OW diver below 60 feet?

[MauiScubaSteve]

I just want to get clarification one thing from some of the posters here (and you know who you are).

You believe that as soon as a diver is done with their initial certification, it is time to start ignoring the guidelines put in places by the Agencies and other divers to keep those very people reasonably safe. Am I interpereting your posts correctly?

My Q's along this line of conversation are; when did each agency start recommending new OW divers not go below 60' without further training or experience, was the OW training any different the year before the agencies started recommending not to go below 60' without further training or experience, is the training any different now from the year before the agencies started recommending not to go below 60' without further training or experience???

I have a sunken feeling that legal liability (lawyers) and marketing AOW (salesmen) had more to do with our agencies recommendations than the content of the training (instructors).

My classmates and I went to 90' on our first dive after certification, a shore dive looking for ship wreckage. Our instructor was not there, but his instruction was. My class was a bunch of free divers / surfers and we were in warm clear waters; there was less danger of serious injury on that dive than on our typical ocean play days before certification!

Everybody is different, every instructor is different, every situation is different; there is no one rule that fits all, even for the same person What were talking about isn't even called a rule

now i don't wanna get in the way of a good, entertaining, pissing match, but i will say that my AOW dive to 130', while teaching me nothing in the way of safety procedures, was a HUGE eye-opener to the effects of narcosis.

Not only are you "not getting in the way", you seem to be "throwing gas on the fire!" What agency was your AOW with?

 

[Ana]

Blah blah blah....

You just don't get it. There is no room for your ideas here, how dare you to encourage the braking of rules. Maybe there was no rules back then when you and your kind started. But society has evolved, we now understand the real danger of diving and we certainly don't need your disregard for safety.
You started diving without BC or gauges. How can anyone trust a person that dives without the proper gear? Like someone pointed out above, your experience is irrelevant.
FYI these days in the US, companies have to waste money training people like you, because you don't know how to deal with today's graduates, obviously it is the same in the diving field, you can't be trusted around new divers.

Back then it may have been important to quickly develop self-reliance and there was no-one to blame when you screwed up... silly old farts, no wonder you guys are consistently disappearing.

Society now has what I can describe as the rapture diving method: Learn the rules, follow them and be saved (I mean safe). If you choose to ignore or brake the rules, poof... you'll pay the price.

So keep those radical ideas to yourself. The last thing new divers need is to think that they can question what they are taught by their instructors. Learning on your own and deciding your own risk is not the way we do things anymore. If they were told to stay above 60 feet, then that's it.

Noooo, there you go thinking again. THAT IS IT.

(I can tell you're still thinking, see you don't get it)

So just go and check the weather for tomorrow, get the boat and get set to go diving in the morning. Stop being a bad influence, we certainly don't need a bunch of divers that can dive without constant assistance. If every one can dive safely, we can't think of ourselves as some kind of heroes.

 

[rstofer]

You just don't get it. There is no room for your ideas here, how dare you to encourage the braking of rules. Maybe there was no rules back then when you and your kind started. But society has evolved, we now understand the real danger of diving and we certainly don't need your disregard for safety.
You started diving without BC or gauges. How can anyone trust a person that dives without the proper gear? Like someone pointed out above, your experience is irrelevant.
FYI these days in the US, companies have to waste money training people like you, because you don't know how to deal with today's graduates, obviously it is the same in the diving field, you can't be trusted around new divers.

Back then it may have been important to quickly develop self-reliance and there was no-one to blame when you screwed up... silly old farts, no wonder you guys are consistently disappearing.

Society now has what I can describe as the rapture diving method: Learn the rules, follow them and be saved (I mean safe). If you choose to ignore or brake the rules, poof... you'll pay the price.

So keep those radical ideas to yourself. The last thing new divers need is to think that they can question what they are taught by their instructors. Learning on your own and deciding your own risk is not the way we do things anymore. If they were told to stay above 60 feet, then that's it.

Noooo, there you go thinking again. THAT IS IT.

(I can tell you're still thinking, see you don't get it)

So just go and check the weather for tomorrow, get the boat and get set to go diving in the morning. Stop being a bad influence, we certainly don't need a bunch of divers that can dive without constant assistance. If every one can dive safely, we can't think of ourselves as some kind of heroes.

Ana,

That was blunt! I LIKE blunt! It cuts through all the 'well, maybe...' crap. In the end, a new OW diver has exactly 4 dives, most of which was doing exercises like ditch/don, remove/replace, etc.

I think you and ScubaSteve001 have pretty much nailed this subject. There are recommendations and they are there for a reason. A new OW doesn't need to know WHY they are there, just follow them.

There was that fatality down in La Jolla a while back where 2 new OW's (father/son) dove to 158'. The son didn't have enough air to get them both to the surface and his father was lost. That was tragic!

I remember being a Private in the Army. We were taught a lot of things but asking WHY was never encouraged.

Richard

 

[Walter]

I certainly didn't have the knowledge of decompression, narcosis, etc, right out of OW training to pursue deeper dives

Unfortunately, lots of folks get short changed in their training.

You believe that as soon as a diver is done with their initial certification, it is time to start ignoring the guidelines put in places by the Agencies and other divers to keep those very people reasonably safe.

