Something's not right...

[eponym]

There is very little taught in most open water courses that has anything at all to do with deep diving. ok . . . very little that has to do with any kind of diving but certainly not deep.[snip]

Nice thread, Mike. My, the posts really pile up while one goes diving.

SB postings sure paint a picture of new and not-overly-practiced divers abounding. I can't say, I haven't dived widely outside our Southern Oregon area--just a few boat trips. And I'm not an instructor, just an assistant-in-training. But that makes sense, as I see my fellow baby boomers flocking to this and other spare-time pursuits.

I looked back from the perspective of my first hundred dives and was surprised by some of the things I saw. I'd forgotten about my third post-OW dive, just me and my instructor's wife. It lasted sixty minutes, on a single AL80. Don't know how I could have forgotten that, maybe I just assumed it was normal. We didn't go below sixty feet.

More to the point: Some few dozen dives later, my dive shop owner wants to check out his new six-pack dive boat in the lake, and the manager and I ride out with him and dive down a bridge support column to the silty bottom, one hundred feet dead on. Pitch black below forty-five feet, and almost freezing at the bottom.

Pretty darned stupid, I guess, but I was totally relaxed about it. I can only assume I was too dumb to be scared.

I read an article by "Harris" Taylor that muses about the 130 limit, and whether it's in fact seen as a goal by some OW students. I think that was true in my case. I completely forgot (or maybe never learned) that OW qualified me for 60 max. That was my fault, and I'm still something of a "numbers wh0re."

Gotta stay on my toes, that's for sure.

Thanks for the reminder, Mike.
Bryan

 

[eponym]

Most of the divers that I've seen get hurt (or close) did it to themselves by freaking because they didn't like what was going on when the original problem shouldn't have really even been a problem. It's not the problem that's the problem but the perception of the problem and the reaction to it.

This is so true. While I have limited diving experience, I used to work on an in-plant fire and rescue team. Many of the injuries and problems we encountered were made far worse by the victims (and friends) reactions to it. Adrenaline and instinct tended to create far more havoc and damage than simply calmly thinking through the problem.

I have a feeling that's really the trick to deep and dark diving: overcoming the rush of adrenaline and resulting panicky feelings if and when something goes not according to plan. If this is like my haz-mat response courses, it comes as a result of training and training again until the proper response becomes a habit and you can keep your cool.

Don't mind me. I'll be over here diving in the shallow water for now.

Well said. Until I had a multiple-problem-induced near-panic, I had no idea how quickly things could escalate, and how tempting it becomes to abandon responsibility for one's own well-being and bolt for the surface. Fortunately for me, I was only at 33 feet at the time, and I didn't bolt, but I sure wanted to.

And that happened even after stress & rescue training. The experience was a valuable one for me. And I'm lucky it didn't happen a lot deeper. How do you share an insight like that with OW students without freaking them out? Can you?

-Bryan

 

[H2Andy]

Yet another data point in the case that law schools badly need to start requiring coursework in logic.

i think i agree with you... not sure, though... all i learned in law
school was how to pretend to be awake while i napped through class

oh, and how to calculate 30 percent of anything, for obvious
reasons (threw me off when i saw .33 the first time... i'm like,
no way i'm taking .33 percent dude... but that got cleared up)

so you never answered my question dweeb... was that a
DVP or a motorcyle you were talking about? cause i don't know
of too many motorcycle riders that get confused about what
"open water" means (i mean, they could, if they were also
divers and happened to be thinking about diving while riding a
motorcycle... that could happen i guess)

so, if it was a DVP, then the guy probably is not in a pool,
cause, that's a pretty short ride, you know... but i guess
you COULD do that, if you kept your speed low, you know,
and were deftly maneuverable.

so, fess up, dweeb: you don't really know the answer, do you?

 

[MikeFerrara]

How do you share an insight like that with OW students without freaking them out? Can you?

-Bryan

Good question.

I set aside a little class time for a short review of the DAN accident report. It's not what you could really call statistics but it does show a correlation between poor skills and injuries. I try hard to do a good job of explaining the accident chain and to tie in the significants of skill/experience issues.

I also show the video "A Deceptively Easy Way to Die" to ebery student who's never seen it regardless of what class they're taking.

When I first started teaching I wasn't very experienced myself and didn't have much to say beyond what was in the text. During my IDC I kept getting dinged for not throwing in enough dive stories. I don't have that problem any more. LOL I have story after story, articles and even written testimony from divers right here on the board to help make any point that I care to make.

A diver who is diving within their "limits should relax (within reason) and have fun. A diver diving beyond their limits, and for some this is a 20 ft dive without supervision, should be afraid.

What I want is to help them gain an appropriate level of respect for the activity and the potential risks. If I can't do that then I guess a little fear will work in a pinch.

One of the big problems is that after they learn one thing in class they go to some resort where some knuckle-head DM in a country that doesn't have a legal system takes them on a dive that they have no business being on just to make a buck. Then the student thinks that you were BSing them because "every one is doing it".

 

[eponym]

When I first started teaching I wasn't very experienced myself and didn't have much to say beyond what was in the text. During my IDC I kept getting dinged for not throwing in enough dive stories. I don't have that problem any more. LOL I have story after story, articles and even written testimony from divers right here on the board to help make any point that I care to make.
[snip]
What I want is to help them gain an appropriate level of respect for the activity and the potential risks. If I can't do that then I guess a little fear will work in a pinch.

