Encountered first PSD/DIR Diver

[dittrimd]

First off thanks to all who have made comments as I think this is a very good discussion to have about sharing ideas and concepts. Bridgediver I especially enjoyed your comments.

Daniel thanks for the suggestion of networking and I have been to many PSD websites to see what other teams are doing. In fact SMART has been one of the sites I found early on. Please do not misunderstand my PSD team is well established team that was created in the late 70's. We have been refining and improving the way we do things constantly. I am 100% confident in my team’s ability to perform safe and reliable operations. That said myself like many of my team members are always looking for ways to do things better and mitigate the risks we face. My observations of the DIR diver were merely discussion about what if anything from the DIR concept could be applied to PSD. I had never really considered it since my outside impression was that is was something only for cave and tech divers and this would not apply to PSD diving. The one big thing about DIR is that they seem to have good “buy-in” amongst its practitioners and the thought occurred to me that it would be nice to have something similar among PSD diver. I think some sort of standard that we could all use to apply to our own unique situations would be beneficial.

Bridgediver, the comment I lost you on was a stab/dig at a well know PSD training company who seemed to base some of their concepts of PSD diving around the gear that they sold. This was not a real constructive comment and I am not here to bad mouth any training organization as they did offer a lot of good ideas so my apologies. A constructive comment would be that individuals, companies, organizations who have a financial interest should not be the ones setting industry standards. I like the approach NFPA takes, they solicit input from a broad spectrum of public safety professionals to help develop their standards.

I also agree that we should be able to have some basic standard underlying approach to each call we must also be able to keep and open mind and realize that no two situations are the same.

The biggest problem is there is no consensus among PSD as to what is safe. For instance one team might think that single diver on a line with a safety diver on the surface is unsafe. They might feel they need to have two divers in the water on the line at all time no matter what.

I do not know what the right answers are and maybe there is no right answer. I guess the least we can do is continue to share our ideas here in this type of forum and hope that they will benefit someone somewhere.

Mark

 

[daniel f aleman]

You guys should know more than do I, as I am not a PSD, per se, but I have worked with them. SMART is more than a PSD team.

 

[Yotsie]

I don't know Yotsie. I agree that tactics need to be flexible but the strategy of how a PSD dives is generally the same no matter where you go. ie - we all work with a tether, we are all pretty much solo diving and have redundant air, exposure protection, bouyancy, back up divers, tenders, comms etc. This should never change whether we use SS or standard scuba gear.

I agree with you on that. My team is standardized as far as tanks, masks, comms, exposure protection. The difference I speak of is equipment and training for diving in specific enviroments. You, I'm sure, have ice. That means ice training and diving in that enviroment. The closest we get to that out here is the large bucket of ice that hold the bottled water. We, on the other hand, have fast moving man-made waterways. We generally dive in these enviroments with "Churchill" type fins and streamlined gear (on tether of course with comms). Other enviroments call for more standard gear, such as full sized fins, etc. We need and my team has the flexibility to adajust to the enviroment we are going to be diving in.

As far as training goes, I believe training with several organizations and PSD training agencies is beneficial. Just like I used to tell my trainees when I was a Field Training Officer, "what I do and how I work may or may not work for you, take parts from each of your FTO's and build a system that works for you." What I mean by that is, it's like perception-everyone sees something different. Same with training from various PSD agencies, we all see something different and we use what will work for us. We also go out of our way to get the proper training to make an informed decision on what we will or won't do. Nothing is ever tried without the proper training first.