Marketing: Are we ok, or do we need help?
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Descend? On your knees training goes back to the very first Scuba classes taught. I personally remember seeing classes on their knees in the early seventies. Oh yeah, there are a number of people who want to rewrite history and say it didn't happen like that. It did and the bad habit continues to this day.
Not a matter or rewriting history, just different sensibilities. Divers had to know how to manage neutral buoyancy before BCs so they had the skills, they just didn’t see any reason to avoid touching the bottom.
Even at that, they were a lot better than their predecessors.
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I bought my first pair of fins back in 1969, in fact, I still own them. I bought them from this character named Hal Watts, "Mr Scuba". They were rocket fins and his biggest selling point was that you could kick the crap out of the reef and not hurt the fins. He was right too. I shared that with Hal at this past DEMA, and he laughed and with a twinkle in his eye said, "Did I really say that? My how times have changed?
it isn't about on your knees or not, it's about how comfortable and safe the student diver feels by the time we take them to OW, fact is many if not most these days do NOT. In the "old" days it was far less, hours and hours spent in pool, swimming, snorkeling and once that was mastered the student mastered scuba in the pool. We don't do that anymore.
I did a lot of diving with marine biologists in the 1960s. One was also a NAUI instructor. Nobody even tough to avoid touching the bottom, but we all avoided landing on soft critters like anemones and nudibranchs. With the exception of relatively rare Hydro Coral, the sea life isnt nearly as delicate or slow-growing on Californias Coast as Floridas though. Kelp grows about 18"/day, dies off, and re-grows every year.
I see the bottom kicked up by new divers a lot more now because so many are terribly over-weighted. I cant remember the last time I saw a new-school diver swim to the bottom instead of pushing the down-button on their BC. With rare exception, they are also really ignorant of diving physics and physiology. The majority are also terrible swimmers and have no idea how to freedive or execute a self-rescue from the bottom.
I see the bottom kicked up by new divers a lot more now because so many are terribly over-weighted. I cant remember the last time I saw a new-school diver swim to the bottom instead of pushing the down-button on their BC. With rare exception, they are also really ignorant of diving physics and physiology. The majority are also terrible swimmers and have no idea how to freedive or execute a self-rescue from the bottom.
On this we disagree. Perfect practice makes perfect. Sloppy practice does little to produce the desired results. Show a person how to do something right from the start and you've significantly cut down the amount of time needed to perfect that skill and to be comfortable doing it. I remember people at the turn of this past century lamenting how difficult achieving neutral buoyancy was, that it was a life long process and so on. To my detriment I even believed them. It's a simple skill. It's a skill that puts the diver in control. It's a skill that relieves the instructor from having to spend his/her time trying to control the students and stop them from getting hurt. Unfortunately, it's almost the last skill fully introduced and then the students are told it's going to take a long, long time to achieve. Shenanigans. Monkey see, monkey do. If the instructor sets the example, and teaches their students to stay off of their knees from the onset, they'll have it down by the end of the class. Control equals competence. A student who can't maintain their depth and their trim is simply out of control, incompetent and a danger to themselves and others they dive with. We can and should do better.
It's easy to learn neutral buoyancy... just take their BC away.
No need for that. Instructors just need to do their jobs. Of course, it helps if the instructor has figured out that the lotus position is not a great demonstration of neutral buoyancy. Even better if the instructor has actually mastered neutral buoyancy and trim themselves. You can't teach what you can't do.
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