Yelled at for MOF

[Charles2]

 

[tbone1004]

that's a bit excessive. Instructor sounds like a kool-aid drinking dick. If that was a rule he should have
a. introduced himself to you before you splashed and laid any specific ground rules that he had prior to you splashing as part of a site orientation
b. gone up to you and nicely informed you that that was a rule that he forgot to make you aware of and apologized for the oversight.

Now, onto my opinions on MOF and the consequences of putting it there where I teach.
For our students who get caught with masks on their foreheads they have to sing and do the motions to "I'm a little tea pot", and instructors/volunteers have to offer to buy the whole class a beer for whoever shows up at the bar of their choice. If done at the open water site, the mask will get launched into the quarry and they have to freedive without a mask until they find it.
VERY rarely happens.

Much better reaosns reasons for not putting it on your head aside from distress. Most important being it makes it quite easy for the mask to get blown off your head if you get hit in the face with a wave. Seen it happen, recovered a few masks because of it.
To your point of it getting knocked off by the first, stage, it usually is because they have the mask strap up on the top of their forehead instead of down by their eyebrows. Basically impossible for the mask to get knocked off that way.

Other good reason is that when on your forehead the mask has openings in the skirt and your defog can get washed out. If that gets in your eyes it tends to burn.

Those two reasons are why we don't let students put it on their forehead. Distress is icing on the cake though we do warn that it's impossible to ID from that alone. What does happen though is that people will usually stick it up on their forehead when they're in distress and it's an extra sign. We have our students put it on the back because it shows they are in a grounded frame of mind to diligently place it back there properly. No different then requiring them to "clap" and "ok" before making an ascent when skin diving or all of the rules for freedive record to "count" with all of the stuff they make them do at the end of a dive.

 

[Caveeagle]

He has now swum close enough and stops and yells at me again. Seriously. Yelling. "AS AN INSTRUCTOR IN CHARGE OF THIS POOL, I'M TELLING YOU THAT YOUR MASK ON YOUR FOREHEAD MEANS YOUR ARE IN DISTRESS!!"

What a tool! In the BSA, there has always been a knife safely rule when handing off a knife the receiver has to say "thank you" before the doner lets go. The similar type of jerk behavior would empower some to refuse letting go of said knife causing an even larger safety issue, when a knife 'tug o war' ensued. I did my best to put a stop to that kind of BS.

I tackled a guy with his sunglasses on his forehead and proceeded to give him CPR because he HAD to be in distress.

...Hey, your board, ...your fantasy!

 

[Lake Hickory Scuba]

First, let me say that I believe the antagonist (I being the protagonist) in the following story reads SB, so I am writing it aware that he might read it. But, my purpose it not to call him out. We talked after it was all over and cleared the air and are, I think, "good". MOF is a subject that has inspired many posts here on SB and is clearly somewhat contentious. So, I want to share my story of what happened to me, and what COULD happen to you, as a result of not belonging to the School Of MOF Means You're Going To Die.

Second, if you don't already know, MOF means Mask On Forehead. Some scuba instructors teach that you should never put your mask up on your forehead because that is a sign of distress.

Onward....

This past weekend, I got in a local pool with a buddy of mine to practice some tech sidemount skills. He arranged for us to get in a pool that I had not been to before, with a shop that I have never been to before. As I learned while there, the shop was running an OW class with half a dozen or so students and a Rescue class with some smaller number of students, plus (I believe) a refresher for a couple of other divers. We were all sharing the deep end of this pool.

My buddy had made most of the arrangements for us to be there. I just had to call a few days before, give them my credit card for the $25 fee to get in, and email them scans of a signed liability waiver and of my C card. When I got there, my buddy was already there and had the lay of the land. I only talked to him and nobody from the shop really talked to me. Nobody asked me my name or introduced themselves. When the waterobics class before us got out and the deep end was empty, I asked my buddy and he said we were clear to splash, so I did. Other folks were following suit shortly after.

We'd been in for a while and everyone was in and actually doing a reasonable job of staying out of each other's way. At least, they were doing a good job staying out of our way and I HOPE we were staying out of their way, too. I was trying, anyway.

We got to a point where we wanted to chat, so we made an ascent and were hanging on the side of the pool. I was holding onto the side with my left hand, facing him. The OW class was a ways away behind him. He was holding on with his right hand, facing me. The Rescue was doing something not too far behind me.

As we were talking, I head a voice yell in the distance. This natatorium was big and there were a lot of swimmers with coaches and whatnot in the rest of the pool area outside of the deep end that we were using. It was loud in there. I didn't react to the first yell I heard. Then I heard another yell and it was closer/louder. I looked around to see what was going on and I see a diver in the water swimming at full speed in my general direction. It was he that was yelling and yelled again. This time I realized he was coming towards me and yelling at me.

He yelled, "SIR, ARE YOU IN DISTRESS?"

I said back loudly, so he could hear, but not yelling, "no."

He continued to swim towards me. Now about 10' away. Still yelling, "YOUR MASK ON YOUR FOREHEAD MEANS YOU ARE IN DISTRESS!"

My first thought was that this was one of the students from the Rescue class and he has mistaken me for someone who is playing a part in a rescue scenario. A similar thing happened to me back when I was a Rescue student - except in that case, it was I who mistook one of the instructors. I mistakenly thought he was pretending to be non-responsive and then combative and I "rescued" him despite what turned out to be his actual, real attempts to get me to stop. His non-responsive behavior was simply him not realizing that I was trying to assess him and staring blankly back at my hand signals because he didn't realize what I was doing. But I digress...

