BP/W & Long Hose In a PADI IE Exam

[danvolker]

I don't see a responsible instructor certifying a student that panics easily.

A BC is NOT supposed to be a Life vest to be used by divers that are barely able to swim. This is a mis-application of its use, one that came with high volume instruction, and the mistaken belief by the dive industry, that every person on the planet was a potential certification they could sell. A BC only needs to have enough lift to get the diver neutral...more lift than that, and it adds poor buoyancy characteristics...the 100 pound lift BC's being the most extreme example of this, and they will tie bad instructors or shops to students as well.

A diver that comes up to the surface, and is comfortable using a snorkel, is a diver that "COULD" SWIM MILES if they needed to.....The snorkel using diver becomes a freediver/snorkler, given this ESSENTIAL SKILL, and should be able to exist in the water for over 24 hours like this, without issue....and would NOT be reliant on the BC for safety.

A diver using a snorkel can actually navigate, and get somewhere..versus a diver swimming on their back--meaning they can't see where they are going, they can't see what is under them, and they are not efficient in the water if they desire to swim a good distance.

I have some issues with PADI, but not about the need for the snorkel...But what they need to do is to TEACH real snorkeling skills, so that this piece of gear can be properly utilized AS IT USED TO BE IN THE 60'S AND 70'S. And far too many Dive instructors are so poor at snorkel skills, they really can't teach anything of value relating to snorkeling or a surface swim with one after a dive..

 

[TSandM]

I'm thinking back over the classes I have worked with, and trying to remember if I have ever seen a student with air in his tank (and they always have air in their tanks) spit out their regulator before their head is out of the water. It just doesn't work like that. If the reg is giving air, the student keeps it until he feels secure that he can breathe. The person who spits out a reg and chokes at the surface is the person whose regulator isn't working, or the person who is in full-blown panic BEFORE they get to the surface. I completely agree that someone in complete panic may well spit out their reg AND forget to inflate their BC AND fail to drop their weights, but I don't think specific training about keeping the reg in their mouth will make much difference, since they have also had specific training in inflating their BC and dropping their weights, and they forget those things.

 

[Hawkwood]

I'm thinking back over the classes I have worked with, and trying to remember if I have ever seen a student with air in his tank (and they always have air in their tanks) spit out their regulator before their head is out of the water. It just doesn't work like that. If the reg is giving air, the student keeps it until he feels secure that he can breathe. The person who spits out a reg and chokes at the surface is the person whose regulator isn't working, or the person who is in full-blown panic BEFORE they get to the surface. I completely agree that someone in complete panic may well spit out their reg AND forget to inflate their BC AND fail to drop their weights, but I don't think specific training about keeping the reg in their mouth will make much difference, since they have also had specific training in inflating their BC and dropping their weights, and they forget those things.

Be ready for it. Suprised the hell out of me when it happened as they bolted to the surface.

All I could think after was "holy crap, this really does happen".

 

[Peter Guy]

Beano -- must be one of those days when I'm foggy and not thinking clearly because I don't understand a major part of your post.

Will you do me the favor of responding to the following questions:

a. Do you think scuba divers, while on the surface and buoyant, should breathing through a snorkel?

b. If the answer is no, then should anything be in a scuba diver's mouth while on the surface and buoyant?

For the "record" -- the local instances of a diver surfacing and then drowning seem to follow the following pattern:

1. Diver runs out of/very low on air;

2. Diver bolts to the surface and yells for help (certainly indicating panic and proving there is nothing in the mouth for breathing purposes);

3. Diver does not drop weight belt nor inflate BC and/or Dry suit; and

4. Diver tires and goes underwater and drowns and is found with an empty tank and weight belt.

5. In these cases, all in cold water, the diver is wearing heavy exposure protection requiring a significant amount of weight to compensate for the flotation provided by the exposure protection (typically in excess of 20 pounds of flotation at the surface). NOTE -- I am quite sure these divers were "over-weighted" by just about any formal guideline as it is sadly a common place occurrence. Had they been "neutral with an empty tank" they might well have survived their panic OR had they dropped their weight belts, they WOULD have survived.

