This thread is improperly named - it should be called "a great example of how dive instructors fail their students".
As an instructor, I apologize for this in a general sense. But at least I will say if you were my student, you would never be asking this question.
As a DSO, I am responsible for more than a hundred divers - people who come to me already "certified", but who I have to make sure are truly competent divers, or its my responsibility to either help them become competent or wash them out. I'm saying this because the mask on forehead question is one I always ask during my checkout dive process. I tell them that if they dive for my institution they can not park their mask on their forehead - ever. Then I ask them why. I'd say about 60% of the time they tell me because it's the "international sign of distress". And that answer is directly the fault of their instructor. As an instructor, if I can't completely explain the compelling reasoning behind something, then I sure as hell shouldn't be teaching that thing.
International sign of distress my ass.
I then demonstrate what that sign really looks like. It's not pretty and it certainly doesn't look like someone parking their mask on their forehead. It DOES involve a lot of flailing and all round freaking out.
So why do I forbid it? Why do I care? Well, the answer to that is a bit deeper, and has its roots - for me at least - in my other diving hat. In technical diving.
Okay - so sidebar. How do you define technical diving? One of the most accurate answers to that is, "recreational divers solve their problems on the surface, technical divers solve them underwater".
So what does that have anything to do with the afore mentioned MOF Syndrome (mask on forehead)? Two words: muscle memory.
I actually began to learn this concept skydiving, and it's critical there. The same holds true for any high risk activity. If you condition yourself to behave in a predictable, repeatable manner (say, if you condition yourself to always grab your second stage by grabbing it at the base of the hose rather than on the body itself), time and time again, every time, then when you have to react to an unexpected stimulus, muscle memory kicks in and your body automatically reacts in the same predictable way.
Muscle memory.
But it can work against you just as easy - more easily actually, because humans inherently gravitate towards entropy (ie, whatever is easiest).
So... (Here's the tie-in). You condition yourself time and time again to pop your mask on your forehead. You're diving in an exhibit in perfect conditions - what's the harm? Again and again you pop that sucker up there. It's natural. It's easy. It's, well, it's muscle memory. It just naturally goes there.
Then you're out in the field, doing reef surveys at night. You lose your buddy so you surface, there's no boat, no buddy, you're a little nervous, the seas have picked up - you knew you were feeling a change in the surge - and the wind's whipping the top of the waves off. No buddy, no boat - you pop your mask up on your forehead - muscle memory, you're too stressed to even think about it, your body just does it. BAM! You get slapped square in the face with a wave just as you inhale, choking down water while your mask washes off your forehead because, like an idiot you had parked it in the most tenuous, unsecured place conceivable.
THAT'S why you don't put your mask on your forehead - ever.
Muscle memory.
And it's just the tip of the iceberg.
John
John H Hanzl
Author, action / adventure
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