Video from a Training Dive with John Chatterton

[Marie13]

I’ve kneeled on a Lake Michigan wreck taking pics as part of a UASC survey. The only things we worry about are trying not to kick up the bottom too much and making sure you don’t cut yourself/suit on zebra mussels.

 

[Protondecay123]

Agree with seeker above, a diver should be able to defend his actions even against people who have a very different perspective. J.C. seems to do a lot of things that are different, and discussion of them is useful especially when they highlight contentious issues. I don’t agree with all the dir stuff, but you can be pretty sure that they have formulated logical and carefully considered protocols which they can defend.

I find the utter disregard for horizontal trim in the open water somewhat refreshing, I must admit. The carrying of the partially filled smb, not so much, but we haven’t heard from the op.

And while I ramble, if a diver is on the deck in a 3 knot current, hanging motionless and in perfect trim is a lot less
Feasible than dumping air and kneeling and hiding from the current as best they can. If he is teaching how to operate in the occasionally very strong currents of that area, perhaps one size doesn’t fit all.

I thought it was a great video and Zach did a great job of narration! Thank you Zach. It was very instructional. But regarding the criticisms, they should be valid criticism. Those comments about wooden ships and the Thistlegorm are clearly False Equivalencies. How many training dives have ever been performed at those sites? Oh, I'll answer, ZERO! Who were the trainers that did that? NONE. They were diving at (imagine the concept) a training site. A site set up for divers who aren't actually perfect and may bang into things! And guess what, trainee's do make mistakes. If you aren't making mistakes you aren't being trained. And some directed criticism toward the trainer about self promotion and then one of the hyper-critical posters posts of video of himself wreck diving. And those comments about SMB deployment? If you are really in trouble and need to deploy from depth in a true emergency, does it really matter if you are kneeling when you deploy? One good thing about this though is it's easy enough to know who is behind the avatar and who you don't want to be trained.

 

[doctormike]

The DIR under my screen name is put on their because I joined the DIR forum to post. I do strongly believe in most of the GUE mentality but don't only dive stringently to the standards they hold. I've dove sidemount for many years for instance.

I do think we'll have to disagree. I never once said that kneeling is unsafe. I also never once said that touching the wreck was wrong. I do believe minimal contact is important, but I've been on a wreck and had to use the structure to help myself move more effectively. The only thing that I've repeatedly said is that a technical instructor allowing his students to kneel in my opinion is allowing for poor basic skills. .

Yeah, and I think that I might have conflated your posts with another one of the crowd making similar points, so I'm sorry about that...

Apparently a lot of nuance gets lost in online communication, as well as regional variations in definitions (like "propoganda" and "progressive penetration").

Dive safe!

 

[JohnnyC]

There is a fundamental difference between posting video for critique, and posting video with the weight of your ego behind it.

“Hey guys, check out how awesome I am, I nailed his skill,” when you’re in fact just twitching like Michael J. Fox with a pair of jet fins on is really going to get your ego slapped. Your ability to accept that with understanding and reevaluate your own opinion is a sign of a person willing to learn and improve. Throwing a tantrum, lashing out at your critics, etc. is just a demonstration of immaturity and shows no actual desire to improve, simply the desire for echo chamber validation. It’s not about getting better, it’s about convincing yourself that you’re right even when you’re wrong solely because of your feelings. Your feelings are irrelevant when it meets the road.....

This is a tough nut to crack and I think the OP has done a pretty good job of navigating it pretty well. However I can certainly see a little righteous indignation on both sides that isn’t helping things for either side. Just an observation. Valid criticism is good. If you immediately invalidate criticism without reason, you do yourself no favors.

As for kneeling. I think when your idea of wreck diving is essentially “citizen salvage,” like most New England wreck divers, the justification for things like kneeling is an easy one. It’s one of those things that has to be viewed in the context in which the idea originated. I don’t say this as a judgement, make up your own mind as to whether or not this is acceptable.

I think it’s important to note, just as a general reminder, we do not rise to the occasion. We sink to the level of our training. When things go wrong and we are forced to act, do we want our first choice to be the lowest level of performance, because that’s what we’ve accepted, or do we want it to be the behavior that is best suited to save our bacon? Take that as you will.

 

[rddvet]

I think it’s important to note, just as a general reminder, we do not rise to the occasion. We sink to the level of our training. When things go wrong and we are forced to act, do we want our first choice to be the lowest level of performance, because that’s what we’ve accepted, or do we want it to be the behavior that is best suited to save our bacon? Take that as you will.

That's an excellent point and a much more succinct and eloquent way of saying what I was hoping to convey.

 

[rjack321]

There is a fundamental difference between posting video for critique, and posting video with the weight of your ego behind it.

