Divemasters Should Ask 'Is Your Oxygen ON?'

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

Good God, you spend more time complaining about this dirt simple question from the boat crew than an entire lifetime of reaching back, confirming its on, and saying "yup its on thanks"
How far did you miss the point?

Did you bother to read what I said and that it was trying to help the OP @DiveGearExpress to improve that process?
 
How far did you miss the point?

Well, I missed it by a good mile. You’re experienced and articulate but, and maybe I’m a snowflake, your posts seem strident sometimes and I think that distracts from your point.
 
Well, I missed it by a good mile. You’re experienced and articulate but, and maybe I’m a snowflake, your posts seem strident sometimes and I think that distracts from your point.
As our Aussie mates would say; fair dinkum cobber.
 
Jeff Bonzanic did a great short video of going thru the pre splash checklist with a non rebreather diver.
Simply hand the list to someone and have them read from the list as you perform the checks.
I believe it's somewhere here on Scubaboard and takes like a minuet or less.
 
A good divemaster sending a tech diver off a boat should have a good idea what the tech diver should be setup at. A canned question "Is your O2 on" will get that divemaster tuned out after a couple of jumps. A more general "are you ready" that can be answered with ignoring "still working on it" or a nod "I'm ready" and will also act as a general signal that the divemaster is now putting his attention to putting you in the water and not the last person who just jumped.

If they see something that looks off, that is the time there should be a clear question asked about that specific item. Something the diver can realize is a specific question aimed directly at them and probably should double check. That will get a lot more respect.
 
A good divemaster sending a tech diver off a boat should have a good idea what the tech diver should be setup at.
There’s no such thing as a technical DiveMaster.

The typical DiveMaster knows little about diving skills outside of basic recreational, non-deco, open circuit dive leading. Sure, some may be more experienced technical CCR divers, but that has absolutely nothing to do with their being a DiveMaster.
 
It’s quite amusing and sad arguing that a CCR diver is by nature accomplished, skilled and infallible and should not be subject to any outside scrutiny. The fact is, it has been a long time since CCR divers were the self-selecting sort who knew what they were doing back to front before they even considered looking at going CCR. It sometimes seems that newer CCR divers have no awareness that there is a couple of decades of clearly documented information on what can go wrong, what people have done wrong and where assumptions lead us. We’ve been talking about the stupid things we do for years, and its all still there if you just go and look for it. Nowadays, anyone can do their OW/AOW go buy a unit and a course and dive it. No need for a long development path through technical diving and so on. I assume PADI is still delivering their Rebreather Advanced Open Water course?

Its the same BS that buddy checks are for new divers, not tech divers and so on.

I also chuckle a little at how people can be dismissive of the “dive crew”. Many of them day in day out sit and watch what divers do, good and bad and often times have developed a good understanding of what looks right and what looks wrong. Yeah, we can all find good examples of “DiveMasters” wo may not have done exactly what we have, but at the end of the day, they are in place to fulfil a function, make diving safer for those on the boat.

If you were to design a perfect safety process for sending divers off a boat with a rebreather, I’m pretty sure it would contain a final – independent check, pre jump that everything is turned on and working. And a bit about the attitude of the diver as well.
 
It’s quite amusing and sad arguing that a CCR diver is by nature accomplished, skilled and infallible and should not be subject to any outside scrutiny. The fact is, it has been a long time since CCR divers were the self-selecting sort who knew what they were doing back to front before they even considered looking at going CCR. It sometimes seems that newer CCR divers have no awareness that there is a couple of decades of clearly documented information on what can go wrong, what people have done wrong and where assumptions lead us. We’ve been talking about the stupid things we do for years, and its all still there if you just go and look for it. Nowadays, anyone can do their OW/AOW go buy a unit and a course and dive it. No need for a long development path through technical diving and so on. I assume PADI is still delivering their Rebreather Advanced Open Water course?

Its the same BS that buddy checks are for new divers, not tech divers and so on.

I also chuckle a little at how people can be dismissive of the “dive crew”. Many of them day in day out sit and watch what divers do, good and bad and often times have developed a good understanding of what looks right and what looks wrong. Yeah, we can all find good examples of “DiveMasters” wo may not have done exactly what we have, but at the end of the day, they are in place to fulfil a function, make diving safer for those on the boat.

If you were to design a perfect safety process for sending divers off a boat with a rebreather, I’m pretty sure it would contain a final – independent check, pre jump that everything is turned on and working. And a bit about the attitude of the diver as well.
No one is arguing that "tech" divers are so great they don't need risk mitigation strategies and 'help'.

On a tech boat, or at least every tech boat I've been on, you're not going to get someone telling you how to do things or checking your kit BWRAF-style. It's up to you to have sorted out your processes and procedures to dive safely. Nor are they going to ask you about "buddies", if you've turned your gas on, etc.

What they will do is help you with the usual crap; hooking on your stage collection; passing you the glove that's dropped on the floor; moving the scooter over and maybe clipping on the line. They may well observe you and pass you your suit inflate, your umbilical torch, or point out you've not connected your heater. And untie the unit - d'Oh.

It's absolutely up to the CCR diver to be self-sufficient enough to make sure they've done the basic checks: drysuit in and out; wing inflate; dil inject; O2 inject; PPO2; pre-breathe; gas levels; turned on the bailout; lights...


The point is that on recreational dives with novices you need to have someone supervising people. That's where the dive "master" comes in: they're paid to make sure all who jump return back to the boat.


Going back to the first post, this is about the oddity of a mixed boat of novices (implied by the DM being there) and rebreather diver(s) who should be self-sufficient and experienced enough to be diving without supervision. Offering help is OK; there's a fine line between that and excessive fussing and especially if that person knows nothing about diving with CCR.

Umpteen posts back I said:
"Inflate your wing and tell me your PPO2"

The answer will be a hiss in the wing and demonstrating a PPO2 something above 0.7. Ideally the diver should point to their dive controller to show the (normally 3) cell readings within a gnats todger of each other.
That's enough if someone's determined to ask a pre-jump question.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/peregrine/

Back
Top Bottom