Teaching in TX mud baths

[Texasguy]

So, in Houston, lake 288. I was passing platforms, taking a few swim rounds just for curiosity's sake.

The visibility was pretty bad, 6 feet+/-, then imagine visibility where students have been mixing silt for hours. 4-5 feet max if someone wears bright colors?

To tell the truth I was amazed that classes were still taking place. I got to admit, I don't know much about instruction and teaching scuba, yet, personally I'd be petrified taking multiple green drivers down in such conditions. If one of the students would be too slow, students would surely separate, it takes little to swim out beyond instructor's visibility. If anything, in my mind, students to the instructor ratio should be 1:1.

PS: I also pity students who have learn scuba in such conditions, hope they don't think that such dives are normal.

 

[oldschool]

Personally, I think learning to dive in such conditions is a plus. If a diver, especially a new diver, can learn to have confidence in their abilities under these conditions, diving under optimal conditions will be a walk in the park. Besides, you can never truly appreciate great diving until you have experienced the bad. I regularly dive with less than 3 ft. visibility and I know this has made me a more confident and stronger diver. It's definitely done wonders for my navigational skills.

 

[C P]

Good Viz used to scare me. I realized there were creatures in the water with me that I couldn't see in bad viz

 

[ibj40]

We used to teach at Squaw Creek lake, up near Granbury, TX, before access was restricted due to 9/11 (Squaw Creek is the cooling lake for two nuclear power plants).

One time we were on a navigation dive, leaving a platform that had been submerged, and I was the trailer behind the students. Fortunately, the diver in front of me had a white tank, as all I could see was this dot in front of me. I looked away for just a second, and the dot disappeared. I continued on the compass heading for about a minute, and then surfaced (lake's only about 20 feet deep at that point), immediately spotting the bubble trail moving off in the distance.

As I was waiting for them to return, another diver (who I didn't recognize) surfaced, looking a little confused. He asked me if I had seen a group of divers, and I pointed to mine. I asked him if he was a student, and he said no, he was the instructor, and that he had been leading a group, and turned around and they were gone. Finally, off a ways from where we were, two heads popped to the surface. "There they are", he says, and yelled out their names, as they started swimming toward each other. My group finally came back by, and I dropped down and followed them back to the platform, apparently they never missed me.

Was funny at the time, but I can see where it might have been an issue under more challenging conditions.

 

[Bill Parker]

You have to have the right stuff to dive in Texas mud water. It's not for everyone.

 

[driftwood]

It's one of the reasons I advocate that the first set of open water dives should be in Spring Lake. Even after a couple of classes in the Training Area, the vis is pretty good for Texas. For the second set of dives, I would go to one of the lakes where the students can get deeper than 16' and be challenged by poorer vis conditions.

 

[chrispete]

Low(er) viz training can be very beneficial for students. It teaches them to swim slowly or else they may not have time to stop before banging their head into a platform/boat/plane, etc. I've enjoyed diving at 288 since we moved back to SE Texas, nice to get back to my Swamp Diver roots.

 

[Lefty Writer]

Personally, I think learning to dive in such conditions is a plus. If a diver, especially a new diver, can learn to have confidence in their abilities under these conditions, diving under optimal conditions will be a walk in the park. Besides, you can never truly appreciate great diving until you have experienced the bad. I regularly dive with less than 3 ft. visibility and I know this has made me a more confident and stronger diver. It's definitely done wonders for my navigational skills.

Absolutely!

After diving Mammoth Lake or even the Blue Lagoon, it makes diving in the Caribbean that much better. Last November my wife and I were diving in Belize on a cruise stop and it had been raining off and on. When we got to the dive shop, the staff started apologizing for the "bad viz."

My first thought was, "Oh, great, we can do that kind of diving in Texas."

The staff said something like "We are really sorry, but the best viz we found was 50 feet." My wife and I just looked at each other and laughed. Once we explained that our last dive's best viz was 5 feet, they were happy and we were happy.

 

[divezonescuba]

While low visibility can be advantageous in certain training circumstances, it can also discourage or prevent divers from finishing open water or even AOW courses. This is particularly common in divers who have claustrophobic tendencies who when beginning diving would not otherwise have issues.

The same applies to doing the AOW deep dive under no visibility conditions. We had one diver who was susceptible to seasickness and could not complete her AOW deep dive offshore. We ended up going to one of the inland dive sites where the visibility was literally non-existant below 30 feet. If I did not have an organically lit led computer, I would not have been able to determine what depth I was at. A dive of this type does little to fulfill the intentions of a deep dive for certification purposes.

 

[James R]

PS: I also pity students who have learn scuba in such conditions, hope they don't think that such dives are normal.

I feel worse for people with a consistently negative outlook on everything...

Something to think about.