Do you Need a Snorkel

[Thalassamania]

You win ... this rathole ain't worth the effort.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Then are you gonna wear a snorkel from now on?

People will be checking up on you, and they will want to inspect your papers please.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

Given the makeup of the people who read ScubaBoard, I'm going to point something out ...

<soapbox>

Doing multiple dives on a single tank isn't a safe practice for most divers. If you are going to do this you should ... at a minimum ...

- be experienced enough to know exactly how much air you are going to need for a given dive depth and duration

- pay really good attention to your depth, time, and tank pressure

- have good enough skills to self-rescue in the event that you miscalculate

The last diver I personally knew who made a practice of doing more than one dive on a single tank ended up dead ... he ran out of air at 60 feet while diving alone. He thought he had enough experience and skill to deal with it (he was a DM candidate).

Turned out he didn't.


If you are putting yourself in a situation where you have to dive down to avoid ships that are "trying to run you over", you have way more serious issues than whether or not you're carrying a snorkel.


First off, the comment about back-inflate BCDs is nonsense, and perpetuating a myth.

Furthermore, if you are diving in squalls at night, you have way more serious issues than whether or not you're carrying a snorkel.

Ships and squalls are things that divers can, and should, avoid by choosing not to put themselves in those situations ... rather than relying on a plastic tube to "save you" because you were too dumb to make reasonable decisions about when and where to dive.

That all makes for entertaining reading (I suppose), but realistically, a good diver will be relying on good judgment to not put themselves in those situations.

</soapbox>

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

I agree that some people might be worried aboout doing multiple dives on a single tank, but i also have some single tanks that have more air than some sets of doubles and many people seem to think that doing multiple dives with doubles is fine. I often can get three dives to the NDL from a large tank in depths around 100 feet. BTW, I always wear a pony bottle and can snorkel to 60 feet, so just because someone ran out of air alone at 60 feet and died is not particularly relevant to my personal risk assessments. In other words, diving to 60 feet with less than a full tank is NOTHING, diving without a snorkel makes me nervous.

The dangers associated with squalls and ships can not be entirely eliminated by the diver, particularly where we commonly dive. Ships can move fast over 20 kts, so they can be far, far away at the beginning of the dive and be on top of you when you come up. I have seen multiple situations where the ship is hailed and informed of divers in their path and they quite often refuse to answer the radio. Boat traffic is a significant danger to a diver floating on the surface of the ocean, it is not necessarily bad judgement by a diver that exposes themselves to this risk (sometimes people even float past anchored dive boats when the current is too strong). The relevant point here is that sometimes it is nice to save some air in the tank so you can make an emergency evasive dive to avoid some props.

Last year I was lost at sea for a few hours and had a ship pass by in the open ocean pretty close to me and inshore as well. I could easily see the people on the bridge and waved and yelled but they never saw me. As they approached from a distance at a relatively high rate of speed, I was carefully watching the path and was unsure if I was going to need to dive. These are not theoretical situations.

Sqalls can blow up at almost any time and if we avoided diving when the atmosphere was unstable we would miss a ton of diving.

These are some of the practical and real world situations as to why I wear a snorkel.

I looked up an old post I made which described a situation where I was glad i had a snorkel;

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/near-misses-lessons-learned/183072-planktonic-diver.html

 

[Splitlip]

Just wondering. The rescue divers DO wear snorkels.

What about the SCUBA diving operatives.

Most of the SEAL and BUD/S pics I see of them, they have no snorkels. Just sayin'...

 

[Thalassamania]

Why Changing Somebody’s Mind, or Yours, is Hard to Do.

by David Ropeik

Our opinions are castle walls, built to keep us safe.

Published on July 13, 2010

There are a lot of psychological terms for the fact that people don't like to change their minds; "motivated reasoning", "confirmation bias", "cognitive dissonance". But you don't need academic semantics to know that trying to get somebody to see things your way is tough if they go into the argument with another point of view. You argue the facts, as thoughtfully and non-confrontationally as you can, but the facts don't seem to get you anywhere. The wall of the other person's opinion doesn't move. They don't seem to WANT it to move.