I said back, again, loudly but not yelling, "no. It does not." I really did not care to get roped into playing along with a rescue scenario. I had things I wanted to get accomplished while we had the pool time and playing games was not one of them.

He has now swum close enough and stops and yells at me again. Seriously. Yelling. "AS AN INSTRUCTOR IN CHARGE OF THIS POOL, I'M TELLING YOU THAT YOUR MASK ON YOUR FOREHEAD MEANS YOUR ARE IN DISTRESS!!"

Oh. You're an instructor for the shop that has the pool right now? Well, why didn't you say so? I didn't say that. As I was taking my mask off my head, I just said, "Oh. No problem. It won't happen again. Your pool, your rules."

At the shop where I am currently a DM, we don't teach people that they can't put their mask on their forehead. We do tell them that some people may see that as a possible sign that they are in distress, so they should be aware of that. We also teach people (in the Rescue class) to look for that as a possible sign of distress in other divers. But, I have personally seen people lose their mask to the bottom of the quarry because they turned it around backwards then, as they swam on their back towards the shore, they didn't notice that their mask got knocked off by their 1st stage. So, I wouldn't ever tell someone NEVER put your mask on your forehead. I would be more inclined to tell people to be aware of how things can be interpreted, but do what works. And if you see someone with MOF, use your best judgment and common sense to determine if the MOF means they are in distress or not. Not everyone is trained the same way, when it comes to MOF, so don't assume anyone else has the same training as you.

If you are of the same mind as I am, please allow yourself to learn from my mistake. Otherwise, you could get yelled at by someone who sees a perfectly calm diver, hanging out and talking on the surface, as a diver in distress, because you have your mask on your forehead. Don't be like my former Rescue instructor and get yourself "rescued" (or even just yelled at) by someone who has misinterpreted your actions.

Well wouldn't you know it. 2 years ago we actually shot a video on this very topic. We got the idea from a Scuba Board article, go figure.

 

[scubadada]

Hi @stuartv

Great story, some people don't exhibit much flexibility in their thinking, they don't have it in them. I'm probably never going to get called on MOF. I don't dive in pools, I don't dive in quarries, I only dive in the ocean. I don't take off my mask until I'm on the boat. However, I do take my regulator out of my mouth while waiting on the surface to be picked up from a drift dive. I put it back in when the boat is approaching and don't take it out again until I'm on board. I hope nobody ever thinks I'm in distress.

 

[dmaziuk]

"SIR, ARE YOU IN DISTRESS?"

"Yes, there's a diver in the water swimming at full speed in my general direction and yelling at me. I do find that rather distressful, thank you for asking."

 

[Chavodel8en]

I tackled a guy with his sunglasses on his forehead and proceeded to give him CPR because he HAD to be in distress.

While MOF might be interpreted as a sign of distress, SOF is more likely a sign of douche-iness. Your actions were appropriate, but instead of CPR, you should have continued to pummel him.

 

[george_austin]

Well, I don't partake for myself or traffic in liquor drinks for others in any way, shape or form so I'm not buying any for anyone under any circumstances - no matter what. If you giant stride and the first thing you do is remove your mask and second stage so you can jibber jabber to your friends - then I hope you brought spare gear because you sure as the dickens aren't going to be borrowing mine so you can lose them as well.

The zero to hero pool diver needs a psych evaluation or a drug test and I would have told he so while I was holding his head under the water. Good for you for showing such restraint. What's with this 25 dollar pool use fee anyway? Who has that kind of money? I can see a sawbuck for a couple hours in the pool but 25? That's obscene.

 

[boulderjohn]

I believe there is some kind of psychological phenomenon in play here, one that causes people gradually to elevate suggestions to good ideas to rules to emphatic rules-that-must-be-obeyed-or-you-will-die. It happens in all activities in which I have been involved, but it really seems to be truly common in scuba. This story is a good example. Here are some others.

• In 1972, the new PADI OW manual had a suggestion that when planning dives, it would be a good idea to do deepest dive first. No reason was stated, and years later PADI was not able to give a reason for that suggestion. In later manuals, the suggestion gradually became stronger, and eventually it became a hard and fast rule that could not be violated. No one knows why for sure, but the original suggestion was most likely because doing it that way shortened the surface interval.
• Years ago instructors wanting to teach OW students that inhaling makes you go up and exhaling makes you go down. They thought that if they got the students neutrally buoyant with just their feet touching the pool, they could make them understand that, and the fin pivot was born. Years later, the fin pivot had evolved into a skill with very rigid performance requirements, and it became one of the hardest skills students had to master in the class, even though it had no application to diving whatsoever. In frustration, PADI finally eliminated it altogether--it was the only way to get rid of that nonsense.
• In the shop where I first worked, OW students were taught how to help each other put on their gear on a shore dive. It involved helping one diver put on the scuba unit, then the other. Then they helped each other with the fins, putting one hand on the buddy's shoulder while making a figure 4 with the leg on which the fin was being placed. At some point someone realized that if they put the fins on in the correct order, when they finished putting the second fin on, they would be facing the pool, ready for the giant stride, which was the next skill. That seemed neat, so he or she made the suggestion. Other instructors started doing it, too. Eventually it became a rule being taught by everyone. Eventually if you did not end up facing the pool, you had done it incorrectly, and you had to repeat the skill. Once again, cooler heads had to step in eventually and point out that there was no such requirement for that skill.

 

[RyanT]

I tackled a guy with his sunglasses on his forehead and proceeded to give him CPR because he HAD to be in distress.

Internet quote of the day! I needed that laugh!

I was taught not to do it because you're more likely to lose it when a wave knocks it off your head. I'm willing to be Stuart could find it in the pool!