Dove with a huge group of students from my univesity today, my first dive with the scuba club. Like most club activities here in Japan, it was very organized and ritualized, and had lots of meetings. I was ready to dive at 8 am, but we had to have another 2 hours of briefings, checks, maps.
I got popped onto the back end of a group of 4, two folks with about 90 dives, two folks with about 20-30. In terms of total dives, dives on this site, and diving in different situations, I was certainly more experienced, but I was their guest, so I was kinda hanging back and getting a feel for how this was all working. I had dove the site about 30 times before, conditions were almost dead calm, shore entry, 63 degree water, vis about 30 feet, zero current.
They were going to engage in a navigation exercise, and I was more or less observing. One strict rule the club has is that if anyone gets to 50 bar, they have to stop using that tank (which I assumed meant that they had to surface). Maybe you see where this might go...
Anyway, on dive one, the leader was hopelessly off course, but I was enjoying the spring bloom of juvenile fish. Everyone was making regular air checks, which was good. One kid was drastically overweight, which is amazing, because he was only wearing 4 pounds, wearing a 5 mm wetsuit. He only weights about 75 pounds I'd say, thin as a rail.
Well, I know he is going to be the first to gas down, struggling with his boyancy. When he hits 50 bar he tells me. I give him the surface signal, which would mean we would have about a 100 yard swim in calm water to the exit. Well, his buddy comes along and signals that she has 150 bar left, and she wants to give him her octopus. She only weighs about 70 pounds and lungs like a bird, pretty nice bouancy as well. Anyway, we are about 25 or 30 feet down, I look puzzled and say no and give the up signal again, but the other buddy pair comes and supports the octopus option, so I just back off because they seem like they have a system for this that I was not aware of. Plus, I was morbidly curious.
They make most of the awkward swim back, then both have to surface, me on their tail, about 30 yards to the exit, short swim on surface afterwards. I wanted him to do a boyancy check with his near empty tank, but he was called in for the after dive briefing (as was I).
In the debriefing, I was told by the senior in the group that because of the waves, it was safer to go back under water. I looked long and hard out over the near perfect calm, "What wave were you referring to...?" Never really got a straight answer on it, and of course, language barrier had an effect. I supported his idea of air sharing if the conditions were rough, or to escape a surface current, etc, but no way I would go out of my way to share air with that overweighted bottom-stomper if there were another reasonable option.
So for the second dive, I gave the heads up to all in my group, "You or I hit 50 bar and we go to the surface."
JAG
I got popped onto the back end of a group of 4, two folks with about 90 dives, two folks with about 20-30. In terms of total dives, dives on this site, and diving in different situations, I was certainly more experienced, but I was their guest, so I was kinda hanging back and getting a feel for how this was all working. I had dove the site about 30 times before, conditions were almost dead calm, shore entry, 63 degree water, vis about 30 feet, zero current.
They were going to engage in a navigation exercise, and I was more or less observing. One strict rule the club has is that if anyone gets to 50 bar, they have to stop using that tank (which I assumed meant that they had to surface). Maybe you see where this might go...
Anyway, on dive one, the leader was hopelessly off course, but I was enjoying the spring bloom of juvenile fish. Everyone was making regular air checks, which was good. One kid was drastically overweight, which is amazing, because he was only wearing 4 pounds, wearing a 5 mm wetsuit. He only weights about 75 pounds I'd say, thin as a rail.
Well, I know he is going to be the first to gas down, struggling with his boyancy. When he hits 50 bar he tells me. I give him the surface signal, which would mean we would have about a 100 yard swim in calm water to the exit. Well, his buddy comes along and signals that she has 150 bar left, and she wants to give him her octopus. She only weighs about 70 pounds and lungs like a bird, pretty nice bouancy as well. Anyway, we are about 25 or 30 feet down, I look puzzled and say no and give the up signal again, but the other buddy pair comes and supports the octopus option, so I just back off because they seem like they have a system for this that I was not aware of. Plus, I was morbidly curious.
They make most of the awkward swim back, then both have to surface, me on their tail, about 30 yards to the exit, short swim on surface afterwards. I wanted him to do a boyancy check with his near empty tank, but he was called in for the after dive briefing (as was I).
In the debriefing, I was told by the senior in the group that because of the waves, it was safer to go back under water. I looked long and hard out over the near perfect calm, "What wave were you referring to...?" Never really got a straight answer on it, and of course, language barrier had an effect. I supported his idea of air sharing if the conditions were rough, or to escape a surface current, etc, but no way I would go out of my way to share air with that overweighted bottom-stomper if there were another reasonable option.
So for the second dive, I gave the heads up to all in my group, "You or I hit 50 bar and we go to the surface."
JAG
