Nobody really can draw a line in the sand that is a working weight. The only working solution is changing the attitude of scuba diving being a 'fat man's sport' as I've heard it called for the last 20 years. The attitude in the industry has to start changing from the active participants. Typically the fatest bastard in the world can scuba dive on a good day and never have a problem, this unfortunately by many becomes the answer to the general question instead of being recognized for what it is. The old "I'm 300 lbs over weight and have dived for 20 years...." you fill in the details to that general statement : Dives 4 dives every 2 years in 20 years, all dives have been in warm caribbean water under ideal conditions.... It's when the good day turns difficult that the problems start surfacing. You add 6 foot swells to the equation... or you add their first dives without a dive master in the water with them... or you add a new piece of unfamiliar gear to their equation... any number of things regarded as insignificant can take that person to zero margin of safety and error quickly.
Diving, Fitness, Obesity and Personal Rights
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Nobody really can draw a line in the sand that is a working weight. The only working solution is changing the attitude of scuba diving being a 'fat man's sport' as I've heard it called for the last 20 years. The attitude in the industry has to start changing from the active participants. Typically the fatest bastard in the world can scuba dive on a good day and never have a problem, this unfortunately by many becomes the answer to the general question instead of being recognized for what it is. The old "I'm 300 lbs over weight and have dived for 20 years...." you fill in the details to that general statement : Dives 4 dives every 2 years in 20 years, all dives have been in warm caribbean water under ideal conditions.... It's when the good day turns difficult that the problems start surfacing. You add 6 foot swells to the equation... or you add their first dives without a dive master in the water with them... or you add a new piece of unfamiliar gear to their equation... any number of things regarded as insignificant can take that person to zero margin of safety and error quickly.
drrich2
Contributor
So put your non-fat, 'fit' diver on one of those harsh condition shore dives that kill some abalone divers off the California coast, and he dies. Someone comes along & says 'Hey, if that diver had been an Olympic class swimmer, I think he could've safety gotten out of that!' If only we restricted diving to professional caliber swimmers...
So fat people shouldn't be fat. And a lot of non-obese people need to tone up & do more cardio. And then people need more watermanship ability. And...
It doesn't stop. And the same people you 'save' from diving mishaps die later from something else.
Plus, fat people are often told they need to get out & get more exercise.
Richard.
So fat people shouldn't be fat. And a lot of non-obese people need to tone up & do more cardio. And then people need more watermanship ability. And...
It doesn't stop. And the same people you 'save' from diving mishaps die later from something else.
Plus, fat people are often told they need to get out & get more exercise.
Richard.
The three most annoying assumptions underpinning this thread:
All fat people are unfit (or at least less fit that any thin person). This simply isn't true. There are fit (or at least fitter) fat people and there are definitely unfit thin people—lots of them. You can see fat, so it is easy to focus on and vilify. What about stress? substance abuse (1 out of every 10 people is the US over the age of 12 is dealing with untreated addiction.) Depression? Untreated hypertension?
Fat divers are more likely to be in serious / fatal dive injuries. Complete conjecture. The medical data isn't there (I know, I’ve looked). And the conjecture (extrapolation from general obesity data) would need to be normed with behavioral data to be useful.
Recreational diving is a high exertion activity. Sorry, you are not doing it right. Exertion in diving (even in worse conditions than expected) shouldn’t be prolonged or excessive. Most fat people can manage periods of intense cardio exertion. The larger concern I see is creating a culture in which divers (of any size) can’t ask for help without being thought “unfit”.
As a fat diver I know firsthand how unwelcoming the dive community can be. I’m a careful, safe, and respectful diver and buddy. I’m a favorite customer at several dive ops. Nevertheless, every time I travel to a new location, I have to run the gauntlet of uninformed macho divers and dive shop staff; all under the mistaken impression that they are my internist. It is both infuriating and demoralizing.
We’d all be better off, in and out of the water, if we questioned the fitness of each other a little less and questioned our own fitness a little more.
-Melissa
All fat people are unfit (or at least less fit that any thin person). This simply isn't true. There are fit (or at least fitter) fat people and there are definitely unfit thin people—lots of them. You can see fat, so it is easy to focus on and vilify. What about stress? substance abuse (1 out of every 10 people is the US over the age of 12 is dealing with untreated addiction.) Depression? Untreated hypertension?
Fat divers are more likely to be in serious / fatal dive injuries. Complete conjecture. The medical data isn't there (I know, I’ve looked). And the conjecture (extrapolation from general obesity data) would need to be normed with behavioral data to be useful.
Recreational diving is a high exertion activity. Sorry, you are not doing it right. Exertion in diving (even in worse conditions than expected) shouldn’t be prolonged or excessive. Most fat people can manage periods of intense cardio exertion. The larger concern I see is creating a culture in which divers (of any size) can’t ask for help without being thought “unfit”.
As a fat diver I know firsthand how unwelcoming the dive community can be. I’m a careful, safe, and respectful diver and buddy. I’m a favorite customer at several dive ops. Nevertheless, every time I travel to a new location, I have to run the gauntlet of uninformed macho divers and dive shop staff; all under the mistaken impression that they are my internist. It is both infuriating and demoralizing.
We’d all be better off, in and out of the water, if we questioned the fitness of each other a little less and questioned our own fitness a little more.
-Melissa
This has never been about fat divers. I stated "fat unfit" divers from the outset. Combined with smoking and age, a deadly combination. As mentioned above, if things go pear-shaped, "fat and unfit" can be lethal. This is SB so someone is bound to argue with me about this. I know, I know, you have an obese uncle that smoked two packs a day and dived the Doria every weekend.
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Well, we could start with:
Add "be in sufficient shape to lug your own gear" and "don't overestimate your physical abilities", and I think we could have a decent starting point for a discussion. It's not about fat-shaming, it's about being sufficiently in shape for the activity you choose to do.
