Incident on 80m (avg) - 30 min BT dive

[AlexL]

So I let her put the wing on backwards without saying anything.... the GUE instructor then also saw what she did and stormed up to her and said in a loud voice, "YOU MUST FOCUS!" He then walked away without telling her what the problem was.

personally, if an instructor pulled that stunt in a class that i paid a large cargo ship load of money for, my gear would have immediately been chucked into the back of the car, a refund for any remaining class days demanded, goodbyes said to classmates, and the long drive home started. even if a student does something stupid, berating them is uncalled for, and is a major breech of professionalism and decorum. it makes me cringe to hear an instructor yelling at students at the local quarry, doubly so if they are minors. luckily its not a common occurrence.

 

[Grumpy Fish]

This post has been in my head since yesterday. I'm sorry if this is slightly off topic but I feel compelled to address this post again. I suppose mods will delete it for being off topic but I feel strongly that I have to speak my mind.

I would like to make it clear, although it has nothing to do with the OP, that my own technical instructors were very carefully chosen to AVOID this kind of thing. I don't want someone reading this thread to assume that my own instructors were idiots and avoid them because of this. I can recommend them all, everyone one of them....they were chosen to NOT be like this. I wanted to make that clear.

Sunnyboy did, however, correctly connect with the frustration I have about it. In my local area I see many instructors, even at the OW level, surfacing with students and "ripping them a new one". I'm frustrated about that. It is unnecessary, it is rude and it doesn't help the student at all! This is what I was addressing.

A few years ago I followed a GUE course that was being taught from the same dive centre where we were diving. On day 1 the students had to put their gear together. One of the students, who was gearing up next to me, did it all wrong. She put the wing backwards onto the backplate. I'm a technical diver and a PADI instructor so I noticed what she did wrong but felt it was inappropriate to help her because the GUE instructor was swaggering around and I thought he would object to help from "outside".

So I let her put the wing on backwards without saying anything.... the GUE instructor then also saw what she did and stormed up to her and said in a loud voice, "YOU MUST FOCUS!" He then walked away without telling her what the problem was. This has become a running joke among my friends. When someone makes a mistake we all scream at them YOU MUST FOCUS

At this point I intervened. I told her (conform the PADI approach) what she did wrong, how to do it right and how to avoid it happening again in the future. I was trying to help her. She thanked me and seem relieved but the GUE instructor's reaction was to forbid his students from talking to me for the rest of the week. They still talked to me but it was in the pub at night, where they were also forbidden from going.

This kind of behaviour is rampant among technical instructors. In my local area you actually have to work hard to find one who doesn't berate students for mistakes. There seems to be this assumption that if you help someone you are "coddling" them. The flip side is that the student can only "learn" by his/her own mistakes and they have to be left to figure out (a) what they did wrong and (b) how to fix it without any help from the instructor. I even see OW instructors using this approach with newbies.....

... and yes.... it makes me mad.... REALLY mad! It makes me want to shake certain instructors until their head comes off.

An ******* is an ******* no matter what agency he or she teaches for. All the GUE instructors I have trained under were top notch and not pricks at all.

It's not fair to paint the whole agency with the same brush as that dick. You can make a class example of something without making the student feel bad. It's all in how you do it. That said, and having trained with several agencies before GUE, I still maintain it's some of the best training you can get.

 

[uwxplorer]

Am I the only one to be missing the point of view of X on the incident? After all he survived the event (luckily and thanks to the support of the whole team) and was responsive on the boat.

 

[Darghu]

I made a weekend of dives few months ago with my club and we noticed a group of diver going to their own (they were sharing to anyone their ccard). We found interesting to come closer and talk a bit with them.

The 4 divers shared/asked to see card certification, who drank/smoke yesterday, who is currently under medication, who is feeling so-so today, who is the most experienced/unexperienced in the groupe, how many dives were made these latest months, if anyone have something (anything) to tell before to dive, if they were specific procedures who might be different from different agency, if someone do not feel confident yet with any skills and want to see this underwater.
Then they analyzed their tanks with a shared gas analyzer and we left the group.

They made this speech / verification because a new diver who just arrived in the city had no buddy and wanted to join them. They got no idea about the new diver skills underwater.

After all we found that cool - this was not like scuba police/ or stupid questions checklist to answer. This was just an open conversation for 10-15 min to introduce everyone because a new diver asked to join their group and found interesting to clearly know better that diver before going underwater.

 

[Grumpy Fish]

Am I the only one to be missing the point of view of X on the incident? After all he survived the event (luckily and thanks to the support of the whole team) and was responsive on the boat.

not sure that makes it ok though just cause he survived. He put the whole team at risk and the problem could have been averted with a discussion before the dive so all the divers were on the same page surely?

 

[uwxplorer]

not sure that makes it ok though just cause he survived. He put the whole team at risk and the problem could have been averted with a discussion before the dive so all the divers were on the same page surely?

Where did I write "it makes it OK"?
Where is the vetting by GUE divers that they were dealing with one of theirs? What is this bashing of non GUE divers bringing to the analysis of this incident?

 

[Grumpy Fish]

No one is bashing a non GUE diver. Please wind your neck in.
It get tiresome when folks just keep bashing at GUE.
Whatever agency X is with, his behavior was dangerous and that's why some folks on here are giving him a bashing not because he is not GUE to the standard he was assumed to be.

 

[uwxplorer]

Assuming the OP would have dived with a non GUE diver had he known he wasn't GUE-certified (but from my understanding, this a purely rethorical hypothesis), he ended up with a diver who lost it during the ascent. Why is that? Did the diver push the boundaries and dive outside his comfort zone? Nothing in the description of the dive indicates it was particularly challenging. Was he experiencing something unusual? Was he stressed by the overbearing attitude of his buddy team (too much love kills love)?
After all, everyone seemed to know each other (edit: actually, I reread the 1st post and what I first remembered was incorrect: X was known by the two guys the OP knew well), and they had not warned the OP about the dire unpreparedness of X beforehand.
I get the angst and frustration of the OP, but I find the analysis a bit lacking in empathy...

 

[KevinNM]

Was he actually qualified for an 80 meter dive? I know a GUE instructor who mentioned that they found actually performing bottle rotation was a lot more difficult to do during Tech 2 than it seemed to be in theory.

 

[beester]

Was he actually qualified for an 80 meter dive? I know a GUE instructor who mentioned that they found actually performing bottle rotation was a lot more difficult to do during Tech 2 than it seemed to be in theory.

What I gather from the after dive conversation between the JJ divers (who are his country men and know X well) is that he has a full trimix ticket but not from GUE (I don't know the agency because it wasn't mentioned).

I don't know what caused his issues. For sure he had issues doing a tank rotation. Maybe it's not something that is trained in his agency, maybe he was only trained to use 2 stages, but unfortunately I don't know this.

Totally of topic. Before I did T2 I feared tankrotation drills of the T2 class but actually doing them it was to be honest not hard. You are doing it a lot during the course so by the time you start the trimix dives on the course it is no longer a hurdle.