Things Scuba Instructors teach that are either bad or just wrong.

[wetb4igetinthewater]

The "bring two" was a joke. You screw in the first, and use that to screw in the second.

The one I did was a scuba sand screw, so different. But something like a spiked crowbar could help. Slam short end in to the side, use it as a drag anchor to rotate, lift up and slam in again to repeat. Lots of work even if it worked.

oh I figured the extra one was a joke. However having torque is key. I used a metal bar that would fit through the eye and tried, but at some point, I couldn't drive through rocks with not being able to dig in. I did try above the waterline and could get a lot farther.

 

[BoltSnap]

You don't need a class, you can learn everything you need to know on internet forums.

Then you get people who start teaching with this information.

I face this situation in Libya where I reside and teach. There are several crooks who are active in teaching scuba and free diving who aren't certified in anything yet they teach many students. They claim that they are experts and have learned everything they need to learn from the internet and YouTube. They literally say this in public. In fact, one said it in a meeting for dive instructors claiming that the agency thing is a scam and everything is available on YouTube, not just diving but even engineering, medicine, etc.

 

[boulderjohn]

I face this situation in Libya where I reside and teach. There are several crooks who are active in teaching scuba and free diving who aren't certified in anything yet they teach many students. They claim that they are experts and have learned everything they need to learn from the internet and YouTube. They literally say this in public. In fact, one said it in a meeting for dive instructors claiming that the agency thing is a scam and everything is available on YouTube, not just diving but even engineering, medicine, etc.

I very briefly participated in a popular FaceBook scuba discussion group a couple of years ago. My first attempt to participate came when someone asked a question about DCS and decompression. By the time I saw the question, about 20 people had already answered, and about 18 of them were dead wrong. I gave a correct answer, citing clear evidence in support, but within an hour there were maybe 30 more wrong answers, some ridiculously wrong. Other knowledgeable people, most with names I recognized, chimed in with accurate facts, but our voices were all drowned out by the deluge of nonsense.

I never checked in to that group again.

 

[rick00001967]

Can you describe that? I only know of one instance, and it took a while to stop delivering gas all together. For each of the 3 instances, how quickly did it shut off completely?

i didn't happen to me but i was on the site.

if i remember right.....one was at an ice dive. i believe our tech said something broke in the first stage. one was at the pool. a students gauge said they had pressure (and we know there was gas in the tank). no gas. even the bcd inflate would not work. never did find out what the result of that was. and the other was in a cenote. one diver in the group was using rental gear and was buddied with the guide (lucky for her). pressure gauge said their was pressure but no gas was being delivered. the guide shared gas for the remainder of the dive. we were close to the exit. she handled it really well actually. never found out the reason for this either. who knows. stuck gauge maybe? maybe she sucked her tank dry?

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

same thing happened to one of our instructors. blew the face right off at the pool one night.
i have also been told that regs never fail closed. they only fail open. i have seen a reg fail to deliver gas three times. go figure.

I’ll bet the little “feet” on the demand lever slipped off the poppet. It’s happened to me.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

I very briefly participated in a popular FaceBook scuba discussion group a couple of years ago. My first attempt to participate came when someone asked a question about DCS and decompression. By the time I saw the question, about 20 people had already answered, and about 18 of them were dead wrong. I gave a correct answer, citing clear evidence in support, but within an hour there were maybe 30 more wrong answers, some ridiculously wrong. Other knowledgeable people, most with names I recognized, chimed in with accurate facts, but our voices were all drowned out by the deluge of nonsense.

I never checked in to that group again.

Kind of like what can happen around here.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Overweighting was the biggest problem I saw when I certified. I didn’t realize it until a few years later. I thought maybe that was just how it was done in scuba, I didn’t know. I was already a freediver.
They loaded us up so much that we were planted firmly on the bottom in the pool and on the ocean floor. The instructors reasoning was that he wanted people to be able to sink feet first when they dumped air and not float away when doing skills along the rope. I felt like it was a balancing act between all the ballast weight and the air cell of the BC, and the diver wearing this contraption was just along for the ride. Buoyancy was now controlled with buttons like an elevator ride. This mentality was never corrected by any later instruction. Not until individual divers figured out it was wrong was it corrected. Many probably never figured out to correct it. I was lucky that I dived with a guy who straightened me out on weighting. The final understanding about proper weighting came when I decided to take up no BC diving in my vintage pursuits. I found I was pretty much right back to freedive weighting except with a tank on my back. Pretty simple really.
Shop instructors will also tell you about all the gear you need to buy so you look like a Christmas tree. They must get commissions for gear sales. Vintage diving and minimalism goes straight against this philosophy.

 

[boulderjohn]

Kind of like what can happen around here.

Not as much. In fact, the exact same topic was discussed here about a year ago, and some people responded with the same nonsense. The result was just the opposite, though. People with well established credentials cited studies, including links, that completely refuted the nonsense. Once that happened, the flood of nonsense came to a halt, and the thread ended up being extremely valuable.

 

[boulderjohn]

Kind of like what can happen around here.

A second thought...

What clearly happened in the FaceBook discussion is that people did not want to read through the long list of replies, so they just responded to the initial question as if they were the first ones to respond. Thus, the presence of clear and articulate responses to the contrary had no effect on them.

You do sometimes see this on ScubaBoard. When a discussion gets to the fourth or fifth page, you will often see someone make a post starting with something like "I haven't read the other posts, but...." What often follows is misinformation that has already been introduced and then thoroughly debunked. I often wonder if the person who wrote that ever goes back, reads the thread, and is then thoroughly embarrassed. I doubt it. I bet they just go on to other threads, convinced they have just added positively to the collective scuba mind.

I wrote a post on this many years ago. I called it the "I can't be bothered to read" syndrome.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

A second thought...

What clearly happened in the FaceBook discussion is that people did not want to read through the long list of replies, so they just responded to the initial question as if they were the first ones to respond. Thus, the presence of clear and articulate responses to the contrary had no effect on them.

You do sometimes see this on ScubaBoard. When a discussion gets to the fourth or fifth page, you will often see someone make a post starting with something like "I haven't read the other posts, but...." What often follows is misinformation that has already been introduced and then thoroughly debunked. I often wonder if the person who wrote that ever goes back, reads the thread, and is then thoroughly embarrassed. I doubt it. I bet they just go on to other threads, convinced they have just added positively to the collective scuba mind.

I wrote a post on this many years ago. I called it the "I can't be bothered to read" syndrome.

and sometimes the posts are so long (like the death of the young woman in Montana in her AOW course) that you forget all the discussions and have to go back to reread it. I made the mistake once of not refreshing my memory.