Question Support divers skills

[SelfDiver]

In an attempt to make up for my dumb questions...
What do you want from your surface support and support divers?
Do people even have support divers anymore?
There is no "specialty" or formal training in the recreational world. Commercial divers have specific duties for their support team.

If you were to make a course for recreational support divers what would that look like? Prerequisites? Required skills? Theory?

 

[rjack321]

In an attempt to make up for my dumb questions...
What do you want from your surface support and support divers?
Do people even have support divers anymore?
There is no "specialty" or formal training in the recreational world. Commercial divers have specific duties for their support team.

If you were to make a course for recreational support divers what would that look like? Prerequisites? Required skills? Theory?

Back when I was doing dives that required support the best level we aspired to was someone trained up to 1 level below you. So on a hypoxic mix dive you'd want a normoxic trained diver. We never used support on a normoxic dive, kind of by definition those dives are generally manageable with team resources and don't need dedicated support.

Support isn't just about taking a bottle. If everything is going totally sideways you want someone trained to a fairly high level to intervene and take over the casualty. The plus side of taking normoxic trained divers for hypoxic dives is the support gets to learn the ropes of the dives they aspire to do in the future.

 

[nadwidny]

I've only had support divers on a couple of occasions. One was in Halifax NS around 20 years ago and we were on OC doing 230-310' dives. The support diver was advanced nitrox trained. I recall he dove with doubles with 32% and had a cylinder of 50% in case we needed it. He may have had O2 as well. Probably. He would meet us around 80-90'. check in that we were ok and would take any stages, cameras, etc off us.

I haven't had one until the last couple of years on our 360' dives in Kootenay Lake, BC. We are obviously on CCR these days. She is advanced nitrox trained with 32% in her doubles, and meets us at around 90' to check in. She carries an 80 of 21/35 and an 80 of 50%. She takes our bailouts when we don't need them anymore plus cameras, etc. O2 is hanging from the deco station plus we have a drop set of various gases that the boat drops on us if needed.

It was important to us that the support diver does not get into deco. They are the communication between the boat and the divers. They are nice to have but not necessary and in same cases (like off Malin Head in Ireland) can, in the grand scheme of the operation, be more of a problem than an asset.