Wreck penetration and queuing

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ballastbelly

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At popular wrecks, when different dive boats and independents show up to dive it,do strangers just share the same reel/line into the wreck? Is there a sort of right of way , like on the road (maybe who dropped anchor first?)
Thx
 
Depends upon where you are.

In my experience, a wreck site is no different from a non wreck site. Generally the first boat wins. Late comers go to another dive site. 1 boat per site. I do not dive places that allow more than 1 boat per site. There are places that do, I have no knowledge what happens there.

UNLESS: the mooring ball has been installed and maintained by a certain group, then that group can bump others as long as there are no divers down.

Some examples
- boat dive in Bonaire, 2 people in a dinghy from a sail boat where at a mooring - they got told to leave
- live aboard boat in Belize, a day boat had just moored at a mooring ball - they got told to leave
in both cases the mooring ball was "owned" by the second boat that showed.
 
This is an excellent question, but it is far from a basic scuba discussion. Not to complain about where it is posted on SB, but this is exactly the sort of question that should be covered in a Wreck Diving course, and it is the sort of answer that should make everyone realize that Wreck Diving Penetration needs to be removed from the recreational scuba world and moved into the technical diving field. Only fully redundant equipped, tech diving trained divers should be inside wrecks.

I am talking mostly to PADI and PADI instructors, where PADI instrcutors regularly take AOW students into wrecks on the Wreck Dive Adventure dive with standard recreational gear. Which is just WTF?

PADI first offered the Wreck Diving Specialty when they had no technical diving side. But overhead environments are tech diving by the basic definition of technical diving as ' no direct access to the surface'.
 
In fact I was going over which options I was going to choose for my padi AOW.
'Wreck' option looks the most interesting, but it just occurred to me that my safety wont just depend on the instructor/instabuddy, but also on any cowboy divers who arrive while I am inside.

May I ask whoever did wreck before,or seen others, how deep inside (eg a cargo ship) to you have to go to pass the skill test ? Thx
 
A). Your safety depends on yourself.
B). If I remember correctly, your either newly certified or in the middle of your basic open water certification. Please do not take this wrong way, but you have absolutely no business going inside of a wreck. You do not have the skill set yet to go inside. By all means, dive on the outside. There's lots of stuff to see. But don't go in. You're not ready.
 
Many agencies (not just PADI) need to drastically revise their basic Wreck Diving courses. By rights, these courses should equate much more closely to Cavern Diver courses; in respect to syllabus, skills and performance standards. They don't... they don't even come close.

That is, of course, if the agencies wish to continue with the pretense that these courses 'qualify' divers to penetrate the overhead (even if only in the light zone - as Cavern Diver does).

As it stands, the basic-level Wreck Diver courses for most agencies should NOT qualify to penetrate. They are neither specific enough, not fully encompassing of the skill-set or experience required. They are also, far too often, taught by instructors who haven't got a clue themselves...

As for instructors taking AOW etc students into the overhead.... well, I think the agencies should throw the book at them. It's not only a huge dereliction of responsibility, a gross negligence in professional risk management...it's also a clear violation of agency standards. It perpetuates a complete disrespect for the dangers of overhead environment diving.

There's plenty (I'd hazard...a majority worldwide) of instructors who are clueless about proper wreck diving technique. They are a failed product of the failed wreck training system that created them. They approach wreck training in an amateurish and lackadaisical manner.... cutting corners, trusting to luck and encouraging dangerous complacence in all they encounter; not least the students they train. If such an attitude were to surface in the cave/cavern diving community, said instructors would swiftly become pariahs. Somehow, this ingrained tomfoolery has become an accepted 'norm' for wreck diving training.

Read my article on Wreck Training Course Quality: How To Evaluate A Wreck Diving Course

In specific answer to the OP's question:

Would I go into a wreck 'sharing' a line from another unknown group? NO. I don't know where they went, how they laid the line, when they will come back out...and a thousand other questions. My team lays it's own line, based on it's own planning and function. I'd be fecking annoyed also if any other divers/groups came charging up my own line because they're too dumb, ignorant or unskilled to lay their own guideline.

Is there a 'right of way'? Damned right. If there's another guideline laid in, then I'll take my team to a different entry/on a different route. I don't want clogged, silted-out passages... and I assume other teams in the wreck don't want the same. More importantly, if anyone needs to air-share egress, especially in diminished visibility ... then the last thing you'd ever want is another group blundering around in your exit route...


Why there is no such thing as an 'easy' wreck penetration:

[youtubehq]Cv2XstyyPOs[/youtubehq]
 
In fact I was going over which options I was going to choose for my padi AOW.
'Wreck' option looks the most interesting, but it just occurred to me that my safety wont just depend on the instructor/instabuddy, but also on any cowboy divers who arrive while I am inside.

May I ask whoever did wreck before,or seen others, how deep inside (eg a cargo ship) to you have to go to pass the skill test ? Thx

It is probably instructor specific but I don't believe PADI allows for penetration on an AOW dive with wreck as a specialty. That is dive four on the wreck diver certification and even at that it is optional.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk
 
beanojones

Isnt there 2 levels of wreck diving. one is nonpenitration and the other is penitration. my wreck cert is not a penitration cert. it is for diving around the wreck and perhaps doing external survey's. I want to say that I believe my course said no penitrating and covered the hazzards and reasons why because of the overhead and visibiity issues similar to cave environments.

This is an excellent question, but it is far from a basic scuba discussion. Not to complain about where it is posted on SB, but this is exactly the sort of question that should be covered in a Wreck Diving course, and it is the sort of answer that should make everyone realize that Wreck Diving Penetration needs to be removed from the recreational scuba world and moved into the technical diving field. Only fully redundant equipped, tech diving trained divers should be inside wrecks.

