Advanced Open Water Disappointment

[wetb4igetinthewater]

Wow! Are you saying it is possible for an instructor to be perfectly competent when being officially observed and then go out and do something really stupid when on their own?

John, you demanded to know why I didn't report the incompetence I observed. Well, I didn't. But I haven't spent that much time observing her. When I was teaching my class, she was acting as a DM, nothing more. In her IDC, how much time was she being observed/taught/evaluated?

Do you think the guy who drove past me at 100 mph the other day did that on his driver's test? Do you think the 20,000 doctors who are sued for malpractice each year were similarly incompetent during their training?

You actually make me laugh equating teaching scuba to these analogies.

Question for you (that you always dodge). Why do you think DAN cited 10 things where they'd like to see changed in the industry? Please don't tell me that they are already addressed, as nothing has changed since then.

 

[Outbound]

Linnea Mills dying is hearsay?!?

How about Jennifer Coyne? Patricia Flores-Perez? Yuyu Xu? Tareq Saade? 4 individuals, one dive center.

My understanding is that these tragic deaths have not been conclusively linked to breaking standards or poor training. In the case of Coyne, I've read it was likely an improperly serviced rental regulator. If that was the case, no doubt the shop should have been held liable. But it's an equipment case and not one of training standards. In the Flores-Perez case, I think the instructor took 3 students out and called the dive because of poor visibility. Tragic death, for sure. But I wouldn't count that as an issue with poor training. Seems to me the instructor made the correct call in thumbing the training dive due to conditions. Unfortunately one of the students was lost in the process. That might be the instructor's fault but it could also just be bad luck. We dive in natural environments, and things can go sideways quickly. Maybe you would argue that a single instructor should not take more than two students out?

I haven't been able to find much information about the Yuyu Xu case, so I can't comment really. I don't think anyone really knows what happened with the Tareq Saade case, so I don't think you can definitively pin it on poor training standards or lax oversight of instructors. Again, if you have more information I'm open to hearing it.

 

[boulderjohn]

John, you demanded to know why I didn't report the incompetence I observed. Well, I didn't. But I haven't spent that much time observing her. When I was teaching my class, she was acting as a DM, nothing more. In her IDC, how much time was she being observed/taught/evaluated?

You actually make me laugh equating teaching scuba to these analogies.

Question for you (that you always dodge). Why do you think DAN cited 10 things where they'd like to see changed in the industry? Please don't tell me that they are already addressed, as nothing has changed since then.

Because I have questioned the need for the massive changes being called for by some people here, you seem to assume I want no changes. I would like to see plenty of changes, but I don't see the issue being with the ones people are obsessing over here. I have always been an advocate of change.

• You have cited my work getting instructors to teach while neutrally buoyant.
• After a long discussion about dive planning for a distinctive specialty I was creating, PADI added much of what I argued for, including the rule of thirds, into the OW course.
• After I challenged the trimix course standards for deep stops, PADI announced that the standard I questioned no longer applies.
• I challenged the language on overhead environments, and they asked me to suggest new language. They published my language in the professional journal and said they would incorporate it into revisions for the wreck diving and OW courses.
• I argued that they weren't doing enough to publicize changes in thinking on decompression, and they published my article on the topic.

Those were successes. I have had some failures.

• I have fought hard to have the way we teach CESA changed. No luck. I believe they are afraid to violate the recommendations of the UHMS study that led to current practice.
• I tried to change the pre0dive safety check. They enthusiastically agreed with me, and then they never did it. I don't know why.
• I have been fanatic about overweighting of OW students, again to no avail. I believe that is tied to their inability to get 100% behind neutral buoyancy instruction. Divers trained on the knees must be overweighted for it to work.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

My understanding is that these tragic deaths have not been conclusively linked to breaking standards or poor training. In the case of Coyne, I've read it was likely an improperly serviced rental regulator. If that was the case, no doubt the shop should have been held liable. But it's an equipment case and not one of training standards. In the Flores-Perez case, I think the instructor took 3 students out and called the dive because of poor visibility. Tragic death, for sure. But I wouldn't count that as an issue with poor training. Seems to me the instructor made the correct call in thumbing the training dive due to conditions. Unfortunately one of the students was lost in the process. That might be the instructor's fault but it could also just be bad luck. We dive in natural environments, and things can go sideways quickly. Maybe you would argue that a single instructor should not take more than two students out?

