Dumbest things you've seen a newbie diver do

[chrpai]

Let me be clear. I have a Rescue Diver cert. Whoop-de-doo, big deal, who cares.

Having a rescue diver cert only means you took the class and practiced some in water skills on accident management. Preparedness is stressed repeatedly in classs. It's a good class but it's probably a bit like a fireman who graduated the academy but hasn't spent years in a firehouse preparing for that big emergency.

It takes a lot of effort to be ready for the big one and then you'll find out what you are made of. Frankly, I haven't put in the effort so while the class was good stuff, I leave the card at home. My nitrox card is the only card I really need.

 

[bowlofpetunias]

Let me be clear. I have a Rescue Diver cert. Whoop-de-doo, big deal, who cares.

Having a rescue diver cert only means you took the class and practiced some in water skills on accident management. Preparedness is stressed repeatedly in classs. It's a good class but it's probably a bit like a fireman who graduated the academy but hasn't spent years in a firehouse preparing for that big emergency.

It takes a lot of effort to be ready for the big one and then you'll find out what you are made of. Frankly, I haven't put in the effort so while the class was good stuff, I leave the card at home. My nitrox card is the only card I really need.

Sure agree with you on that one. Certs don't mean a darn thing, neither does age or the number of dives a person has been fortunate enough to do.. it is in water skills that count and the right attitude when "the ship hits the sand".

I know instructors who really put their students through the ringer.. a couple that go too far and some that accept pretty well anything. The cert only means that "hopefully" a person demonstrated a specific skill set on a specific day during assessment. They may forget it the next day or never practice it again or they may have been spoon fed and handed a certificate they shouldn't have been too

I remember years ago when I started teaching First Aid. I was teaching a re-certification course... and I remember thinking "I wonder what idiot gave this person a Certificate in the past" A few years later I was teaching a re-certification course and I realized "I had been the idiot that gave the person a certificate in the past" :doh: You can only do your best as a trainer and what they do after you get them up to speed to maintain that level is out of your control

 

[Mayor]

On a family vacation in Provo they split the groups into two. So called advanced divers and ow diver. The advanced group jumps in and we get settled for a few minutes waiting for all of the group. At the same time on the other side of the boat the ow group is getting in. Out of the corner of my eye I see this woman venting and dropping kind of on the fast side. As I looked away I caught the look on our DM face and looked back to the woman. At this point she is in 50 feet and still venting just off the wall. The bottom has to be over 300 feet. There is no way the DM can get to her in time. He might be 300 yards out and I'm half that distance in 20 feet of water.

I do the math on the distance and my gas then check my buddy. So I go for it, as i get close I start to see if she is ok and as I puff some air into the bc to get her slightly positive. Then check the depth (86 feet) and her air (1500 psi) we make a slow trip up to about 40 feet and the DM thanks me and takes over. Turns out after the dive she had no clue what happened. Some other divers told her and she thanked me a few days later. Was just glad I got her long before going below 100 feet. Not my ha
ppy place on a single al 80 with out any redundancy.

So that's my new diver story. I have many more but this one comes to mind right away.

 

[bowlofpetunias]

On a family vacation in Provo they split the groups into two. So called advanced divers and ow diver. The advanced group jumps in and we get settled for a few minutes waiting for all of the group. At the same time on the other side of the boat the ow group is getting in. Out of the corner of my eye I see this woman venting and dropping kind of on the fast side. As I looked away I caught the look on our DM face and looked back to the woman. At this point she is in 50 feet and still venting just off the wall. The bottom has to be over 300 feet. There is no way the DM can get to her in time. He might be 300 yards out and I'm half that distance in 20 feet of water.

I do the math on the distance and my gas then check my buddy. So I go for it, as i get close I start to see if she is ok and as I'm doing this puff some air into the bc to get her slightly positive. Then check the depth (86 feet) and her air (1500 psi) we make a slow trip up to about 40 feet and the DM thanks me and takes over. Turns out after the dive she had no clue what happened. Some other divers told her and she thanked me a few days later. Was just glad I got her long before going below 100 feet. Not my happy place on a single al 80 with out any redundancy.

So that's my new diver story. I have many more but this one comes to mind right away.

Wow... lucky diver congrats on a job well done!

 

[Bubbledup]

I'm hoping you can all shed some light on mishaps you've seen newbie or inexperienced divers encounter. I've read the pet peeves thread but I thought this could be a thread with personal experiences. I'm hoping myself and other new divers could learn from others' mistakes.[/QUOTE

I was diving in Costa Rica a few years ago. There was a newly certified diver on the dive boat (not a live-aboard) who had, just the day before, purchased a new dive computer. After the first dive (to about 60 ft. for about 45 mins.) he looked at his new computer and saw that the bubble indicator (green/yellow/red) was touching the very bottom of the yellow scale. He absolutely refused to go into the water for the rest of the day. I showed him my computer which indicated the same thing. No way, he wasn't going back into the water. At that rate it's going to take that guy a few years to accumulate some dives.

