To those considering an OW class...

[Maxwell's Hammer]

I learned the skill too - buddy breathing with and without a mask. I think it can be extremely stressful and if not practiced often could be dangerous. I see it as a colossal failure of dive planning and gas management. You can plan for any scenario without resorting to it including loss of deco gas.

Good thing that there are never any colossal failures of planning or gas management, then. Good thing it is not taught any more so that even that cannot be part of the planning for such scenario.

 

[TheRedHead]

Good thing that there are never any colossal failures of planning or gas management, then. Good thing it is not taught any more so that even that cannot be part of the planning for such scenario.

I think it would be better to teach the students dive planning and gas management. There are some scenarios in a overhead when you're really screwed where it might be necessary, but open water divers with a buddy would have to be in a situation where you have 3 2nd stage failures or a first stage failure plus a 2nd stage failure on the working regulator.

 

[jbd]

I learned the skill too - buddy breathing with and without a mask. I think it can be extremely stressful and if not practiced often could be dangerous. I see it as a colossal failure of dive planning and gas management. You can plan for any scenario without resorting to it including loss of deco gas.

I don't teach it as a replacement for good planning, monitoring of gas supply etc, etc, etc,

I just feel that when one goes into an "alien" environment one should possess all the tricks of the trade so to speak. I agree that skills should be kept up through practice. Whether or not anyone I teach to dive ever practices buddy breathing is unknown to me, but was a skill they once had even though I doubt they will ever use it.

I personally don't find buddy breathing to be stressful.

 

[Storm]

Exactly the point I was making.

So where do those University students get the skills or ability to move from University to productive employee? Through experience. They have learned what they have learned, but to apply it they must practice and gain experience.

To apply this to diving, the answer is not to lengthen the class any more than to lengthen the requirements for graduation. It is to get out and dive within the limits of one's training and experience, and through that to gain experience and skill. The answer lies not in the classroom, but in the practice (practice, practice).

I disagree, and the example I used actually does not fit your paradigm.

I agree that the student learns through gaining real life experience, but the point that I was making, which you missed, is the fact that in my example, the skill in question is, or rather used to be, and should become again, a fundamental skill that should be mastered before the student is sent along to gain experience.

So by your paradigm, the student, who cannot even write well enough to create their own resume, should be sent out to the work force to learn this most fundament skill.

 

[TheRedHead]

I personally don't find buddy breathing to be stressful.

I find buddy breathing without a mask at 150 feet unpleasantly narced to be rather stressful. But that was the point of the exercise.

But I never learned it in a recreational diving class. My OW instructor, who was also a cave diver, just didn't approve ot it. Said it was a hold over from the days of J-valves and primitive diving practices. There are good arguments against it, including the fact that fatalities have decreased since divers started using backup regulators.

You can also breathe off your inflator hose, possibly from a bare tank, but I have never tried it.

 

[Maxwell's Hammer]

paradigm

:lol: :lol:
​

"paradigm"
Now, that really cracks me up.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Exactly the point I was making.

So where do those University students get the skills or ability to move from University to productive employee? Through experience. They have learned what they have learned, but to apply it they must practice and gain experience.

To apply this to diving, the answer is not to lengthen the class any more than to lengthen the requirements for graduation. It is to get out and dive within the limits of one's training and experience, and through that to gain experience and skill. The answer lies not in the classroom, but in the practice (practice, practice).

I don't agree. When one leaves the university they go to work and gain experience applying their university learned skills to their job. However, they are expected to already have the math skills, language skills, ect.

We don't do it this way in diving at all. So many of the most basic aspects of diving are totally neglected in training that it's like sending a grad away from the university without basic math skill or language and computer skills. They don't have any skills to learn to apply to the job, or in our case, the diving environment.

