Incident on 80m (avg) - 30 min BT dive

[Diver0001]

Holy ****, you must have had some real ***holes for instructors to be that angry.

I stand by what I said. The quote was "soften the blow". I guess it depends on how you interpret this, but too often I've seen that as allowing something serious to be trivialized, which does no-one any favors.

However, at no time did I say "rip him a new one". You are the one putting your anger at terrible instructors into my mouth.

Yea, I've had ****** ninja-wannabe-navy-seal instructors, and watched a few besides. I agree 100% that yelling and swearing and "ripping someone a new one" is not only terrible teaching methods, it almost never works.

We agree on a full debriefing, but it must be honest even if that does hurt feelings. Again, no need to be angry or rude or miserable, but honest. The fellow might not be here were it not for the actions of the other divers, and he needs to be totally aware of that fact. Ideally he should be mentored by the team to turn this into a really positive learning experience.

This post has been in my head since yesterday. I'm sorry if this is slightly off topic but I feel compelled to address this post again. I suppose mods will delete it for being off topic but I feel strongly that I have to speak my mind.

I would like to make it clear, although it has nothing to do with the OP, that my own technical instructors were very carefully chosen to AVOID this kind of thing. I don't want someone reading this thread to assume that my own instructors were idiots and avoid them because of this. I can recommend them all, everyone one of them....they were chosen to NOT be like this. I wanted to make that clear.

Sunnyboy did, however, correctly connect with the frustration I have about it. In my local area I see many instructors, even at the OW level, surfacing with students and "ripping them a new one". I'm frustrated about that. It is unnecessary, it is rude and it doesn't help the student at all! This is what I was addressing.

A few years ago I followed a GUE course that was being taught from the same dive centre where we were diving. On day 1 the students had to put their gear together. One of the students, who was gearing up next to me, did it all wrong. She put the wing backwards onto the backplate. I'm a technical diver and a PADI instructor so I noticed what she did wrong but felt it was inappropriate to help her because the GUE instructor was swaggering around and I thought he would object to help from "outside".

So I let her put the wing on backwards without saying anything.... the GUE instructor then also saw what she did and stormed up to her and said in a loud voice, "YOU MUST FOCUS!" He then walked away without telling her what the problem was. This has become a running joke among my friends. When someone makes a mistake we all scream at them YOU MUST FOCUS

At this point I intervened. I told her (conform the PADI approach) what she did wrong, how to do it right and how to avoid it happening again in the future. I was trying to help her. She thanked me and seem relieved but the GUE instructor's reaction was to forbid his students from talking to me for the rest of the week. They still talked to me but it was in the pub at night, where they were also forbidden from going.

This kind of behaviour is rampant among technical instructors. In my local area you actually have to work hard to find one who doesn't berate students for mistakes. There seems to be this assumption that if you help someone you are "coddling" them. The flip side is that the student can only "learn" by his/her own mistakes and they have to be left to figure out (a) what they did wrong and (b) how to fix it without any help from the instructor. I even see OW instructors using this approach with newbies.....

... and yes.... it makes me mad.... REALLY mad! It makes me want to shake certain instructors until their head comes off.

 

[RainPilot]

To bring the above on topic, I suspect that a large contributor to this incident from X point of view can be related to a perception of "intolerance for weakness " that characterises certain DIR instructors.

If I had a GUE F instructor like Rob mentions, that may go part way to explaining why I didn't continue with further tech training with them.

It may also lead to a reluctance to speak up when I'm confused or unsure, and an extreme reluctance to call a dive when I'm way off the reservation.

All hypothetical but it does lead to me reevaluating my approach to the pre-dive chat with new buddies. Just realising that because someone has a high level card doesn't mean that they aren't also vulnerable human beings as well.

Making it clear that I am ok with you being uncertain and that I hope you are ok with that too may open communication to an extent that this incident could have been avoided.

@beester im pretty sure that if he had said anything about being a little uncertain of the team procedures, you would have been able to deal with that simply and easily. Letting him do his switch first while you watch him for example.

It may even be that a reduction in peer stress before the dive may have allowed him to avoid those mistakes in the first place.

Not saying you did anything wrong, if anything it's hammered home to me again how much influence we as instructors have on our students going forward long after we are "done" with them.