I am talking mostly to PADI and PADI instructors, where PADI instrcutors regularly take AOW students into wrecks on the Wreck Dive Adventure dive with standard recreational gear. Which is just WTF?

PADI first offered the Wreck Diving Specialty when they had no technical diving side. But overhead environments are tech diving by the basic definition of technical diving as ' no direct access to the surface'.


---------- Post added July 4th, 2014 at 04:58 AM ----------

I have dove wrecks,(outside and pass throughs) such as the Texas Clipper. Part of the predive brief is a warning that penitration is not for REC divers, That ther are "GOLD" lines like caves inatalled but not to follow then into the ship. There is a lot involved in entering spacel like this nad the skills are all in the technical arena.

In fact I was going over which options I was going to choose for my padi AOW.
'Wreck' option looks the most interesting, but it just occurred to me that my safety wont just depend on the instructor/instabuddy, but also on any cowboy divers who arrive while I am inside.

May I ask whoever did wreck before,or seen others, how deep inside (eg a cargo ship) to you have to go to pass the skill test ? Thx
 
Isnt there 2 levels of wreck diving. one is nonpenitration and the other is penitration. my wreck cert is not a penitration cert. it is for diving around the wreck and perhaps doing external survey's. I want to say that I believe my course said no penitrating and covered the hazzards and reasons why because of the overhead and visibiity issues similar to cave environments.

Most basic wreck qualification (i.e. PADI Wreck Diver) qualify for penetration "into the light zone, no restricted spaces and no more than 40m/130ft linear distance from the surface"; which is a joke considering they contain, at most, a single actual penetration dive. On that penetration dive, there's no air-sharing, no silt-out familiarization, no contingency drills whatsoever...

Personally, I don't believe these basic courses should qualify for penetration. Further training is definitely needed. The disparity between basic wreck and cavern course syllabus highlights this disparity... and both courses; basic wreck and cavern, essentially qualify for the same degree of penetration.

Some agencies (i.e. ANDI) have a basic wreck course much more aligned with Cavern Diver courses. That's a single open-water skills dive, followed by 4 actual penetrations. The course teaches black mask, lost line, lost buddy etc drills...

Beyond that... and for 'unlimited' penetration beyond the light zone, through restrictions and into deco.... you have Advanced/Technical Wreck courses. These have high-level prerequisites for enrollment. They are known to be highly challenging courses.
 
Devondiver is very correct about many of the courses taken. If the course is not a regular course but in the realm of that group of training an instructor is allowed to teach, you can get a card. IE yo can get a dry suit card from an instructor that has never had one on. When it comes to wreck's, there is an inherant problem in that the instructor doesnt know what he doesnt know. And because of that he doesnt know what to emphasize to a REC WRECK student about the list of things not to do. The course I took did not cover any inside issues that i remember but it did cover things like decaying superstructure as it related to cuts and things falling off and becoming a hazzard to those below. Also there was no actual required dive to get the cert bacause it was more a knowledge course thing about what the wrecks are and the dangers of them are as well as the aspects of artificial reef's. I think there was a little bit about the differences in the art reefs and sunk vessels. Clearly there is a difference in wrecks and caves as the cave walls dont fall apart like wrecks do. Definately there is no training about guidlines, reels, and proceedures in the REC training.

---------- Post added July 4th, 2014 at 05:35 AM ----------

I agree mostly, there is always great debate among the fanatics when it comes to pass throughs. A 5 ft pass through is an overhead and it will kill you ect. This mostly falls on deaf ears and tend to make new divers complacent on grounds of overprotection. So they allow the enter into light zones to cover that. Those light zone areas are no where near what caverns provide. Its hard to difrentiate between a swim through and a ships passageway the has natural light in it. Anyone who wants to go down the passageways will see no difference from a swim through, Those of us who know better are aware of the everchanging conditions that exist in such places as nature reclaims the vessel. So as far as penitration being taught goes, and the anomosity that exists for those who go through swimthroughs, new people will attempt to treat swimthroughs and entering the bowels of the engine rooms as the same thing. On the flip side REC training cant really subdevide overheads as safe and unsafe overheads either like the technical arena does with cavern and cave. Not a course issue but a new diver human nature thing. perhaps we need a course structure like WRECK level 1,2,3... like caves and cavern. 1 being no penitration beyond swim throughs that are within 10 - 20 feet from a free ascent path to the surface. 2 being structured like the cavern courses to include the cavern corriculum and skills. and 3. further penitration ect like the cave courses.

Most basic wreck qualification (i.e. PADI Wreck Diver) qualify for penetration "into the light zone, no restricted spaces and no more than 40m/130ft linear distance from the surface"; which is a joke considering they contain, at most, a single actual penetration dive. On that penetration dive, there's no air-sharing, no silt-out familiarization, no contingency drills whatsoever...

Personally, I don't believe these basic courses should qualify for penetration. Further training is definitely needed. The disparity between basic wreck and cavern course syllabus highlights this disparity... and both courses; basic wreck and cavern, essentially qualify for the same degree of penetration.

Some agencies (i.e. ANDI) have a basic wreck course much more aligned with Cavern Diver courses. That's a single open-water skills dive, followed by 4 actual penetrations. The course teaches black mask, lost line, lost buddy etc drills...

Beyond that... and for 'unlimited' penetration beyond the light zone, through restrictions and into deco.... you have Advanced/Technical Wreck courses. These have high-level prerequisites for enrollment. They are known to be highly challenging courses.
 
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