Doing nothing.
Holding still. Perfectly still in the water column. No sculling or kicking just hanging there motionless. You can do all the ditch-and-dons and free ascents and air shares and valve drills and stage swaps and bag shoots you want but nothing seems more allusive to more divers than holding perfectly still in the water. Forget adding one of these other skills to the equation!
When I first witnessed this skill, I had my biggest diving epiphany. It was several years and several hundred dives ago. Uncle Pug invited me to dive with him, and we were joined by SnowBear and NWGratefulDiver. I donned my wetsuit, discount sporting goods BC and reg, snorkel, rental AL80 and Atomic split fins, and we headed out into Cove II. At 30 we came upon a single stubby squid floating about 6 over the bottom. My three dive partners formed a circle around the squid, hanging there motionless, and lit it up with their HID lights. I tried to join the circle, and suddenly realized that I was about to swim right into the squid, and then past it into another diver! So I quickly started sculling wildly with my hands to propel myself backwards. It worked, kind of, and I avoided the collusion. But as I tried to bring myself to a stop, I plunged down into the bottom and stirred up a giant cloud of silt. The vis around the squid dropped to zero, so the team moved on.
After the dive, no one said anything about the silt-up, my skills (or lack of) or my cheap gear. They were too busy just enjoying talking about the dive. But they didnt need to say anything. It was obvious to me, after watching these three divers, that they were in another league of diving that I didnt understand.
Many years, many dives, and many classes later, I still work hard to perfect the art of doing nothing. Last week we were doing a skills dive, and I did what I thought was a fairly decent valve drill. But when I looked down after the drill, I had moved forward about six feet. Darn!! The only reason my buddy didnt nail me on it after the dive was that he was too busy kicking himself for moving even further during his drill.
Watch the DIR and DIR-X videos, and youll see that in most cases, even those guys are doing tiny back-kicks (while doing, for example, an air share) to maintain their distance from each other.
If you haven't really tried this, and you don't think it's as difficult as I'm saying, on your next dive, you and your buddy face each other four feet apart and see if you can maintain that exact position for one minute without moving.
I said, without moving.
In conclusion, holding perfectly still in the water column, and then reaching up and turning off a valve, or removing something from a pocket, or handing off a reg and staying exactly where you were no moving forward, up or down no little wiggling of the feet or hands just frozen like a fly in amber
For me, this is the most difficult diving skill to master.
Holding still. Perfectly still in the water column. No sculling or kicking just hanging there motionless. You can do all the ditch-and-dons and free ascents and air shares and valve drills and stage swaps and bag shoots you want but nothing seems more allusive to more divers than holding perfectly still in the water. Forget adding one of these other skills to the equation!
When I first witnessed this skill, I had my biggest diving epiphany. It was several years and several hundred dives ago. Uncle Pug invited me to dive with him, and we were joined by SnowBear and NWGratefulDiver. I donned my wetsuit, discount sporting goods BC and reg, snorkel, rental AL80 and Atomic split fins, and we headed out into Cove II. At 30 we came upon a single stubby squid floating about 6 over the bottom. My three dive partners formed a circle around the squid, hanging there motionless, and lit it up with their HID lights. I tried to join the circle, and suddenly realized that I was about to swim right into the squid, and then past it into another diver! So I quickly started sculling wildly with my hands to propel myself backwards. It worked, kind of, and I avoided the collusion. But as I tried to bring myself to a stop, I plunged down into the bottom and stirred up a giant cloud of silt. The vis around the squid dropped to zero, so the team moved on.
After the dive, no one said anything about the silt-up, my skills (or lack of) or my cheap gear. They were too busy just enjoying talking about the dive. But they didnt need to say anything. It was obvious to me, after watching these three divers, that they were in another league of diving that I didnt understand.
Many years, many dives, and many classes later, I still work hard to perfect the art of doing nothing. Last week we were doing a skills dive, and I did what I thought was a fairly decent valve drill. But when I looked down after the drill, I had moved forward about six feet. Darn!! The only reason my buddy didnt nail me on it after the dive was that he was too busy kicking himself for moving even further during his drill.
Watch the DIR and DIR-X videos, and youll see that in most cases, even those guys are doing tiny back-kicks (while doing, for example, an air share) to maintain their distance from each other.
If you haven't really tried this, and you don't think it's as difficult as I'm saying, on your next dive, you and your buddy face each other four feet apart and see if you can maintain that exact position for one minute without moving.
I said, without moving.
In conclusion, holding perfectly still in the water column, and then reaching up and turning off a valve, or removing something from a pocket, or handing off a reg and staying exactly where you were no moving forward, up or down no little wiggling of the feet or hands just frozen like a fly in amber
For me, this is the most difficult diving skill to master.
