Getting in Over Your Head

[underthedeepblue]

I am new to diving: 60 dives and AOW

The eve of my departure to start my OW training in Utila I sat down with myself and swore I would never, ever do cave diving or swim throughs of *any* kind. I am claustrophobic and frankly a sudden anxiety attack would not only be hazardous for me but for others too.

I arrived in a Caribbean diving resort ten days ago - very sleepy village type atmosphere and I love it BUT I cruised all the dive shops and chose one and said point blank to the owner and intructor before I signed up for thirty dives:
"Please: no swim throughs. No caves. No discussion!"
and they were fine

First dive with DM in front and a family of four diving together I was led into a swim through and backed off just in time and swam over it and I was alone hovering a good four minutes as they disappeared inot something that - had I followed blindly - I could have died due to sudden panic.

It really annoys me when DMs and instructors who obviously dive every day of their lives become complacent and don't listen to very real concerns and to people who KNOW their limitations.

When I mentioned it on the surface interval the DM just told me I need to relax!


EDIT:
btw I haven't done many wreck dives but I was wondering if they are mae safer by taking doors off hinges and removing them to keep everything easier to navigate if people do choose to go into rooms or confined ares?

I am not interested in doing that - I have only done Halliburton wreck on Utila but I just skirt around the outside.

 

[FireInMyBones]

Standardization. It is there for a reason. When I got my OW cert not only was I not told about not being able to go into wrecks or caves, we completed our check out dive in the lake and were allowed to swim though a downed Chinese Junk. I came up after that final dive and asked my instructor about overheads, I had read in my OW manual that they are not allowed. He said that if I was with an instructor or DM, I was fine. I have since went through AOW, Rescue, Cavern and working towards DM. I look forward to the day that I become an instructor. I want to help prevent these kind of mistakes. If all you are is OW, I do not care how much "extra training" you receive during class, overheads are outside the boundaries of your training. Period. If you want to dive them, go get certified.
As someone that will soon be considered a "dive professional," I hope that I can say I will live up to that label. I should not have to lower my standards for people to have more fun. I want to see divers make the kind of choices that allows them to keep diving for years to come.
I know that there are some that would disagree. I am okay with that. Everyone will be held accountable for their actions.
I often disagree with how things are run, so I have decided to make the changes I hope to see. If one day I am shown the error of my ways, I hope I have the humility to see the truth and change. I am often too stubborn and learn the hard way. That is why until I am trained further, anything beyond my training is out. Else I may become a story my fellow divers tell to warn future divers.

 

[koyote1111]

Interesting discussion...
Recently completed my Master Scuba Cert. and do remember reading about not entering overhead environments.
A couple of things that I did noticed along the way:
Many students do not do the assigned reading and complete knowledge reviews in a pretty sloppy manner (yet this seems to be acceptable).
Some instructors do not evaluate knowledge reviews.
After the pre-dive safety check is taught and performed a couple of times...it seems to be a thing of the past.
I am noticing that some instructors are now leaning toward little if any classroom instruction (and I'm not referring to the online education courses).

I happen to believe that the classroom is important and I would put certification on hold if a student was not completing their "homework" in a proficient manner. In other words, I think the entire certification process should be a bit more rigorous...both in the classroom and the water. I went through too many specialty courses and even the rescue diver course where we simply performed a skill one time...and this equated to certification.

I have been a teacher for 25 years...and at times I've found it a bit frightening that the specialty cards and certs are handed out when a person may have marginally performed their skills and truly not performed the academic part. (Some pretty specific coaching will help them pass their tests).

I am a 50 year old female...yet was an athlete and have continued to be highly active throughout my life. Became a diver after two back surgeries. I think that much "risky" behavior is really related to the belief that "it won't happen to me" ... or a sense of invincibility. I know that I struggle a bit with this...in spite of being shown numorous times that this belief is erroneous. I tend to be a bit of an adrenaline junkie and am working very hard to temper that.

