Minimizing deadly tendencies

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northernone

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Rest in Peace
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Currently: Cozumel, from Canada
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What sort of personality traits, attitudes or character strengths that are useful for dry land living have been dangerous to your diving?

How far have you gone in self awareness to make changes to safeguard against these potentially life threatening unsuitable aspects.

For myself I'm extremely practical and hands on... I test theories and explore information I am told... commendable in myself on dry land and allows me to understand things deeply and passionately...

Get me underwater and it's dangerous to act on. I've put myself in actual danger underwater while testing theories... my personality wants to know things first hand I'm better leaving to quality hearsay for my own safety. (DCS, oxtox, and certain environmental hazards come to mind for example) I'm working on tempered my natural bent (unfortunate word choice) by adding extra safety measures to when I want to 'try something' and more importantly am learning to accept research without personally verifying it. This is one reason I love this forum.

This thread won't appeal to all personality types but perhaps there's some good discussion in attributes that will get someone killed if it's left unchecked underwater.

I'd suggest hubris is danger, as an offshoot of the Chatterton article: Accomplished Bad Divers

Cheers,
Cameron
 
About a dozen years ago, I was doing a solo dive on the Spiegel Grove, a wreck I had dived at least 15 times previously. I was taking the long hallway on the port side of the main deck from the bow back to the well deck. I came to a hatch in the floor and decided to take a quick look. I found another hatch in the floor and decided to take just another quick look and then return to my path on the main deck. I went back up through the first hatch, and then, just couldn't locate the 2nd hatch, despite a couple minutes of search. Many things quickly went through my mind, what is it like to drown, how will my wife and children be affected by my death, what a stupid thing to do?

Fortunately, I turned off my light, thinking that I might be able to see some light coming down though the hatch from above. That didn't work, but I saw pale blue light at the end of the hallway toward the stern. I swam down the hall and then up and out through a stairway, exiting quite near to my original destination.

I learned a tremendous amount that day. Whenever I briefly contemplate doing something risky or stupid, the memory comes back and tempers my judgement. I've not done anything similar since and have no plans to do so, it's not worth it.

Good, safe diving, Craig
 
About a dozen years ago, I was doing a solo dive on the Spiegel Grove, a wreck I had dived at least 15 times previously. I was taking the long hallway on the port side of the main deck from the bow back to the well deck. I came to a hatch in the floor and decided to take a quick look. I found another hatch in the floor and decided to take just another quick look and then return to my path on the main deck. I went back up through the first hatch, and then, just couldn't locate the 2nd hatch, despite a couple minutes of search. Many things quickly went through my mind, what is it like to drown, how will my wife and children be affected by my death, what a stupid thing to do?

Fortunately, I turned off my light, thinking that I might be able to see some light coming down though the hatch from above. That didn't work, but I saw pale blue light at the end of the hallway toward the stern. I swam down the hall and then up and out through a stairway, exiting quite near to my original destination.

I learned a tremendous amount that day. Whenever I briefly contemplate doing something risky or stupid, the memory comes back and tempers my judgement. I've not done anything similar since and have no plans to do so, it's not worth it.

Good, safe diving, Craig
Similar occurrence happened to me inside the engine room of the Fumizuki Destroyer in Truk: did a progressive penetration "visual jump" from a tight accessway across the ship's beam & open compartment space to look at some controls/instrumentation, without looking back for reciprocal return "landmarks" to find the way back to the accessway. Obviously, the pathway going in can look a lot different than the pathway coming out (throw in some silt and I would have been hopelessly lost). Which leads to:
Read Sheck’s book Blueprint for Survival. Should answer all your questions. Tried and true.
The point of view perspective going into a wreck can be totally different than that on egress, causing potential disorientation. Hence Rule Number One in Overheads: Always run a continuous guideline out to open water.
 
What sort of personality traits, attitudes or character strengths that are useful for dry land living have been dangerous to your diving?

Disclaimer: none of this is ment to be braggadocious. Just want to illustrate the contrast between my land based strength and what's useful for diving.

It's not exactly a "personality trait" per se, but I've always been very reliant on my physique. Used to be a speed skater and, by any standard, pretty fit. They'd never put my skating technique in the text books though. My main asset was being able to push myself beyond what I thought my body could handle (which, come to think of it, is probably true for most athletes).

This has helped me enjoy lots of activities that, without the physique, would have taken a lot more technical experience/training and knowledge - be it skiing, rock climbing, hiking etc. And I've always enjoyed being able to compensate a lack of experience with stubbornness and stamina.

Naively, I thought this would be to great benefit when I started diving some 4 years ago. Came as a shock to me that the way I've always solved inadequacies in the past was completely useless under water. And I learned it the hard way... Overexerted myself fighting strong current on my 5th dive after certification, panicked and didn't dive again for three years.

Glad I got back into it though. That initial feeling of panic and choking is still with me, but I get better with every dive and I now find it almost meditative. Overcoming it has been a huge challenge and I'm obviously still working on it.

Also... Wanna take this opportunity to thank all the experienced divers here who share their knowledge on scubaboard and out in the world. It's priceless to us newbies :)
 
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