Stress & Rescue with only 8 logged dives ?

[emoreira]

Hi, I'm now taking the S&R Course. One of the fellow divers that is taking the course with me is newly certified as OWD last december 2010 and has only 8 logged dives.
I know that there is almost no requirements to do the S&R course but OWD Cert, but accepting a student with only 8 logged dives, without deep diving cert or navigation, sounds to me without any logic.
What can a Rescue diver like this do if the victim is beyond 18 meters depth or he has no clue of how to search a missing diver.

 

[melanie.]

More training is never a bad thing. Just because they might not have the experience to use the tools yet doesn't mean it is worthless to learn them.

I would hope if a situation is beyond their abilities they wouldn't go, but that has nothing to do with whether they took a course or not

 

[TSandM]

There isn't all that much in the Rescue class that actually involves diving skills. A lot of it is mindset, and how to AVOID problems, and some is surface skills like getting people out of their kit and doing tows and carries. We did do a search scenario, but IIRC, none of the students in the class had taken Search and Recovery; we managed anyway, after a briefing on techniques we could choose.

I think at 8 dives, I would have been pretty challenged, but on the other hand, I could applaud this student for wanting to take a class to improve his safety.

 

[emoreira]

I took this course with a lot of responsibility and decided to take it after more than 60 dives under my belt. I didn't take it before because I though I had not the experience nor the diving skills to be a rescue diver. I had to be comfortable diving prior to be a rescue diver. After my check-out (like this case) I didn't know anything about diving alone, I mean without a DM that guide me and my buddy underwater. The first open water dive after check-out with a dive buddy and no DM was a challenge. I think the case of this fellow student. He has not yet done the first dives with a buddy without a DM, as the 8 logged dives were also cert dives for specialties.
Perhaps I'm overacting, but for me, being a rescue diver means a lot.

 

[aquaregia]

I think I had 15 dives when I started Rescue. I basically did OW/AOW/RQ back to back over about six months with only 6 or so. I prefer to think of my OW course as a six month course with 20ish dives total. I took it very seriously, and actually had to rescue a (conscious) diver during one of the dives for rescue too, so it was sort of intense . What might be different though is that after my last checkout dive I was comfortable diving in similar conditions with a similarly trained buddy, and a few weeks after my checkout dives, I did.

I can sort of see your point that if someone has never done unaccompanied diving they may not have ever been in a situation where they had to trust themselves to handle themselves, let alone to handle someone else. On the other hand, there's something to be said for getting the complete training that you want before you go into the wild.

In terms of dive count though, I've known divers with 300 dives who couldn't set up their gear, yet records have been set by people with a smaller dive count.

 

[GrumpyOldGuy]

Divers take many different styles of learning. Some do classes back to back to back and it works. Some like me are stubborn, rarely take classes unless we have to, but dive and practice skills on our own. Most are someplace in the middle.

The diver you cited might have recognized the flaws of the current abbreviate OW training and decided on a track to address this that fit his style of learning. Maybe he won't get as much out of it as you did, but I am sure he will be a better diver after the class than before which is the real goal we should all have. Taking the class is not exposing him to any more danger than is already there, but addressing how to recognize it and appropriate actions.

 

[raftingtigger]

I've read a lot of complaining here on SB on the lack of rescue training in OW courses. So here is a diver that wants to remedy the lack. Kudos to them.

50-100 dives from now they may want to repeat the class. My guess is that the first time around Rescue will make them a safer and more aware diver. The second time around they may become a competent potential rescuer.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

My feeling is if the student has not had basic rescue techniques such as panicked diver, unconscious diver from depth, tows while stripping gear, and supporting a diver at the surface they are not well served taking any other classes first. This is the main reason I have those skills as well as no mask swims, buddy breathing swims, and no mask air share swims and ascents in the last dive of my AOW class. For those people who were shorted these skills in their OW training.

Giving a diver an AOW card and not giving them the skills to assist a fellow diver is not only short sighted but also irresponsible. I have looked at several incidents where divers died because their buddies were incapable of helping them. AOW dives by their very definition put the diver in a position where they and their buddies can get into trouble quicker and with more serious consequences. Leaving those basic skills I noted in OW classes may have made the difference, and some divers may have been able to be saved.

If any skills need to be introduced as soon as possible it is rescue skills.

 

[drbill]

When I finally had to get certified in the 60s, the three week course I took (Los Angeles County) covered the basics of what is taught in OW, AOW and Rescue (PADI/NAUI) in a single course. I see nothing wrong with a newly minted OW diver going for S&R, but then I'm not familiar with SSI standards (nor those of PADI, NAUI or any other agency).

 

[D_B]

Some form of rescue training? the sooner the better, with the requirement being that they are comfortable in the water and have basic buoyancy and trim skills , so they are not too busy with the basic diving to learn new skills and take in new info


I did rescue with about 14 dives but I also had met the above requirements
At some point I would like to take the course again, and I applaud those instructors that allow prior rescue graduates to do so at little or no expense