If you are a new diver, please read this

[MXGratefulDiver]

I realize these kinds of threads tend to wander but why shouldn't a new diver be exposed to all of the debate?'

There's a lot of good information here ... what tends to happen over time, however, is that the information gets buried in "***-for-tat" exchanges between people who can't let even a minor point go in favor of staying focused on what really matters. At that point, most people simply stop clicking on the link to the thread.

Then the inevitable training debate starts. Well, in the end, it is a training issue. Somewhere along the line, training failed. Running low on air, failure to ditch the weights, failure to inflate the BC; these are all training issues and training failures. Things that should have been automatic didn't seem to work. And where is the dive buddy in all of this?

You're making an assumption here ... and that is that people will always do what they were trained to do. My experience says otherwise. I spend a lot of time at dive sites, and it's amazing how often I see people doing the stupidest things ... or failing to do the simplest things ... in most cases in complete violation of what I KNOW gets taught in just about everybody's OW class.

I have never been very comfortable with the default safety plan where I just rely on my buddy when things go sideways. My buddy is NOT my backup plan. If I don't come up with a better plan than that, I am likely to wind up dead. Here we have an example of the buddy system failing. New divers need to know that they simply can not rely on this approach. They are personally responsible for their own safety.

We all have to dive within our comfort zone. However, I will also say from personal experience that the two concepts are not utually exclusive. I tend to focus a great deal of my dive instruction on the development of good buddy skills ... because since virtually all training agencies promote (or in some cases mandate) buddy diving, it seems logical that one should understand that there's more to being a dive buddy than simply getting in the water with another diver. As with most things, it's one thing to tell people what they should do and another altogether to show them how to do it.

New divers are also exposed in this thread to a couple of approaches to gas planning. Even if it is just "dive no deeper than your tank size in CF", the rule of thirds or watch your SPG, this informatiom can be helpful. Knowing that these concepts exist and that, for the most part, are not taught sufficiently in OW (other than reading the SPG) should cause a new diver to think "Gee, maybe I need to think about this stuff a little" and that is a good thing. This hobby isn't the cute and cuddly thing it is presented to be. If you mess up, you can die. Good to know!

Yep ... and it's all gas management. People get wrapped about the axle with SAC rates and rock bottom pressures and whatnot. That's all good information ... but hardly the point of gas management. The fundamental concept is that you have to consider ... before the dive ever begins ... how much gas you're bringing with you and whether or not it's appropriate for the dive you plan to do.

The thing that inhibits this mentality is that we're all taught ... from day one ... to think in terms of how much gas we will have at the end of the dive, rather than how much we have at the beginning.

Telling someone to end the dive with 500 psi is all well and good ... but if you then don't tell them how to do it, it's useless information.

The raging debate about what agencies teach and what they don't is something new divers need to know. How can they possibly know what they don't know if someone doesn't tell them. The passion that people bring to this thread shows just how important the information really is.

The only problem I have with it is the amount of misinformation that gets spewed about as though people actually knew what they were talking about. If you don't teach for an agency ... or if you haven't taken the time to read and consider what the agency standards really say ... then you really don't know. More often than not, people are simply repeating something they heard at their local shop ... or read on the Internet. I'm all in favor of giving new divers something to think about ... but I'm rather picky about wanting that information to be accurate.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[boulderjohn]

There's a lot of good information here ... what tends to happen over time, however, is that the information gets buried in "***-for-tat" exchanges between people who can't let even a minor point go in favor of staying focused on what really matters. ...

The only problem I have with it is the amount of misinformation that gets spewed about as though people actually knew what they were talking about. If you don't teach for an agency ... or if you haven't taken the time to read and consider what the agency standards really say ... then you really don't know. More often than not, people are simply repeating something they heard at their local shop ... or read on the Internet. I'm all in favor of giving new divers something to think about ... but I'm rather picky about wanting that information to be accurate.

Bob,

Please stop jumping in with logic and common sense statements. You are ruining the tone of the thread.

 

[boulderjohn]

You're making an assumption here ... and that is that people will always do what they were trained to do. My experience says otherwise. I spend a lot of time at dive sites, and it's amazing how often I see people doing the stupidest things ... or failing to do the simplest things ... in most cases in complete violation of what I KNOW gets taught in just about everybody's OW class.

I recently taught a class of five OW students, two of which were a husband and wife. The wife was fully certified by NAUI already, but it had been ten years since that certification and she decided to go through the whole thing again with her husband. At just about every point in the class, she had more trouble than anyone else in the class. I had to give her more care and attention in learning the skills than to any of the students who were learning them for the first time.

