Difficulty level of emergency rescue diver?

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Harshit Bajpai

Registered
Messages
28
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Location
United Kingdom
# of dives
50 - 99
From all the experts of scuba diving here, I wanted to ask the following things -

  1. I wasn't at the top of my class in the OW course. In fact my I took about 2 days extra to complete the course and my instructor said that people are generally able to complete all the skillset in about 1-1.5 days but in the end, I was fairly confident about the skillset there. Should I go for the rescue diver course?

  2. I have heard it is quite physically demanding and I am by no means an active athlete. I am a tech guy who works on his laptop throughout the day. Should I still go for the rescue diver course?

  3. I am certainly not confident about at this stage is my buoyancy after completing the AOW course. It takes me about 2-3 attempts at the bottom of the sea surface to get neutrally buoyant, unlike some people who are able to do it instantly. I have heard your buoyancy skills should be top-notch for this course. Should I still go for the rescue diver course?

  4. Any minimum number of logged dives you would recommend before taking this course? I currently have 14.

  5. How tough is the rescue diver course really? Will I be able to do it considering I almost thought of giving up in my OW course?
I apologize in advance for the long question but any course requires serious money and time. So looking for help and advice from the people who have wandered this road before.
 
Dive, dive, dive.

Get comfortable in the water first. The fact your asking says your not ready.

Pratice your skills pick a skill on every dive and practice it.

Once you get more experience you'll know when your ready. The class itself is actually a lot of fun. But you will need to remove a victims BC on the surface, bring a non responsive diver from the bottom at a safe ascent rate etc.
 
From all the experts of scuba diving here, I wanted to ask the following things -

  1. I wasn't at the top of my class in the OW course. In fact my I took about 2 days extra to complete the course and my instructor said that people are generally able to complete all the skillset in about 1-1.5 days but in the end, I was fairly confident about the skillset there. Should I go for the rescue diver course?

  2. I have heard it is quite physically demanding and I am by no means an active athlete. I am a tech guy who works on his laptop throughout the day. Should I still go for the rescue diver course?

  3. I am certainly not confident about at this stage is my buoyancy after completing the AOW course. It takes me about 2-3 attempts at the bottom of the sea surface to get neutrally buoyant, unlike some people who are able to do it instantly. I have heard your buoyancy skills should be top-notch for this course. Should I still go for the rescue diver course?

  4. Any minimum number of logged dives you would recommend before taking this course? I currently have 14.

  5. How tough is the rescue diver course really? Will I be able to do it considering I almost thought of giving up in my OW course?
I apologize in advance for the long question but any course requires serious money and time. So looking for help and advice from the people who have wandered this road before.

Hi. First, in my opinion you should not take rescue now. You still need to work on your fundamentals before you start worrying about rescuing other people. I would highly recommend the ppb (peak performance buoyancy) course for you to inporve those. Then after another 10-20 dives think about rescue again.

2. Some of it is demanding but not overly so. There are two main activities that are toughish. Tired diver tow gets tiring quickly when you try to go fast so the trick there is just to take your time. And the patient carry can require strength depending on how heavy your buddy is.

3. Your buoyancy skills don't have to be top notch but it helps for surfacing an unresponsive diver. You can certainly do the skill without perfect control.

4. 30-40

5. It is tougher than OW certainly. Will you be able to do it? I can't comment without knowing you personally but if you give yourself a few more dives experience I'm sure you won't have any problems.

Whatever you choose good luck :)
 
There are a few threads on this.
There used to be a (PADI) requirement of 20 dives. I did mine at 26 dives. My general skills, buoyancy, etc. were fine.
My advice would be to improve your buoyancy somewhat. You don't have to be like one of those aquarium divers who do wild tricks and hover on their head.
I usually say that familiarity with equipment and general diving ability should be good. Also, I agree with basically all on the forum that every diver should eventually take Rescue.
I have read that courses vary a lot according to instructor. Mine wasn't particularly hard physically but was a mental challenge.
The sooner you have the basics down and can take the course the better. Even if you have problems with this procedure or that one, you now will have the knowledge, and can practice stuff.
Two divers buddying up with neither having rescue skills bothers me. And that was my situation when I didn't know better (or have the choice to dive with a rescue-trained buddy).
 
There used to be a (PADI) requirement of 20 dives.
I think that was only for people who did not have PADI AOW, but rather some kind of equivalence from another agency. In any case, it went away about 2009 or so.

For the OP, Rescue is demanding but not difficult. You can probably do it, and it is a great confidence builder. But it is very much about preventing problems by having an increased awareness of what is happening with the other divers. If you are still inward focused, do some more diving. Once you begin to have an increased situational awareness, you are ready for Rescue.
 
  1. I wasn't at the top of my class in the OW course. In fact my I took about 2 days extra to complete the course and my instructor said that people are generally able to complete all the skillset in about 1-1.5 days but in the end, I was fairly confident about the skillset there.