Bottom line, I think that cert requirements should carry higher standards and that instructors should be rigorously evaluated. Many seem to be overworked or choose to overwork and I wonder how this factors into the quality of their instruction.

This is my first post.......hope it made some sense!

 

[MauiScubaSteve]

Here is a theoretical booking for you to ponder;

Three different neighboring operators that do regular charters to the same significant cavern dives. Prospective customer is looking for OW certification for himself and his wife, with a boat trip as part of the package. This is a request all three operators get many, many times every year. Prospective customer is now playing each operator with the quotes from the competitors, but also pushing for a private class.

The operator that mostly does the caverns wins the bidding war (the other two go to the caverns half as much). The trip that fits their schedule is not surprisingly a cavern trip. They know this up front (perhaps that made their decision!). They are also told that getting the home work done before meeting the Instructor is pretty much the make or break for this departure limited 4 day schedule, and it will not be easy physically to get it done so quickly.

They are not as good a home workers as they promised they would be, they are not as comfortable in the water as they claimed they were, they are not as in shape as they thought they were, they do not qualify to go on the boat that did not sell those seats because they were part of the OW class package. Neither do they qualify for any refund. They can get a referral for what they completed.

On the other hand; we (all 3 operators I'm fairly confidently assuming) run many successful classes where CW and 3 OW dives are conducted from shore and OW #4 is the first boat tank with a Cathedral as the 1st dive after certification.

We get a lot of referrals where we just do the 3 OW shore dives and the boat trip, but those students are usually not as easy as the ones we CW ourselves.

Then there are the landlocked tourists that quarry or lake cert a few weeks before their trip and do lifetime dives #5 & 6 on a Cathedrals trip.

There are also plenty of "got certified on my last trip 2 or 3 years ago and only did one trip after cert back then." Lifetime dives #7 & 8 on a Cathedrals trip.

And which divers are the most likely to want photographs of their dives? I can't tell you how many times the "photographer" on that trip has 6 divers with less than 25 dives lifetime, 4 of which have less than 10.

And then I start briefing them about us allowing solo ascents, so they have to decide about that as well as about going inside...

As a leader, if I exude the "fact" that it's just another walk in the park, unless you were really taught to bolt for the surface as a solution, your buddy training is still ~99% applicable. My charges easily follow me on that walk in the park, ~95% of the time. And the 5% that do not are not accidents, or even incidents. They just don't go under rock and they don't do solo ascents. That's fine by me.

The boat I now cover rare shifts on buys no advertising. They have a web site and there are fliers around the Island, but we are not out there selling cavern diving. We don't have to because divers are flocking to any and all trips to nice caverns.

The 1% restriction, with guide 2' in front of you.​

 

[Quero]

Apologies in advance for the long post. I'm coming late to the discussion, and rather than posting four or five responses to different people, I've just clustered them all here.

I wonder to what degree that is true of diver education in general. I tell my students very firmly about the dangers of caves. I wonder how many others do.

I talk about overhead environments when we go over the differences between technical diving and recreational diving. It's clear that none of those tempting things are "okay" for my divers without additional training. That is, I don't emphasize cavern/cave specifically, but combine admonitions not to yield to the temptation to enter them to the same extent that I emphasize not earning a deco obligation with the notion that they can pay it off on a multi-level ascent. It's all part of "dive within the limits of your training."

I would be interested to see the number of people who fail the OW course on cruises/resort areas versus those who fail at normal local areas that don't rely on tourist traffic. There is probably a significant gap.

Maybe because I teach in a resort destination, I chafe at this assumption. I think there are instructors who are thorough and instructors who are lax, and both types are found at resorts as well as at "normal local areas." I have seen well-trained and poorly-trained divers come from both resort schools and LDS schools, and I can't say that I notice any significant tendency for skill and knowledge or lack of skill and knowledge among either group. I can say that divers who have learned in large classes tend to be less skilled than those who have trained privately or in very small classes.