Dan -- most of the instructors with which I've worked in our area do "suggest" that their students swim on their backs when swimming to/from shore or to a boat. It is easy to navigate with a compass (you are just swimming a reciprocal course backwards -- that is, away from the heading as opposed to with the heading) OR to use a "shore range" (picking two inline objects on shore and keeping them inline while swimming away from them). We'll just have to disagree as to which is more efficient for swimming purposes when one is carrying a lot of weight with heavy exposure protection -- on one's back with the water supporting most of the weight and minimal dead air space for breathing or on one's stomach with the body supporting most of the weight and constantly rebreathing CO2 from the snorkel's dead air space.

 

[danvolker]

Dan -- most of the instructors with which I've worked in our area do "suggest" that their students swim on their backs when swimming to/from shore or to a boat. It is easy to navigate with a compass (you are just swimming a reciprocal course backwards -- that is, away from the heading as opposed to with the heading) OR to use a "shore range" (picking two inline objects on shore and keeping them inline while swimming away from them). We'll just have to disagree as to which is more efficient for swimming purposes when one is carrying a lot of weight with heavy exposure protection -- on one's back with the water supporting most of the weight and minimal dead air space for breathing or on one's stomach with the body supporting most of the weight and constantly rebreathing CO2 from the snorkel's dead air space.

Peter,
Tell you what....
I will stipulate that in situations where a freediving wetsuit would not be functional for comfortable freediving....where the high drag of Dry suits, or the heavier wetsuits used, would not be effective for freediving, and where the amounts of weight required are too high to make freediving enjoyable....then in those situations, addition of the scuba tank to this equation could very well suggest the method you prefer for swimming in on your back, to be more effective.

Where freedivers can be effective, in the more tropical settings, etc.....scuba can be just an extension of freediving.....when the tank runs out, you can still be freediving....so in this situation, when one of us is now freediving with the tank on our back....we are going to enjoy ourselves more with our faces in the water, and the snorkel in place ....And, since we are not geared up like a dump truck with tons of heavy gear or double tanks --double tanks are way worse--horrifying!!.....we, with a freediving set up, glide effortlessly in the water even WITH a tank on our back.....and when we are flat horizontal, we are experiencing far less drag than we would in the 45 degree angle of backward swimming that is typical of this technique.....

Also, in most of the tropical locales I have enjoyed diving in over the last several decades, there is current....I don't typically enjoy destinations that don't have currents.....the thing about navigating with currents, is that it works better to be able to sight to a point on shore, or at a boat you are heading to--- often, than to attempt to navigate by reciprocal compass headings and no visual.

Also, please be aware I normally agree with 95% of your posting..or more....and with Beano, I am not sure it is possible to agree with him on the color white, actually being white

 

[ams511]

Dan, I have never dived the Pacific Northwest but my intuition tells me that the visibility there is not as good as in Palm Beach. So looking down a diver is only going to see green murky water.

 

[Storker]

A diver using a snorkel can actually navigate, and get somewhere..versus a diver swimming on their back--meaning they can't see where they are going, they can't see what is under them, and they are not efficient in the water if they desire to swim a good distance.

What frequently puzzles me with your posts is that they seem to spring from a belief that one size fits all, and that it's your size that fits all. Have you ever dived cold waters? In 4C water, you're either gonna freeze you butt off and experience shrinkage so severe you'll prefer sitting for taking a leak the next couple of days, OR you put on a drysuit and so thick undergarments that a walrus on land looks downright elegant compared to you. Plus from ten to twenty kilos - not pounds - of total weight.

Kitted up like that, "streamlining" becomes a joke, and long distance snorkel swims isn't something you seriously consider. Sure, I carry a snorkel. A roll-up snorkel in my left thigh pocket. It's there for the unlikely situation that I find myself in choppy sea with an empty tank. And about once every blue moon, I use it for snorkeling. But in the summer, the surface layer is usually pretty murky, so I often don't see much until I'm a few meters below the surface. Swimming on my back, though, is something I do on every dive. It's relaxing, I've got my face well above the surface, and it IS possible to turn your head once in a while to check where you're going. Just like when you're rowing. A rower needs only occasionally to turn around to check where he's going, because he keeps track of where he's coming from. That trick works pretty well if you know it.




