Triggers of Dive Accidents

[flots am]

Diving molokini crater comes to mind -- there were 12-15 boats coming and going throughout the dive (you could hear the all boat traffic from the bottom). Is it smart to head to the surface in relatively high traffic areas like that? This is something that I've had to consider before as I usually suck down air faster than the more experienced divers in my group. My OW instructor beat it into our heads that we should never surface in high traffic areas if there were other options (presumably using an alternate air source in this situation).

You need to be able to send up a surface marker buoy SMB to mark your location and hopefully keep the boats from killing you when you ascend. Nearly every emergency procedure taught in Open Water class ends with the diver floating on the surface. If this isn't an option, then OW training is unsufficient.

This includes any dive where a safe exit requires returning to the starting point.

flots

 

[SoCalRich]

I agree with Kurtis.
And I will bring up this suject on board my next boat dives.

I would like to add; That the (way) a diver signals his remaining air, is different to many people.
(I try to review this signal with my buddy before a dive). Also I thing the DM should look at a new divers gauge on their first dives together. Just to make sure they and the same page.
Mery Christmas

 

[Atom]

The marketing of SCUBA is the problem. That's the only reason for these contortions of logic. In climbing, which isn't marketed as being for everyone under the sun, no one would down play tying the knot that attaches the rope to your harness by saying that your buddy will catch the mistake or that someone else or some piece of equipment will save you from your inattentiveness. Virtually no one therefore forgets to properly tie that knot.

Experienced climbers sometimes get complacent and make mistakes though... an unfinished figure 8 knot because they were talking to their belayer or not passing the rope properly through the harness can and does happen.

I was taught to do mutual verification before starting a climb, it takes 10 seconds to show your knot to your belayer and check that the belayer has the belay device properly configured with the biner locked. But that's more the equivalent of a buddy check than an air share.


In any case, I do agree that gas management is not emphasized enough, and that the importance of monitoring your air consumption is not stressed enough most of the time. I feel that instead of asking you how much air you have the instructor should ask you how much air you think you have 1st and then make you check and answer again.

That's a least one advantage to wireless transmitters on wrist computers, takes 2 seconds to check and gives you all the info you need in one look at your instrument.

 

[Atom]

Peter,
I think the goal of Basic Open Water Training, should be to give a person the skills and knowledge, "to not kill themselves" on a 40 to 60 foot dive, by doing something stupid. It is not supposed to make them a GREAT Diver. But they do need the most important skills----guage reading/monitoring air supply.....s-drill air sharing.. mask off and on underwater.....peripherol awareness of buddy....don't do follow the leader diving....how to kick/propel yourself on scuba....how to find close to neutral with a BC at depth....and how to do a CESA. Lots of practice with the CESA...

I wonder why a typical OW course doesn't require you to plan and execute a dive with a buddy without an instructor. OW is supposed to prepare you to dive independently but it's the one thing you're guaranteed not to do in the course. In fact where I took my OW course it's pretty damn hard to dive with a buddy without an guide/DM/instructor, because nobody will let you.

When I did my cavern course we did the 1st dive as a 'demo dive' where the instructor pretty much ran the show but the latter dives where ours to plan/execute with the instructor hovering nearby and throwing failures at us. I've learned far more this way than if I'd been following him the entire time.

 

[boulderjohn]

I wonder why a typical OW course doesn't require you to plan and execute a dive with a buddy without an instructor.

Require and without an instructor, taken literally, are contradictory terms.

If you read the standards for PADI, at least, OW students are supposed to participate in the dive planning for their OW dives, with the supervision of the instructor.

 

[Ken Kurtis]

I wonder why a typical OW course doesn't require you to plan and execute a dive with a buddy without an instructor

It's an excellent suggestion and one (when I was teaching OW regularly) that I would do as the final dive for all my classes. The students had all already done the required number of dives and demonstrated skills up to snuff for me, and then the final thing was to plan/do a dive on their own with their buddy, while I stayed up on the boat and supervised.

I would always tell them that I wanted their first dive without me to be when they knew I was at least close so they'd still feel comfortable. But it also tends to point out to them things they have to think about - navigation, watching depth, etc. - that they sometimes tend to take for granted when they're under the direct supervision/control of an instructor.

But I also think part of all of this goes to mindset of the instructors who are teaching the newbies. Too often nowadays I see instructors whose objective seems to be to get their students through the required skills and minimum number of dives rather than teaching them how to dive and ensuring that they are comfortable on their own before handing them their card. Two different things in my opinion.

