In defense of Casual Divers

[TheFoggyMask]

no...

but maybe a little boring?

you might be a little trollish too. PF..is that you?

okay, you got me there for a second.

It would be far more exciting to die?

 

[Cacia]

oh brother...

it's not THAT dangerous! ... is it? I might start wearing my helmet in the car.

yea, a little risk is why it's fun. You cannot be serious? The reason we think about reducing risk so much, mainly, is just so you can spend it somewhere else.

do you ski, or surf, or anything fast?

 

[Sharkbaithawaii]

Ok you guys are all hitting the original post right on the head:

Who are any of you to say what makes a good diver?

Why should you care if I die? Lamont you are so worried about saving us all, how about sitting out side a bar and telling people not to drink and drive, or how about sitting on the highway and telling people not to go so fast untill them have lots of practice since that will lower highway death statistics?

We all take chances in everyday life. So let me take mine and please don't tell me how to do it.

 

[BarryNL]

do you ski, or surf, or anything fast?

Not any more - not since I screwed my knee up for life.

The problem with a little risk is sometimes it does go wrong and you have to live with the consequences.

 

[stevetim]

Good post.
You're right. Too many people think diving is requisite to being an astronaut. My dive buddy laid it out and said, "You know what...it's breathing underwater and hanging out with the fishes, period.". That truly is what diving is all about. I agree too many people get hung up on being sooooo technical about how much NO2, PO2, and whatever else they have in their system. But you know what? You will NEVER know exactly how much you have in your system because all people absorb and release these differently. The RDP tables? They are guidelines...not to be crossed unless you're a deco diver or value your safety, of course, but guidelines... to help the largest crossection of divers get their premium bottom times.
So I agree with you that the sport could use a little less spectre of lethality, more encouragement from those "perfect" divers, and let's all have fun!!

 

[Sharkbaithawaii]

Steve, Well said.

 

[BKP]

I think you, Walter (if that's his opinion) and BIggDawg are completely wrong. I just went through the 2005 DAN report and:

1. the majority of fatalities (50-70%) had only OW or AOW certs.

2. the majority of fatalities (~75%) had less than 20 dives in the prior 12 months.

3. 56% of fatalities were returning to diving after 1 to 4 years.

4. ~60% of fatalities were on dives with a max depth of 60 fsw or less.

5. 88% of fatalities were on 21%, 6% were on 32%, rebreathers and trimix account for the remaining 6%..

I went looking for these numbers myself, Lamont, out of curiosity, so thanks for posting them. While at first glance, they seem very telling, in order for them to validate anything, you'd have to ask "what percentage do OW and AOW certs make up of the whole?" For instance (and these are hypothetical numbers), if 97% of all "divers" (and I use the term loosely), were only OW or OW/AOW certed, then even though they were 50-70% of the fatalities, that's a relatively small number (for parity, you'd expect them to be 97% of the fatalities)... capiche?

Anyway... I don't mean to digress... just my $.02.

 

[MikeFerrara]

ok, I've read the entire thread from yesterday (or was it two days ago?). And yes, I'm a new member, but I have 2 comments...

1--It seems that some of those posting to this thread have forgotten about when THEY were new divers (in fact, maybe some of you got started doing your OW at the sunny beach resort on vacation)

2--Some of those who start off as 4 to 6 dives-a-year-divers eventually come around. :14: Actually, for years I never touched the water of a lake, quarry, or anything else...and that was fine for me. While I'm still not an expert (yes, I admit to still being able to learn something new from others), I did decide to go through the typical steps of AOW, rescue, Master Diver, and eventually over to the professional side of things. BUT, I remember where I started my diving. Do you?

Kevin

Valid question.

I remember very well how I started. I also remember the problems I had and have, many times since seen others have.

I also remember how I started as an instructor and some of the fire drills I've seen in training.

I also know what I had to do to learn to avoid so many of those problems myself, as a diver and for others, as an instructor.

I found that most if not all of the common problems are easily avoided by some changes in training methods which in turn effect diver habits and skill level. The kicker is that it's all pretty easy. the sad part is that the industry as a whole misses it by a mile. That's why I write about the things that I do.

Refer to prevouse posts which reference the DAN report and the fact that many diving accidents involve buoyancy control problems and running out of air. Those are aspects of diving that can be directly addressed in training...even the training of casual recreational and infrequent divers. And not it doesn't require any long hard or militaristic training either. The whole process can be made both easier and more effective.

Then there are agencies and others who refuse to try any other approach and instead do nothing but quote cliches and dive industry lore and legond that is perpetuated by those who just don't know ant better.

Reading this thread it seems pretty clear that "casual recreational diving" is being closely associated with bad diving. Those who try to address bad diving seem labeled as having something against casual diving or casual divers. That premis is wrong. Casual recreatrional diving can be done well. Bad diving is still bad and people can make all the excuses the themselves, their students or their clients that they want to but that doesn't get anything done.

What's bad? Simply put, diving is primarily controling your position and movement in the water and being able to breath while you do it. It isn't hard to see when a diver has trouble or just flat out fails doing that. There might be more to being "really good" but lets just start here for now because there are more than enough divers that aren't getting any further.

 

[Rick Murchison]

Reading this thread it seems pretty clear that "casual recreational diving" is being closely associated with bad diving. Those who try to address bad diving seem labeled as having something against casual diving or casual divers. That premis is wrong. Casual recreatrional diving can be done well.

Well said, Mike. The hiring of DMs is a reasonable expedient for those with limited time to cram in as much underwater wonder as is possible on a short yearly vacation. Go directly to the good stuff and pack it in...
Nothing wrong with that
Rick

 

[MikeFerrara]

I went looking for these numbers myself, Lamont, out of curiosity, so thanks for posting them. While at first glance, they seem very telling, in order for them to validate anything, you'd have to ask "what percentage do OW and AOW certs make up of the whole?" For instance (and these are hypothetical numbers), if 97% of all "divers" (and I use the term loosely), were only OW or OW/AOW certed, then even though they were 50-70% of the fatalities, that's a relatively small number (for parity, you'd expect them to be 97% of the fatalities)... capiche?

Anyway... I don't mean to digress... just my $.02.

Not really. First off that would be true if the "cert" was causal and yopu expected a direct and strong correlation. However, if you read through the numbers and even read the the summeries that DAN usually include in the report, what's being pointed to as causal is poor skills. Now it almost seems common sense that divers with poor skills would have more accidents and they do.

Why would we see a strong correlation between cert level and accidents? Simply becausee there are some instructors teaching good diving and some divers who manage to learn better diving independant of certification level.

I'll be that, with some work, we could show a VERY strong correlation between skill level and acidents. It's hard to do numerically because we don't know how many divers are diving or how many dives they are doing. It's very easy to observe, by watching in the water and looking/reading about the accidents that do happen. Forget about insjuries, go to a bussy dive site and observe skill level and see who has the screwed up dives...buddy seperations, unintentional ascents/descents ect that don't result in injury every time they happen but certainly do at times. And...it's really only a few different things happening over and over. It's the same skill issues and mistakes over and over. In fact, it seems about as obvious as a slap in the face.

So, Why don't agencies address the buoyancy control problems? I think it's because they don't know how. From experience, I can tell you that they don't like being told how either.