Water in BCD

[Panama Jones]

You know, as a new diver, I find scuba diving, with relatively simple (albeit very important) concepts, somewhat difficult to understand.

In my line of work, the concepts are airtight (no pun intended). Anywhere I go in the world, any professional in my line of work will fully understand that concpet and any related process in EXACTLY the same way.

In Scuba diving, I can ask the same question on a basic concept of 5 different scuba instructors and get anywhere from 2 to 5 different answers. If anyone wants examples just ask.

After my last dive, I was emptying water from and I made some sort of jike to an instructor who had just finished a class. His words to me were, don't worry, everyone gets a lot of water in their BCD and I often add some on purpose if I need more weight.

Forget the point that I wondered why someone with an instructor rating would need to do something like this to correct a weight issue, my real question is that I thought that the weight of water, in water was ambient weight.

The water in my BCD at depth should not actually add weight below the surface... would it?

 

[dfx]

No it wouldn't. Displacement, basic physics. Archimedes must be rotating in his grave.

I do hope that this instructor was really only kidding.

 

[Panama Jones]

Nope, not kdding, I actuallly challenged him on it and he told me how wrong I was. Funny though. Hope he isn't teaching his students to add water when they can't stay down. Ok, Maybe not so funny.

 

[cb5150]

Oh, it gets crazier!!! Just ask about split-fins, BP/Ws, smoking on dive boats, cave diving, dive etiquette, wearing gloves, using reef hooks, 3mm vs 5mm, DIR, etc, etc, etc.

 

[TSandM]

The fact is that there are no prerequisites for being a scuba instructor, other than being able to dive a little -- and I mean that. When I went through my Divemaster class, I was wryly amused to discover that the physics test that baffles a lot of people was really very basic. The classes for dive pros are not designed to ensure they have a thorough scientific background in matters pertaining to the sport, and the training is in how to teach it and maintain control and safety, not on diving skill or diving knowledge. There are a lot of not very well educated people teaching diving. You ran into one of them.

 

[Linedog]

I once had an instructor tell me that water in your BCD at the end of a dive is a symptom of being underweighted. Reason being that you are opening your BCD dump valve trying to sink but all the air is gone, thus letting in water. I added a few pounds and hardly any water in my BCD now.

 

[Doc]

Answer #6 .... Merely poses another question

If you had been diving in fresh inland water, getting some slosh in your BC, then went off to the ocean (or vice versa) and now in the brine,

This, then, is your new puzzlement, grasshopper.

 

[nimoh]

I once had someone (not an instructor) tell me once that they had a 40lb wing and got rid of in favor of a 30lb wing because they were too buoyant with the 40...and the 30 fixed the problem.

 

[Panama Jones]

The fact is that there are no prerequisites for being a scuba instructor...... There are a lot of not very well educated people teaching diving. You ran into one of them.

Aboslutely true in my opinion. I was at a dive shop one day talking two instructors (one owner, one employed). The employed instructor was telling me something that absolutely defied the laws of physics and when I challenged him, he challenged back, I could see in the owners eyes that she knew one of her instructors was giving me wrong info but also that, for his own credibility reasons, she was not about to challenge him in from of me.

I work in the science field and apply logic to everything, so I can weed out the illogical advice.

Which opens a new can of worms. Either diving really is so simple and we just over exagerate on how complicated and dangerous it is (so our instructors are truly qualified), or, we need better foundation qualifications for instructors if they are to teach a sport that is life support dependent.

 

[kaerius]