That's really interesting. I wonder if there is a difference in that response between men and women? I'm a (very) new diver and I am the opposite. I am very very aware of how much I DON'T know. I have been lurking on ScubaBoard since shortly after I received my C Card, trying to learn as much as I can here. I think I should have a Learner's Permit, not a card allowing me to dive on my own (gasp)! I'm also female and ...um...older...

LOL. I'm a "mature" female too. I remember talking to an instructor friend after I was already a Rescue Diver with nearly 200 dives and telling him that I thought I was pretty inexperienced. He looked at me with a shocked expression and carefully explained that in his view I was actually fairly experienced and went on to describe my diving skills and milestones. I think it's a mind set, realizing that there's so much you still don't know that in comparison with what you do know it seems that it will take heaps more "experience" to tip the scales the other way. I'm still like that, even though I've been teaching scuba for years now. I'm always gaining some new insight.

A prudent instructor teaches the skill set necessary for the local conditions, right?

I agree. It's especially important to impress on students the risks and techniques for overhead environments when the local environment in which they'll be diving includes those kinds of dive sites. However, I'd probably insist that students had to do AOW with a Cavern specialty. Here we don't have lots of caverns, so it's not really a big issue, but we do have dozens and dozens of liveaboards. From our liveaboards the dives are deep, they are mainly drift dives, there's current to deal with, we do night dives, etc. When I get OW divers wanting to book on those trips, I always tell them they need AOW for practical reasons, even if the charter operator doesn't strictly require it. I tell them I can't force them to take the course, but that I strongly recommend it. It's my experience that when I give this kind of safety advice and explain why, most divers listen. I believe that if I were teaching in Hawaii, I'd follow the same kind of policy, though obviously I'd have to become cave certified in order to be able to teach the cavern specialty (here we are back at my previous point about realizing how much there still is to learn).

When resorts and charters are willing to ignore agency recommendations on nearly every dive, it really doesn't matter too much what we teach in class.

To be clear - I'm not abdicating my responsibility to train my students correctly. But I also know that they're headed off on a trip where just about nothing I taught them will be followed. I have to be honest that it leaves me feeling somewhat dejected when I stop to think about it.

I am more optimistic of our influence on students. They are actually pretty sharp, I find. They take the information we give them, they emulate our attitudes, and they weigh what they see and experience through a lens of what they have learned from us is the way things should be. If we do a good enough job of telling them what to look for in an operator/dive shop/dive site, they'll use that information to form their own judgments.

 

[FireInMyBones]

Maybe because I teach in a resort destination, I chafe at this assumption. I think there are instructors who are thorough and instructors who are lax, and both types are found at resorts as well as at "normal local areas." I have seen well-trained and poorly-trained divers come from both resort schools and LDS schools, and I can't say that I notice any significant tendency for skill and knowledge or lack of skill and knowledge among either group. I can say that divers who have learned in large classes tend to be less skilled than those who have trained privately or in very small classes.

Although my first assumption would be that John has a point. But I agree with you. There can be both types of instructors anywhere. Those good instructors get to set the bar for the others.

It's especially important to impress on students the risks and techniques for overhead environments when the local environment in which they'll be diving includes those kinds of dive sites. However, I'd probably insist that students had to do AOW with a Cavern specialty. Here we don't have lots of caverns, so it's not really a big issue, but we do have dozens and dozens of liveaboards. From our liveaboards the dives are deep, they are mainly drift dives, there's current to deal with, we do night dives, etc. When I get OW divers wanting to book on those trips, I always tell them they need AOW for practical reasons, even if the charter operator doesn't strictly require it. I tell them I can't force them to take the course, but that I strongly recommend it. It's my experience that when I give this kind of safety advice and explain why, most divers listen. I believe that if I were teaching in Hawaii, I'd follow the same kind of policy, though obviously I'd have to become cave certified in order to be able to teach the cavern specialty (here we are back at my previous point about realizing how much there still is to learn).

