Drop the freaking weights!

[AfterDark]

...yet another reason to go with integrated weights.

Thanks but no thanks. It doesn't happen often enough. Just when I dive deeper than 100FSW.

 

[flots am]

If it doesn't add any significant overhead then why do the agencies not make it part of the course?

It adds time for the student and most of the students just don't want to spend the time.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

If it doesn't add any significant overhead then why do the agencies not make it part of the course? Having the students dictate how the class should be taught is ridicules! Being a self regulated industry is a good thing if used properly. We should know better what the course should cover then someone from the outside especially a student!

What makes you think that students dictate how a class should be taught? Is it because some anonymous person in an internet discussion said so?

What I think is ridiculous is how so many internet experts who have never taught a scuba class know so much better about how they should be managed than those of us who do ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

---------- Post added October 14th, 2013 at 07:35 AM ----------

It adds time for the student and most of the students just don't want to spend the time.

In the nine years that I've been teaching I've rarely experienced that ... most students I've taught don't mind spending the time as long as they understand why spending that time is important. Most students would prefer to come out of class feeling competent to dive ... and like they got real value for the money, time and effort they spent in the class.

Might be different in your area ... or perhaps for divers who only want to learn enough to do guided dives while on vacation ... but in my local diving environment I'd say competence is the priority for most students.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Bob DBF]

It adds time for the student and most of the students just don't want to spend the time.

In '63 my dad taught me SCUBA and I didn't have a choice on the time it took and in '80 when I needed a c-card I didn't have a choice on the time it took for that class. It's funny that, as a whole, the classes are a lot shorter now, and some say that students don't dictate how a class should be taught.

If it takes three or four different training classes to make a competent diver, then the OW cert shouldn't be handed 'till all the classes are finished.



Bob
------------------------------

That's my point, people, by and large, are not taught that diving can be deadly, they are taught how safe it is, and they are not equipped with the skills, taught and trained to the level required to be useful in an emergency.

 

[flots am]

In the nine years that I've been teaching I've rarely experienced that ... most students I've taught don't mind spending the time as long as they understand why spending that time is important. Most students would prefer to come out of class feeling competent to dive ... and like they got real value for the money, time and effort they spent in the class.

Might be different in your area ... or perhaps for divers who only want to learn enough to do guided dives while on vacation ... but in my local diving environment I'd say competence is the priority for most students.

That's pretty much it. There are two shops in our area. One does a short class and we do a long class.

The local diving pretty much requires the long class, since the water is cold even when it's warm, and a lot of the interesting stuff (wrecks) are deep and many are in significant current.

However a lot of the people who just want to try diving on vacation go for the short class. The prices for the two classes are just about identical. Some want "quick" and some want "as long as it takes". I think the "short class" people are not doing themselves any favors, but it's their choice.

flots

 

[phoenix31tt]

Actually its pretty common. OOA, races up and gets to surface, passes out due to embolism or otherwise is in a panic and doesn't orally inflate their BC, sinks back down and drowns. There has been a fatality along these lines or similar just about every year I can recall. Many are described in accidents and incidents here on SB. So yes NOT dropping lead (at all) is implicated in a whole lot of recreational scuba fatalities.

i think you missed my points all together... its all to common for divers to not drop weight at all... i was saying their aren't many incidents where a diver didn't drop ENOUGH weight... i.e they had 10lbs.. 6 belt and 4 trim... and they dropped 6 and still drowned... its usually they have 10lbs, 6 belt and 4 trim... and drowned with 10lbs still on!!


i can relate to what flots am is saying.. it does not only apply to diving, but sadly to most other consumer products as well... customers always go for the quick and easy... and it just takes one shop to start offering quick and easy to increase profits, then the other shops must adjust to compete... running a dive operation is a business afterall...

agencies really dont have the resources to police individual dive shops and as such enforcing stricter rules and longer timelines wont really help... additionally the agencies themselves see more profit as well ...

 

[Akimbo]

Everyone trying to defend the pathetic state of diver training today needs to buy some drinks for charter boat captains, both liveaboards and day boats. In fact, just bringing them a Coke from the reefer onboard is enough. I never fail to get an ear full. My most common response is “You’re kidding!”.

I doubt many divers have received more formal and informal training than I have (thank you US Navy and commercial diving industry). I can honestly say that very little was new or hard to understand in any of those classes due to the base I received in my 1962 SCUBA class. The class consisted of six two hour classroom sessions, six pool dives that lasted 1½-2 hours, and 6 ocean dives that burned up two tanks plus some freediving. Everyone was properly weighted then because there were no BCs to work around it.