Of course not. Never hold your breath, monitor your air supply, etc. are certainly excellent guidelines and are designed to keep folks safe. OTOH, a 60 ft depth limit for OW and 100 ft depth limit for AOW is not only not designed to keep folks reasonably safe, it can be down right dangerous. I never advocate following "rules" or recommendations merely because they are there. I believe we should know the reasons for those rules and evaluate them. In many cases that means we are more likely to follow them. Who wants to die a painful death from an AGE? OTOH, if a diver is newly certified with 4 dives to 20 feet under his belt, reading that OW divers are OK to 60 ft could easily put him at great risk. The same for the AOW diver with 8 dives to 20 feet and 1 dive to 60 feet thinking he's qualified to dive to 100 feet. OTOH, an OW diver with 4 dives to 60 feet (yes, I know that would violate PADI standards, but other agencies do allow the first two dives to 60 feet) is most likely ready to continue diving in that same depth range. That depth range does not have a hard bottom at 60 feet, but could easily extent to 65 or 70 feet and after experience there, could easily expand to 80 or 85 feet. This experience can continue without taking AOW. Bottom line, these particular "rules" are silly and do nothing to keep people reasonably safe. Any such recommendations should be based on experience and not a card in your pocket.

 

[daniel1948]

Lots to respond to this time.

Daniel, Perhaps I should have addressed your original post first. In an answer to your question, No, I do not believe that your dives to 80' were stupid. In fact, I'm am proud of you for making those dives. You were in Cozumel, some of the most relaxing diving around, with a DM, someone to basicaly hold your hand. You should have relaxed and enjoyed the experience and realized that you are perfectly capable of diving the extra 20' without any major concern in those conditions. For those of you out there gasping right now, we are not talking 150' tp 170' or 200' to 225'.

I do believe in the principle of not exceeding your comfort zone. I don't believe in telling you what your comfort zone is, and I don't want to scare you into thinking that your comfort zone ends at a certain depth.

I actually was very relaxed in Cozumel, and even fairly relaxed in Belize (where I was certified and had the dives I asked about at the start of this thread). And I enjoyed all my dives immensely, except for the very first one, where I was seasick before going in, and had trouble equalizing, and almost didn't continue.

Here's the thing about comfort: it doesn't always signify. I went to the top of the Space Needle in Seattle. I looked down through glass and was terrified. Yet I was perfectly safe.

If there is a need to go to the surface because you are out of air I would recommend non-stop humming as you move up and do not take half a minute to gain 20 feet, specially on the beginning of your ascent.

I was taught not to exceed 60 fpm, and I've read on these forums that 30 fpm is a better standard. I hear you saying that faster is okay at the start of the ascent.

... how do you tell if you "feel safer than you actually are." [?]

That's really why I started this thread. To gain insight into what level of risk I subjected myself to, as well as whether the standard recommendation was different for a DM-accompanied dive than for a dive by two buddies, both OW.

And in fact, I have gained a lot of insight from the discussions above. I'm very happy I asked.

To the OP, you already sounded like you had your mind made up that you felt what you did was unsafe. Why come on here and ask about it if you had already reached a conclusion?

No, I had not made up my mind. Clearly, I would not have asked if I had not been concerned. But I asked because I wanted to learn, and I have learned. Maybe I still don't have a certainty. But I feel I've gained by this discussion.

You just don't get it. There is no room [...snip...]

Ana, please save the flaming for elsewhere. I respect your views on the topic as much as those of others, and I want to read them. But personal attacks are much less effective and much less interesting than arguments directed at the matter at hand.

 

[Ana]

I was taught not to exceed 60 fpm, and I've read on these forums that 30 fpm is a better standard. I hear you saying that faster is okay at the start of the ascent.

60fpm IS a wonderful speed when everything is going well, adding deep stops is also a good habit and yes, for the last portion of the ascent 30fpm or even slower.

That is NOT what you do on an Out of Air situation.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Thing is, with the state of training these days there's way more emphasis on teaching people what to do if they run out of air than there is teaching them how not to run out in the first place.

One significant reason for not going deep as a new diver is that due to a bunch of factors ... most significantly that you haven't had time to develop good technique yet ... new divers tend to breathe up their air supply pretty quickly. Going deeper only enhances that issue. The double-whammy is that the deeper you go, the faster you drain your tank AND the longer it takes to reach the surface.

And if you're diving with another new diver, chances are pretty good they're doing the same. So what happens when you look at your gauge, realize you're almost out, slash your hand across your throat and THEN find out that your dive buddy has about as much as you do?

At that point your only option is bolting for the surface. DCS now is the least of your worries. You'll be stressed and breathing even harder ... and if you run out on the way to the surface, chances are good that in your stressed condition you'll forget to make the conscious effort needed to overcome your hard-wired instinct to hold that last breath in.

I've known a few divers who died that way ... the most recent less than a month ago. He was diving with a DM too ... only when he took that last breath and panic took hold, he swam away from the guy. They found his body on the bottom at 93 feet.

It's all well and good to sit in front of your keyboard and talk about how easy a free ascent from 80 feet might be ... but the reality, especially under stress, is something else altogether.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Walter]

Ana, please save the flaming for elsewhere. I respect your views on the topic as much as those of others, and I want to read them. But personal attacks are much less effective and much less interesting than arguments directed at the matter at hand.

I'm curious, what makes you think that was a personal attack?

 

[orange_diver]

Not only are you "not getting in the way", you seem to be "throwing gas on the fire!" What agency was your AOW with?

please, excuse my gas.

PADI for AOW

 

[lowviz]

I'm curious, what makes you think that was a personal attack?

-the 'old fart' part. If I wasn't laughing so hard, I'd report the post.