 

[Bubbledup]

Dunbest thing I did as a newbie was trusting my dive buddy's to take care of me when I went out with them. I should have been trusting myself instead. Nothing bad happened but there were a few instances that I was in over my head and I did not say anything because I did not want to ruin someone else's dive.

I have since learned that if it is not right, I am not doing it, bedamned those who think otherwise.

Absolutely right! The bottom line is that you are responsible for yourself.

 

[Bubbledup]

I'm hoping you can all shed some light on mishaps you've seen newbie or inexperienced divers encounter. I've read the pet peeves thread but I thought this could be a thread with personal experiences. I'm hoping myself and other new divers could learn from others' mistakes.

I have to report myself for doing an incredibly stupid thing on my fourth or fifth dive. It was 1963, and I was diving in Kaneohe Bay, HI with a buddy. We had what were called J-valves on our tanks. This consisted of a lever with a wire attached to it; if you ran out of air you could pull the wire and, supposedly, get another five minutes of air, enough to get you to the surface (we didn't know about safety stops in those days). We had been poking around for about an hour at about 40 feet when I felt difficulty in breathing. No problem; all I had to do was reach behind, find the J-valve wire and give it a gentle pull. Trouble was, I couldn't find the wire to give it a pull of any kind, gentle or otherwise. My buddy was about 40 feet away, but instead of swimming straight over to him I continued to grope for the J-valve. I groped and groped, I could have surfaced because we weren't that deep, but I continued to grope. Now I felt a really urgent need to breathe, and my buddy wasn't looking at me. I swam over to him, using the last molecule of oxygen in my lungs and pointed to my tank. He immediately realized my problem and turned on the J-valve, giving me sweet, delicious air. I will never forget that first breath. And I never again gave any thought to relying on a J-valve.

This post will probably trigger a lot of questions. Was I certified? No. My buddy was in the navy, and whenever he was in port he would check out navy scuba gear for us, no questions asked. My buddy was not certified either. Instead of a BC we wore what were called horse collars, a sort of inflatable inner tube you wore around your neck. Nor did we have pressure gauges; he said the navy guaranteed the tanks were full. Would they lie? Looking back, I don't know how or why we survived, but we did. Had I practiced finding the J-valve before the dive? Yes, several times. We dived like this for several years.

 

[aquaregia]

I have friends who, on multiple occasions, found that they'd forgotten to reset their J-valve. They'd pull it for the rest of their air and... whoops!

 

[gtscott]

i made a few mistakes as a noob that i realised pretty much straight after the dive at the wrong time it might of killed me,
on my 2nd ow dive out of my course, and part way into my naturatlist course, worried to much about how much air i was using and ruining my buddies dive, ended up leaving the water with pretty much no air (has some pressure in it still, not enough to show up on the gauge) as i underestimated the distance to water were it was safe to accent (dive was a shore dive that goes into a shipping channel) and underestimated the ammount of air u use working hard to get in when ure scared ure about to run out of air

another time i went to look for a dive light i had lost the day before, took a tank that had about 100 bar in it (al 80) only lost the torch in about 8m, and had atleast 15m vis at the site the day before, plan was to take a mate who only snorkels with me, and snorkel around till i find it, dive down, get it, get back up and leave

got to the site, water was very rough, yet thought hmm if i time it right i can still get in, got ready, jumped in, no air in the bc, and inflator hose disconnected (no buddie and no buddie check) wasted 50 odd bar just being washed around while trying to connect inflator hose, then realised the water was that bad i only had about 1 foot or less vis and was smashing into rocks everywhere, so got out and back home

learnt alot since those days, and are alot smarter now and safer

 

[gtscott]

i made a few mistakes as a noob that i realised pretty much straight after the dive at the wrong time it might of killed me,
on my 2nd ow dive out of my course, and part way into my naturatlist course, worried to much about how much air i was using and ruining my buddies dive, ended up leaving the water with pretty much no air (has some pressure in it still, not enough to show up on the gauge) as i underestimated the distance to water were it was safe to accent (dive was a shore dive that goes into a shipping channel) and underestimated the ammount of air u use working hard to get in when ure scared ure about to run out of air

another time i went to look for a dive light i had lost the day before, took a tank that had about 100 bar in it (al 80) only lost the torch in about 8m, and had atleast 15m vis at the site the day before, plan was to take a mate who only snorkels with me, and snorkel around till i find it, dive down, get it, get back up and leave

got to the site, water was very rough, yet thought hmm if i time it right i can still get in, got ready, jumped in, no air in the bc, and inflator hose disconnected (no buddie and no buddie check) wasted 50 odd bar just being washed around while trying to connect inflator hose, then realised the water was that bad i only had about 1 foot or less vis and was smashing into rocks everywhere, so got out and back home

learnt alot since those days, and are alot smarter now and safer