And just FTR, I'm not exactly young and athletic myself. But I try to follow those guidelines (including the annual physical), and the liability is mine and mine alone. When I got my last cert, I had to get a clearance from a diving medicine competent physician due to my answers to the RSTC medical. Did that transfer liability the medical professional? Perhaps. I don't know because we're not a litigious society (yet...), so if I killed myself while diving my family probably wouldn't be suing anyone. But it'd still be a crappy thing to do to my op or my clubmates if I did that, so I try not to.
gcarter
Contributor
How do you feel about organizations like these - a 30 second google sampling?
https://www.ddivers.org/
https://www.hsascuba.com/
www.diveability.comDisabled Scuba Diving , Dive with Disabilities ... Scuba Trust WebsiteInternational Association for Handicapped Divers - IAHDand lets not forget
http://www.dvsp.us/
http://www.sudsdiving.org/
http://diveheart.org/
http://veteransoceanadventures.org/
How about letting people make their own decisions about the risks they take with their health and their lives? Who are you to decide who should be able to dive?
I've never seen another sport that has less connection between condition and ability. What may appear to be an insurmountable emergency for one person may be just another day diving for an experienced old fat guy.
I read about one old diver, 94 yo if I remember, who still dove but had someone help him with his gear. Obviously they should cut him off from diving. He might die!
I read about one old diver, 94 yo if I remember, who still dove but had someone help him with his gear. Obviously they should cut him off from diving. He might die!
You're supposed to dive within your abilities. It could be a grossly over-weight diver, an old diver with limiting strength who can't get up or down the ladder with tank on their back without help, let em dive, but make sure the dive sites and the dive conditions are tame enough to give them plenty of margin for error, cause sooner or later the weather will turn bad and conditions will dramatically deteriorate while you're on your surface inter val and you'll press your luck, or a dive site's conditions will change, or a dive master will miss read a dive sites conditions miscalculating a tidal current's time to change direction, there will be a sudden down current, the dive boat will catch on fire, run out of fuel, break down or have to leave you in the water for any number of reasons, or one of a thousand other things will eventually come along and then those diver's limitations are going to be a liability, how big and how fatal the out-come will be up to fate and chance.
I personally can think of many dives I've done in the past that got hairy that thinking back I wouldn't do them again if I suddenly acquired some physical limitations to my body.
Just a little over a year or so ago I did a shore dive in Maui that I got out of with just some scratches and bruises, diving with sketchy poor deteriorating weather conditions combined with a navigation mistake made me miss the proper exit on the return and had to haul up on iron shore with waves smashing me into the sharp lava and urchins, adding insult to injury I happened to have left my booties in the car and went in barefooted in my fins (was a sandy beach entry and planned exit) but lava, bare feet, urchins, pounding surf, was ugly and embarrassing but survivable with mostly my ego more bruised than my body. Had I been physically handicapped in some way it would have ended way, way, way worse.
**** happens, I'd like to have some physical margin of error on my side for when it does, cause the more you dive the more likely something is going to happen out of the ordinary. If you're on the razor's edge of margin you're going to end up an accident thread on scubaboard.
I personally can think of many dives I've done in the past that got hairy that thinking back I wouldn't do them again if I suddenly acquired some physical limitations to my body.
Just a little over a year or so ago I did a shore dive in Maui that I got out of with just some scratches and bruises, diving with sketchy poor deteriorating weather conditions combined with a navigation mistake made me miss the proper exit on the return and had to haul up on iron shore with waves smashing me into the sharp lava and urchins, adding insult to injury I happened to have left my booties in the car and went in barefooted in my fins (was a sandy beach entry and planned exit) but lava, bare feet, urchins, pounding surf, was ugly and embarrassing but survivable with mostly my ego more bruised than my body. Had I been physically handicapped in some way it would have ended way, way, way worse.
**** happens, I'd like to have some physical margin of error on my side for when it does, cause the more you dive the more likely something is going to happen out of the ordinary. If you're on the razor's edge of margin you're going to end up an accident thread on scubaboard.
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The argument over the RSTC is an old one and well covered elsewhere.
Everyone should get an annual physical but they are only as good as the individual doing the exam and can only go so far. Unfortunately it doesn't guarantee health or fitness. Or do you mean a dive physical? With specific standards and guidelines? Like the RSTC? Do you really think requiring a medical provider to sign off on every diver yearly would prevent medical issues with divers? I can forsee an entire money making industry arising from this idea but not much benefit to the diver themselves. Regulations tend to have this side benefit to certain entrepreneurs.
"Lug your own gear"? See posts above.
"Don't overestimate your physical abilities"? And how do we test for that. Remember, evey guideline or "rule" you make to exclude someone from diving should have a concrete method of measurement or else its all just opinion.
I dive for a number of years with adhesive encapulitis ( frozen shoulder), 2 years in my left and then later 8 months in my right. Some of you would have stopped me on the chance something "may" have occurred that I wasn't capable of handling.
Yes, I suppose but I had lots of challenges at the time. (Try putting a bra on, gah, doing your hair, starting a new job). Frankly, I believed that diving was a savior for me at the time. By the same token, I wasn't doing any aggressive diving and dove almost consistently with a crew that had known me for years.
It was my decision and my responsibility.
Perhaps you'd have had me taking the bus everyday to instead of driving my car?
Yes, I suppose but I had lots of challenges at the time. (Try putting a bra on, gah, doing your hair, starting a new job). Frankly, I believed that diving was a savior for me at the time. By the same token, I wasn't doing any aggressive diving and dove almost consistently with a crew that had known me for years.
It was my decision and my responsibility.
Perhaps you'd have had me taking the bus everyday to instead of driving my car?
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