What wasn't covered well enough...

[mwhities]

As you implicitly suggested, get your C-card and then continue your education on your own.

That's essentially what I've been doing. I'm trying to find a good instructor and/or mentor that's reasonably close to where I live but, I think I'm prolly the only Hog/DIR(kinda) diver around here in MS.

Michael

 

[Twiddles]

It will be interesting to see how this pans out over time. My thought is that as the number of divers increase and the standards and class times decrease, the number of accidents will continue to increase. At some point I would think agencies that proclaim themselves educators/trainers are going to reach a point where they become negligent (if they havent already). In reference to the public education comparison, lets just leave it at poor public education will not kill you.

In the end the race for the dollar might actually help/hurt diving by forcing regulation. The agencies have done a decent job at keeping requirements very similar across the board, but how long before dividing up the original open water class into all these mini classes results in divers deaths before thier next mini class? At some point an issue will develop that results in the death of a diver because the diver who is enrolled in continuing education has had something happened that wasnt covered in the OW or AOW class. Hell after reading Rock Bottom and Gas Management (which was not taught in the form I now understand it) I can easily see exactly how an accident could have already happened and been misjudged as a simple lack of monitoring gas consumption.

On DANs website: http://www.diversalertnetwork.org/medical/articles/article.asp?articleid=28

Researchers conducted a series of experiments to determine the time required to inflate a BCD at various depths. The BCD had an internal volume of approximately 18 liters (i.e. around 40 pounds/18 kilograms lift) and the "reserve" pressure in the cylinder was 35 atm. The tests showed that it required about 57 seconds to inflate the BCD at 100 feet/30 meters using the power inflator. It was not possible to completely inflate the BCD at 100 feet if the diver continued to breathe from the regulator during the inflation since the air supply ran out before the BCD was fully inflated. These results were supported by subsequent, more extensive tests conducted at the Royal Australian Navy School of Underwater Medicine.

The results of both series of tests indicate that divers, who have not attained neutral buoyancy at depth by adding air to their BCDs when there was plenty of air in their tanks, may not have sufficient air left to enable them to regain neutral buoyancy for the ascent. They may have to work hard and, therefore, use up a lot of air in order to ascend. At times, especially if divers are overweighted, they might have great difficulty ascending without ditching their weights

.... Little Scary especially since gas management wasnt covered. Watch your guage, begin ascent with "x" psi. But never hey buy the way while your down at 100' if you were frog hoppin along the bottom because your not neutral you may not have enough air to fully inflate (I am aware you likely wouldnt need to fully inflate), or you might not be able to breath and inflate your bcd LOL.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

It will be interesting to see how this pans out over time. My thought is that as the number of divers increase and the standards and class times decrease, the number of accidents will continue to increase. At some point I would think agencies that proclaim themselves educators/trainers are going to reach a point where they become negligent (if they havent already). In reference to the public education comparison, lets just leave it at poor public education will not kill you.

In the end the race for the dollar might actually help/hurt diving by forcing regulation. The agencies have done a decent job at keeping requirements very similar across the board, but how long before dividing up the original open water class into all these mini classes results in divers deaths before thier next mini class? At some point an issue will develop that results in the death of a diver because the diver who is enrolled in continuing education has had something happened that wasnt covered in the OW or AOW class. Hell after reading Rock Bottom and Gas Management (which was not taught in the form I now understand it) I can easily see exactly how an accident could have already happened and been misjudged as a simple lack of monitoring gas consumption.

On DANs website: http://www.diversalertnetwork.org/medical/articles/article.asp?articleid=28

Researchers conducted a series of experiments to determine the time required to inflate a BCD at various depths. The BCD had an internal volume of approximately 18 liters (i.e. around 40 pounds/18 kilograms lift) and the "reserve" pressure in the cylinder was 35 atm. The tests showed that it required about 57 seconds to inflate the BCD at 100 feet/30 meters using the power inflator. It was not possible to completely inflate the BCD at 100 feet if the diver continued to breathe from the regulator during the inflation since the air supply ran out before the BCD was fully inflated. These results were supported by subsequent, more extensive tests conducted at the Royal Australian Navy School of Underwater Medicine.

The results of both series of tests indicate that divers, who have not attained neutral buoyancy at depth by adding air to their BCDs when there was plenty of air in their tanks, may not have sufficient air left to enable them to regain neutral buoyancy for the ascent. They may have to work hard and, therefore, use up a lot of air in order to ascend. At times, especially if divers are overweighted, they might have great difficulty ascending without ditching their weights

.... Little Scary especially since gas management wasnt covered. Watch your guage, begin ascent with "x" psi. But never hey buy the way while your down at 100' if you were frog hoppin along the bottom because your not neutral you may not have enough air to fully inflate (I am aware you likely wouldnt need to fully inflate), or you might not be able to breath and inflate your bcd LOL.

A pretty fair synopsis of the issue ... and exactly the reason why some of us push the issue on ScubaBoard and elsewhere ... because the agencies (pretty much all of them) have decided it's not important enough to include in their recreational curriculum ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)