So, what. There is nothing wrong with taking extra time to complete the course. Sadly, we have developed a incorrect attitude thinking all students learn at the same rate.


  1. I have heard it is quite physically demanding and I am by no means an active athlete. I am a tech guy who works on his laptop throughout the day.

In most cases you don’t have to be in excellent shape. Some find it demanding. Use the intentions of taking the course to develop a work-out/diet program to get yourself in ready for the course.



  1. I am certainly not confident about at this stage is my buoyancy after completing the AOW course. It takes me about 2-3 attempts at the bottom of the sea surface to get neutrally buoyant, unlike some people who are able to do it instantly. I have heard your buoyancy skills should be top-notch for this course. Should I still go for the rescue diver course?

Your buoyancy doesn’t have to be perfect, but adequate enough to be able to conduct searches without stirring up the bottom. Buoyancy is a skill divers should never give up practicing.




  1. Any minimum number of logged dives you would recommend before taking this course? I currently have 14?

Some recommend you gain some experience in diving before taking the course. Each agency has its own standard as to how many dives are required to take the course. Meeting the minimum number of dives is fairly easy to obtain when one takes the basic open water and advanced open water courses. Going out and gaining some experience will help give you some insight if what the course is about and to develop situational awareness, something everyone should start learning when they take the open water course.





  1. How tough is the rescue diver course really? Will I be able to do it considering I almost thought of giving up in my OW course?

Again this depends on the instructor. The real question you’ll ask after taking the course is are you physically able to conduct a full blown rescue if need be. It can be physically and mentally challenging. Each person should know how to conduct a rescue in order to bring up their buddy. It can be disconcerting to witness an incident, but have no knowledge of what to do.

As stated above, the course is as much about what to look for in order to avoid a situation as it is about learning how to rescue someone.
 
It takes me about 2-3 attempts at the bottom of the sea surface to get neutrally buoyant, unlike some people who are able to do it instantly.

Try this on your next dive:

When ready to descend, release air from bcd in short bursts no more than 1 second each. Allow a couple of seconds between bursts. Dont kick.

As soon as your head goes underwater, let go of your bcd inflator.

Exhale as much air as you can comfortably and count to 5. As you sink a bit more you can resume normal breathing.

As you get closer to the bottom you will get more negative so you will have to add a slight amount of air to acheive neutral buoyancy - add air in a very short burst and wait a breath or two before adding more. If you need to slow down your descent, kick up gently rather than adding air too rapidly.

If you practice this a few times in a shallow area (10m or so) i bet you will find that you will acheive neutral buoyancy without touching the bottom.
 
While I think developing good buoyancy skills should be a focus for you because of how it will improve your diving in general, I disagree that it is critical for the rescue course. In fact, the hardest of the rescue diving skills take place on the surface.
 
I'd suggest a couple of things, first dive and consolidate the skills you have learned up to this point in your diving. I think it's important to be able to conduct your dives up to the level of your training before proceeding.

Second, talk to your instructor and see if you can watch the course being conducted so you can see how the course is run and what it consists of. My instructor had no issues with this, as well as encouraging his certified recue divers to come back and participate in the future courses as well.

He would physically push students, not too hard, just enough so they know it will be work. Avoiding the need for a rescue, and the organization and teamwork needed for a successful rescue are the reasons for the training.
 
So, what. There is nothing wrong with taking extra time to complete the course. Sadly, we have developed a incorrect attitude thinking all students learn at the same rate.



In most cases you don’t have to be in excellent shape. Some find it demanding. Use the intentions of taking the course to develop a work-out/diet program to get yourself in ready for the course.



Your buoyancy doesn’t have to be perfect, but adequate enough to be able to conduct searches without stirring up the bottom. Buoyancy is a skill divers should never give up practicing.



Some recommend you gain some experience in diving before taking the course. Each agency has its own standard as to how many dives are required to take the course. Meeting the minimum number of dives is fairly easy to obtain when one takes the basic open water and advanced open water courses. Going out and gaining some experience will help give you some insight if what the course is about and to develop situational awareness, something everyone should start learning when they take the open water course.



Again this depends on the instructor. The real question you’ll ask after taking the course is are you physically able to conduct a full blown rescue if need be. It can be physically and mentally challenging. Each person should know how to conduct a rescue in order to bring up their buddy. It can be disconcerting to witness an incident, but have no knowledge of what to do.

As stated above, the course is as much about what to look for in order to avoid a situation as it is about learning how to rescue someone.

Well, you are perhaps the only one in this entire thread that is encouraging me to go for it. Seeing everyone's response, I am thinking of taking a peak performance buoyancy course first for two days and then moving on to this one after discussing with my instructor as well. Let me know if you have any other thoughts on best way to proceed about this.
 
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