Minimum training for urchin collecting?

[Eric Sedletzky]

I recently got into a discussion with a person about the minimum requirement needed for our urchin collecting operations.
We are removing overrun purple urchins in a cove in Northern California to do kelp restoration.
Anyway, we get a lot of fresh open water divers who are interested in taking part which brings up some concerns for me. I love the fact that they are interested, but in many cases I don't know if they are ready to handle what it takes to do the job.
The job requires filling large game bags, critter ID, using rakes and tools, using lift bags, and using float lines and or tow ropes. Most of the work is shallow between 5 feet and 15 feet deep, and many times we find ourselves alone, essentially solo diving.
My thought was that prospective divers should have at least advanced open water, rescue, navigation, and peak performance buoyancy. I also think they should have at least 25 Northern California shore dives before they are eligible.
Some in our group are saying this is too excessive and we would lose too many people. My argument is that I need some insurance that people know what they're doing and gave the comfort level to do that job. Learning to dive right out of OW should not be part of doing the job of urchin collecting.
One problem is that in our area we do not have a large population of prospective participants.
What are your thoughts?
This post is more aimed at instructors and advanced or veteran divers.
If you are a beginner diver and disagree with my opinion I would like to know why.

 

[TMHeimer]

An interesting question and of course it depends on the individual diver and their comfortability diving. I think they should have at least a few dives without dealing with lift bags and tools, etc. Buoyancy should be decent, especially diving shallow. If it were me 20 years ago I think I would have been capable of doing this safely at those shallow depths with maybe 10+ dives under my belt.

 

[Alekseolsen]

Not sure if I qualify as "experienced" at ~500 dives, but I'll try anyway!
While I can understand your desire to not have "straight out of OW" divers doing the collection dives - I dont see the courses as even relevant to assess that desire.

For what it is worth we do yearly "trash collection dives" using lift bags etc. They are both among the most popular club dives - and important to recruit new divers. Conditions seems similiar - shallow and zero vis after launching anything from the mud.

Pairing up "newbies" with experienced ones for their first cleanup may be just as good?

 

[BoltSnap]

I recently got into a discussion with a person about the minimum requirement needed for our urchin collecting operations.
We are removing overrun purple urchins in a cove in Northern California to do kelp restoration.
Anyway, we get a lot of fresh open water divers who are interested in taking part which brings up some concerns for me. I love the fact that they are interested, but in many cases I don't know if they are ready to handle what it takes to do the job.
The job requires filling large game bags, critter ID, using rakes and tools, using lift bags, and using float lines and or tow ropes. Most of the work is shallow between 5 feet and 15 feet deep, and many times we find ourselves alone, essentially solo diving.
My thought was that prospective divers should have at least advanced open water, rescue, navigation, and peak performance buoyancy. I also think they should have at least 25 Northern California shore dives before they are eligible.
Some in our group are saying this is too excessive and we would lose too many people. My argument is that I need some insurance that people know what they're doing and gave the comfort level to do that job. Learning to dive right out of OW should not be part of doing the job of urchin collecting.
One problem is that in our area we do not have a large population of prospective participants.
What are your thoughts?
This post is more aimed at instructors and advanced or veteran divers.
If you are a beginner diver and disagree with my opinion I would like to know why.

I agree with you totally, especially considering the circumstances of the diving and the task involved. 25 N. CA shore dives is perhaps too few dives, it should be more like at least 50 dives.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Not sure if I qualify as "experienced" at ~500 dives, but I'll try anyway!
While I can understand your desire to not have "straight out of OW" divers doing the collection dives - I dont see the courses as even relevant to assess that desire.

For what it is worth we do yearly "trash collection dives" using lift bags etc. They are both among the most popular club dives - and important to recruit new divers. Conditions seems similiar - shallow and zero vis after launching anything from the mud.

Pairing up "newbies" with experienced ones for their first cleanup may be just as good?

The courses I mentioned give the diver more dives with an instructor and add to the divers comfort level. Rescue is a confidence builder and again, more dives. PPB is important although the techniques differ amongst different instructors.
What we do is tricky because it's shallow and much of it in safety stop depth which is the biggest yoyo territory.
We do have some just OW divers but they are very athletic and naturally adept to the water. Not all are like them, I'd say we lucked out because they are less than 1%.

 

[therookie]

the biggest yoyo territory

I am a new diver (just under 50 dives at the time of writing, not one of which is in NorCal ) with some of your qualifications (AOW, PPB, nav) and would absolutely love to participate in that project if I ever found myself in that area. It would be a mistake, just for this reason alone - I'm still working on keeping my ascent rate under control coming up from the safety stop and my Cressi Leonardo LOVES alerting everyone to my weakness... All those certs, even rescue, and even 25 shore dives in NorCal don't necessarily mean that someone is able to maintain their buoyancy, while working, in those shallows where someone can do some serious damage to themselves coming up too fast from 15ft. I think that not even all AOW divers necessarily recognize that is potentially one of the most dangerous parts of the dive.