Good points. Students should be trained not only for local conditions but as many conditions as able to duplicate. As overheads are no good for those without official training, these should not be included.

I am more optimistic of our influence on students. They are actually pretty sharp, I find. They take the information we give them, they emulate our attitudes, and they weigh what they see and experience through a lens of what they have learned from us is the way things should be. If we do a good enough job of telling them what to look for in an operator/dive shop/dive site, they'll use that information to form their own judgments.

Even better points.

As Jim mentioned a little earlier, as dive professionals continue to do their best to discourage those charters and companies that break training protocol, I say they are doing their part. I would take it a step further: report the company to it's governing training agency. Maybe nothing would be done, but one could hope. If a charter does not ask to see my C-cards for the dives we are going to do, I will not go back with them.

 

[LoonDiver]

With few exceptions I've found that women tend to be more cautious divers than men. But I think that's at least partly a genetic thing that applies to any aspect of life ... which is probably why God put women in charge of the babies ... otherwise by now our species would've gone the way of the dodo bird ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Certainly true for me and my husband...I'm much more cautious.

 

[LoonDiver]

All the more reason to take more time on these subjects. I know in nearly every classroom session I talk about the stupidity and recklessness of many of those places and people. Every class watches the deceptively easy way to die video. Every student I have is told that just because someone has a pro rating does not mean they know what they are doing. And that they have the divers best interests at heart. Its why I train them to not be dependent on anyone except their buddy and themselves. And if its an instabuddy to not depend on them. If we don't emphasize personal responsibility then when a new diver dies doing something they were not sufficiently warned or educated about their instructor shares some of the blame. You can't fix stupid. But stupid is different than uninformed. To not warn divers about why they should not go into overheads in graphic terms is IMO wrong. To warn them and then take them into them is ignorant. My own ow class had some warnings, but then we got told how great the ballroom at ginnie was at night. No one with cave or even cavern. Including the instructor. Me not knowing any better. I warn my students about these trips now and to not do them. Wish I had been told.

Thinking about driving to PA to get more training with you...I wish my OW instructors had been this conscientious.

Oh I think it does ... you just have to be able to come up with a way to help the student draw their own conclusions about what constitutes a prudent decision.

My most recent AOW student is a good example. She came to me expressly because she was going to Cozumel with a friend who had the Devil's Throat dive on his bucket list. By the time she completed the class she had decided for herself that it wasn't a good idea to do the dive.

Had she not taken the class, she'd have simply followed him down on a "trust me" dive, with even less competence than she currently has.

I didn't make the decision for her ... she made it on her own after having been given enough information to understand why it probably wasn't a good choice for her.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Pugetropolis would be a long way to go for more training...but again it's crossed my mind...

Thanks to the many caring instructors on SB, I have learned so much more than in my OW classes...

 

[ronbeau]

Oh I think it does ... you just have to be able to come up with a way to help the student draw their own conclusions about what constitutes a prudent decision.

My most recent AOW student is a good example. She came to me expressly because she was going to Cozumel with a friend who had the Devil's Throat dive on his bucket list. By the time she completed the class she had decided for herself that it wasn't a good idea to do the dive.

Had she not taken the class, she'd have simply followed him down on a "trust me" dive, with even less competence than she currently has.

I didn't make the decision for her ... she made it on her own after having been given enough information to understand why it probably wasn't a good choice for her.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Bob, how experienced was her friend? Regardless of how much experience he has I think in this case the definition of friend is questionable. At minimum he is severely lacking in judgment and has total disregard for the safety of his friend.

Taking someone with open water training through a steep, dark overhead compartment that dumps out at about 140 feet is reckless. I was diving at Punta Sur this summer and when we passed the entrance to Devil's Throat I was around 100 feet. Looking down the throat was looking into darkness.

