A few questions on protocol and fish with teeth :)

[Steele]

I have a friend with a huge amount of diving experience in FL whom I'd like to go diving with eventually when I'm able to get down that way. I've dove springs, rivers and quarries only. Never Salt Water.

He says it is a different animal all together. Which I do not doubt. I trust his experience.

With me being newly AOW certified, he is of course concerned for not only my safety but his as well, and wants to make sure I am well aware of certain things before we even discuss getting in the Gulf.

I guess this level of certification can be related to acquiring your private pilots license. Several years ago while finishing up my certification, the FAA check-out ride dude said as soon as we landed the final time as he shook my hand - Congrats, you now have an license to kill yourself. The catch is, try not to kill anyone else while you are doing it, especially me.

After looking at him quizzically for a few moments he shook his head and said - The training isn't over. Treat each flight, no matter how simple it is as a training session - Stop training, and you die. Period.

I assume this applies to diving as well. As I said above, my buddy in FL is concerned not only for my safety, but his as well. He asked me a few questions, and for the most part I knew the correct answer, but there are some I'm either a little fuzzy on or don't know at all.

Sure, I can ask my current instructor - which I have, but I'd like to also get a few answers from a broader source. You. Here are 4 of the questions he asked me (there were more) but these are the more interesting ones.

1) You lost half your integrated weight belt and are in a sideways uncontrolled ascent from 80'+ with no reference point. What action(s) do you take?

2) A large, aggressive Cuda is following you around. What do you do?

3) You find yourself in a ripping current that you cannot out swim and it's taking you away underwater. What would you do?

4) You come into contact with a LARGE sea creature, Shark, Mantaray, Giant Stingray, Loch Ness Monster (okay, that last was my own little addendum) . What do you do?

 

[Wayward Son]

OMG, your avatar has a dude wearing a pair with a skiddie on his head!!!

How much money does he pay & how often does it get extracted due to that pic?

 

[cummings66]

Some of the questions like your #1 are kind of a trick question in that you don't have enough info to give a good answer to, plus it's based on some things that are not necessarily going to happen. There is not enough info given to formulate an answer here beyond you're screwed. Here's why, no buddy was mentioned as being near, you're in an uncontrolled ascent which means you've already emptied your BC, the type of tank you have is not mentioned so you don't know if it's +- in bouyancy. We don't know how much weight you needed to get under. We don't know the type of BC you have on or exposure protection you're wearing. How can you answer this question without more data? The biggest thing is, where was your buddy in the first place that he let this happen? At the very least after dumping your BC he could have dumped his and held onto you to slow you to an acceptable rate, but no, he let you start rising out of control and it gets worse the closer you get to the surface. All we know is your in the middle of nowhere and out of control with absolutely no lines, rocks, walls, nothing near you except water. Terrible question in how it's phrased. The answer is you do what you have to in order to slow or stop the ascent, by that I mean you get rid of what's positive if you can and make yourself horizontal in the water so you have more resistance.

#3 is interesting as well because he states flat out that you can't outswim the current. We can't go up, down, forward, backwards, left or right since he said you can't outswim it so I'm interested in his answer to this, is he going to just float along until it spits him out?

The animal questions are interesting in that he's got them setup like they're going to eat you and you have no choice in the matter beyond pepper or salt.

Of course there is a difference between the ocean and inland water bodies. I've got buddies that cringe when most of their diving is ocean and they have to use a quarry or lake. If he was going to be my buddy I'd want to know his answer to this important question. Say you're swimming along near a rock wall and a giant crawdad jumps on your BC and cuts your LP hose with his monster claws and then rips your mask off, spits in your eye and gets the butter out, what are you going to do? What are you going to do?

What I'm wondering is what was your buddies answers to those questions and how much diving has he done because it sounds to me like he's stuck on himself and his fantastic skills that only he has. I don't know your potential buddy and might be misreading what you've posted, but it sure sounds to me like he's not that interested in you being his buddy until you match his experience which can never happen unless he stops diving.

When you take away the normal options for self rescue, which he has, what does he want you to do?

 

[CBulla]

I guess this level of certification can be related to acquiring your private pilots license. Several years ago while finishing up my certification, the FAA check-out ride dude said as soon as we landed the final time as he shook my hand - Congrats, you now have an license to kill yourself. The catch is, try not to kill anyone else while you are doing it, especially me.

After looking at him quizzically for a few moments he shook his head and said - The training isn't over. Treat each flight, no matter how simple it is as a training session - Stop training, and you die. Period.

