Is the PADI SMB specialty a waste of money?

[Centrals]

I believe every diver should carry at least one smb in every dive. Knowing how to deploy it under water is an added advantage. How to achieve it is another matter.
I learnt it as part of tec course 19yrs ago. In those days I never seen smb was being used in rec dive but the situation has changed dramatically probably because of accidents.

 

[lv2dive]

I am a little curious about where the heartburn comes from, regarding classes that are offered, that no one is required to take?

In this case, personally, I can see value; I dove for at least ten years before I had even heard of a SMB. If someone wants to spend the money and a day or two diving with an instructor, to hone their skills with an SMB, why does that cause so much angst for some of my fellow divers? Where's the harm?

Once I spent a day working on crazy stuff with an instructor - one of the things he had me do was back kick down the run at Ginnie Springs and buddy breathe with him. And I mean literally buddy breathe - we shared one second stage between us. Would most people see value in that exercise, or want to it? Probably not, but I did.

When seeing classses we don't understand, i guess I'm thinking, would it be so hard to take a step back and consider "Why not?" before jumping straight to "why?" And even if we don't see the point for ourselves, consider it may well be value-add for someone else?

Just a late night philosophical ramble, thanks for indulging it!

Kate

 

[lv2dive]

Ok I guess there is a difference in *requiring* a card that some people see as something that should have been taught as a part of basic OW. But the class being out there does not mean it is suddenly going to be a new required cert. even in Pompano, where it seems like they want a card for everything, I can't imagine they are going to want an SMB card.

 

[The Chairman]

one of the things he had me do was back kick down the run at Ginnie Springs and buddy breathe with him. And I mean literally buddy breathe

Extra points if you were blind folded and deployed a reel.

 

[NAM001]

I would think that deploying an smb in OW is a massive achievement.

To do so you need buoyancy control. New OW's don't have this
You need to be deep enough so that the inflation air volumn will not take the diver to the surface. easier to do at 60 ft than 20 ft.
Ow classes in general is done is 30 ft and less.to inflate a smb and hold on to it till it is 50% full is in my opinion dangerous unless the smb is so small in which the smb use is not usefull. AOW class skill YES.

Should it be taught in OW. I think it depends on whether you are being taught to dive in the ocean or a FW no current environment. I know there are those of you that will say yes teach it but reality is that the quality of the teaching in this area will vary as to the dive location. You will get functional training form one shop and form another it will be " Ill show you because the course says you have to get this but you will never use it in our local waters."

One thing that is beneficial is to letthe student experience how difficult it is to do with out bering dragged to the surface in the process.. Mo9st likely it will be taught with severe overweighting on a platform to maintain diver depth control. Pretty useless for real world use.

 

[The Chairman]

Mo9st likely it will be taught with severe overweighting on a platform to maintain diver depth control. Pretty useless for real world use.

I agree with this. I saw a class doing this and it made me shake my head. What's the point? Students don't belong on the bottom of the pool and especially not on the bottom during OW dives. Skills need to be able to be executed mid water if you want them to be realistic.

 

[Patoux01]

To do so you need buoyancy control. New OW's don't have this

I think that's your issue right there. OW divers should have pretty solid buoyancy imo. And if it takes an instructor 10 (diving) hours to do so, then that's what is required, and that's how I see it taught here. That might also be the reason my OW cost me over 800$ (including drysuit rental, and 1-1 training), and not 150$ like I saw it done a lot in Oz (even if it didn't require a drysuit there).

 

[Damselfish]

We covered this some in PADI AOW as part of Search and Rescue, which our instructor wouldn't even do until we had done like 20 real dives on our own. I can't imagine having done it in OW, especially in cold water with a wetsuit to complicate buoyancy control. And I got certified in 90 before some of the watering down of training occurred and before there were even options in AOW. There's a few things to be learned about different types of SMBs, and shooting them well requires practice. (I've seen working DMs that can't even do it consistently well, which I think is lame, but that's a different issue.) It also requires pretty good buoyancy control, which most people won't have right out of the average PADI OW class, they need more practice. I don't see the standard PADI OW class nowadays getting into this enough to get any good at it.

Like it or not, PADI has broken up dive training into a bunch of little chunks. Pros and cons of that have been beaten to death. But a SMB class seems way more useful to diving skills than a lot of the other specialty classes on offer. Maybe it is different in a soup to nuts OW class that some people teach, but that's not the format we're talking about here.

 

[The Chairman]

Maybe it is different in a soup to nuts OW class that some people teach, but that's not the format we're talking about here.

That's a valid observation.

 

[mdb]

Continued training was something encouraged even in "the old days." Still valid today.

After my basic open water NASDS class 6 weeks, classroom and pool, 5 ocean dives,
I was encouraged to follow on with supervised dives-I did.

I then had a great NAUI rescue class, another NASDS compass class, night diver class.

I took at least one class a year, from various instructors, for my first ten years of diving.

This thread motivates me to get out and do a good refresher. Gotta keep learning.