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[TSandM]

Hawkwood, I thought I did say that someone might spit out their reg when in full-blown panic -- but training divers to keep something in their mouths at all times isn't going to prevent that. Beano's thesis is that, if we never allow students near the water without a snorkel or reg in their mouths, it will prevent panic-related regulator discard, and I don't think it will. On the other hand, a non-panicked person, faced with a situation where a regulator or snorkel would be handy, will likely use it, whether trained or not.

Demed, I'm very, very sorry that I misidentified the kneeling person as the CD. I was told he was the CD. What I saw was someone involved in the instructor training spending a significant period of time on one knee, with the other leg out in front of him, while doing skills. This didn't appear to be corrected by anyone, so it appeared to me that the posture was acceptable.

 

[danvolker]

What frequently puzzles me with your posts is that they seem to spring from a belief that one size fits all, and that it's your size that fits all. Have you ever dived cold waters? In 4C water, you're either gonna freeze you butt off and experience shrinkage so severe you'll prefer sitting for taking a leak the next couple of days, OR you put on a drysuit and so thick undergarments that a walrus on land looks downright elegant compared to you. Plus from ten to twenty kilos - not pounds - of total weight.

Kitted up like that, "streamlining" becomes a joke, and long distance snorkel swims isn't something you seriously consider. Sure, I carry a snorkel. A roll-up snorkel in my left thigh pocket. It's there for the unlikely situation that I find myself in choppy sea with an empty tank. And about once every blue moon, I use it for snorkeling. But in the summer, the surface layer is usually pretty murky, so I often don't see much until I'm a few meters below the surface. Swimming on my back, though, is something I do on every dive. It's relaxing, I've got my face well above the surface, and it IS possible to turn your head once in a while to check where you're going. Just like when you're rowing. A rower needs only occasionally to turn around to check where he's going, because he keeps track of where he's coming from. That trick works pretty well if you know it.




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Storker, Sorry if the idea of streamlining was offensive.
I was not attacking the concept of diving in cold water... ( By the way, I was certified in Buffalo NY, and did under ice dives, and plenty of COLD dives before moving to Fl).....What I was doing was reacting to a general POSITION I hear a lot, where it is "generalized", that "Scuba divers should NOT need to have a snorkel on them..that they should not need to use one or carry one...." When you hear this position, they don't typically add a proviso that you don't need a snorkel in water that is 5 degree centigrade....but that in the tropics things are different--they just state that snorkels are foolish for scuba.....

You did see in my post, I stipulated that I was talking about the tropics....I think generalizing as if MOST divers dive COLD water is not any better than my posting about the importance of tropical issues....I also think that there are more dives taking place in tropical waters than in cold--more man-hours spent diving in tropical destinations....though that is just an off the wall guess--and the real answer to this is not all that important.

---------- Post added March 6th, 2015 at 10:31 AM ----------

Dan, I have never dived the Pacific Northwest but my intuition tells me that the visibility there is not as good as in Palm Beach. So looking down a diver is only going to see green murky water.

If Peter had posted that they don't like using a snorkel because they have zero to see when they are on the surface, and because the cold water forces them to be wearing gear that streamlines them about as well as a big cement truck---I would not have made any arguments. I keep hearing that PADI is wrong to mandate the snorkel, and that divers reaching the surface SHOULD swim on their backs....I think it is one thing to suggest this given the anti-streamlining and low vis, and quite another to say this as a general rule that would have to be applied as well to the tropics.

Heck, I will even admit that if I have to wear the really heavy insulation to be warm, and all the gear this requires in 32 to 35 degree F water, my freedive fins are like "lipstick on a pig" ....there is no kick and glide, and all of a sudden an entirely different type of fin makes sense. Here, I'd be wearing Extra Force or Excelerating Force fins.....for the most efficiency , but no reliance on coasting. Even in the high drag scenario, I would still care about efficient propulsion.

 

[Storker]

Sorry if the idea of streamlining was offensive.

Offensive? No worries, it takes quite a bit more to offend me. If I were offended it'd probably be rather obvious. In that case, there's a definite chance that you'd receive a gentle suggestion to have intimate relations with a member of the Cactaceae family, probably coupled with a hypothesis that at least one of your female ancestors might be of the genus Canis .

No, I just wanted to point out that for some of us, "streamlining" during normal diving is about as relevant as the ability to win marathons. And BTW, if you can tell me how to donate a long hose reg with a snorkel on the mask strap, without risk of tangling the hose on the snorkel, I'm all ears...


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