How often do you "Plan your dive, dive your plan"? Preliminary Survey Results

[RJP]

Let me see if I understand what we seem to be saying.

Winging it: Two divers go on a dive to a wreck, planning to ascend when one of their computers gets within a few minutes of NDL or when one of them gets to an agreed upon gas pressure.

Careful planning by highly trained tech divers: Two divers drop off oxygen bottles at the mouth of a cave. They follow the mainline of a cave, planning to turn back to the exit when one of them gets to 1/3 of gas pressure. When they get to their oxygen bottles, they will do as much decompression at the end of their dives as their computers tell them to do.

In the survey, however, an awful lot of recreational divers don't seem to be agreeing upon a turn pressure before entering the water... so turning at an agreed upon pressure isn't in my definition of winging it.

 

[boulderjohn]

Both of those sound the same to me. Turning the dive when some parameter is reached. I don't see anything more "careful" about the 2nd scenario other than its fancy because you used the words cave and decompression.

That was indeed my point.

 

[dmaziuk]

I think what you're seeing in the survey is an indication that the vast majority of dives fall into the category of being very straightforward with respect to planning.

There's a reason the KISS pronciple keeps getting re-stated in various forms since [at least] Occam.

 

[AfterDark]

Considering the state of dive training these days are these results really a surprise? I’m surprised there aren’t more dive accidents.
I was looking at some old deco tables taken from the US Navy tables from 1971 today on Ebay and at the bottom of the instructions in boldletters are the words: PLAN YOUR DIVEAND DIVE YOUR PLAN. Is that simple piece of advice on any of the dive tablesthese days? Never mind we use computers!

 

[BRT]

What do you dive planners do if you see something interesting above or below what you planned for? Hang steady at depth? What if vis is bad at planned depth? I have a hard time believing that cave or wreck divers don't follow their noses into places no one has been before without a plan beyond max depth and run time and vary run time based on max depth???

 

[agilis]

What do you dive planners do if you see something interesting above or below what you planned for? Hang steady at depth? What if vis is bad at planned depth? I have a hard time believing that cave or wreck divers don't follow their noses into places no one has been before without a plan beyond max depth and run time and vary run time based on max depth???

Planning a dive includes anticipating all these variables and others as well. A planned dive is not a mechanistic scripted dive. Modifications are always made as circumstances dictate. Planning for these modifications is an integral part of the dive process for any competent experienced diver.

 

[Storker]

What do you dive planners do if you see something interesting above or below what you planned for? Hang steady at depth? What if vis is bad at planned depth?

No problem at all. My dive plan/pre-dive discussion includes the purpose of the dive (photo, hunting, picking scallops, or just looking at stuff), max operating depth and contingency depth, max time at max depth (decided by NDLs and gas reserves), rough profile (square or multilevel), and general direction to swim. We might also agree on other stuff, say that the first part of the dive is just a transport leg, and we won't start looking at/looking for things until we've reached a certain depth or after we've covered a certain distance. Very often it's not set up as a formal plan, but rather as a chat on the way to the site or as we assemble our gear. But it's still a plan, and with that plan there's less of a risk that one of us is pissed off because the dive wasn't as anticipated.

Some things in the plan may be changed, but they aren't changed without some kind of discussion. If we don't find the scallops where we thought they'd be, we might wrap up our catch bags and just enjoy the dive. If viz is crap, I might fold up my strobe arms and clip my camera. If viz sucks at the bottom, it's no problem to go shallower. If viz sucks on the second, shallower part of a multilevel dive, we might just call it after about half time because it's no fun to muck around in pea soup.

Like agilis said, it's a plan, not a script. But some things, like max run time, max contingency depth, minimum gas at depth and NDLs, are fixed. They are never changed during the dive.

 

[BDSC]

What do you dive planners do if you see something interesting above or below what you planned for?

And that's one reason we don't plan dives. We never know what we may encounter after we drop. Our depth, direction, dive time, etc. just depends on what we find when we get there.

 

[AfterDark]

Personally I always dive with an objective in mind, which is why I plan each dive. When I solo dive I leave a dive plan at home and a copy in my car just in case I don't come back, the searchers have a starting point and an area to search. However like war plans that are good until contact with the enemy; dive plans are good until contact with the water. Anyone that calls themselves a diver should be able to modify their plan on the fly, I do it very often because one never knows what will be encountered once submerged. Unexpected encounters is an invalid reason to not plan IMO. Besides my wife wants to know when to expect me to be out of the water!

She called the USCG one night when I was 4 hours late. We got caught over a 1/2 mile from shore against the outgoing tide because the sandbar we walked out there on was covered with water when we surfaced. We made it to shore before they showed but we did encounter the police that told us the USCG was on the way! They cancelled the call.

 

[fjpatrum]

I'm not the least bit surprised by this. Despite what the regular posters on SB profess, most divers are simply vacation divers (like me, to be honest) and we don't do a lot of diving. I checked the "plan mostly" (or whatever it was) box because I'm pretty diligent about at least consulting tables before my dives and figuring out how much running time I have. (Generally way more than my gas will allow.) I am one of the few I've ever witnessed "planning" a dive on a dive boat. Perhaps some of those folks have already planned their dive prior but I'm not sure how as most of the dives have been "Captain's call" determined on the fly.

Rec divers, like it or not, simply follow the rule of "back on the boat with 500" and watch their gauges (sometimes) to do that. It is, perhaps, a sad state of affairs, but it's the reality at least as far as my experience diving with ~150-200 other people on various boats around the world has shown.