Lessons Wreck Penetration

[Eric802]

I wrote a detailed explanation of the issues with the PADI wreck course a few years ago after lengthy discussions with them. The course is frankly long out of date and in need of rewriting. I identified several serious problems with it, and they asked me to suggest different wording for key ideas. They liked what I wrote and said they would use it when the course was rewritten. They paraphrased my language in an article about wreck "penetrations" in their professional journal (Undersea Journal) a few years ago. Yes, they gave me credit.

I put the word penetration in quotations above because that word is a significant part of the problem. The way they use the word is not the way the rest of the English speaking world uses the word. The course says you can never penetrate a wreck without running line. As the rest of the world uses the word, that is absurd. You have to run line to enter one side of a wheelhouse and exit the other side, 10 feet away? What they mean by penetration, however, is an entrance into a wreck in which the diver enters, explores, and then returns to the entry point. If you enter in one location, swim through a short passageway, and then exit somewhere else, which is how 90% of wreck diving is done, that is not a penetration. That is a swim-through. They consider swim-throughs in general to be open water, and they are not even mentioned in the course.

My language differentiates between a swim-through and a line-following penetration. It goes further than that and identifies the complications that turn a simple swim-through that can be done by just about everyone and another that requires special training. I did the same with penetrations. The new language talks about the kind of judgment required to be able to judge when one's training, experience, and equipment is suitable for an intended entry into a wreck.

What would you suggest as a good, non-tech wreck diving course? It’s something I’ve always been interested in and, after I get a bit more back into this and get my rescue diver and EAN done, would like to pursue.

 

[boulderjohn]

What would you suggest as a good, non-tech wreck diving course? It’s something I’ve always been interested in and, after I get a bit more back into this and get my rescue diver and EAN done, would like to pursue.

Honestly, it all depends upon the instructor. Once you recognize that the PADI course allows swim-throughs (even though it doesn't say so), even that course, which needs a ton of improvement, will do the job with a good instructor.

One problem with the PADI course is seen in comparison with the PADI cavern diving course. Both courses teach divers how to lay line for penetration. A difference is that to teach the cavern course, the instructor must be a certified cave diver, and a certified cave diver has had intense training and practice laying line. In contrast, there is no requirement that a wreck instructor have any such training, so you have no guarantee that the wreck instructor has ever even seen anyone lay line well, let alone practiced it. A skilled instructor can take that basic course and turn it into something worthwhile.

As for courses taught by other agencies, I haven't the foggiest idea. I know nothing about their requirements. I assume you are going to run into the same thing there--it will depend upon the instructor. I suggest finding out if the instructor has cave training, too.

 

[Wibble]

I wrote a detailed explanation of the issues with the PADI wreck course a few years ago after lengthy discussions with them. The course is frankly long out of date and in need of rewriting. I identified several serious problems with it, and they asked me to suggest different wording for key ideas. They liked what I wrote and said they would use it when the course was rewritten. They paraphrased my language in an article about wreck "penetrations" in their professional journal (Undersea Journal) a few years ago. Yes, they gave me credit.

I put the word penetration in quotations above because that word is a significant part of the problem. The way they use the word is not the way the rest of the English speaking world uses the word. The course says you can never penetrate a wreck without running line. As the rest of the world uses the word, that is absurd. You have to run line to enter one side of a wheelhouse and exit the other side, 10 feet away? What they mean by penetration, however, is an entrance into a wreck in which the diver enters, explores, and then returns to the entry point. If you enter in one location, swim through a short passageway, and then exit somewhere else, which is how 90% of wreck diving is done, that is not a penetration. That is a swim-through. They consider swim-throughs in general to be open water, and they are not even mentioned in the course.

My language differentiates between a swim-through and a line-following penetration. It goes further than that and identifies the complications that turn a simple swim-through that can be done by just about everyone and another that requires special training. I did the same with penetrations. The new language talks about the kind of judgment required to be able to judge when one's training, experience, and equipment is suitable for an intended entry into a wreck.

One hopes that PADI paid you for your time and expertise in reviewing their course for them.

The challenge with wreck diving is it doesn’t fit a simplistic set of rules like "cavern" diving does.

The main requirement for wreck diving is for excellent core skills and especially finning techniques (mod frog and backfinning). Your technique and mental approach needs to be chilled out when "stuff happens", such as a silt out or snagging on stuff.

As the buddy (not team) system prevails, following divers will be going through disturbed spaces (silt and percolation from bubbles). Not forgetting lack of gas resilience with single cylinder, single regulator kit configuration.

Line laying can be challenging as you’ll most often exit from a different route thus your line is lost, or worse still, you put yourself at risk to retrieve it through disturbed space and unfamiliar environments (do you ever back-reference as a matter of course?).

PADI isn’t strong on skills excellence, focussing on mass market mediocrity. Advanced Wreck diving is a technical diving topic requiring experience and a very self sufficient attitude. Seems more suitable for TDI et al.

 

[Centrals]

ANDI, IANTD, PSAI, TDI etc etc all offer tec wreck course.
Plenty to learn and plenty of seemingly excessive equipment are required(3 sets of light and 3 spools etc).
Inside a wreck is quite eerie as literally everything is covered with silt, broken/fallen objects, rotten metal edges, hanging carpet, dangling cable/wire, narrow passageway etc etc. Why bother?
Have fun but be careful.

 

[boulderjohn]

I want to add one more comment to my previous warning that it was all about the instructor.

As I wrote earlier, I had extensive talks with PADI about their wreck diving course and learned that their vision of the course is different from what the course literally says to people who speak English. (I was an English teacher.) After that conversation, I have a very different view of what I can do in teaching the course than I had before those discussions.

That means that if you were to take the wreck diving course from me today, it would be a very different course than the one I taught only a few years ago. I think the same would be true of any instructor who is following the written word in the course manual carefully.

 

[TravelGas]

boulderJohn you have an incoming DM.

 

[Centrals]

Wreck penetration is a tec course if you want to do it properly.
There is no half measure in life.

 

[Akimbo]

Wreck penetration is a tec course if you want to do it properly.
There is no half measure in life.

Everything is relative I suppose. I was thinking that anything less than US Navy Diving and Salvage School was a half measure. US Navy Master Divers would say that salvage school was just the opening to that rabbit hole.

I bet that less than 5% of divers that enter wrecks in Truk or Palau have any formal wreck training at all. The same is probably true with significant guided "swim-throughs" and cave training.

A distinction should be made between guided tourist dives and real wreck exploration. The latter is far more dangerous and requires a great deal of preparation depending on many different factors, including the nature of the penetration. Dropping into the hold of an upright ship in clear water can't be compared to something like this:

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Unfortunately it is very difficult to quantify all the variables that separate these extremes. The most important guidance I can offer to someone interested in wreck diving is take baby steps and do your homework. Just paying for courses is far from the complete solution... for anything.

 

[Centrals]

I have seen enough to realize some divers just do not have any idea how dangerous it is inside a wreck.
At the end of the day it is the diver who can decide if wreck diving is fun at all.
YES, one step at a time.
Even your powerful HID/LED light could only see no more than 5m in front of you through the haze(without anyone kicking up the silt) inside the wreck. And you are the one to lay the line and have only two hands! Nerve wrecking.

 

[Akimbo]

At the end of the day it is the diver who can decide if wreck diving is fun at all.

I keep coming back to the lesson in the OP: Would you send your brother in there who is expecting his first child? Never ask yourself "should I go in" because the answer is usually what you want to do instead of what you should do — at least for most males with our well-known under-developed sense of self-preservation.