Pool Diving

[DevonDiver]

It depends on the quality of the surface support you have, and whether that surface support would be able to assist you.

There's not much danger is a pool, but then, swimmers manage to drown in shallow water/pools regularly enough, and they are not encumbered by negatively buoyant scuba kit.

Inflating your BCD and/or dropping weights is the solution to any problem you might encounter, but if it was that simple, then the scuba fatality rate would be much lower than it actually is. The danger arises if you become incapacitated for any reason and couldn't achieve postive buoyancy on the surface. Hence... capable surface support is a good risk prevention measure.

 

[vladimir]

H2Andy shared a story a while back that stuck with me. I hope he will forgive me for any inaccuracies, but the gist of it was this: he was standing in two or three feet of water with heavy doubles on his back and no regulator in his mouth and fell backward. Lying there, turtled, with his nose and mouth just barely submerged, unable to breathe, stand, or even roll, he had time to contemplate his mortality and the merits of the bungied secondary regulator. (I believe he survived.) How is this relevant to the OP? There are a lot of creative ways to die and it is impossible to anticipate all of them, especially as a new diver, so it is smart to ask the question. And asking it doesn't mean the answer is "no." In my opinion it is okay for a brand new diver to solo in a pool, and I think the small risk you assume by doing so is more than compensated for by the skill and enhanced safety it will engender for future dives.

Edit: Andy's thread: http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/near-misses-lessons-learned/128343-how-drown-2-feet-water.html