What's going on there? Why do people so tenaciously stick to the views they've already formed? Shouldn't a cognitive mind be open to evidence ... to the facts ... to reason? Well, that's hopeful but naive, and ignores a vast amount of social science evidence that has shown that facts, by themselves, are meaningless. They are ones and zeroes to your mental computer, raw blank data that only take on meaning when run through the software of your feelings. Melissa Finucane and Paul Slovic and others call this "The Affect Heuristic" , the subconscious process of taking information and processing it through our feelings and instincts and life circumstances and experiences...anything that gives the facts valence - meaning...which turns raw meaningless data into our judgments and views and opinions.

Okay, but why do we cling to our views so tenaciously after they are formed? Interesting clues come from two areas of study...self-affirmation, and Cultural Cognition. Both areas suggest that we cling to our views because the walls of our opinions are like battlements that keep the good guys inside (us) safe from the enemy without (all those dopes with different opinions than ours). Quite literally, our views and opinions may help protect us, keep us safe, literally help us survive. Small wonder then that we fight so hard to keep those walls strong and tall.

Self-affirmation conditioning studies find that if, before you start to try to change somebody's mind, you first ask them to remember something that gave them a positive view of themselves, they're more likely to be open to facts and to change their opinions. People who feel good about themselves are more likely to be open-minded! (That's far more simplistic than any academic would ever put it!) One study, in press, was done back in 2008 and asked people about withdrawing troops from Iraq. Most Republicans at the time thought the troops should stay. Two separate groups of Republicans were shown statistics about the dramatic reduction of violence in Iraq following the "surge" in American troops. One group was asked to do a self-affirmation activity (they were asked to remember a time when they felt good about themselves by living up to a moral value they held). The other group was just shown the violence statistics, with no self-affirmation. Then both groups were asked whether the dramatic reduction in violence in Iraq was a reason to withdraw U.S. troops. The Republicans who did the self-affirmation activity, the folks who were primed to feel good about themselves, were more likely to change their minds and say that the reduction in violence in Iraq was a reason to begin pulling out of Iraq. The group that had not done the self-affirmation remained adamant that the troops should stay.

Cultural Cognition is the theory that we shape our opinions to conform to the views of the groups with which we most strongly identify. That does two things. It creates solidarity in the group, which increases the chances that our group's views will prevail in society (e.g. our party is in power). And it strengthens the group's acceptance of us as members in good standing. (Like the lithmus test some conservative Republicans have proposed that candidates must pass, making sure their views conform to conservative doctrine before those candidates get party support.)
Strengthening the group, helping it win dominance, and having the group accept us, matters. A lot. Humans are social animals. We depend on our groups, our tribes, literally for our survival. When our group's views prevail, and our group accepts us, our survival chances go up. So the Cultural Cognition motivation to conform our opinions to those of the groups/tribes with which we identify is powerful. And it would be consistent with that interpretation that the more threatened we feel, by economic uncertainty, or threats of terrorism, or environmental doom and gloom, the more we circle the wagons of our opinions to keep the tribe together and keep ourselves safe...and the more fierce grow the inflexible "Culture War" polarities that impede compromise and progress. The self-affirmation research seems to support this. It appears that the less threatened we feel, the more flexible our opinions are likely to be.

So the next time you want to have a truly open-minded conversation on a contentious topic with someone who disagrees with you, don't launch right into the facts. Ask them to tell you about some wonderful thing they did, or success they had, or positive feedback they got for something. And try to remember something like that about yourself. Then you might actually have a conversation, instead of the argument you're headed for instead.

---------------------------------------------------------------

So ... I guess before we can discuss snorkels, splitfins, BCDs vs BP/Ws, MOF/NMOF, DIR or spare airs we all need to think back on the best dive we ever had.

