Piscean
Registered
I had a sobering experience the other day. I consider myself to be a reasonably good diver with 140 logged dives, 80 in the last year and I am training to be a Divemaster but every so often something happens which makes me think - whoah not so fast, you need to learn to dive properly before you start trying to look after other people.
This is what happened. I was doing my internship in a rescue class. After the instructor had explained everything, we had to do down to see how to bring an unresponsive diver to the surface. I went down with my snorkel in my mouth. No problem, I have done that before. However, this time I failed to recover my primary 2nd stage because it was tangled behind me and I didn't manage to get hold of the hose from the 1st stage. In the end I swam back to the surface from six feet down. No big deal. However, afterwards, it occurred to me that I hadn't even considered using my alternate which is integrated into my BCD hose and which I had in my hand. I was very suprised at myself since I am normally a calm relaxed diver, but in that instant that I couldn't find my primary I had focussed solely on the surface and not considered my alternate. A classic case of perceptual narrowing.
So this is my question, how do I train myself to deal with unexpected situations, like not being able to recover my primary 2nd stage or a runaway inflator for example. How do I train myself to avoid perceptual narrowing?
Some ideas from you whizzes would be much appreciated. I mean I know I could take classes, but they seem to be so fake, it is almost impossible to recreate a real panic situation in a class. What else can one do?
Piscean.
This is what happened. I was doing my internship in a rescue class. After the instructor had explained everything, we had to do down to see how to bring an unresponsive diver to the surface. I went down with my snorkel in my mouth. No problem, I have done that before. However, this time I failed to recover my primary 2nd stage because it was tangled behind me and I didn't manage to get hold of the hose from the 1st stage. In the end I swam back to the surface from six feet down. No big deal. However, afterwards, it occurred to me that I hadn't even considered using my alternate which is integrated into my BCD hose and which I had in my hand. I was very suprised at myself since I am normally a calm relaxed diver, but in that instant that I couldn't find my primary I had focussed solely on the surface and not considered my alternate. A classic case of perceptual narrowing.
So this is my question, how do I train myself to deal with unexpected situations, like not being able to recover my primary 2nd stage or a runaway inflator for example. How do I train myself to avoid perceptual narrowing?
Some ideas from you whizzes would be much appreciated. I mean I know I could take classes, but they seem to be so fake, it is almost impossible to recreate a real panic situation in a class. What else can one do?
Piscean.