BC Remove and Replace Skill
- Thread starter Adobo
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Good point and I encourage all of my students to package in Nitrox during their OW. I feel it's the best time to introduce Nitrox training to them; when they're learning about gasses, bottom time, dive planning etc.
And you're dead on about entry level classes. A good base is all we can provide. The rest is up to them. Which is why we end up with Master Divers in short order.....but also have people taking a Skills Update before an upcoming trip because they've done two dives since they were certified 5 years ago.
I do not understand this at all. You can teach students to plan dives using tables without mentioning gas planning. You can teach students to plan dives with computers without mentioning gas planning.
A proper computer-based OW class spends about as much time teaching how to dive with a computer as it did teaching tables. They are just two different ways to manage the dive. Neither one in itself has anything to do with gas planning.
What if they are caught in a net where turning around is impossible or would result in even greater entanglement? What if they are caught in an anchor line or wire leader that their cutting tool can't get through? What if they are diving rental gear that doesn't include a cutting tool?
I don't see your problem with doff and don. It's both a practical tool and an excellent training device: it's potentially lifesaving in an entanglement situation, it's very useful with a slipped tank, it reinforces students understanding of how their gear functions by forcing them to think through the steps of getting it on and off under a different set of conditions, it provides reassurance to students that they can cope with out of the ordinary events underwater, and it provides instructors with additional feedback on the in water comfort of the student when task loaded.
The last two are of very real value. You might not be aware of this, but part of the brief of the formation of the RSTC standards was to include enough task loading exercises that agencies could discourage ad hoc harassment training by instructors during OW training. Underwater doff and don was a major component of this and it's the chief reason it is still in there despite the ever decreasing average time of instruction.
I have one word: sidemount! 
I am not sure about the ever decreasing time of instruction.
A couple years ago, someone posted a thread with PADI OW standards from about 30-35 years ago. The only requirement in those standards that is not required today was the single regulator buddy breathing. That was replaced by the alternate air source, which was not a requirement back then. In contrast, there are at least 15 requirements in today's standards that were not in the old ones. So if there are more standards now than before, what is causing the "ever decreasing time of instruction"?
Perhaps you mean that in reality people are skimping on standards and rushing students through the OW course. I have no doubt that it is happening in places, but it has always happened. I was certified a quarter century ago in 3 days, and I later realized that was done by skipping more than a few standards. In this History of NAUI, the authors admit to a problem NAUI had from the very beginning--instructors insisting that they wanted to hand students their completed certification cards as soon as the class was over. NAUI therefore sent them the certification cards as soon as the students signed up for the class. They knew that as a result, many students got the cards before they had completed the class. In fact, they knew of cases where students got the cards without doing anything at all. (This started in 1960.)
So what is the evidence for an "ever decreasing time of instruction"?
Come on John! You know it yourself. Teaching neutrally buoyant and trimmed you don't need as much time to create competent open water divers!
Giving this a serious answer....Come on John! You know it yourself. Teaching neutrally buoyant and trimmed you don't need as much time to create competent open water divers!
Many people are afraid to move to neutrally buoyant instruction because of a fear that teaching that way will add too much time to the class. that is not true. Students learn to control their buoyancy while they are doing the other skills, so there is no added time. If you spend the same amount of time teaching neutrally buoyant students as you would teach students on their knees, the difference will be that the neutrally buoyant students will finish the pool sessions looking like experienced divers.
But it takes about the same amount of time to complete all the requirements.
In all seriouness, I when I taught at a shop, I pretty much needed the entire 6 hours of pool time.
Teaching neutrally buoyant and trimmed, I needed five, and used that extra hour for task loading buoyancy exercises/games.
It only takes a little more knowledge and skill for the instructor and it results in tremendous benefits. The same results with less time, or better results in the same time.
It's a simple win all the way around.
One justification I have for this is the amount of time students spend doing something. If you have X students, your attention on a student is pretty muich 1/x of the time you have. However, if your students are neutrally buoyant, they are constantly doing something during the (x-1)/x time.
That's huge.
In these neck of the woods most instructors are incapable of demonstrating the skills neutrally buoyant, thus believing that everyone else is as slow to adapt as them.
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