AOW student dies in training: Alberta

[leeannelodge]

Very sad for those that lost this student.

From personal experience, it does not matter how a student died as much as that s/he died. There's one hell of an impact on the shop and instructors; I cannot imagine the additional grief should they discover the death is unnecessary.

So, a question to the experienced and instructors among you.

What, if anything, could be changed in these basic courses that would help the inexperienced to remember to drop their freaking gear / weights?

My brother was his best friend and this tragedy was unbearable for our family

 

[nadwidny]

My brother was his best friend and this tragedy was unbearable for our family

Friends of mine were there (not part of the class) and were the ones that helped with the rescue attempt.

 

[boulderjohn]

I was just rereading this. Very sad, and it appears as if his tank problem (Free flow?) described by Leeanne was sadly accompanied by being grossly overweighted.

 

[KevinNM]

Depends on the diver ... I know people who dive year-round in Puget Sound in a 7mm wetsuit ... and it gets down into the low 40's here in winter (and never above mid-50's). Some folks just have more bioprene than others ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

It really does. I was on a dive in Hawaii and one guy was diving in shorts and one girl was diving in two layered 7mm wet suits and still couldn’t make a dive much over 30 minutes.

 

[nadwidny]

I was just rereading this. Very sad, and it appears as if his tank problem (Free flow?) described by Leeanne was sadly accompanied by being grossly overweighted.

As I mentioned, I'm friends with the people that first attempted to bring Tyler up and talked to them quite soon after. I remember they mentioned about the crazy amount of weight.

 

[wgw04024]

Without reading the 'other' 12 pages....

I've never agreed with the idea that divers should absolutely do training (new divers at least), in the most challenging environments because it prepares them for ANYTHING further down the road. In no other industry do people train in worst environments FIRST, do they?

I'll use flying as an example, you don't jump into a 747 and fly it through a lightning storm because it'll be 'good practice'.....

 

[wgw04024]

I so agree with you. I just got certified this year and I'm in no rush at all to go for my AOW. There are other students in my class with about only 10 dives and already thinking of doing their AOW, to me that's plain stupid. There should be like a 30 dive mandatory to even be accepted to do the AOW. There are also some LS here every time I go to fill my tank, asking me when I'm I doing my AOW. Keep telling them, there is no rush. I'm just enjoying it and simply gaining some experience before I even think about that.

AOW in my mind is merely OW v2. No better time to take it imo than directly after OW. It's basically 5 guided dives in 5 different diving scenarios. After 30 dives say, there's not much to get from AOW that wouldn't of been worthwhile in the beginning.

 

[boulderjohn]

I've never agreed with the idea that divers should absolutely do training (new divers at least), in the most challenging environments because it prepares them for ANYTHING further down the road. In no other industry do people train in worst environments FIRST, do they?

Decades ago, when I was a high school basketball coach, I took a college course in the care and treatment of athletic injuries. The professor, the trainer for the college's football team, was passionate about what he thought was the most typical and most idiotic trait of high school athletics. Coaches devote the first days of practice to punishing training regimens, subjecting the athletes who probably did not do as much off season training as they should have to brutal physical drills, all for the goal of getting them in shape for the season. He said most of the injuries come on the third day of this, and then those players are laid up and unable to participate fully in practices for the next few weeks.

He asked us if we would do that to ourselves if we decided we needed to get into shape. Would we brutalize ourselves right away, or would we break ourselves in, gradually increasing our workloads as our conditioning improved?

I myself learned scuba in warm tropic water, and I learned to love it there. Over the years my skill grew, and I extended my diving experiences to more and more challenging environments as I became ready for them.