Needless to say we swam past the throat.

I applaud you for getting the student to the point where she could trust her own good judgment (regrdless of the experience of her 'friend") and improve her level of safety.

I also commend her for seeking out the training before allowing her "friend" to take
her on such a reckless dive.

 

[vinegarbiscuit]

I am new to diving: 60 dives and AOW

The eve of my departure to start my OW training in Utila I sat down with myself and swore I would never, ever do cave diving or swim throughs of *any* kind. I am claustrophobic and frankly a sudden anxiety attack would not only be hazardous for me but for others too.

I arrived in a Caribbean diving resort ten days ago - very sleepy village type atmosphere and I love it BUT I cruised all the dive shops and chose one and said point blank to the owner and intructor before I signed up for thirty dives:
"Please: no swim throughs. No caves. No discussion!"
and they were fine

First dive with DM in front and a family of four diving together I was led into a swim through and backed off just in time and swam over it and I was alone hovering a good four minutes as they disappeared inot something that - had I followed blindly - I could have died due to sudden panic.

It really annoys me when DMs and instructors who obviously dive every day of their lives become complacent and don't listen to very real concerns and to people who KNOW their limitations.

When I mentioned it on the surface interval the DM just told me I need to relax!


EDIT:
btw I haven't done many wreck dives but I was wondering if they are mae safer by taking doors off hinges and removing them to keep everything easier to navigate if people do choose to go into rooms or confined ares?

I am not interested in doing that - I have only done Halliburton wreck on Utila but I just skirt around the outside.

About your last point, the answer is yes...and no. Certainly, artificial wrecks are prepared carefully before sinking. All hazardous materials like fuel oil are removed to comply with environmental standards, and structural items that can trap divers like electrical cables, doors and hinges are stripped. The wreck can also have sections of the hull or topsides cut away to allow sunlight penetration and enable divers to make 'swim-throughs' (very different to actual wreck penetration, of course).

Therein lies the paradox, though. Since these wrecks are so carefully cleaned and prepped and commonly are placed at recreational depths, it's common to consider them more safe and benign than a 'natural' (for want of a better word) wreck, which can look pretty intimidating, depending on the fate of the poor ship and how long she's been resting on the bottom. It's more tempting to swim through an artificial wreck if you can see daylight streaming in, for example. It's not that big a leap for untrained overhead divers to think they made a 'penetration' safely, and think, "Ooh, I wonder where that passage goes?!" From there, it's so easy to get into trouble, and navigation quickly becomes impossible. Some artificial wrecks are old Navy ships, and sailors assigned to her had enough difficulty navigating the vessel when she was in active service, let alone a diver who's never seen the innards of a naval vessel and is encountering the passages for the first time. Add to that: 1) confusion resulting from a skewed perspective if the ship is laying on its side; 2) the fact that rooms and passages tend to look the same; and 3) a narcosis buzz if the ship's at depth. Easy to see how trouble can ensue. Advanced wreck divers are taught to navigate via a progressive penetration and/or running a line into the wreck, as well as studying plans of the wreck, if they exist. Recreational divers are not.

Artificial and natural wrecks moreover carry common hazards. For example, they're both at the mercy of the elements, so structural weakness and collapse can result from being constantly subject to storms and water movement. That too poses risks to the unwary recreational diver visiting artificial wrecks.

Even as a diver with overhead equipment, training and modest experience, I won't penetrate a wreck, although swim-throughs with a verified entry and exit point are something I consider on a case-by-case basis. Caves and wrecks are two very different environments, and while I have robust respect mixed with a tiny element of fear for the former - a good approach, I think - the latter scares me silly, so I doubt I'll ever seek advanced wreck penetration instruction. Too many hours spent listening to Northeast wreck divers shooting the sh*t, I guess. I'm largely happy to remain on the outside of the wreck, whether it's artificial or not.