“Hey guys, check out how awesome I am, I nailed his skill,” when you’re in fact just twitching like Michael J. Fox with a pair of jet fins on is really going to get your ego slapped. Your ability to accept that with understanding and reevaluate your own opinion is a sign of a person willing to learn and improve. Throwing a tantrum, lashing out at your critics, etc. is just a demonstration of immaturity and shows no actual desire to improve, simply the desire for echo chamber validation. It’s not about getting better, it’s about convincing yourself that you’re right even when you’re wrong solely because of your feelings. Your feelings are irrelevant when it meets the road.....

This is a tough nut to crack and I think the OP has done a pretty good job of navigating it pretty well. However I can certainly see a little righteous indignation on both sides that isn’t helping things for either side. Just an observation. Valid criticism is good. If you immediately invalidate criticism without reason, you do yourself no favors.

As for kneeling. I think when your idea of wreck diving is essentially “citizen salvage,” like most New England wreck divers, the justification for things like kneeling is an easy one. It’s one of those things that has to be viewed in the context in which the idea originated. I don’t say this as a judgement, make up your own mind as to whether or not this is acceptable.

I think it’s important to note, just as a general reminder, we do not rise to the occasion. We sink to the level of our training. When things go wrong and we are forced to act, do we want our first choice to be the lowest level of performance, because that’s what we’ve accepted, or do we want it to be the behavior that is best suited to save our bacon? Take that as you will.

There are 3 basic types of dive videos posted online:
1) Look how awesome I am!!
2) Help me fix my trim (backkick etc)
3) Neutral but leaning mostly towards "look how fun this site was"

When the first group are clearly flailing or acting like Doc Deep I have no problem knocking them down a peg. They don't listen because their egos have swollen up to the point where their eyes are closed but what can you do.

The second group its easy to at least try and be kind since they are reaching out with humility in the first place

The third group wasn't posting to boast or necessarily to solicit constructive criticism either so its especially important (if you feel like saying any at all) to be kind and constructive. I would put this video mostly in category 3

 

[CptTightPants21]

I think that you may be missing the point. And I appreciate that you are trying to improve diving skills and safety in general, we are on the same team. But consider this.

People aren’t saying that kneeling is correct just because JC lets people do it in class. It’s not an argument from authority. People are saying that he provides good training and skills that a thinking diver should have in their quiver as options for some circumstances. And so they seek out that training, have a dialogue with him, and try to learn from someone with a lot of experience.

Every instructor or course has specific skills and experiences that should be instilled in the diver to facilitate their learning. Basic diving skill takes time to develop and be taught to students. The reason that some tech divers are the way they are is that each instructor they went to made the decision to kick the fundamental skills can down the road and just “teach” what they were paid to teach. The best instructors are the ones that stop kicking the can down the road and actually pick it up. It’s like watching a piece of trash slowly blow down the street, everyone things someone else can deal with it or it isn’t my problem, I am here to do X. They go along their merry way and ignore what is right in front of them. You want a cleaner world? Better reefs? Better wrecks? less fatalities? It starts by picking up the first piece of litter when you see it and not letting it accumulate.

As has been explained several times upthread, there are situations where (in the opinions of some posters, including me) kneeling is OK. There are reasons why no-touch isn’t always the best approach to wreck diving. There are downsides to running a line in some circumstances. People solo dive. Etc…

Now you apparently feel differently - you feel that kneeling is never appropriate, and doing it is a sign of being not just a “bad” diver, but an unsafe diver. That’s fine. But maybe you (and your wife) could remember that there are different ways of diving, and just because someone doesn’t spend the whole dive in perfect trim, with their hands out in front of them, doesn’t mean that they don’t have a reason for doing what they do. The point of diving isn’t to maintain trim.

You are cloaking yourself in the vagueness of language to defend a bad position and ignore the core facts of the argument in this case. People (rightfully) criticize the kneeling that is done in this video. You ignore that and just say well there are times kneeling is good—no one said there are times it is not ok. If you need to kneel to provide stability to get the right camera angle on a shot taken in the flow, and as long as it is not on coral or a wooden shipwreck, go for it. That is kneeling with purpose and to correct an environmental issue. Kneeling to take that same shot in a calm lake when you should be able to hover for control— most likely a problem. To give a NE example, if you need to kneel to give yourself leverage while you pull XYZ off the wreck, fine. Again kneeling with purpose to achieve a VERY HIGHLY SPECIFIC objective. Do not mistake this to mean well now I can kneel on wrecks or I can kneel when I drop my stage bottle because that is an objective—no, it’s not. To provide a personal experience about kneeling, I was once in a cave that had an absolutely MONSTER flow—full flutter kick and you would barely inch forward and maybe even start to lose distance depending on speed of your kicks. When I went to switch and stow my stage bottle, the cave was absolutely having its way with me and I was kicking and building up CO2 like crazy. I paused and thought about my circumstances. I moved up about a dozen feet and found a nice handhold cutout in the solid limestone. I dug my knee into the cutout to provide stability, I made the switch, and I continued with the rest of my crawl of a cave dive.

