Debriefing the dive

[TSandM]

As we were standing around in the parking lot last night doing this, it occurred to me that this was one thing that was never mentioned at all in my original training: Debriefing the dive. This means not just, "Wow, was that ever a huge octopus?", but talking about what went well, what worked and what didn't, how everybody's skills looked, and so on. It can be as simple as, "Where you were, you were a little behind me, and kind of hard to see". If you are going to dive with the same buddies over and over again, it seems like this kind of thing would be very useful. Obviously, it might not go over well with a random instabuddy . . .

How many of you do this?

 

[Walter]

When you did your checkout dives, did you have a debriefing?

 

[TSandM]

Not that I remember. The first day of checkout dives, I ended up hypothermic and we hustled me into the car to get the heater going. The second day, I just remember neither my instructor nor I could get any data out of the computer I was using, so we used his to pull the data to log the dive. I don't remember a formal debrief along the lines of, "Well, you did this well, and you need work on that." Just a lot of congratulations!

 

[J.R.]

My wife is my dive buddy... she's really new at diving (just finished her AOW)... and we do it every night after a day of diving... partly for the purpose of discussing the octopus... partially to note what went right... and what could have gone better.

As we're both older divers we often discuss things relating to pace, stress, how to do things 'easier' and technique... what's working for us... what we want to practice... what we need to totally sit back and re-think. I find that I get at least as much out of these de-briefs as she does...

(Maybe its an 'age' thing... but we find that a dive well done is much more enjoyable to us than how many we can do in a day... how deep we can go or how long we can stay under... but that's just our thing... yer' milage may vary...)

We believe that the better we dive as a team... the more enjoyment we'll get out of it... I'm a firm believer in de-briefs... at least as important as the brief before the dive. Good communications can often solve problems before they occur.

J.R.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Not that I remember. The first day of checkout dives, I ended up hypothermic and we hustled me into the car to get the heater going. The second day, I just remember neither my instructor nor I could get any data out of the computer I was using, so we used his to pull the data to log the dive. I don't remember a formal debrief along the lines of, "Well, you did this well, and you need work on that." Just a lot of congratulations!

Well, you've learned a lot since then ... especially when it comes to debriefing your dive buddies.

I'll have to be more careful with the light next time we do OOA drills ... :shakehead

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[H2Andy]

during our apprentice cave preparation, Jeandiver and I dove with a bloke from the UK (Simon, not Simbrooks) who was in the military, and liked to debrief each dive while still in the water, waiting to get out.

i had never done that without an instructor present, and i really liked going through the dive from my perspective and hearing two other diver's perspectives. plus, the events were fresh, so they could be prompted easily.

i have found it rather useful, to debrief formally like that

but, in all honestly, most of my "debriefs" are rather informal, more like a running conversation as we put our gear away

 

[MikeFerrara]

Typically in dive training the instructor will brief the dive. They will also debrief the dive. What they don't usually do is teach students to briefe, debrief and give them practice at doing it.

When we dive, there is a designated "leader". They briefe the dive and each member of the team in turn briefs the dive. Now we know that everyone is on the same page and any questions or misunderstandings come out.

After the dive we each in turn debriefe the dive. In doing so, the good points as well as the not so good come out and you have a solid bases for improvement.

Don't get me wrong, if my wife and I go to the local quarry and do the same dive that we've done a thousand times this is a pretty informal process. On the other hand if we are doing a more complicated dive and/or are diving with someone else, it gets a bit more formal.

I was taught to do these types of briefings and debriefings but not until pretty late in my training. I had somewhat started to do it on my own as an instructor because I found the best way to point out someones mistakes were to have them debrief and point it out themselves. It's not a blame game but an approach to gaining a realistic understanding of how things really went and improving.

A formal process may be more critical for complicated dives...you lead, I call deco, whoever shoots the bag and we will do our gas switches in this order...ect. Even on simple dives though, having each diver brief and debrief helps avoid and root out simple problems like miscommunications, poor buddy positioning, mishandling of light and so on.

This is just another of many areas where typical dive training fails, IMO. Sure, an OW text talks about some of the things that a dive plan should address but when do they give students a chance to develop a plan, convey it to the team, verify understanding, ececute the plan and then follow up with a review? The fact is that they ususally don't.

 

[Wilson]

but, in all honestly, most of my "debriefs" are rather informal, more like a running conversation as we put our gear away

We tend to do it this way as well, as we're putting gear away and on the long drive back. During OW we always had a debrief and that seemed to carry over.

 

[Biofish]

Debriefing is in my opionion one of the best tools to further your diving ability.
It is always used in my department after trainings and rescues. More importantly I believe I learn more after debriefing a recreational dive.
Questions asked:
What worked?
At anytime were you uncomfortable? Why?
Also debriefing the actual site works well.

 

[mislav]

As we were standing around in the parking lot last night doing this, it occurred to me that this was one thing that was never mentioned at all in my original training: Debriefing the dive. This means not just, "Wow, was that ever a huge octopus?", but talking about what went well, what worked and what didn't, how everybody's skills looked, and so on. It can be as simple as, "Where you were, you were a little behind me, and kind of hard to see". If you are going to dive with the same buddies over and over again, it seems like this kind of thing would be very useful. Obviously, it might not go over well with a random instabuddy . . .

How many of you do this?

I always debrief informally with my buddy first and later on together with the rest of the group. But, some buddies don't like doing that. Rarely, but sometimes they even get offended...