A diver's got to know their limitations: Diving within your limits.

[The Chairman]

There have been a few threads as of late about how much training a diver needs. It's apparent that some environments are easier to deal with than others and that getting ready for one will not necessarily prepare you for another one and vice versa. The key to this predicament is to always dive within your limits but that gives rise to questions as to what are your limits? Let's cover a few of them, and hopefully others will chime in with a few of their own limits. My rule #2 is that you can call a dive at any time, for any reason and with no repercussions. This call is usually based on limits.

1) Training. What conditions have you been trained for? Obviously, if you've only been OW certified you should stay out of overhead environments and above 60fsw.

2) Conditions. This is a grayer area and the diver has to use some discernment. Conditions include weather, waves, current, visibility, temps and so forth. A lot of it has to do with comfort, but it can also have an impact on your safety. Only you can no your limits here and you should be open and vocal if they are being exceeded.

3) Buddies. This requires open and frank communication as well as a decent amount of skepticism. This is especially true with an insta-buddy on an unfamiliar dive. You should look at their gear and decide how you'll be able to help them before you splash.

4) Mental. This is perhaps the hardest limit to assess accurately and it's probably the most important. If your mind isn't into the dive, you should just call it. If it's not, you'll be putting you and your buddy in jeopardy with mental lapses.

5) Physical. We've mentioned conditions, but is your body really up to the rigors of the dive before you? If not, you need to rethink it. No one wants to rescue you. They want and expect you to be able to finish the dive you started.

6) Time/Depth/Gas. No list of limits would be complete without these three basics. They are probably what you first thought of when you read the title of this thread.

 

[Dive Bug Bit Me]

7) experience. Just because you are advanced open water certified does not mean that you should dive to 130 ft at night. Just because you have dived off a boat doesn't mean you should sign up to a Galapagos live aboard. Be honest with yourself, how much experience do you have (in addition to training) in conditions similar to the dive at hand. How much are you pushing the bounds of your experience on the proposed dive. If at any time you are only 1% uncomfortable, rather end the dive.

 

[Oldbear]

... My rule #2 is that you can call a dive at any time, for any reason and with no repercussions...

Great rule NetDoc...:thumbs-up


For a rule that seems common sense on the surface, it is amazing how often it is overlooked. :nervous:


I have applied this rule a couple times and sat on the boat waiting for the others to return. In my cases, the rule, saved me from a lot of unnecessary misery due to an injury and an equipment malfunction.


Just think how many incidents could have been prevented if more "diver" applied this rule. :lookaround:


~Oldbear~

 

[The Chairman]

Be honest with yourself,

I don't think this is actually possible. You need to find people who are honest with you to the point of almost being cruel. Sure, that opens you up to some hurt feelings, but so what? You really need an honest assessment of your abilities from time to time and your ability to do that is suspect.

 

[idive2]

I can't count the number of times I have thought to myself "this person or these people should really not be making this dive".
Sometimes saying this to someone will feel way out of line but there is a side of me that sometimes wants to tell them the
chances they are taking diving way beyond their experience and level. If you're just certified or dive only a couple times a year
you may want to wait on a deep guided drift dive with no assigned buddy...just an example. Just because you return from a dive
you have done beyond your training does not mean you should have made that dive, it only means you got lucky.

 

[TSandM]

We make sure our OW students know that they are to stay above 60 feet, and we tell them WHY -- we make sure they know that they will use their gas really fast (and have more bottom time if they stay shallower), and that if they run into any problems, they are at higher risk for managing them when the surface is further away. We bring that home during the no mask swim and the CESA, that the one minute time is because they will never be more than one minute from the surface. I think if people understand WHY certain limits exist, they are more likely to respect them.

Where people get into serious trouble, though, is where they either don't recognize limitations or choose to ignore them. We have a thread running right now about someone who was out of the water for ten years, and her first dive back was to 80 feet without a depth gauge. We also had a thread about dangerous psychology, in the middle of which a woman came in and went on and on about how it was perfectly safe for her and her family to cave dive with no training. People with reasonable common sense are unlikely to make such decisions, but some people do, and the results can be bad.

