Disturbing trend in diving?

[Leatherboot69]

I did a DSD as a customer in 2022 and have subsequently led them as a DM (noting my choice of language, as they are ‘experiences’ rather than ‘training’)

You do have to do a pool or confined water dive before you are allowed to do an Open Water dive. My confined water dive started kneeling in chest deep water and subsequently went no deeper than 5 metres, with one DM for two of us. Easy peasy. I didn’t go onto do a DSD OW dive as a customer. But this requirement is presumably to check that people are comfortable underwater before doing a limited open water dive.

But even accepting the argument that the two sources don’t allow one to compare DSD to OW dives (which I don’t), you haven’t actually provided any evidence to support the premise that DSDs are more dangerous. If this is an important part of your argument, let’s see the source. #changemymind

 

[Leatherboot69]

Yes. I didn't take a DSD myself, nor did I ever teach it. My problem with it is two fold. One is that I've heard stories of the instructor (or DM) to student ratios being dangerously ignored. The other is the ratios themselves. If the instructor has only two students and one panics and bolts to the surface he/she will be leaving one of the two not directly supervised. And at the limit of 4 students to one instructor, you can multiply that problem. I don't think it is even possible for one instructor to always be within grabbing distance of two students at all times, much less four students.

If one diver bolts to the surface, they’ve gone to safety. Head up slowly with the other divers. I’ve had a similar scenario when DMing an OW course

Also the ratios allow instructors/DMs to dive with 2/4 divers. It doesn’t mean they need to - it’s up to their professional judgment to manage the group and dive based on the conditions they encounter. That’s why they’re professionals.

 

[The Chairman]

no one has yet provided any evidence that DSDs are more dangerous.

It's not the class: it's the instructor. It's actually the style of the instructor. Students who have trim/buoyancy thrown at them at the very end of the class will conduct their dive in panic or just shy of it. They've been sold the lie that it will take 100 dives to learn buoyancy, and they are scared of hurting themselves. Rightly so.

Kneeling has been a part of dive instruction as far back as I can remember. It's how I first learned, how I was finally certified, and then it became a part of my NAUI ITC. Having students planted firmly on the bottom gives the instructor a modicum (illusion?) of control, but it denies the student truly learning buoyancy and self-control for themselves.

It's why we lose so many divers. They get certified and then have the crap scared out of them on their first dive without an instructor. It's why so many students feel a need to go from one class to another. Having an instructor around to pull their butts out of the abyss if they make a big mistake. They lack control. They lack competency.

Twenty or thirty years ago, it was rare to see non-fit people diving. I saw one class doing pushups in full kit, mask, wetsuit, and duck fins included. You had to be because we learned on our knees back then too. Contrary to the rose colored glasses worn by many old-timers, our collective buoyancy was crap. We had no problem crawling on the reefs. I bought jet fins partly because the Scuba God who sold them to me told me I could kick the crap out of the reef, but not hurt the fins.

/rant

 

[TMHeimer]

How is that different in an OW class?

It's a lot different. For one, OW class checkout (ocean/lake, etc.) dives are after maybe 8 hours of pool training in the most benign of settings possible. As well, even with courses that are taught "kneeling", there still is usually time to just swim around in the pool to figure out buoyancy. On a cruise I was on before I was certified I could have taken a DSD-- they were doing the 1 hour training in the ship's pool. Not enough for me-- I took the snorkeling tour instead.

 

[Leatherboot69]

No one has still yet explained why if DSDs are so dangerous why DSD customers don’t die in large numbers and we don’t hear about more law suits.

 

[Leatherboot69]

It sometimes feels like some SBers want recreational scuba diving to be harder and more dangerous than it actually is, to validate their own choices of training, equipment and style of diving.

 

[Leatherboot69]

By way of comparison, (according to ChatGPT), DSDs have a similar fatality rate (I.e 0.89 per 100,000 participants) to hiking, cycling, jogging, recreational skiing, open water swimming, all of which are classed as ‘low risk’.

 

[Leatherboot69]

[

It's a lot different. For one, OW class checkout (ocean/lake, etc.) dives are after maybe 8 hours of pool training in the most benign of settings possible. As well, even with courses that are taught "kneeling", there still is usually time to just swim around in the pool to figure out buoyancy. On a cruise I was on before I was certified I could have taken a DSD-- they were doing the 1 hour training in the ship's pool. Not enough for me-- I took the snorkeling tour instead.

