: When I first started diving I had a fear of overheads. As a new diver, as much as I wanted to explore overheads even if I wanted to just "peek in a little," i didn't. Partly because I thought there was a scuba police that would come take my cert away, and partly because I was taught never to do that initially and was terrified of them. But as my training went on, I found it more and more common for instructors to signal me to follow them through short overhead pass throughs in quarries (old trucks, big cement tubes, etc) even though I (and now I know they) were not trained to do that. Being a student and not wanting to say no and wanting to do what the instructor says, I'd follow them. Slowly, deviance from the norm became accepted and looking back I found myself allowing overhead environments to creep into my diving even though I wasn't trained for them. Mainly because I had done them so many times with instructors as just regular dives and the fact that they were overhead was never brought up or a concern. I had a very large false sense of security about them since nothing had ever gone wrong even though I was not trained at all about what to do if something did. It was only later when I was actually trained for overhead environment/wreck diving that I realized how risky what I was doing before was.
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Looking back on all this stuff when I started scares me now, and makes me reassess if my current diving practice is allowing creep of things I'm not trained for because of potentially bad examples around me. I feel that a lot of shops/instructors out there become more concerned with ratings, business, referrals, and money and relax too much on safety. At a quarry around me, I regularly see instructors take students in the process of completing their OW training dives through a sunken 747 approximately 50 feet long entrance to entrance, complete overhead without a way out except those exits on each side of the 50 feet. People do it all the time like it's no big deal. Students come out of the water ecstatic at what they just did and talking about how much fun they had. No clue about how dangerous going into an overhead untrained is.
It's so easy to be peer pressured into diving a site or enviro or conditions you are not prepared for. I could easily see how a cavern diver could get sucked into diving a site he's not prepared for because he's with 3 other experienced friends who have been there many times. Thinking about some of my own technical dives, even though I try to be very conscious about risks and am usually overly particular about safety, I can think of a few times that I probably should have said no to a dive someone else really wanted me to do with them. Sometimes it's really hard to be humble and properly assess what your own limitations and weaknesses are.
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