To address pull and glide on the wreck. When I pull and glide on a wreck or cave, my body is within 10 degrees of trim, I use between 1-3 fingers, usually not past the 2nd knuckle to pull/give my self a little assist into the next handhold. My body is almost 100% still, depending on circumstance/flow, there might be a small assist kick during the glide portion as I go for the next hand hold. It is a controlled and methodical technique that attempts to balance environmental conditions, efficiency, and conservation of the dive site. It isn’t a full hand, body, knee free-for-all that is an excuse to manhandle a wreck.

The point of diving isn’t to maintain trim -true. It is to have fun do cool stuff. The point of driving isn’t to drive. It is to have fun and do cool stuff, but you still need to be able to drive between the lines for the safety of the environment, yourself, and others.

If someone says it’s OK to go into unplanned deco on a single tank, then I’ll be right at your side calling them out as promoting unsafe practices. But kneeling simply isn’t the same thing.

Kneeling for the sake of kneeling is the sign of a unskilled diver, not unsafe. The unsafe part comes when this unskilled diver takes those (lacking) skills into an overhead or another potentially dangerous situation.

So, getting back to core argument. You believe it is ok for an instructor to take students into a hard overhead environment without rudimentary kicks or proper buoyancy?

You believe that it is ok for a student to go on his knees at any point in a dive and for any reason provided he is not causing harm to environment or others?

To be honest (and I don’t mean to agency bash), one of the common pushbacks that I hear to the three letters below your screen name is intolerance of deviation. The idea that there is one and only one correct way of diving, and if you don’t do that, you are simply doing it wrong, full stop. I’m not so arrogant to think that. Which is ironic, since one thing that I HATE here on SB is the phrase “dive and let dive”. There are definitely right and wrong ways of doing things. But no matter how much I feel that, say, a BP/W is superior to a jacket BC, I understand that there are situations where a jacket is the better choice. Other things aren’t negotiable.

As far as I am aware no poster in this thread has discussed any GUE techniques or criticized anything in this thread because it is not GUE. Metal on metal stage bottle connections, stage hose length, gas mix, canister light, light head positioned on right hand, deco gas on right side- none of it is GUE and no one has criticized it as such. We have talked about buddy check gas switch procedure which is somewhat GUE, somewhat not. Even this instructor has buddy check gas switch, we just questioned why it was done after the potentially bad gas was put into your body and not the 15 seconds before. All of the criticism so far has been about basic dive skill and procedure.

 

[CptTightPants21]

Where there some trim/buoyancy issues in the video? Absolutely. Was it the worst thing ever seen in the world? Hell no, I've seen far worse students graduate with cave certs. Remember fellas, these are students in a class and they're learning.

I agree Ken, which is why in over 150 posts NOT ONE has criticized the students in this course and it has all gone towards the instructor/instruction in general. They are newer divers, they are enthusiastic, and they are eager to learn which is great. I think the issue that many are having is that the instructor in question was not even attempting to fix some of the buoyancy, trim, propulsion techniques. In fact the instructor with his thousands of dives looked JUST LIKE the students and was actively promoting bad form. We should be mindful that this was just adv. wreck and that some other instructor certified them on AN/DP. If this had been a trimix course, the instructor would have been teaching them the same techniques with the same (I would call them lax) standards and these students would be at the top of the OC certification pyramid with the skills demonstrated (or not demonstrated) in that video. There would have been no OC dive they were not certified to do.

The course might prepare them for some wreck diving navigation and techniques, but in terms of actually learning how to dive in a skillful, safe, and responsible manner they are actually getting a better education on this thread, website, and (some) youtube videos. It’s not that they dive like that and it’s not that they are in a class. It’s that they look like that, are in a class, AND it’s not being addressed by the instructor.

I also picked up a couple of neat tricks from the video that I had not seen before and I'm going to go play with them and test them out (filling the SMB from my wing to maintain constant lift volume and steady buoyancy does seem slick).

I thought the lift bag was an interesting idea. I don’t use open bottom lift bags, but it does seem like an interested idea. I actually really liked the spool recovery technique. If I drop a spool my thoughts were that I still have the line going up attached to the bag so I will just reel it up at the end of the dive or deploy a backup if needed. The pulley technique is interesting as a solo/self reliant technique.

