Hey, DMs...share your eye-opening experiences

[Doc]

First, that’s awesome with how much the diver you spoke of did on her own. One question, did she use some kind of HUD to monitor depth, time, gas?
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[in re my armless HSA diver…]

All that telemetry was preset standard on a whip line held positionally & attached on her BC and she was wearing a standard (or was it a Mares ESA mask? That’s the mask that was otherwise modified to the configuration you were referencing, but not hers. The ESA allows for full view “down” as in the chest area. Great mask, now discontinued)

The Cool Thing #2:
She flew her own Cessna 182 from Canada to one of our local Chicago airports. She presented herself at the rental car agency and they (at first) refused to rent a car to her. Think about that.

 

[lermontov]

Unfortunately, dead students don't learn lessons.

Nope nope nope. I plan to start issuing OW certs at the end of this summer (just finished ITC last weekend, doing IE in August) and both of my kids want to get certified when they are old enough. I have a long way to go (my oldest is 4), but there is no way I'm doing their class. I'll send them out with my favorite instructor whom I know I can trust to take care of them, but I'll wait nervously on the shore.

As a DM and as an AI, I can't say I've had any "eye-opening" experiences, but I've had plenty of "learning" experiences. I've seen many students, recently certified divers, and even experienced divers who could really benefit from a scuba skills update. I don't think that they missed anything in their classes because they had bad instructors, but just because they were over loaded by so much to learn at once. After a few dives post certification, maybe within 6 months or a year later, I think everyone should do an update with an instructor just to make sure they don't continue down a path of doing things incorrectly and thinking they are doing everything right.

One specific example, several years ago I was in Cozumel and diving with a couple on the boat who had been certified for a few years. The woman and I surfaced together after the man had been sent to the surface with a different buddy because they were both low on air and she wasn't (LOA buddy group restructuring is pretty common in Cozumel). After she and I did our safety stop together, she took off at light speed to the surface. I grabbed her fin and slowed her down and then pulled her aside back on the boat to apologize for grabbing her, but also to counsel her on the safety issue of such a fast ascent. She told me that she thought that after the safety stop, you could go full speed to the surface because all the risk was over at that point, when in reality, that last 15 feet is the most dangerous time to ascend too quickly. She was otherwise a really solid diver, but that little bit of information just got crossed up at some point.

im not a DM but when doing a deco procedures course ive suggested to divers to switch to the tissue loading graph on the shearwater and watch it as they ascend from 6m to surface -it quite eye opening

 

[SlugLife]

Yeah, I'm not a fan of DSD anyway because of the 2:1 and 4:1 instructor/DM to students (as well as the stories you read about where these are even violated). I read once on SB of an instructor who had an OW student who did the same thing-- took the course to overcome her fear of the water. Maybe AT LEAST a little time in the deep end fooling around in a swimming pool to solve this beforehand?

Scuba-Instructors aren't generally qualified enough to act as underwater therapists, much less paid enough to be one. I might also question whether that person's therapist is qualified to be a therapist as well.

 

[TMHeimer]

Scuba-Instructors aren't generally qualified enough to act as underwater therapists, much less paid enough to be one. I might also question whether that person's therapist is qualified to be a therapist as well.

Right. The same can be said for school teachers, yet therapy is often part of the job. They can receive criticism from parents and others, who obviously can do a way better job.