Things You Learned but Never Had to Use (or Had to Use)

[rongoodman]

Out of air ascent, dropping weights, and lotus position.

I actually saw several divers from the same shop assuming the position on a recent liveaboard trip. Very weird, since they had basically immobilized themselves in the water column by doing so.

 

[Doc]

Breathing straight off of the tank nipple orifice.

No reg, just feathering the valve with the black hand valve, sipping the bubbles and not blowing your lungs or sinuses. Don’t swallow a popped o-ring.

Think about that.

it was done as a confidence builder and tester.

 

[JMBL]

Things I've been taught and never used :

- ditching my weight belt (haven't been using one for 18 years btw),
- ditching my rig underwater and putting it back on,
- going up while exhaling,
- assisting an unconscious diver, (but conscious ones I did),
- buddy breathing,

- exiting from a cave without any light (hope it'll stay that way),
- being entangled in the life line, then cutting it and fixing it (see above),

 

[TTPaws]

the rebreather I was certified on today.

Congratulations

 

[boulderjohn]

In my last years of teaching the OW class, I used to have students swim around on schuba, first at the surface and then in the shallow end of the pool, getting the feel of being neutrally buoyant before we started the first skill. When we were done with that, I would say, "OK, that's all you need to know to scuba dive. Thanks for coming. We'll collect the gear...." My spiel would be interrupted by some mild laughter, after which I would say something like, "No, seriously. You just learned all you need to know to scuba dive--as long as nothing goes wrong. Almost everything we will do from now on is what to do when things go wrong."

When you think about it, a lot of the OW class is stuff you might never have to do in scuba, outside of training. That goes double for the rescue class--I have never seen a diver need anything that happens in that class.

 

[mdwalter]

In my DM class or IDC there was a scenario the instructor set up that was pretty fun. They had each of us drop our rigs on the bottom around the edge of the pool and then swim circuits on breathhold. When we got to a rig we took two breaths and moved on. Gradually the instructor removed rigs until there was just one left. You couldn't take too long on your breaths because you knew there were other swimmers coming behind you.

It's not directly applicable to any diving skill but it was a good test of water confidence.

Two thoughts on this one. First, swimming around to find a random abandoned scuba rig on the bottom and then taking a couple breaths before abandoning it again for someone else to find does not sound like a skill any of us will ever need (or maybe not like a skill at all). Second, this is technically breathing off SCUBA while free diving, which is something you are explicitly instructed not to do.

 

[mdwalter]

I am looking at shelves of books and diving manuals that I've read over the past 41 years in the sport. Two even have my name on them! The older books are my favorites. They seem to contain the most in-depth information and are also the ones I remember most due to the principle of primacy. Books also remind me of the classes I have taken, the instructors who taught them, and fellow students whose ingenious solutions and complete foul-ups served as learning experiences. As I age, I really am starting to forget a lot. Like my mask is already on my face when I'm looking for it. There's that saying, "He's forgotten more about diving than most of us will ever know." In some ways that is true because things that were once taught in diving courses are no longer taught. In other ways, it is not true because so many divers are learning to use technology that I have only had rudimentary training in (such as rebreathers) or no training (such as sidemount).

How about you? Do you have any favorite academic or practical aspects of training you learned but never had to use? Or, perhaps something you never thought you'd have to do, but you did?

I recall an instructor who had me learn to breathe directly from a tank valve, in the context of a solo diving situation in which either I only had one tank with one first stage or all first stages available had failed. I was instructed that it was likely this is a skill I would never actually need in real life, but we're going to learn to do it anyway. Wait, that instructor was you, and you were right; I have never needed to do this in the 15 years since. But it does give me a strange feeling of added security to know that it can be done, I can do it, and I have done it (and it sucks). It was also an excellent reinforcing impetus to only solo dive with fully redundant and adequate gas supplies (i.e. 2 of everything minimum, and 3 is better) to truly ensure I'll never need this skill.

Some other skills I've not needed but am very glad to have learned in case I ever do need them are (and I will skip all the ones others have already mentioned):
Lost line, no lights lost line, and most other related cave scenarios
Calling DAN for assistance, advice, medical opinion, etc.
Honestly, it's getting hard to think of more, because there are many more things I have used because I like to practice them or that I've only needed once than there are things I've NEVER needed or done.

My next reply will be about some skills I surprisingly have needed or used that one would think should be on the "never did" list. But first, one last "never needed" skill I learned from you. It's a complex scenario I like to call "Buddy lost all 3 lights, and my three lights, and his mask, and his backup mask, and my backup mask, and my mask, and his deco bottle with some deco to do, so we had to buddy breathe my deco bottle using touch contact communication while maintaining contact with the line to the exit" Now that was some big fun, but I'm pretty sure that's never going to actually happen. Thanks for the memories.

 

[Trace Malinowski]

Wait, that instructor was you, and you were right; I have never needed to do this in the 15 years since. But it does give me a strange feeling of added security to know that it can be done, I can do it, and I have done it (and it sucks).

LOL! As you know, building confidence and skills is the entire point of training well beyond the common failures. When you venture into the realm of the absurd an actual failure becomes stuff you can laugh about rather than die from... such as your instructor thinking he fixed your manifold while dropping into a strong current to 170 feet on the JB King, but he actually didn't fix it after all... or you both pick up oxygen bottles left inside a wreck at 65 feet only to discover neither one of you has any back gas left... or some other fun moments over the years.

 

[Trace Malinowski]

CPR or everything I learnt from the rescue course.

The day after we did a CPR renewal for lifeguarding at our college pool, one of the girls in class had to perform CPR on a guy who had a cardiac arrest. Not in the pool, but somewhere she was.

My dad was a lifeguard too. I came into the kitchen one evening to find him choking (hardly making a sound) over the sink trying to use the counter to do the Heimlich maneuver on himself. I got behind him and started to do abdominal thrusts. It seemed to take forever, and I thought he was going to pass out, but the technique eventually worked.

 

[Trace Malinowski]

There is a cmas approved solo accelerated decompression course where you are supposed to validate your buddies gas switches.

Is that for training safety? I can see that being done in training when it is possible to check on one another - like the student and instructor verifying each is on the correct gas.