Which is why in an OW training dive you can have one instructor to eight students, in up to 18m of water. In DSDs limitations are imposed to ensure safe practice: they only do one pool/CW dive (which is effectively the first pool dive of OW, if conducted to OW standards, which is not mandatory) and thus are limited to 12m in easy conditions within 2 weeks of their pool dive, 1 DM to 2 customers, and (I think) can only dive with the instructor and/or DM who conducted their pool dive. Sounds like legit safe risk management to me

 

[therookie]

Reading through this thread again, and in the spirit of the forum it is posted in ("Basic Scuba" - a Learning Zone with special rules), I have three questions specific to my situation. I'm not trying to , nor hijack the thread - I think they are in line with the original post (but mods, please correct me if I'm wrong):

First some background: My wife is a non-diver. Loves marine life (to the point where she admirably tolerates my amateurish, below-average-quality videos of the marine life I interact with on my dives). However, she has a phobia about water (not the surface, she's amazing in a canoe!) but being face-down in it. It is the result of falling off of a dock as a toddler at a lake in northern Canada where she grew up. The only reason she did not drown is because her aunt happened to see her fall and was able to grab one foot before she descended further. It seems it was sufficiently traumatic that even snorkeling for her is a real challenge - and as soon as she is in water over her head a familiar panic begins to set in, and she quickly retreats to a "safer" area.

So, when our sister-in-law decided she wanted to get scuba certified a few years and asked me if I would accompany her so she wouldn't be doing it alone, my wife emphatically refused to entertain our offer to have her join us. We didn't push it - we know better.

Fast forward to a few months ago, and seeing how much we love diving she is actually beginning to consider a Discover Scuba Dive as envisioned and implemented by a certain professional association of dive instructors. I was... shocked. And overjoyed. And trying to reign in my enthusiasm for that idea so I don't push her away...

... but ...

I now have some questions.

1. Is scuba diving really only for those already comfortable in the water beforehand? I don't recall that as a requirement for certification, but is it unwise for those who are not already competent swimmers to take it up? At our age, my wife's comfort level in the water is what it is, it isn't going to change anytime soon. My personal opinion is that if she can learn to dive and the underwater environment is really not as scary as it was to that three-year-old that fell off a dock, it might improve her comfort level considerably. Am I wrong to think that?
   
   
2. My own experience with a DSD was probably non-standard. Boat dive (rolling off the side) and we went down a mooring line to a depth of ~25 feet. Well, I went down. The instructor and my sister-in-law stayed at the surface working out a couple of issues. When I got to the bottom I realized (for the first time - my situational awareness was zero at the time) that I was by myself, and looked up. The instructor, from 25 feet above (decent vis in Roatan at the time!) signaled if I was OK. I signaled back that I was, so he signaled to stay there, kneel in the sand (GASP!), and wait for them. So I did. And discovered the truth of what he had already taught us - that when you breathe in, you go up (in my case, knees lifting off the bottom), and when you breathe out, you go down (knees hit sand, check!). So I experimented more with that and discovered (it really was a DSD!) that you breathe in more, you go up more, and breathe out more, you go down more. Buoyancy 101, on the DSD, on my own. And then I got distracted by a southern stingray a few feet away (situational awareness improved, check!), and that was the end of the experimentation and the beginning of the discovery of what scuba is really all about for me. Shortly afterward I was joined by the instructor and my dive buddy and off we went what was to me exploring a wonderful world for the first time, and just another day at the office for our instructor.
   
   But - is the DSD really so dangerous that there is considerable risk of it only adding to my wife's trauma? I understand that there is some risk of that, and so does she. But realistically and objectively, is that risk considerable? If so, I likely need to abandon the idea of my wife ever joining me on a dive - and I can certainly accept that over putting her at risk.
   
   
3. In my ideal world, my wife does a DSD and loves it 1/10 as much as I did mine and so decides it is worth the time, expense, and mental effort to work at overcoming her phobia to enough of an extent that she can be certified by the aforementioned professional association of dive instructors as an open water diver. And she accomplishes that. However, she is then very likely to decide that she doesn't want to deal with a computer or NDL limits or any of the more technical aspects of diving and will rely on me for those "details" (can't imagine her not using an SPG though, she'd never go that far).
   
   By many standards, even the one that I myself expressed a few posts back, in that case my wife would not be considered a "competent" diver. But I was dead wrong in that post. If she actually got to that point, I would consider her not only competent but "masterful", considering where she came from. And since I have no idea what the circumstances are of anyone else in my dive group that I am not previously acquainted with, I need to avoid judging their competence at all.
   
   My third question is this: My wife and I would be, now knowingly, contributing to what may be a "distrubing trend in diving". Are we considered to be wrong to even consider her starting down this path? And as a followup - if we did it anway, would we still be welcome as members of the diving community?

If you choose to answer any of these questions, be honest - you won't offend me. And I genuinely want to hear the opinions of those more experienced than I am on the topic. Which, I think, is almost every single poster to this thread so far...

 

[OMyMyOHellYes]

No one has still yet explained why if DSDs are so dangerous why DSD customers don’t die in large numbers and we don’t hear about more law suits.

I don't hear anyone saying any such thing (that DSDs as so dangerous that there are large numbers of divers getting un-live in them).

This thread had nothing to do with the safety of DSD programs until somebody introduced a red herring to the thread.