I assume this applies to diving as well.

Flying.. diving.. driving.. camping.. communications.. life.. yup, pretty much if you give up on learning in life, you've given up completely.

Sure, I can ask my current instructor - which I have, but I'd like to also get a few answers from a broader source. You. Here are 4 of the questions he asked me (there were more) but these are the more interesting ones.

1) You lost half your integrated weight belt and are in a sideways uncontrolled ascent from 80'+ with no reference point. What action(s) do you take?

2) A large, aggressive Cuda is following you around. What do you do?

3) You find yourself in a ripping current that you cannot out swim and it's taking you away underwater. What would you do?

4) You come into contact with a LARGE sea creature, Shark, Mantaray, Giant Stingray, Loch Ness Monster (okay, that last was my own little addendum) . What do you do?

Interesting questions, lets see what I can come up with since 95% of my dives are salt water...

1) Grab your buddies tank and hold on like a rodeo star on a mechanical bull. IF your buddy is no where to be seen, you can try to get your berings by watching where your bubbles go - bubbles tend to go up ya know! Provided you survive the harrowing experience, call H2Andy and tell him your story so he can tell you about his motorcycle riding skills and then he might give ya some info on legal recourse for your gear failing.

2) Cover the shiny stuff your wearing. I wear practically nothing when I dive but have never had any agressive fish try to get my necklace or anything.. just a small thing on a reef trying to beat up the fish that looked like it in the reflection of my mask.

3) Try not to dive Boca Grande Pass during a tidal exchange...

4) Contact how? If your comfortable in the environment they'll come up and check you out. I've had more than a few encounters with no problems at all. In fact, other than the time the jewfish....er.. Goliath grouper sucked my left foot in its mouth and shook me all around all of my large fish encounters have been fairly boring.

 

[TheRedHead]

Ocean diving is really not that difficult - in many cases it is easier than fresh water diving. It sounds like you buddy is inflating his ego at your expense.

There is no such thing as in integrated weight belt. If you lost 1 pocket a 80' and had your weight distributed, you probably would not make an uncontrolled ascent. You might not even notice it except for a tendancy to tilt to one side. You would notice it a lot more at your 15 foot safety stop.

The OW manual says to swim perpendicular to a current to get out of it. Leave critters alone and they'll leave you alone. That's also in the OW manual.

The most likely scenario for a new diver in the ocean is either losing the boat or being downcurrent from a boat.

If you're apprehensive about diving in the Gulf, make a trip to Key Largo or Coz to get used to blue water diving.

Good luck.

 

[ReefGuy]

For Colin, this mostly involves placing his hands over his nipples

2) Cover the shiny stuff your wearing. I wear practically nothing when I dive but have never had any agressive fish try to get my necklace or anything.. just a small thing on a reef trying to beat up the fish that looked like it in the reflection of my mask.

 

[CBulla]

If you're apprehensive about diving in the Gulf, make a trip to Key Largo or Coz to get used to blue water diving.

Heh.. if your talkin about diving the Gulf on the FL coast, ya may have the right kind of training in a quarry with 20' of vis on a good day. The best I've had in the Gulf near shore (within 20 miles) is 40'.

For Colin, this mostly involves placing his hands over his nipples

Its quite comical, almost Marylin Monroeske. Sometimes its confusing with the D-rings though and I've gone so far as to clip my SPG to it.

 

[TheRedHead]

Heh.. if your talkin about diving the Gulf on the FL coast, ya may have the right kind of training in a quarry with 20' of vis on a good day. The best I've had in the Gulf near shore (within 20 miles) is 40'.

Then maybe Marathon so he can practice losing the boat in 20' of water and 30' of viz. Then he can dive the Thunderbolt for his first experience with big critters (Bubba likes new divers).

 

[CBulla]

Then maybe Marathon so he can practice losing the boat in 20' of water and 30' of viz. Then he can dive the Thunderbolt for his first experience with big critters (Bubba likes new divers).

:lol: That'd be a good start!

 

[Steele]

Unfortunately, due to the medium in which we are communicating, and the fact that I'm not the very best at getting these thoughts into written form, the questions did seem a bit whack.

I can assure you my buddy isn't trying to 'put the shine on' or fueling his own super inflated ego. LOL, being in the radio business we both already have incredible ego's as it is and have trouble sometimes getting into our hoods, but in this case, it was my fault. Any negativity you may have felt was purely due to my poor writing skills and lack of pertinent information as described above.

And for the record, the word belt was not supposed to be there, nor was it in the original question. Again, my fault.