I haven't been able to find much information about the Yuyu Xu case, so I can't comment really. I don't think anyone really knows what happened with the Tareq Saade case, so I don't think you can definitively pin it on poor training standards or lax oversight of instructors. Again, if you have more information I'm open to hearing it.

A friend of mine was teaching a class at Cove 1 on the day Ms. Flores-Perez drowned and observed the fiasco after she was lost. I have observed a number of courses from Seattle Scuba at the surface. I shook my head as I watched them waddle into the water: both regs & console swinging/not secured, obviously overweighted. I never saw them underwater as there was too much silt kicked up.

So I would advocate the following:
1. Mandatory proper weighting: meaning minimum amount of weight needed to maintain a safety stop with a nearly empty cylinder and empty wing AND maintain control in the remaining ascent to the surface. DAN agrees with me on this. I would add distributing the weight so that the student is able to be in a horizontal position effortlessly.
2. No placing students on their knees in the open water period.
3. For low viz environments (say less than 10' measured on a Secchi disk - yes I own one), all students have dive lights. Mine do. When I was a shιtty on the knees instructor where students silted things up pretty badly, it was what I needed to find them in the silt cloud and take them out of it.
4. Definitely 1 certified assistant/instructor per 2 students. With regards to Ms. Flores-Perez, they had 2:4 ratio. There is no excuse for losing her.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

Because I have questioned the need for the massive changes being called for by some people here, you seem to assume I want no changes. I would like to see plenty of changes, but I don't see the issue being with the ones people are obsessing over here. I have always been an advocate of change.

• You have cited my work getting instructors to teach while neutrally buoyant.
• After a long discussion about dive planning for a distinctive specialty I was creating, PADI added much of what I argued for, including the rule of thirds, into the OW course.
• After I challenged the trimix course standards for deep stops, PADI announced that the standard I questioned no longer applies.
• I challenged the language on overhead environments, and they asked me to suggest new language. They published my language in the professional journal and said they would incorporate it into revisions for the wreck diving and OW courses.
• I argued that they weren't doing enough to publicize changes in thinking on decompression, and they published my article on the topic.

Those were successes. I have had some failures.

• I have fought hard to have the way we teach CESA changed. No luck. I believe they are afraid to violate the recommendations of the UHMS study that led to current practice.
• I tried to change the pre0dive safety check. They enthusiastically agreed with me, and then they never did it. I don't know why.
• I have been fanatic about overweighting of OW students, again to no avail. I believe that is tied to their inability to get 100% behind neutral buoyancy instruction. Divers trained on the knees must be overweighted for it to work.

Rule of thirds sucks John. I wouldn't call that a success by any stretch of the imagination. That was the deciding factor in getting me to write my dive planning doc that I share via my signature where I pass on min gas. If there are things to see from the deepest part of the dive and the safety stop, there's no reason to not return to the surface with 500 psi in the cylinder.

Diving thirds when diving with a guide is going to make a lot of people on the boat pissed off at you. It is completely ridiculous for open water recreational diving.

Your article on the possibility of teaching neutrally buoyant was a first step. However this statement is dead wrong: "It’s not reasonable to expect the students to have mastered neutral trim at the early learning stages." Sure it is. Just distribute the weight properly and there you go. It was also missing the how. Inside my own agency at the time (PADI) there was no one I could find to tell me how to do this. Fortunately a bunch of UTD instructors helped me out.

And again DAN IS ASKING FOR CHANGE. And I agree with them and repeat their message. If you get DAN to write in any future yearly reports that they were wrong to request those 10 changes and everything is honkey dorey, then I will shut up about improving open water training forever.

Any violation will be a $10,000 payment to you. You heard it here folks!

As I have been asked in DM for the DAN 2016 report, I've attached it.

 

[boulderjohn]

You actually make me laugh equating teaching scuba to these analogies.

You have no choice but to laugh, since laughing covers up the fact that you cannot think of a reason why the scuba industry should be expected to do such a better job of supervising its people than do the medical, legal, police, or really any of the well-funded industries do of supervising theirs.

 

[boulderjohn]

Rule of thirds sucks John. I wouldn't call that a success by any stretch of the imagination. That was the deciding factor in getting me to write my dive planning doc that I share via my signature where I pass on min gas. If there are things to see from the deepest part of the dive and the safety stop, there's no reason to not return to the surface with 500 psi in the cylinder.