This was pre-Nitrox but I understood using Oxygen in treatments, how to calculate partial pressures, and understood the Navy tables for HeO2. All of us could use reped tables, safely do moderate decompression dives, use a snorkel as comfortably as a regulator, and do free ascents from 60'. I remember getting reamed by a Chief in my Navy SCUBA class for reading ahead of the class, which was not the case. Oh, and we actually practiced dropping weight belts just like in my first SCUBA class.

 

[raftingtigger]

i think you missed my points all together... its all to common for divers to not drop weight at all... i was saying their aren't many incidents where a diver didn't drop ENOUGH weight... i.e they had 10lbs.. 6 belt and 4 trim... and they dropped 6 and still drowned... its usually they have 10lbs, 6 belt and 4 trim... and drowned with 10lbs still on!!

I agree. Seems like a number of posters missed your point about PARTIAL weight dropping. It would be very interesting to see if DAN has any statistics on this.

Personally I've seen too many people working to stay on the surface without thinking about immediately inflating their BC or Drysuit. If they can't remember to do that first, what is the chance of that person thinking about dropping weights?

I also believe that if you don't practice, or at least mentally rehearse, a skill you are less likely to execute it properly when the need arises. I would like to do skills practice more but find it hard to arrange for several reasons.
1. Buddy not interested
2. My dive days are full already and by the time I drive 4 hours to the ocean I want to 'fun' dive
3. No convenient pool access. The one pool I can get access to is highly chlorinated and exceedingly warm - so I don't like to put my good gear in it and don't want to use my drysuit.
4. There is no place to not lose my weights in practice drops outside of a pool or with a buddy that will mark/retrieve them.

The only convenient and reliable place I've found to do skills (with myself) is during the SS, but since much of my diving is shore based my SS is generally part of the swim in. As a result mentally rehearsing is what I do most of the time.

 

[boulderjohn]

I agree. Seems like a number of posters missed your point about PARTIAL weight dropping. It would be very interesting to see if DAN has any statistics on this.

I read every case description in the DAN fatality report every year, and I don't recall ever seeing a case in which a diver was determined to have suffered a fatality as a result of only dropping part of the total weight.

Actually its pretty common. OOA, races up and gets to surface, passes out due to embolism or otherwise is in a panic and doesn't orally inflate their BC, sinks back down and drowns. There has been a fatality along these lines or similar just about every year I can recall. Many are described in accidents and incidents here on SB. So yes NOT dropping lead (at all) is implicated in a whole lot of recreational scuba fatalities.

Let's think through the causes of fatalities and their relation to dropping/not dropping weight.

A couple of years ago PADI and DAN combined for a study of fatalities to try to determine the initiating causes. The results of that study are behind a large number of the changes PADI has made in its OW course starting next year.

1. By far the number one cause of fatalities (over 40%) is related to the diver's health--mostly cardiac issues. In a case reported in our Accidents and Incidents forum a year or so ago, two divers were diving contentedly when one made a funny noise and was dead. When a diver passes out unexpectedly while diving, that diver will be found on the bottom with the weights on. Failing to release the weights had nothing to do with it, though, unless the diver was conscious long enough to have pulled them.

2. The number one preventable cause of death (over 20% IIRC), is the scenario rjack mentions above. A diver goes OOA and then embolizes on a panicked ascent to the surface. If the diver passes out and dies as a result of a CAGE on the surface and then sinks to the bottom, then I am not sure I would blame failing to jettison weights as a significant factor. It would have kept the corpse afloat, but not much else.

3. Many of the remaining deaths are attributed to entanglements, CNS toxicity, rebreather failures, etc. Once again, the divers would be found on the bottom with the weights on, but that was not the issue that led to the deaths.

There are indeed cases in which ditching weights would help. For example, there have been a couple of cases reported on ScubaBoard in which divers were OOA, reached the surface, could not achieve buoyancy, and did not have the kicking strength to stay afloat. In those cases, dropping the weights would have been a smart thing to do. On the other hand, there are two other factors at work in such an event. One would be the degree to which the diver was overweighted. It should be hard to sink with an empty tank if you are properly weighted, not hard to stay afloat. The other is the failure to remember how to inflate the BCD orally.

 

[scubafanatic]

Wow ... I'd love to know the source of that statistic ... I don't believe it's even close to being accurate ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

---------- Post added October 14th, 2013 at 05:46 AM ----------



... poor decision-making ... which can be fatal regardless of what equipment you happen to be using ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

......granted, but it's incredible to believe anyone could be THAT bad at decision making, 2 or 3 functional brain cells should cover it !