Go back to the simple skill assessment that I described a couple of posts back. A diver who can't hover well, can't do a very controled descent. If they do a controled descent...the whole dive falls apart from the very start. They aren't even ready to do the OW portion of their training let alone gain experience in a real diving situation. It's like sending the university student to the lab without having read the book or done the homework first. They're liable to get electricuted before they even get started but even if they don't they aren't going to learn anything in the lab because they don't understand what they see. It's the same with diving. Divers do not improve very much with experience because they don't have the basics on which to build. Forcing a university student to experience being electricuted is no way to teach ohm's law.

In dive training, the OW dives are to reinforce and apply what the student has already learned in confined water. There's too much that isn't taught in confined water at all. Since it isn't taught in confined water, standards can't require the student to demonstrate proficiency in OW so they can just bounce along. They get certified and go out bouncing around as certified divers. Not only don't they have the skill foundation to build on, they don't even know what it is that's missing. They are like the university student in the electronics lab who gets electricuted because he never read the book. First he has to re-discover ohms law on his own and figure out how it applies to his problem. After a whole bunch of trouble and maybe even pain he may eventually realize that the problem is that his flesh having lower resistance to current flow than open air, closed the loop of a circuit and caused current to flow through his body. Our diving student, first needs to figure out that things like trim, gas management and the ability to make a controled descent with a buddy would help them and then they need to invent the techniques themselves because they don't even know that it's already been done.

All this is why divers learn skills like trim and gas management her on scuba board. LOL

Read back a few pages and you'll see where a discussion of the need to do descents and ascents as a buddy team was a regular revelation to some board members who had never been exposed to the concept at all let alone taught how to do it. Now pick up some training standards and you'll see why.

No, the logic behind how diving is taught is so twisted as to almost be funny and the holes are so large that I can't help wonder why they aren't as blatant as a slap in the face to any one who looks. The answer to that, of course, in found in further examination of training standards where we see that the skills that are missing from entry level training aren't taught in any class. Even a recreational diving instructor has never been required to demonstrate a controled descent with a buddy, learn gas management, demonstrate good trim or even learn the mechanics behind it and the list goes on.

Even if you argue that it doesn't need to be taught in entry level training, it's hard to argue that it shouldn't be taught and required at some level. The fact that it isn't seems proof that those designing the courses and writing the standads actually don't know these things themselves. About the time that it became clear to me that the agencies actually don't know how to dive and have no idea at all about how to teach it that I stopped sending them money.

 

[MikeFerrara]

I think it would be better to teach the students dive planning and gas management. There are some scenarios in a overhead when you're really screwed where it might be necessary, but open water divers with a buddy would have to be in a situation where you have 3 2nd stage failures or a first stage failure plus a 2nd stage failure on the working regulator.

All it takes is a first stage failure and an alternate second stage that takes too long to find or deploy. I often see alternates dangling behind a diver or even stowed in pockets and under cumberbuns. When divers are using such screwed up equipment configurations buddy breathing would be a good skill to have.

Notice though how often divers resort to just surfacing. Niether sharing an alternate or buddy breathing can be used if buddies aren't close enough and aware.

You can plan for any scenario without resorting to it including loss of deco gas.

Of course we carry enough decompression gas to be able to complete the dive with the loss of any one gas. However, that means more time and maybe LOTS more time in-water. That extra time can be bad news all on it's own when we consider things like temperature, sea conditions and the possible existance of other problems. Since we don't put alternates on decompression bottles, buddy breathing a decompression reg is the obvious solution to a lost bottle without the added in-water time associated with decompression without it.

Any technical diver should be proficient at buddy breathing and I don't think that tech training is the place to be first exposed to it. It's a basic skill that should be initially taught in entry level training. It's not hard, it's not dangerous and this is all just more agency propoganda. It only becomes dangerous when we have divers who are too unconfortable and not able to control their position well enough to impliment it...in other words, the other holes in entry level training are what makes buddy breathing difficult.

 

[jbd]

I find buddy breathing without a mask at 150 feet unpleasantly narced to be rather stressful. But that was the point of the exercise.