Diving thirds when diving with a guide is going to make a lot of people on the boat pissed off at you. It is completely ridiculous for open water recreational diving.

I didn't realize I had to explain this to you, but apparently I do. There are several different ways to plan a dive. One of them is the rule of thirds. There are others. You have to choose the one that is appropriate to the dive you are doing. I'm sorry you didn't know that.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

You have no choice but to laugh, since laughing covers up the fact that you cannot think of a reason why the scuba industry should be expected to do such a better job of supervising its people than do the medical, legal, police, or really any of the well-funded industries do of supervising theirs.

But I do John. I see horrible skills and I read reports of people dying. I see recommendations by DAN. So yeah, there are 3 reasons, but you won't accept even the last one. That's hysterical.

I didn't realize I had to explain this to you, but apparently I do. There are several different ways to plan a dive. One of them is the rule of thirds. There are others. You have to choose the one that is appropriate to the dive you are doing. I'm sorry you didn't know that.

Sure, and show me where other options are provided to students/instructors. Let's be practical. Tell me where min gas is discussed in open water materials.

Look at the PADI slates. That's what people teach in general.

 

[boulderjohn]

However this statement is dead wrong: "It’s not reasonable to expect the students to have mastered neutral trim at the early learning stages." Sure it is. Just distribute the weight properly and there you go. It was also missing the how. Inside my own agency at the time (PADI) there was no one I could find to tell me how to do this. Fortunately a bunch of UTD instructors helped me out.

Perhaps you would like to see the weeks of email negotiations with PADI that led to that article. There are other sentences I had to add to get it published despite the fact that I did not agree with them. That was because PADI had never seen it done that way. I realized as it was being published and we continued to correspond that they were experimenting with it for the first time themselves. Discussions with that same PADI representative a year later showed me he now understood why he was wrong.

That was a dozen years ago. So why hasn't more been done? It's a mystery to me, because I know the key people at PADI fully support it.

How about other agencies?

One of the other people signing the article was my Course Director at the time. He was so impressed he required all the instructors at the shop to teach that way. He then crossed over to SSI and became one of the top people in SSI management. I figured SSI would go all in on it then, but they didn't. If there is any push from it in SSI, the SSI shops in my area haven't gotten the memo. I have been told that person is no longer involved with SSI management--I don't know for sure.

A couple years ago Mark Powell of SDI said in a webinar that SDI now requires neutral buoyancy instruction for OW. The SDI people in my area seem to have missed that memo, too.

I am on a South Florida FaceBook group, and a NAUI instructor just posted an advertisement to come to him for serious OW instruction, and he posted a picture of divers on their knees. When comments challenged that, it was clear he had never heard of a different way of doing it.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

Perhaps you would like to see the weeks of email negotiations with PADI that led to that article. There are other sentences I had to add to get it published despite the fact that I did not agree with them. That was because PADI had never seen it done that way. I realized as it was being published and we continued to correspond that they were experimenting with it for the first time themselves. Discussions with that same PADI representative a year later showed me he now understood why he was wrong.

That was a dozen years ago. So why hasn't more been done? It's a mystery to me, because I know the key people at PADI fully support it.

How about other agencies?

One of the other people signing the article was my Course Director at the time. He was so impressed he required all the instructors at the shop to teach that way. He then crossed over to SSI and became one of the top people in SSI management. I figured SSI would go all in on it then, but they didn't. If there is any push from it in SSI, the SSI shops in my area haven't gotten the memo. I have been told that person is no longer involved with SSI management--I don't know for sure.

A couple years ago Mark Powell of SDI said in a webinar that SDI now requires neutral buoyancy instruction for OW. The SDI people in my area seem to have missed that memo, too.

I am on a South Florida FaceBook group, and a NAUI instructor just posted an advertisement to come to him for serious OW instruction, and he posted a picture of divers on their knees. When comments challenged that, it was clear he had never heard of a different way of doing it.

John,

Before you bring up yet another topic, please address my question regarding DAN's 2016 report of the top ten changes they'd like to see. DAN believes that change is necessary. Do you agree or disagree with DAN? I have attached that report for your convenience.

Let's finish that topic before moving onto your whataboutism.