Courses for progression into deco diving

[ScoobieDooo]

What would you say should be the order of progression for anyone wanting to get into deco diving - in order of additional training/courses...and what agency?

Basic Open Water?
?
?
?
?
?

Thanks...

 

[nickjb]

BSAC teach and practice deco from a very early stage. It is just taught as part of diving.

 

[ScoobieDooo]

BSAC?

 

[Spectre]

I'm confused as to if this is a thread or a poll. Are you looking for a list of agencies that can get you to deco diving? Or are you looking for a course path?

I'm going to assume you are looking for a course path.

You can go:

OW
AOW
Nitrox
Advanced Nitrox [tdi]
Deco Procedures [tdi]

You could also go DIR-F & Tech 1 w/ GUE

Then there is IANTD, ANDI and a few others that I don't know the course program for.

 

[O-ring]

ScoobieDooo once bubbled...
BSAC?

CMAS (Confederation Mondiale des Activites Subaquatique) does it also...deco tables from the beginning. I have one buddy who is French and he explained the tables to me once...they are a little more thorough in basic diver education than we are, IMHO.

 

[MikeFerrara]

O-ring once bubbled...

CMAS (Confederation Mondiale des Activites Subaquatique) does it also...deco tables from the beginning. I have one buddy who is French and he explained the tables to me once...they are a little more thorough in basic diver education than we are, IMHO.

My experience with CMAS is limited to one CMAS certified diver. This diver makes a heck of a story all by himself though. He was the husband of an OW student of mine. I say was because if he continued diving I doubt he is still alive.

Back in the days when we used to let divers tag along with a class without signing releases or paying money....

On one dive he tagged along with an AOW class. He ran out (or very nearly) of air and shared air with one of the DM's to the surface. Keep in mind he wasn't a student and I had no intention of supervising him. However my wife decided to look at his air gauge after he signaled ok when asked about it. We're at about 60 ft. She then came to ma and told me he had 500 psi. I turned the dive and brought him up next to me. Now I'm supervising him but only to keep him alive. I wanted to get him shallower or near a line instead of having him ascend in OW. Now he is huffing and puffing. Not two minutes later he is getting really low on gas. I got him to about 20 ft and had him hold onto a tree trunk and had him switch to a DM's alt so he could do a bit of a safety stop. After surfacing he exclaimed that he thought the ordeal was good experience. I explained that it was not and that finishing the dive with a bunch of gas left like I did was a good experience.

On another dive he and a buddy (neither had been students of mine) were following an OW class I was teaching. His buddy signalled to me that he was missing. I brought the class to the surface and left them with a DM. I found his bubbles on the surface and followed them down ( he was only about 40 ft from the platform). When I reached him he was facing the platform, sitting on the bottom looking at his gauges. I thought he was picking up a heading back?. Anyway I led him back to the platform. When we got to the surface he asked me if 200 psi was enough to finish the dive. Then it dawned on me that he didn't even have a compass. What he was doing sitting on the bottom looking at his gauges was watching his air disapear while he tried to figure out what he should do.

There was another dive where we saved this guy from himself but the post is getting long.

If CMAS is more thorough this guy somehow slipped through the cracks.

 

[O-ring]

Geez. Yeah, I guess our limited experiences may be the two extremes of CMAS trained divers. The guy I know is a really good diver - knowledgeable, skilled, and an overall good guy.

 

[Richeod]

When you say you want to get into deco diving, how in-depth do you want to go? If you're just looking at some increased knowledge to do a few minutes of deco here or there there are many agencies that can give you the nesessary instruction. Spectre's post (OW-TDI) would be fine. If you want to eventually be someone that plays the game at the highest level you need to be a little more choosey. I'm not saying settle for less, just that if you never plan on more than 15 minutes at 130 ft. you don't need to know how to plan a 400 ft. dive.
If you're looking at someday doing really advanced dives I would start with the GUE DIRF-Tech route. However this is DIR diving and it's not for everyone. If you choose not to go with GUE be VERY picky about choosing your instructor. I'm sure there are some excellent instructors in EVERY agency. Just don't blindly walk into the local shop and sign up for a deco class. Do some good research.

Hope this helps.

 

[Doppler]

ScoobieDooo once bubbled...
What would you say should be the order of progression for anyone wanting to get into deco diving - in order of additional training/courses...and what agency?

Basic Open Water?
?
?
?
?
?

Thanks...

Hi Scoobie:

You have a habit of asking the interesting ones!

Acency and courses are secondary -- usual disclaimer. More important is to ask yourself what benefits are you looking for from the training and who can deliver those to you in the most interesting way. (The old instructor is key adage.)

Also ask yourself, am I ready for this. Deco diving and by extention technical diving, does require some additional committment from its participants.

All that aside, and regardless of who and what you pick to deliver the training, work on being prepared... chances are you are going to have some additional kit for the course and you are certainly going to be doing things in the water that may be "out of the ordinary."

1/ Know your gear -- log lots of dives with any new stuff you will be using. This includes reels, liftbags, deco bottles, and of course doubles, backplate and wings.

2/ Master buoyancy. I have students "play" various games that pretty clearly point out where work is needed.

3/ Swimming. Add frog kick, modified flutter, helicopter turns and reverse kicks to your arsenal of skills.

4/ Try to understand what a dive algorithm is and what it actually tells us.

5/ Think about what a good dive plan should include... you probably already have all the answers.

When you have all that in a line, look around for a deco class. Look for an instuctor who is teaching more than the course minimum... because none of the agencies (GUE comes close but still misses IMHO) really has a program to help divers make the tranition from recreational sport to deco and tech.

Hope this helps

DD

 

[Okiecaver]

Doppler,

As the man whose website got me interested, for good or ill, in technical and cave diving, it's nice to start running into you here. I still miss your old email list!.

Scoobie, I'd do EVERYTHING that Steve here says. He knows his stuff, so I'll just pass a few of things I've discovered.

Train for the envirionment you will be diving in the most. I wanted to cave dive, so almost all my technical training has been in caves. I'm lucky that I'm only 3 hours away from Missouri caves and mines.

TAKE YOUR TIME. It took me 18 months of continuous studying and diving to go from cavern to full cave, picking up normoxic trimix, equipment repair, and gas blender along the way. Yeah, you can do the one week immersion courses, but I have found that most of those are not optimal, since the learning curve can be so steep. The assumption is that you will be diving in that same location, with that same group that you learned with the next week, which is rarely the case.

Hit the gym. Hard.

Find an instructor who is diving the way you want to dive, not just teaching. That way, you have a mentor and a potential dive buddy, not just an instructor.

Finally, get some of your buddies involved with you. Then you always have buddies to dive with.

My progression was
YMCA OW2
Drysuit
TDI Nitrox
IANTD Overhead/cavern
IANTD Advanced Nitrox
IANTD Intro to Cave
IANTD Equipment repair
IANTD Gas Blender
IANTD Normoxic Trimix
IANTD Full cave.

From TDI Nitrox to Full cave was a full 2 years and over 150 dives not counting training. I hope to have at least 50 more cave dives by December, and qualify for my Advanced Cave.

Take your time buddy, the lakes, ocean, and caves will be there.....

Dive safe
Brock