Learning from 1000+ dives?

[rjack321]

Rushing and hypothermia, individually are both pretty bad. Combine them and its incredibly easy to create a whole bunch of stupid mistakes with a suit flood.

 

[lermontov]

I haven't done a 1000 dives but the eureka moment that has had the biggest impact on me was when i was in a silt out in a wreck - and the thought came to me was 'how easy it is to die ' obviously i survived but that was the turning point and all the course training I had done come to life. From that point on I started taking my wreck penetrations a lot more seriously

 

[scubadada]

Hi nothernone,

I learn things on every dive, often subtle, sometimes more dramatic. I mostly dive solo, so have no distractions to my own diving. I know my gas consumption and NDL quite accurately, even before the occasional check. I have a really good idea what variables like temperature, current, effort, will have on my dive. I have an innate sense of navigation in my most commonly dived area and have a very good idea of where I am and where I am going most of the time. Occasionally, conditions are on the extreme end, I'm generally, easily able to deal with these deviations from the norm. I've made, at least my share, of mistakes, and have learned from each and every one of them. As a diver, you are always learning, no matter what your dive count and cumulative time underwater.

Good diving, Craig

 

[Killerflyingbugs]

Another good thing I have learned is how my tanks feels at 1/3rd, and how the hose on my spg feels at about 500 psi. I'm usually with in 100 psi of my estimates.

 

[Rhone Man]

I have about 1,400 odd dives. I actually think between 400 and 800 dives I absorbed a lot of lessons that took a long time to seep in, but not so many since then (to my knowledge).

But I guess everyone is a bit different.

 

[clownfishsydney]

I think the one main thing I learnt over the years (I have 3,875 dives as of this morning) was that diving is not a sport, it is a recreational activity. As such, no diver should be trying to outdo another, whether it is to go deeper, to stay longer, to use less air, to carry more gear than someone else (or less for that matter) just to say they are a better diver.

So many of the people I have ever seen who behave like this are now dead, killed by their "sport".

Dive the way you feel the safest, not the way some so called expert might tell you and never try to outdo someone else.

 

[kathydee]

I've found that it pays to not be in a rush to progress too quickly. It's quite valuable to build a solid foundation (that comes with time, patience and experience diving in many environments and conditions) before heading into more challenging diving.

 

[KeithG]

I am a bunch of vacations away from reaching 1000 dives, but feel that after around 400 of "the same dive" I started to wake up and stop drinking the industry koolaid. At that point I started to actively read Scubaboard and Undercurrent and dumped my subscriptions to several dive magazines.

It took a bunch of additional research and learning and several regulator service screw ups at a bunch of my LDS (more than 1 of them) before I fully became aware of how messed up the dive industry is.

I am not sure I am going to (need to?) learn much more since my preference is simple warm water dives. This type of diving is not very demanding. It is really as simple as you can get. Minimal skills required, only about 4 variations of dive possible: day, night, wall, lazy drift...

So I continue to be amazed (and annoyed) when I see underwater stupidity at my minimal level of competence. A few trips ago I witnessed an instructor with a rebreather that bicycled vertically and beat the sh*t out of the bottom. His behaviour did not really bother me until we hit a dive site with a sand bottom. I am a photographer. Sigh...

 

[Subcooled]

How many dives did it take until you stopped collecting dives/certs/depth and so on, and were able to easily and without regrets skip a dive that just didn't feel "right"?

 

[rjack321]

How many dives did it take until you stopped collecting dives/certs/depth and so on, and were able to easily and without regrets skip a dive that just didn't feel "right"?

4 or 5?

In my experience the people least interested in cards/certs tend to dive the longest.