John isn't teaching you buoyancy skills - he's teaching you survival skills inside wrecks while incurring deco - that's the focus. These dive sites aren't wooden treasures in some national park, I don't think he'd ever approve of those diving methods/styles in any park. He teaches NE down and dirty wreck diving period.

Chuck you have a quote attributed to me in post #114 that I did not say. Can you please remove/edit it.

I touched upon the need to address buoyancy and basic skills in my previous post, but I will add a little more here.

Having good buoyancy skills is important for a couple of reasons. Having good buoyancy stops situations from requiring survival techniques in the first place. Good buoyancy also stops bad situations from becoming much worse.

How many fatalities have been caused from bad buoyancy? Going into the cave didn’t necessarily kill them, going into the wreck didn’t necessarily kill them. Silt and clay stirred up from bad buoyancy (and kicks) caused the situation to become fatal and there is a good chance that bad buoyancy stopped the situation from improving by stopping the clay/silt out from dissipating. He might be address some wreck specific survival skills, but I would argue that buoyancy is the first line of defense for survival in scuba.

I know in the classes I took with him, we never once talked about style points - well we talked and laughed about them. He teaches buoyancy, fining etc in ITT - wreck diving class is more of a wrestling type class.

John focuses a lot on CO2, much more so in the deeper classes but it's high on his list of priorities. I call it lazy diving, call it whatever you want. There is an underlying method that he wants you doing the absolute minimum effort underwater - why be neutral fining into the current if you can kneel - why fin your way thru a passageway when you can pull yourself along? CO2 CO2 CO2 bad bad bad - he says something related to CO2 about every five minutes - maybe that's a partial reason he teaches the way he does.

I understand about CO2, but I believe he is using it as an excuse for some poor practices. Doctor Mike posted above that trim isn’t the goal diving. While limiting CO2, especially in big dives, is important; limiting CO2 is not the ultimate goal of diving. Proper form and good technique can limit CO2 build up just as much, maybe even more than some of the techniques that I have seen John employ. If CO2 retention is really the goal then he should be advocating trimix at very shallow depths.

I think it’s important to note, just as a general reminder, we do not rise to the occasion. We sink to the level of our training. When things go wrong and we are forced to act, do we want our first choice to be the lowest level of performance, because that’s what we’ve accepted, or do we want it to be the behavior that is best suited to save our bacon? Take that as you will

Perfectly said. We play the way we practice. In an actual emergency, the skill level that we exhibit will always be at least a little bit worse than our average. Diving is mostly safe and it is supposed to be fun, but how we handle the rare emergency is the difference between life and death.

 

[Zack-Bloom]

That said, I disagree with a few posters who get bent out of shape by seeing people kneel on the wreck, but my understanding is that OP posted this video to solicit criticism, not find universal praise.

I think it's a great conversation whether people should kneel on wrecks. I think in the situation in the video being neutrally buoyant makes more sense, and I think the people kneeling would agree with me. The reason people reacted so strongly, I believe, is because the conversation moved from how people should dive to whether a specific dive instructor is competent or not. That question wasn't just being asked, it was being definitively answered based on as superficial an assessment as I can imagine, and totally at odds with the experience of people who have actually trained with him. Personally I think talking about diving is more fun.

 

[Zack-Bloom]

It looked to be around 60 feet per minute for a full minute - going from 130 to around 60 feet.

All I can say is, 60 feet was the number we were taught to aim for. In practice it seemed controlled to me, and it was certainly nice to get out of the decozone quickly. I can see why a faster ascent rate would be valuable for doing very deep dives, but I don't have enough experience to comment more.

I would think, it would be preferable to either add a little air at depth and let it go, or ascend to a reasonable stop depth and inflate the smb and let it go, but carrying a partially full smb that is expanding during a good portion of the ascent seems to add task loading and potential negative consequences for zero benefit that I can identify. Is this issue partially why the ascent was kinda fast from 130 to 60 or so? Is there a benefit to partially filling and then carrying the smb?

One thing we were taught is the importance of not overfilling the SMB at depth, as it can be challenging to have the OPV releasing gas at 'random' as you ascend. The goal was to get it about 1/5 full at that depth, if I had overfilled it I would have emptied a bit before beginning my ascent. Beyond that, I didn't find it difficult to release gas as normal from my BC to control my ascent rate, and it was impressive how effective paying out the spool ten feet below the first stop and using that to come to a stop was.

Can you help me understand more what the failure mode of the strategy is? If I was really getting pulled up by the SMB at depth why couldn't I just let the line pay out (or worst case let go of the spool)?