Not once did the thought "Naui instruction must be terrible" pass through my head. I am sure she received fine instruction then. Because I am a lifelong education professional, I know that students are far from perfect learners to begin with, and as time passes from that initial instruction, more and more of what was originally learned is lost.

 

[Standingbear56]

While SAC is an important concept, it is NOT the heart and soul of gas management - WATCHING YOUR GAUGE IS! Just because my car gets 30 mpg on the average does not mean I will always get precisely 300 miles with on each and every tank. Same with SAC. It is a guideline only. No diver would ever do a dive and depend only on his/her SAC rate to determine gas supply. They confirm with their gauges! Just like you should scan your car gauges at least once a minute, the same goes with your SPG. So, here is gas management, KISS style: Both divers start with 3000psi. They plan their dive to 60 feet with a turn around when either one of them first reaches 2000psi, 20 minutes or someone chooses to abort the dive - which ever comes first. Gauges are scanned at least once a minute - gas usage is monitored in real time so heavier than expected breathing. etc, is automatically compensated for. Divers return to the surface with between 500 - 700 psi left. Simple, and it works. No SAC calculations needed - only basic planning and gauge monitoring. SAC is important, especially the more advanced a diver becomes. However there is no diver that I know of who will do a dive, see that their gauge is reading lower then expected and say - "My gauge is off, my SAC calculations say I have enough gas for 15 more minutes" when their gauge is showing turn around pressure.

 

[rstofer]

The problem with the admonition to always surface with 500 psi is that it is a two pass algorithm. You won't know if you have 500 psi at the surface until you get to the surface.

Richard

 

[rstofer]

Thanks for this quote. I intend to steal it and use it in my training. It says it all.

I hope it helps! I thought it up yesterday when I was thinking about the importance of the SPG.

Richard

 

[Diver0001]

Thanks for this quote. I intend to steal it and use it in my training. It says it all.

Yeah.

In my training I ask divers when we get back to the surface to tell me how much air they have in their tanks without looking.

If they say "I don't know" then I say "how long do you want to live?"

I kind of think of it as tough love because it's not said with a smile or any "diving is fun" look on my face... but it gets the point across and even if ONE student gets the "how long do you want to live" line then they all hear it and not surprisingly they all check their SPG's better after that.

I usually save this until the first check out dive but you could do it in the pool too I guess. The difference is in the pool we're drilling them to respond to the "how much air" signal so they all know how much air they have left at the end of the session. In OW we watch without telling them we're watching.... all part of making them think like divers....

R..

 

[Hawkwood]

Yeah.

In my training I ask divers when we get back to the surface to tell me how much air they have in their tanks without looking.

If they say "I don't know" then I say "how long do you want to live?"

I kind of think of it as tough love because it's not said with a smile or any "diving is fun" look on my face... but it gets the point across and even if ONE student gets the "how long do you want to live" line then they all hear it and not surprisingly they all check their SPG's better after that.

I usually save this until the first check out dive but you could do it in the pool too I guess. The difference is in the pool we're drilling them to respond to the "how much air" signal so they all know how much air they have left at the end of the session. In OW we watch without telling them we're watching.... all part of making them think like divers....

R..

I work with one instructor who does exactly this with his students in the pool. We are expected to query the students frequently on their air pressure. After the first pool session, the students are told that when signaled about their air pressure they are expected to not have to look at their guage before answering. The expectation being that they are watching it frequently enough to be able to do so.

 

[elan]

Someone who makes it to the surface and then is unable to estabish positive bouyancy while weaing fully functioning scuba gear (even if the tank is empty) did not die from a failure to understand gas management.

To say that she got so panicked from having no air is still a weak argument.

I could make an equally plausible claim that she dies because she did not have a buddy that was attentive and qualified.

Or I could say she died because she wasn't wearing a pony bottle.

Or I could say that she died because she had no ditchable lead or maybe (probably) was over weighted or that she wasn't wearing a weight belt configured to be easily ditchable.

From what little has been presented in the thread, it sounds like the diver died because she couldn't work her BC/weighting system.

I would lean towards this... I must admit that when I was fresh out of the OW course it was not obvious for me to inflate the BC at the surface, especially with my month. I had the knowledge but I did not have the skill. Only after probably 5th dive it became a skill.

 

[Thalassamania]

Actually, going back through the posts, my point was that if more people would actually go diving more and use better judgment these things wouldn't happen.

No argument there.