Successful completion of skills alone does not a "diver" make.

And I just thought of this as I was proofreading this post: There's a big difference between instructors who "hand divers their card" and instructors who require their students to earn their certification card.

- Ken

 

[boulderjohn]

But I also think part of all of this goes to mindset of the instructors who are teaching the newbies. Too often nowadays I see instructors whose objective seems to be to get their students through the required skills and minimum number of dives rather than teaching them how to dive and ensuring that they are comfortable on their own before handing them their card. Two different things in my opinion.

Successful completion of skills alone does not a "diver" make.

I agree with this, and I wonder to what extent fear of liability comes into play. Instructors are often so focused on maintaining control of the student and making sure the students are never in anything remotely close to a situation where they might make a mistake that cannot be immediately solved by the lurking instructor that they don't allow independent diving of any kind.

I recently saw a typical confined water class. All skills (except the obvious) were performed with the students anchored firmly to the floor of the pool on their knees, with the instructor kneeling inches away, ready to pounce on the slightest mistake. During those rare moments when the instructor allowed the students to swim freely, the instructor knelt in the corner of the pool, watching vigilantly for signs of trouble.

In contrast, students can do all skills while neutrally buoyant. When you see students removing and replacing their weight belts and scuba units in mid water, it looks a little sloppier than kneeling on the bottom, and the instructor has to hover in mid water to be ready to solve problems, but the students are learning much more. You can have students practice a lot of independent swimming in buddy teams, with the instructor swimming as well to serve as a role model for proper trim and technique. During the final CW dives, you can tell buddy teams to check each others' air supplies and practice air sharing, but you have to be comfortable with students performing skills like that without an instructor inches away. I think a lot of instructors would have trouble giving up that much control.

 

[John C. Ratliff]

Ken and BoulderJohn,

This is a good discussion to have, and I'll put just a bit different perspective to it. Let me give just a bit of background. I started snorkeling in the mid-1950s, and then saw The Silent World in about 1957. From that time on, I decided I wanted to scuba dive. But I had no scuba equipment. So I spent a summer picking strawberries and beans, and earned enough money to buy a used Healthways SCUBA regulator and a 38 cubic foot tank. I started diving them; that was in the days when you could get a tank filled without a card. I had been on swim teams since I was about 8 year old, and had already taken the YMCA Lifesaving classes. So I began diving in Oregon rivers and lakes. That was 1959. The next year I had saved enough money to buy a White Stage wetsuit (my aunt worked for White Stag in Portland, so I got a good deal on a custom wetsuit). In high school, we formed the Salem Junior Aqua Club, and were diving with the Salem Aqua Club on their dives. Then we decided we had enough members to bring in an instructor, and get our certification. I passed our LA County Scuba Class in 1963, four years after I began diving. One of our LA County pool dive trials was to get out from under a net, helping our buddy at the same time. The instructor was there, but did not help. We had several open water dives, and we had to do a free ascent from about 25 feet in Yaquina Bay, Oregon.

I guess what I'm saying is that at that time, people who wanted to dive were already very aquatic people. The instructor basically showed us how to use equipment we were already diving for years, safely. Most of it, we had already figured out ourselves. If you read Cousteau's book, The Silent World, several times, you get all the basics of a dive course.

SeaRat

 

[Atom]

Require and without an instructor, taken literally, are contradictory terms.

If you read the standards for PADI, at least, OW students are supposed to participate in the dive planning for their OW dives, with the supervision of the instructor.

Even if the instructor makes you plan the dive (as they should, but honestly I don't remember if I did it in my OW course), there's still a bit of a difference between planning the dive and executing it. Planning is the important 1st step, but there's some navigations/awareness skills necessary (sometime) to execute a dive properly on your own. It's too easy in your OW course to be in follow mode and never develop any of the skills necessary to execute the dive beyond following. Maybe it should be required that students lead at least one dive observed by an instructor during their course, the instructor could then provide feedback and correct some bad habits. But that increase the number of dives (and time) necessary to finish the course depending on the student/instructor ratio.

 

[Saltwater Junky]

The instructors that i've had the pleasure of diving with had us students checking our air about every 5min. During my OW training the instructors stressed the importance of checking one's air supply often, during the pool work, by signaling us frequently for our air status. One instructor had us swim around the in pairs and he'd come behind one of us and turn off our air and we'd have a semi realistic OOA situation and we'd practice sharing air.