Video from a Training Dive with John Chatterton

[Zack-Bloom]

I watched your video yesterday evening and enjoyed it. I'm glad you had fun in your class and learned some stuff. You should also be commended for the way you've handled yourself in this thread.

Thanks so much, truthfully everyone has been so kind and supportive. It's not strange to get criticism on the Internet, it is special to have people jump to my defense though .

I also picked up a couple of neat tricks from the video that I had not seen before and I'm going to go play with them and test them out (filling the SMB from my wing to maintain constant lift volume and steady buoyancy does seem slick).

The one thing which I haven't mentioned yet is, if you don't have enough gas in your wing you can always just push both buttons on your inflator at the same time to fill the SMB. As long as the hose is pointed up the only place the gas is going to go is right into the SMB, and it saves having to switch regulators.

 

[The Chairman]

Which is ironic, since one thing that I HATE here on SB is the phrase “dive and let dive”.

Et tu, Mikey? I found your dive knife in the middle of my back! I still love you man!

However, this is a perfect example of that. There are a lot of great instructors out and I would never take a class from most of them. It's not that they aren't safe, but rather that their diving style is not simpatico with mine. No, not every diver has the same attitude towards kneeling, crawling, walking etc on the bottom as I do. That's OK, as I have plenty of other instructors to choose from. Clearly, the OP feels his needs were met and he even acknowledged that he made mistakes. Clearly, #2, many saw additional mistakes that were not mistakes as they were actually part of a different approach. Hence, dive and let dive. I'm going to stick with my no kneeling stance and let the kneelers do what they want. AS LONG AS they don't stir the crap up or damage anything, I don't have anything to say about that except that it's not the way I would dive.

 

[rddvet]

. That question wasn't just being asked, it was being definitively answered based on as superficial an assessment as I can imagine, and totally at odds with the experience of people who have actually trained with him. .

You may see it as superficial, but it's actually not. Poor basic skills are at the root of some the issues with instruction many of us are seeing nowadays. In cave country we're seeing more bad divers year after year. It's because there are instructors letting alot slip. Then the next instructor doesn't want to fix the basic problems. And so on and so on. There are some other videos of Chatterton classes floating out there where basic issues are being ignored by the instructor. That's not doing a proper service to the student who's showing poor skills. I'm sure John is very nice, an amazingly skilled wreck diver and probably teaches one hell of a class about the ins and outs of wreck diving. At the same time there are some hugely glaring issues in his instruction. This isn't new news. I've been hearing it for years.

 

[doctormike]

Et tu, Mikey? I found your dive knife in the middle of my back! I still love you man!

.

Right back atcha, boss!

 

[The Chairman]

Poor basic skills are at the root of some the issues with instruction many of us are seeing nowadays.

There has never been a true industry wide consensus about the definition or importance of trim and buoyancy. What makes many of us cringe, is pretty normal and could be praise worthy to some divers.

 

[rddvet]

There has never been a true industry wide consensus about the definition or importance of trim and buoyancy. What makes many of us cringe, is pretty normal and could be praise worthy to some divers.

Completely true and may be part of the problem. At least many agencies are moving to no kneeling.
Funny this weekend at peacock I exited the peanut tunnel (at the entrance-we were exiting the dive) and out of the blue decided I wanted to go check out the mistake over to the right. I was getting out of the way of an incoming team and helicopter turning very quickly to tell my buddy we were altering the dive without being in the other team's way. In my head it felt very wonky and crappy since it was a quick spastic turn and I'm still a ccr newbie. The other team that was entering was a friend who hadn't seen me dive before. The next day he praised how good my wife and I looked in the water as new ccr divers and hoped to aspire to that level one day. Meanwhile I felt like that was the strokiest 5 seconds I've looked on a dive in years.

 

[The Chairman]

Right back atcha, boss!

It's not that there isn't a 'right' answer, but it can change depending on your style of diving. You think that a BP&Wing are the bomb diggity solution... where I only think it's an adequate solution. However, it's the solution for me if I'm wearing manifolded doubles. My last OW dives on a single AL80 were done with a harness and no bladder. Like our underwear, it all "Depends". If I condemned every instructor who kneeled during a class, then I would be pretty lonesome. It's why I don't try to give advice to DIR/GUE divers. I don't dive like them and I don't want to.

 

[doctormike]

It's not that there isn't a 'right' answer, but it can change depending on your style of diving. You think that a BP&Wing are the bomb diggity solution... where I only think it's an adequate solution. However, it's the solution for me if I'm wearing manifolded doubles. My last OW dives on a single AL80 were done with a harness and no bladder. Like our underwear, it all "Depends". If I condemned every instructor who kneeled during a class, then I would be pretty lonesome. It's why I don't try to give advice to DIR/GUE divers. I don't dive like them and I don't want to.

As with most things, the devil is in the details. And the fact that the right answer depends on what kind of diving you are doing is what I was getting at upthread.

C'mon, we all know that "dive and let dive" is OK for some things (what color fins should I buy?). We know that it's wrong for other things (can I breathe EAN80 at 120 feet to minimize my deco obligation?). What I don't like is when it is the ANSWER to a question.

Someone makes a logical argument about why X is a good diving practice. Instead of making a counterargument about why X is not a good diving practice, the next person says "dive and let dive", as if that addresses the original question. As if it's a personal liberty or a first amendment issue.

 

[The Chairman]

We know that it's wrong for other things (can I breathe EAN80 at 120 feet to minimize my deco obligation?).

You're conflating physics with diving styles. Shades of min deco et al. Ignore physics at your own peril, but dive like you want to. You still won't die diving split fins.

 

[doctormike]

You're conflating physics with diving styles. Shades of min deco et al. Ignore physics at your own peril, but dive like you want to. You still won't die diving split fins.

I'm not conflating. I'm describing how that phrase that we are discussing is sometimes appropriate and sometimes not. As in, it's appropriate when discussing diving styles, it's not when discussing physics.