One of the big problems is that after they learn one thing in class they go to some resort where some knuckle-head DM in a country that doesn't have a legal system takes them on a dive that they have no business being on just to make a buck. Then the student thinks that you were BSing them because "every one is doing it".

How ironic. Thanks for all of this. It's on my mind as I start the divecon/asst.instructor (SSI) course. Fortunately, I'm too old to be looking to make a career out of teaching diving. I think the assistant position will fit fine, as it won't get in the way of actually diving once or twice a week.

About the stories: I remember learning to skydive when I was very young. We learned over a weekend and jumped on the second day. No tandems, no static lines, just step off the wheel strut and arch, count, pull. I loved the experience but never kept it up because every time we were waiting in the hangar for clouds to lift, the experienced hands would talk about nothing but the accidents they'd witnessed.

Bryan

 

[MikeFerrara]

About the stories: I remember learning to skydive when I was very young. We learned over a weekend and jumped on the second day. No tandems, no static lines, just step off the wheel strut and arch, count, pull. I loved the experience but never kept it up because every time we were waiting in the hangar for clouds to lift, the experienced hands would talk about nothing but the accidents they'd witnessed.

Bryan

I wasn't really refering to only accident stories. What I was really refering to was being able to show application for the material being taught in real diving context.

Texts, quizes and tests, including the required in-water tests, often do a pee-poor job of tying together the various components being taught. The instructor needs to do that and he there's no book that tells him/her how.

Example...

An entry level diver is required to remove and replace a mask (usually while kneeling).
They are required to hover.
They are told to stay with a buddy.
But...most agencies and instructors do not require that they do all three at the same time which is exactly what they will have to do the very first time their mask comes off on a real dive. It's up to the instructor to tie the pieces together.

The other day I posted a thread called "Over Coffee" or something like that which addressed the way reg recovery is taught and how it was explained in the new addition of "Dive Training" and how inapplicable it is to what happens in real diving.

In reference to the mask, hovering, buddy thing...When I was a fairly new diver my wife and I were hovering along a wall in a quarry watching some fish on a night dive.

I had an itch on my nose and I decided that I had to stick my finger in my mask to scratch it. Afterward, I took a big breath to clear my mask and felt myself rising and my chest hurt. I quickly exhaled and the next thing I knew I was in the bottom. I stayed there while I cleared my mask only to see that I was in a thick cloud of silt. When I rose up out of the silt my wife was nowhere to be seen.

As it turned out when I had started to go up she tried to follow. When I plummited back down I lost her. So...she was up while I was down. We were seperated with me on the bottom silting the place out.

I can tell you that niether of us had any trouble at all during our training. Easy right? While solidly plastered to the bottom you take a big breath, look up and blow to clear a mask. Only that's precisely the wrong way to clear a mask. We thought that we could do any of those skills easily yet when they were needed on a real dive it was a disaster. What if it was a 100 ft dive right after certification? Would we have known that we weren't good enough?

The answer is NO. If we had been at a resort and an instructor/DM wanted to lead us on a 100 ft dive we would have went and felt secure in our abilities being totally without a clue.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Last post continued...

So Bryan, could such stories be used to scare a new diver? I guess it could. However, if it's used to put the individual skills in context and the training is continued to prepare the new diver for such situations than it enables them to have more fun diving and be safer about it. We use it to explain why we don't go vertical (to look up) and take a big breath to clear a mask. Because it'll hose up our position control and maybe get us sep[erated from our buddy totally losing control of the dive. Instead we breath normally placing the priority on position control while we clear a mask.

I haven't seen that in a book nor would, or did I, come to that logical conclusion be reading the book and acing all the tests. Worse, I'll bet I could show you plenty of new divers who are instructors who don't know it themselves...because it isn't in the book.

 

[eponym]

Neat. Thanks for the thoughts, Mike.

Didn't mean to imply that horror stories should or are used in dive classes, sorry. Got onto a tangent there, as usual.

I noticed exactly what you're talking about yesterday, when practicing maskless. Even with my little low-volume mask, the buoyancy difference between having it full of air and having it full of water is amazing, when I'm in only thirty feet and neutral.

I've found inflating an SMB before a safety stop more difficult, too, now that I don't carry any extra weight. Have to do it deeper, where I can get several pounds negative so it doesn't start me up the minute I put air into it.

Bryan

PS: You sound like a good teacher. I like that you remember and share your own learning experiences. The "instructor as pefect role model" can have some drawbacks, I'd guess, including the "trust me" factor.

 

[MikeFerrara]

I've found inflating an SMB before a safety stop more difficult, too, now that I don't carry any extra weight. Have to do it deeper, where I can get several pounds negative so it doesn't start me up the minute I put air into it.

This is off topic but I'm gonna do it anyway.

We deploy the SMB either before starting our ascent or at a planned stop depending on conditions.

you don't need to get negative at all to deploy one. If you're deep enough you only need to add a small amount of air to it because it'll expand on the way up. Just a little puff and let go.

If you are shallow and feel the need to put more gas in it, from a horizontal position, go slightly head down so you can hold it down with little frog kicks rather than going vertical trying to hold it down with weight.

Just some suggestions.

 

[String]

The SMB pull with air isnt immediately, like any other buoyancy changes you have a short time before the difference is noticed. I tend to find this is more than ample to squirt enough air into the DSMB and release the reel before it starts to pull.

Then again im lazier than that now, i have a buddy DSMBCi (self inflating) with a small crack bottle so its twist 'n' go