Instruction question: to spin or not to spin

[LiteHedded]

blitzed. psh
if you can scooter through it, it's not blitzed

 

[ucfdiver]

blitzed. psh
if you can scooter through it, it's not blitzed

If you can scooter through it and it was your fault it's not blitzed.

If it was your buddies fault, it was COMPLETELY BLITZED....

 

[PfcAJ]

oooh ooooh
I wanna play!
this one's kinda nasty. I think i win cus most of it came from the ceiling

Should have posted the one with "narration".

Would have been a great dive if the walls weren't covered in that death slime.

 

[Trace Malinowski]

Should have posted the one with "narration".

Would have been a great dive if the walls weren't covered in that death slime.

Reminds me of every exit out of a certain cave in the Bahamas. Bubbles were not slime friendly.

 

[diebeste]

When Danny Riordan did this drill with us, he took us off the line a short distance (maybe 15 feet; not much more). He gave us 30 seconds -- an eternity, really -- to study where we were, where the line was, and what the landmarks near us were. Then he turned the lights off.

Forgive my ignorance, but what if one of the students panicked then? I assume the instructor would not know, with the lights off? Or did you mean that he gave you a blacked out mask?

 

[TSandM]

I've actually often wondered how the instructors keep tabs on us in the dark! No, we did not get a blackout mask. We got the lights turned off.

On our lights-out exits, Danny told us he would be turning on a small light from time to time, and we were to use any information we gathered from him doing that, as it would simulate the fact that even in zero viz, there are periods where the silt is thinner and one might be able to see some. But I don't recall seeing his light during my line search -- as far as I know, I was in total darkness throughout it. But he must have had something, because Danny was VERY sober about safety.

 

[Dive-aholic]

rob, i think i'd know where the instructor is because as i spun i'd feel hands on me from the same spot. like spinning before 'pin the tail on the donkey' - the spinner doesn't move as they spin the spinnee.

now if the instructor was changing his or her location during the spin, then where the hands came from wouldn't be helpful, of course.

I move my students by holding their tanks or wings. They don't feel my habds on them.



Should we really be joking around about siltouts?!? What happened to cave conservation?



Lynne, I've gone through drills lights out and on and discussed the issues related to them during my internships. It was something we spent some time discussing during my instructor institute. The consensus among the instructors was safety is compromised during lights out. sure, you can hear breathing rates and patterns and other audible cues, but not only do you miss visual cues, you also aren't able to adequately evaluate technique. I use Danny's method on air share touch contact exits and frequently light my students up to evaluate form, technique, orientation, etc. And those drills only last a couple of minutes. Lost line drills can last 10-15 minutes. I want the lights on so I can at least monitor gas. But that drill is also done deeper than most Mexico caves.

 

[Capt Jim Wyatt]

I've actually often wondered how the instructors keep tabs on us in the dark! No, we did not get a blackout mask.

My solution to that is using a mask with duct tape over it, thereby making it a blacked out mask. The student cannot see through the duct tape on the mask.

All lights are left on so the student can be watched carefully. The duct tape has a "tab" on it so the student can peel it off quickly should s/he feel compelled to see immediately. I have yet to have a student feel the need to remove the blackout tape.

 

[DA Aquamaster]

I move my students by holding their tanks or wings. They don't feel my habds on them.

Babyduck hit the nail on the head, that was exactly the point.

I have a news flash for you - you can pull and push people by their tanks and wings to move them and spin them, but if their SA is good they can still still tell the direction from which the pulls and pushes are coming from, so the original point still stands.

Should we really be joking around about siltouts?!? What happened to cave conservation?

I agree completely. I think far to many divers take a far to casual attitude toward siltouts, and they tend to be more experienced divers.

On a recent trip a diver commented that it took him a long time to finally learn to not worry about contacting the cave. To a limited extent he is correct - new students can be their own worst enemy. For example if setting a jump in a spot with some mild flow over a silty bottom or with a pristine clay bank nearby, it might make more sense to anchor or stabilize yourself with a finger tip gently placed on a suitable rock as it involves much less risk of permanantly scarring the cave. If that rock already has evidence of previous use in that manner than the potential harm is even less.

However, it goes downhill from there to divers who get very casual about cave contact, and in some cases, cave contact becomes almost expected as part of the dive. For exmaple I have seen some sidemount divers who plan to be contacting the cave at some point in dive, but go ahead and start it in areas where a backmount diver would still be completely clean in the cave. Really bad form, but based on an attitude, not a skills deficiency.

And it is certainly not limited to sidemount divers. I am really sick of seeing hand prints and evidence of people poking fingers in up to the hand itself in areas that indicate they are clearly full cave trained, yet obviously lack the required buoyancy skills. No one is perfect and cave skills are perishable, but if they are rusty and need a warm up dive, they also need to have the discipline to do it in a training area of the cave.

It is almost an attitude of "Well, if I had not damaged it someone else would have sooner or later." There may be some element of truth in that as we continue to fill caves with more and more divers who have minimal skills and apparently less concern about cave conservation, but that attitude in and of itself, will greatly accellerate the process.

 

[DA Aquamaster]

In my experience, if you're in a real silt out, you see it coming at the very least, seconds in advance and know to start getting near the line....

...You can see that even in what most would consider a "complete silt out", there's still 2-3ft viz other than around the 40 second mark where it goes down a bit. That's quite a bit of viz in a small passage, especially with even mediocre line and situational awareness.

I agree that in most cases the viz goes to pot over several seconds in a real silt out giving you time to get on the line if you are both reasonably close to the line and aware of where the line is at all times - and those are skills that should be taught.

I also agree that in most places a "silt out" just reduces viz to levels we considered normal in many of the freshwater lakes I use to dive in. I have however done a substantial amount of inland commercial diving in zero viz where the really bad zero viz was black and the good zero viz was just dark brown as you got closer to a light source.

Feeling your way around a vehicle and rigging it for lifting on a bottom composed of 3 ft of very soft and fine silt results in truly zero viz that I probably will never encounter in a cave. But the value of training a diver in a black out condition is that they develop the SA needed to operate in that environment, and that gives them the skill and confidence to easily handle any lesser threats they may encounter in the real world.

My solution to that is using a mask with duct tape over it, thereby making it a blacked out mask. The student cannot see through the duct tape on the mask.

All lights are left on so the student can be watched carefully. The duct tape has a "tab" on it so the student can peel it off quickly should s/he feel compelled to see immediately. I have yet to have a student feel the need to remove the blackout tape.

In PSD training it was common for us to black out the student's mask with a piece of tin foil wrapped over the mask. It is easily applied, easily removed and black as coal inside the mask. And the tin foil is easily folded and put back in a pocket when done.