Video from a Training Dive with John Chatterton

[Marie13]

I wonder how much of what we’ve got here is the disagreement between the old style tech divers and current practice.

I know a local guy in his 60s who’s done a ton of deep Great Lakes diving. He just switched to a BP/W in the last year or two as he wanted to not get hassled on charters for his gear if he didn’t want to take his own boat out, as well as for safety reasons. He said he used to dive doubles with just a drysuit for buoyancy. Said he realized one day on deco that if his neck seal went on a dive, he was a goner.

He teases me about me working on my frog kick. He said he was taught to work as little as possible. They just pulled themselves along on the wreck with their hands. I get the impression that was standard practice, not just in current. Also did a lot of light deco dives with just a large back tank and a deco bottle. Doubles weren’t used all the time. Guy knows a ton, but the way he did things was totally different than how we’re taught nowadays.

 

[seeker242]

And if you need to have someone verify your gas switch, You should stay in the kiddy pool..

Yea, who cares if your buddy switches to the wrong gas and passes out. That's his problem, not yours.

 

[njdiverjoe]

I've been following this thread just for the laughs.. As always there are the "GODS" of cave diving bad mouthing others.. I even read one person blowing off John's thoughts on reducing CO2 well Diving.. CO2 is 10x as bad as nitrogen, AND ADDING HELIUM DOESN'T HELP CO2 build up..

And if you need to have someone verify your gas switch, You should stay in the kiddy pool..

Jim...

I don't know why you would say that when there is a lot of evidence demonstrating that adding helium improves pulmonary mechanics, lung ventilation, etc, -- the very mechanisms by which CO2 is eliminated.

 

[oldschoolto]

Yea, who cares if your buddy switches to the wrong gas and passes out. That's his problem, not yours.

Well I guess you don't solo dive.. We old-school northeast wreckers know it's solo even if you have a buddy..
Jim...

 

[oldschoolto]

I don't know why you would say that when there is a lot of evidence demonstrating that adding helium improves pulmonary mechanics, lung ventilation, etc, -- the very mechanisms by which CO2 is eliminated.

Because the key is to NOT make the CO2 in the first place.. And there are NO HARD FACTS that Helium does help with clearing the CO2 .. I'll stick with not making it..

Jim...

 

[Protondecay123]

It's absolutely not only up to the instructors students to decide if he/she is good or not. Many of them don't know any better. I know many people that think their sh-tty instructor is scuba jesus.

Yes absolutely. What’s hard to follow. A lack of basic skills was clearly demonstrated in the vide of students that passed a class. It makes me question the level of instruction. I think I made it pretty clear throughout this thread. Not sure where you get the emotion stuff from. Cerich even made it clear he feels there could have been standards violations. That’s a lot more serious than me questioning the quality of instruction.

What's being confused in the first statement and part of the problem with the analysis is that student knowledge of subject matter does not preclude them from being the best judge of teaching effectiveness. You can present every minor detail of gas physiology, deco techniques etc. But if it's not presented in an effective manner conductive to the student's learning it is ineffective. If an instructor has a high failure rate on student technical skills then guess what, it's probably not the students, but the instructor at fault. Also instructors have an inherent bias pro and con in the evaluation of other instructors. Go do a literature search and see for yourself. It's pretty rich and special to see some of the same people that defended convicted felon Peter Sotis ( and attempted supplier of rebreathers to Libyan terrorists) in the death of Rob Stewart, come on this thread and try to make a mountain out of a mole hill with this video. Shameful.

 

[njdiverjoe]

Because the key is to NOT make the CO2 in the first place.. And there are NO HARD FACTS that Helium does help with clearing the CO2 .. I'll stick with not making it..

Jim...

Despite what your comment says, I'll assume that you know you are always producing CO2.

Heliox Improves Carbon Dioxide Removal during lung Protective Mechanical Ventilation
http://downloads.hindawi.com/journals/ccrp/2014/954814.pdf

If you do even a minute amount of searching you'll find that there are lots of scientific studies (one example I linked above...) showing that high helium content gases improve lung ventilation. These studies are often centered around patients with impaired lung function -- not too unlike impairment of a divers lungs at depth due to the increased gas density.

Edit: Took me a couple minutes to track down. There's a great article co-authored by Simon Mitchell which touches on this very topic (see page 66): https://www.omao.noaa.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Rebreathers and Scientific Diving Proceedings 2016.pdf

 

[johndiver999]

I hope he puts the video back up, if J.C. allowed him to take the video, I doubt he is worried about the content of it. As for the op, he specifically asked for critical review, so I would be surprised that he would be overly upset with criticism.

I don’t quite understand the intensity of the attacks on buoyancy. If a diver intends to pull and glide, you want to be a little heavy don’t you? If there are violations of standards of the relevant training agency, then I would think it fair game to explicitly detail those.

Personally, I was a little surprised by some of the kicking technique shown in the wreck (and the use of the smb) but I don’t know enough (apparently) to be outraged.

 

[rddvet]

I've been following this thread just for the laughs.. As always there are the "GODS" of cave diving bad mouthing others.. I even read one person blowing off John's thoughts on reducing CO2 well Diving.. CO2 is 10x as bad as nitrogen, AND ADDING HELIUM DOESN'T HELP CO2 build up..

And if you need to have someone verify your gas switch, You should stay in the kiddy pool..

Jim...

Oh Jeez. I guess you either haven't heard or don't believe that Helium can lower CO2 levels due to its positive affects on WOB in both OC and CCR.

Based on your closing statement I suspect you have alot of trouble controlling your trim with those big hanging balls between your legs. For clarity, I do not perform a team gas switch procedure in the grand majority of my diving because it's not always realistic to turn around in a cave to watch your buddy switch. When it's realistic to do so I do, and if I were diving OW trimix I sure as hell would.

 

[cerich]

Because the key is to NOT make the CO2 in the first place.. And there are NO HARD FACTS that Helium does help with clearing the CO2 .. I'll stick with not making it..

Jim...

The helium is key to a lower wob that does help reduce "making CO2.

That is well established