For me, I think one of the hardest decisions is to decide when a given dive exceeds what I can physically do, either because of current, or because of the issues posed getting in and out of the water. I've made those calls both ways, and probably been wrong in both directions, too . . .

 

[redacted]

So how does an OW trained diver ever get to 61 feet? Is the only way to buy more training? And just what is so magically done in that training that now allows the diver to breach that 60 ft limit?

My OW training never took me below 40 ft. In my initial dives after OW I (we) pretty much stayed above 40 ft. Then we ventured on to 50 and 60 ft. Then, with more experience, 70 and 80 feet. And night dives, boat dives, drift dives all without further formal certification training. Eventually, I was doing dives to over 100 feet, at night, solo, with just that OW C-card (and an EAN cert). So what was the problem?

 

[Craig Smith]

Conditions are very important personally, since a dive here in Scotland with a drysuit, 12kg of weight, a pony, cold water and torches is a lot different to your tropical places!

 

[Melicertes]

So how does an OW trained diver ever get to 61 feet? Is the only way to buy more training? And just what is so magically done in that training that now allows the diver to breach that 60 ft limit?

My OW training never took me below 40 ft. In my initial dives after OW I (we) pretty much stayed above 40 ft. Then we ventured on to 50 and 60 ft. Then, with more experience, 70 and 80 feet. And night dives, boat dives, drift dives all without further formal certification training. Eventually, I was doing dives to over 100 feet, at night, solo, with just that OW C-card (and an EAN cert). So what was the problem?

Paying a professional to look after you is not a bad thing. Some people do cert courses for more experience and yes, some dive shops do take advantage of that fact by sometimes telling students that it is the only way to get more "good experience" (whatever that means). They play on new divers' insecurities and fears and consequently benefit from their cash being handed over. As unethical as that is, it is not illegal, just bad business practice.

That is not to say that you cannot responsibly gain more experience by diving in new environments without being enrolled in a cert course. Think of a newly minted Caribbean OW boat diver who thinks that the shiny new C-card proves that he can come down here to SoCal and take on a 30-ft max depth shore entry dive in winter with a 5-mil w/suit - easy right?. If he finds himself another instabuddy somewhere with similar past diving experience and they try to do this they will in all likelihood get to wear their @$$3s as hats on a good ol' washing machine day down here. If on the other hand they have an experienced local diver with them to show them the ropes; e.g. reading the conditions to determine whether to call the dive or not, timing the entry, dealing with waves etc., there arguably will be no need to pay an instructor for a guided dive or do another cert course. However, paying an instructor and doing a cert course could achieve the same benefits and expose them to more diving knowledge at the same time as well (I am not going to get into the merits of some training courses and their content). The same applies to winging it to deeper depths on your own with just a buddy or taking a more formal approach by using formal training. You could become a very proficient diver using both methods, it is just a matter of how you calculate the personal risks you will take and whether you are willing to accept responsibility for your choices if something goes pear-shaped.

It remains a personal choice, albeit one that some unscrupulous dive shops will try to capitalize on to sway in their financial favor. One big thing to keep in mind though is that when you do choose to violate certain limitations of your certification, like your max certified depth, you might find that your medical insurance or other supplemental insurance might not be so happy to pay out in case you run into trouble at 80 ft when you were certified for 60 ft max regardless of the fact that you have done 100's of dives to 130 ft before for decades. When you cross over that line you take on the added responsibility to accept the consequences. Unfortunately many people today are quite willing to act the role of the square-jawed, brave warrior diver who would dare to cross the limits and live to tell the tale. That is until they get their @$$3s handed to them for hats one day, and if they survive, their first call is usually to 911 and then to their lawyers to start looking for legal loopholes benefiting their case to argue in arbitration or court why they should not be held responsible for the consequences of their decisions when they knowingly took on more risk without the necessary training.

 

[Dr. Lecter]

One big thing to keep in mind though is that when you do choose to violate certain limitations of your certification, like your max certified depth, you might find that your medical insurance or other supplemental insurance might not be so happy to pay out in case you run into trouble at 80 ft when you were certified for 60 ft max regardless of the fact that you have done 100's of dives to 130 ft before for decades.

An excellent reason to have DAN USA Preferred or Master level insurance, and in any event to understand the true scope of your coverage.