Practicing 'emergencies' / 'accidents' underwater - cue / training cards

[rfwoodvt]

Contrary to some of the other well considered opinions, I think you are on to something good. The cue card idea will certainly set into motion "unplanned" situations and meet your goals of not knowing from the beginning of the dive.

From what you have described it seems the purpose of these cards is practice responding to an unexpected situation as a team, rather than pre-informed practicing of rote skills.

The printed credit card thing has merit, btw.

Just my two pennies' worth.

 

[Nick_Radov]

Agreeing upfront which exercises to do together is what we do NOT want. We want to simulate a situation that was NOT discussed beforehand. It has to be a surprise to the diver what happens, so that we can exercise the thinking and responding underwater, instead of preparing for it before the dive. We want to make that destinction: skills are trained during the courses by preparing above water, and once a student has passed the certifiaction, simulations that 'use' the skills should be a surprise.

I understand what you're getting at and frequent skills practice is important, but I'm not convinced that throwing random safety drills to surprise your teammates is really a great idea for most divers depending on baseline skill level. You might find yourself with a self-induced real emergency on your hands. In training classes with simulated random failures, things occasionally go haywire and the instructor has to step in get everyone squared away. Like one common training error with double back tanks is the instructor hits the bubble gun to simulate a left post failure but the student closes the right valve, then realizes their mistake and closes the left valve without first opening the right valve: whoops. This is more stressful and risky than performing a standard valve drill following a set sequence.

We do skills practice dives but we brief the plan first on the surface so it's not a surprise (and in some cases we return to the surface briefly to discuss the next sequence). I think this is generally good enough for building muscle memory.

Most instructors are happy to do a skills refresher session outside of a formal training course if you pay their regular daily rate.

 

[ps444mike]

great ideas.. i will tell boat crew and other divers we are doing some skills just in-case they see us sharing air or ???

 

[lermontov]

thats impressive - not often ive seen that sort of commitment to excellence in a new divier - keep it up -with that mindset my guess is youll eventually head down the technical route

I have about 25 cue cards - on one side is the problem the other is the solution -no point practicing the wrong way to correct the problem we often go up to a nearby lake and spend an hour in just shallow water doing drills- i suggest you start with a few and add as required

I just used standard paper and got a laminator - make sure you cut a corner off tehpaper so that when you use a punch you dont break the seal

I usually do them myself or get a buddy to flash card and then he watches me to make sure I solve teh problem according to the details on then reverse side

 

[NothingClever]

I like @steinbil 's recommendation to stick with hand signals. Some of the problems may warrant a cue card but if you can favor hand signals, this reinforces a skill that often gets neglected.

 

[Tigerpaw]

It's a great ideal to regularly practice, while I understand the card concept, I think the best way is to let the emergency happen and then let the affected diver deal with it. After all you're going to get little to no warning in real life. To add an element of safety, during pre dive mention hey we're going to be going thru x, y and z.

Another thing that can be done is to think about different scenarios and solutions during the dive, this is something I try to do on every dive. I don't let it consume me or take away the fun but I just run scenarios.

I recently had my inflator hose get stuck doing a wreck a few weeks ago. I had just hit depth at 115 and without warning I heard the dreaded sound of my wing inflating. Instantly I disconnected the inflator hose, grabbed the down line and stabilized myself. Oh I forgot to mention the group had left me so for a brief moment I was alone.

 

[mrtechbench]

I'm fortunate enough that my dive buddies are generally tech instructors or divers better than me. Without knowing skill and comfort level of yourself and dive buddies, I will say that @Nick_Radov has a good point about possibly creating an actual emergency so it's probably worth saying if you're going to perform these drills to do it in a safe/shallow/non-deco/non-overhead environment. I believe my TDI trimix courses and below said no skills/drills to be performed deeper than 100ft/30m, and that was with the instructor right there. Doing drills in a pool or very shallow water where someone could stand up would probably be safer, although I'm just a diver, not a dive master or instructor. My official answer is to take classes, dive with instructors, and/or hire an instructor to help you and your buddies practice with professional supervision.