There's also a lot of discusson on SB about how the certs aren't what they used to be in terms of actual ability. If it were me involved with a project like this, I would be thinking about asking potential volunteers that I had doubts about their ability to do a sort of "self-checkout" dive first. Something along thie lines of "We really want and need your help, but we want you to have fun too. So bring a buddy and do a dive with us first to just watch what we do on these Sunday mornings and see if it's really something you want to do. Keep yourselves to a max depth of 15 feet, minimum of 5 feet, and stay relatively close to (pick one of my volunteers that I know has good situational awareness and can do their work and also keep on eye on the candidate) without getting in their way". And then when they are done the dive have an informal chat with them and ask how it went, how hard was it to keep their depth consistent, what they thought of the work, etc. And of course also chat with my experienced diver that they were supposed to stay close to. That would give me more peace of mind about their ability before task loading them with the effort of the actual work involved.

I fully agree you don't want newly minted OW divers (or even less newly minted AOW divers like me) on the project - the last thing PURP needs is to be linked to one of Dandy Don's incident reports!

 

[happy-diver]

yeah or one of the purplicants may be a serial killer and dandy could add a forum link to the purpout

No matter the the qualifications or number of dives the dudes will either be able to do the job or not
as far as how sleep affected you are going to be thinking about losing one you can only wait and see

 

[BoltSnap]

In my 52 years of diving, I have over 6,000 dives, but I have never dived in California. I'd have to do several dives with experienced CA divers with extensive experience in the region before I could say I am qualified to dive there. In addition, I understand that the California coastline is vast and different in different areas, so one has to get proper orientation for each region. At least that's what I'd do myself.

 

[johndiver999]

I've done only a few dives there, but pretty many in similar conditions. The problem I think is that the training is probably so variable in its quality and content, that demanding several certifications does little to ensure safety and competence.

Perhaps, I might approach it like this. Unless the new diver can provide overwhelming evidence of their underwater abilities (which would be by personal reference, reputation, log book or MAYBE certifications(s), then I would require:

The new diver is assigned a willing mentor. The new guy is assigned primarily as a buddy to observe and provide safety to the other guy. One tank to follow along and if it is going well, then he might be handed a hand rake and allowed to scrape the bottom for 5 minutes. He will watch the whole operation, especially the handling of lift bags and ropes etc. Those are probably the most problematic, along with dealing with the surf.

Watching the exact activity one intends to engage in, is far more valuable than chasing peripherally related dive certifications.

I think that after the completion of a single dive like this, you (and the prospective volunteer) would have a pretty good handle on whether it makes sense to send him out there on his own or with a buddy and a butt load of gear and expectations.

If he still needs work but remains motivated, he would be welcomed to do additional buddy (non collecting) dives), hopefully he won't be too much of a hinderance.

I think this would be much more palatable to prospective volunteers than arbitrary certifications or dive count. Somebody goes to all the effort of volunteering, getting a fishing license, then they probably want to at least get in the water.

I feel for your dilemma, I've seen divers with lots of certifications and even experience, but when you see them work underwater,they are super clumsy, slow and stupid. On the other hand, there are intelligent, athletic people who, when you show them something once, they can pretty much just do it.

 

[lairdb]

I've done only a few dives there, but pretty many in similar conditions. The problem I think is that the training is probably so variable in its quality and content, that demanding several certifications does little to ensure safety and competence.

Perhaps, I might approach it like this. Unless the new diver can provide overwhelming evidence of their underwater abilities (which would be by personal reference, reputation, log book or MAYBE certifications(s), then I would require:

The new diver is assigned a willing mentor. The new guy is assigned primarily as a buddy to observe and provide safety to the other guy. One tank to follow along and if it is going well, then [...]

This -- but for everybody; this is just the onboarding process regardless of who you are. New participants need to do a ride-along, whether they are zero-to-hero or Dr. Bill -- if they haven't done this before, they go along as an observer/observee/helper for a dive.

Where it gets potentially tricky is turning people down; to better communicate _and_ to make it easier on the mentor-divers it might be worth coming up with a checkbox form, e.g.,
"We'd love to have you join the project when you have
[ ] improved buoyancy control in shallow conditions
[ ] more practice with surf entry
...
In the meantime you can support the project by helping with beach support, increasing awareness, ..."


(Source: Experience with similar on-boarding processes.)