Bombay High
Contributor
Thank you, but I'll decide on that risk.
With less than 24 dives you do not even know what the risk is.
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
Thank you, but I'll decide on that risk.
Easy. I'm practically attached to him. Which is likely a lot closer than any instructor would be in any scuba course, where at a time, 86.6% (I did the math) of the class is unattended.
Didn't we just have a death from a Discover Scuba course?
No thank you, 1 on 1 is safest, and I won't even charge him.
Nobody will die, nothing will happen. We'll screw around for a few minutes, then I'll nag him until he goes and passes his OW. Exact course of events.
Give up, gaijin, it's looking hopeless. KD8NPB sounds like a college-age kid, definitely male, who has a typical late-teen/cusp-of-twenties "I'm a man" attitude. As Alex Pope wrote:
In other words, he doesn't know what he doesn't know, yet thinks he knows it all. The more we learn, the more cautious we tend to become as divers.
To the OP--please be smarter than KD8NPB and don't plan on doing this.
I understand your point, Bob, but there are literally thousands of instructors who take the same risks every day. Knowing the risks isn't why people don't take the risk, it's why people choose carefully. As always, I think the advice is sound, but I also believe it is based in an egotistical position that it's somehow impossible to do a valid risk assessment as a newbie, which I completely disagree with for several reasons.... unless, of course, he manages to get a little water in his mask, has a reaction not uncommon to new divers when water gets into their nostrils that makes them feel like they're breathing water, and tries to bolt on you ... holding his breath, because that's what instinct tells us all to do in that situation. Then you have two choices ... let him go or hold him down. If you let him go, he may suffer an overexpansion injury that could easily kill him. If you hold him down, he may go into full-blown panic mode, which could easily result in serious injury to both of you.
Which would you choose?
This is not a theoretical scenario ... it's one that dive instructors have to learn how to deal with. It's one that's happened to me before.
Are you prepared to deal with it?
Taking stuff like this lightly is how people end up being the topic of an Incidents and Accidents thread.
No ... you DON'T know the risks. You're kidding yourself thinking that you do. If you did, you wouldn't even be contemplating it ...
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
And that attitude is the difference between you and a professional.
I understand your point, Bob, but there are literally thousands of instructors who take the same risks every day. Knowing the risks isn't why people don't take the risk, it's why people choose carefully. As always, I think the advice is sound, but I also believe it is based in an egotistical position that it's somehow impossible to do a valid risk assessment as a newbie, which I completely disagree with for several reasons.
I'm not attacking anyone who thinks this is a foolish choice as I tend to agree. But make no mistake, it's not that difficult to read an OW manual and recognize what the risks are to you or another newb you take under water. It's also ridiculously easy to research possible scenarios for risk assessment (like the one you just provided) here and any number of other places. You CAN know the risks even if you haven't actually experienced them.
Knowing the risks isn't the issue I have with this, it's knowing how you are going to deal with them, which is what we as newbies really can't know (no matter how much we THINK we'll do it well). In your scenario, for example, you even provide the options how to deal with it and that provides me ways to consider the scenario that I could then make the decision to do it anyway. Not in spite of your post but because of it.
I know I've dealt with MY OWN issues under water fairly well so far. If I took a friend to 30 feet breathing off my octo, though, I really don't know how I'd deal with various scenarios, even though I know the risk. There's a big difference in those two things and I tend to believe that most of the folks providing advice like yours stress the wrong issue in these discussions.
This was my point in post #36. I'm glad to see somebody make this same point in different words. Thanks.Knowing the risks isn't the issue I have with this, it's knowing how you are going to deal with them, which is what we as newbies really can't know (no matter how much we THINK we'll do it well).
Second point ... an OW manual barely scratches the surface of risk assessment.
Knowing the risks involves understanding them ... and in this case, understanding the potential consequences of such an action should be enough to forego any serious contemplation of the action. Risk management is more about keeping you and your dive buddy out of a bad situation than it is about dealing with one once it occurs. Making a conscious decision to do something dumb implies that, in fact, you don't understand the risks at all ...
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
I stand by my statement, though, that putting the focus on "you don't know the risks" rather than "you don't know how you'll handle the risks WHEN you encounter them" is the wrong way to discourage us overly-confident know-it-all newbs.