But I never learned it in a recreational diving class. My OW instructor, who was also a cave diver, just didn't approve ot it. Said it was a hold over from the days of J-valves and primitive diving practices. There are good arguments against it, including the fact that fatalities have decreased since divers started using backup regulators.

You can also breathe off your inflator hose, possibly from a bare tank, but I have never tried it.

IMO, the reason you found buddy breathing stressful in the scenario you learned it in, is because this was essentially your first exposure to the skill. Had you learned it in OW, repeated it in AOW and whatever master level you took and continued it into your tech training it would not have been stressful. It would simply have been something to do demonstrating you had the skill done pat.

Please understand that I DON'T teach this as a replacement to gas planning, monitoring, diving skills or appropriate equipment. I teach it to help the students understand that there are many ways out of a situation as long as one knows their options and stays calm enough to exercise those options.

As a point of discussion I would like to hear what the arguements are against buddy breathing when the people involved are trained and competent in the skill. I don't want to hear things like, one should never get in that situation yada yada yada. The scenario is that the two divers ARE in the situation where one is OOA for whatever reason and they are at a depth of 120(salt water or freshwater) and there have been enough equipment failures or whatever so that there is only one regulated source of air/gas.

 

[Storm]

As a point of discussion I would like to hear what the arguements are against buddy breathing when the people involved are trained and competent in the skill. I don't want to hear things like, one should never get in that situation yada yada yada. The scenario is that the two divers ARE in the situation where one is OOA for whatever reason and they are at a depth of 120(salt water or freshwater) and there have been enough equipment failures or whatever so that there is only one regulated source of air/gas.

Because PADI says you should be doing a CESA instead? OPPS! Did I say that out load:shakehead.

After all their order is
Normal Accent
Buddy Assisted normal accent
CESA
Buddy Breathing.


Now I don't know about you, but personally, I failed (intentionally) when asked to put these in order as I personally think that the chances of a safe (non bending experience) ascent while performing a CESA, from any depth is questionable, and believe that if there is sufficient air in buddy's tank (which there should be if you've done proper gas planning), that the chances of both making it to the surface safely are greater using buddy breathing (assuming that merely donating a secondary is not possible).

Now some might argue that buddy breathing has the potential of creating a potential second victim scenario. That belief is predicated on the assumption that both divers are at risk when buddy breathing so the practice is discouraged. As the practice is discouraged it is not practiced sufficiently enough for the student diver to become proficient enough in the task. The cycle is self perpetuating.

I put forward that if the drill were to be taught and practiced the student would become proficient in the task to the point where buddy breathing would be no more of a risk than donating a secondary.

IMHO, students are taught to use a CESA before attempting to buddy breath for training liability reasons only. Take an average OW check out dive. Most are done in thirty feet or less of water, where a student can simply blow for the surface. The agencies probably figure that if an OW student panics or has a problem instinct will take over they'll head up anyway, so they might as well be taught how to do it a safely as possible.

I personally think this wrong headed, and being a diver who has had a serious OOA at depth (95 feet) it's a good thing that I personally put CESA in the bottom of the list.

Some will argue that buddy breathing is inherently dangerous and should not be taught in OW at all, but rather later after a student has become more proficient in other skills like controlled ascents and buoyancy control. Those who espouse this, are also predicating their stance on the assumption that there is not enough time in an OW to master the prerequisite skills needed to perform buddy breathing safely, but then will also argue that the OW course need not be lengthened......yet another self perpetuating cycle.

The solution, from a pure training point of view, is actually quite simple. Increase the length of the OW course and the number of OW dives, to allow the average student to become proficient in the fundamentals like buoyancy control and ascents to the point where buddy breathing can then be taught and practiced not only kneeling on the bottom, as it is now, but also while ascending properly.

Again it all goes back to the fact that the agencies are more concerned with the volume of divers they can churn out, not the quality

BTW, if you’re at 120 feet and your buddy is not around, you failed to practice proper buddy diving so a please pass on my regards Mr. Darwin when you meet him.