 

[LeadTurn_SD]

.....

So ... I guess before we can discuss snorkels, splitfins, BCDs vs BP/Ws, MOF/NMOF, DIR or spare airs we all need to think back on the best dive we ever had.

Probably good advice, Thal.

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." Ralph Waldo Emerson.

I'd forgotten it was Emerson who wrote that.... I somehow thought it was Henry David Thoreau.... oh well, it is the thought expressed in the quote that is important, not the fact that I cannot remember college classes anymore

Hard as I try to remember to apply that quote in my own life, I have often been guilty of being the one with "a little mind"....

But of course Emerson would agree I'm still right about snorkels being useful

Best wishes.

 

[Splitlip]

I agree that some people might be worried about doing multiple dives on a single tank, but i also have some single tanks that have more air than some sets of doubles and many people seem to think that doing multiple dives with doubles is fine. I often can get three dives to the NDL from a large tank in depths around 100 feet. BTW, I always wear a pony bottle and can snorkel to 60 feet, so just because someone ran out of air alone at 60 feet and died is not particularly relevant to my personal risk assessments. In other words, diving to 60 feet with less than a full tank is NOTHING, diving without a snorkel makes me nervous.

The dangers associated with squalls and ships can not be entirely eliminated by the diver, particularly where we commonly dive. Ships can move fast over 20 kts, so they can be far, far away at the beginning of the dive and be on top of you when you come up. I have seen multiple situations where the ship is hailed and informed of divers in their path and they quite often refuse to answer the radio. Boat traffic is a significant danger to a diver floating on the surface of the ocean, it is not necessarily bad judgement by a diver that exposes themselves to this risk (sometimes people even float past anchored dive boats when the current is too strong). The relevant point here is that sometimes it is nice to save some air in the tank so you can make an emergency evasive dive to avoid some props.

Last year I was lost at sea for a few hours and had a ship pass by in the open ocean pretty close to me and inshore as well. I could easily see the people on the bridge and waved and yelled but they never saw me. As they approached from a distance at a relatively high rate of speed, I was carefully watching the path and was unsure if I was going to need to dive. These are not theoretical situations.

Sqalls can blow up at almost any time and if we avoided diving when the atmosphere was unstable we would miss a ton of diving.

These are some of the practical and real world situations as to why I wear a snorkel.

I looked up an old post I made which described a situation where I was glad i had a snorkel;

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/near-misses-lessons-learned/183072-planktonic-diver.html

OK. So I am just scanning here. I'm working on my bike in the garage. I may have missed it, but please amplify..

A snorkel helped you spot the people on the bridge, how? More so than somebody floating heads up? Was it a sailboat?

And your link? Like I said I just scanned it, but what about the snorkel?

I am not being prick. Just multitasking.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Then are you gonna wear a snorkel from now on?

People will be checking up on you, and they will want to inspect your papers please.

LOL ... I promise to wear one for the next two week-ends ... send over the inspectors ... I can use the help ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Splitlip]

Ahh.

See now off topic from OP.

 

[Thalassamania]

It's an interesting question. I'm now looking into whether this is the same or different in populations that have been specifically trained to be open to change in thought. I grew up in a medical family, but was educated as a scientist. It always seemed to me that the scientists I knew were more open and more creative than the physicians, but that made sense to me, scientists are specifically trained to operate in a continuum in which today's "fact" is often replaced and where it is really important to be up to the minute (at least in a small and narrow area of expertise) while physicians it seemed were more concerned with breath of knowledge than being absolutely up-to-date.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

Why Changing Somebody’s Mind, or Yours, is Hard to Do.---------------------------------------------------------------

So ... I guess before we can discuss snorkels, splitfins, BCDs vs BP/Ws, MOF/NMOF, DIR or spare airs we all need to think back on the best dive we ever had.

I tend to think back to my worst dives; those are the ones that seem to teach me lessons that I remember.