 

[Aviyes]

Currently in the military for 9 years, i've gone through both enlisted and officer accessions programs. "Ripping a person a new one" is used for a very specific purpose, it is a form of group teaching. The point is to illustrate the mistake to a large group of people and hopefully have it corrected/prevented in the future, by singling a person out. Instead of it being a reoccuring issue that requires wasting time with a correction for evey single person. There is rarely a benefit to doing the same to a single person/small group. It is quite easy to get across the seriousness of the mistake with discussion of the consequences, a walkthrough of the mistakes made and options for the way ahead. All without resorting to rude/angry yelling. Unfortunately, the "ninja-wannabe-navy-seal instructors" who grew up on war movies don't know any better.

It also makes me mad, when it is used improperly and completely detrimental to the training of an individual. Not offering a correction or better yet asking a question to make the student think and come to the correct conclusion is the signs of a terrible instructor.

 

[ChicagoScubaDiver]

2 min on O² he graps the ascend line... I ask what's the problem and he gives me the signal of cramps in his calves. I tell him to keep tight and I stretch his legs. He signals cramps are gone, but he keeps the line in his hand

This also jumped out as a huge red flag. I don't know many GUE divers who would hold onto a line unless there was a ripping current.

 

[beester]

This also jumped out as a huge red flag. I don't know many GUE divers who would hold onto a line unless there was a ripping current.

For me the real red flag was already before this moment, when he forgot/missed a tank rotation at 9m and after he finally started it managed to get so taskloaded that he lost all awareness and ended up sinking 6m. That was for me personally the moment when it went from a more benign "scratching my head why he is acting so silly" to "**** we have to intervene here and we need to keep him safe".

Mind you he never during the dive communicated that he was in any kind of stress or problem.

 

[Darghu]

If you had any doubts since that moment why you (and your buddy) have not decided to end the dive ?

Alright this is SDI/TDI blog article
"Any diver can call the dive at any time, for any reason, without fear of repercussion."

and Quora answer from a GUE Tech2 diver:
https://www.quora.com/If-I-was-scub...p-with-the-unconscious-diver-before-ascending
The real rule no 1 of diving is: "Anyone can call the dive at any time, for any reason whatsoever, no questions asked."

 

[beester]

If you had any doubts since that moment why you (and your buddy) have not decided to end the dive ?

Alright this is SDI/TDI blog article
"Any diver can call the dive at any time, for any reason, without fear of repercussion."

and Quora answer from a GUE Tech2 diver:
https://www.quora.com/If-I-was-scub...p-with-the-unconscious-diver-before-ascending
The real rule no 1 of diving is: "Anyone can call the dive at any time, for any reason whatsoever, no questions asked."

Euhm... theoretically speaking we were already ending the dive. I mean the first real hick up was ascending from the dive at 57m during the first gas switch with 2 hours of deco to go... at that time I don't think it seems reasonable to end the dive in any other way than trying to finish deco don't you think?

At 9 m after the tank rotation, when we caught on that the string of events, pointed to a very stressed diver in difficulties, we had still no option but to try to control events and get him to finish deco. Of course if we were facing an unconscious diver at that moment or a toxing diver not breathing we would have had to make the hard decision to skip 1 hour of deco (at the 9m stop) and bring the diver up. But that was not the case.

For sure if there were any reasons before the dive that would have alarmed me or my buddy before or during the bottom phase of the dive I would have not dived or thumbed the dive prematurely.

 

[Darghu]

Apologies have not read again the first message since you published it.

 

[boulderjohn]

his kind of behaviour is rampant among technical instructors. In my local area you actually have to work hard to find one who doesn't berate students for mistakes. There seems to be this assumption that if you help someone you are "coddling" them.

I have written about this phenomenon a number of times. For many tech instructors, explaining a teaching point and demonstrating it is "handholding," and they make it a point to say there is no handholding in their instruction. When you then fail to perform correctly because you did not receive that handholding instruction before you tried, you are then soundly berated for that failure, and berating is also perceived to be part of the "no handholding" philosophy. This is not something they do without realizing it--it is very much their intended instructional philosophy, and they are quite proud of it.

This makes the class an ordeal for the student, and it makes it much harder for the student to succeed. When they do finally emerge from that ordeal, though, they feel proud for having succeeded. They then feel a great sense of superiority over people who learned through handholding, and if they go on to become instructors, they will usually carefully imitate their earlier instruction as they deal with their own students. A number of years ago, education researcher John Goodlad showed that when they get into a classroom, teachers tend to teach their students the way they were taught when they were students themselves, even when they were taught in their teacher training classes to do it differently. I am sure the same is true of scuba instructors.

 

[beester]

To bring the above on topic, I suspect that a large contributor to this incident from X point of view can be related to a perception of "intolerance for weakness " that characterises certain DIR instructors.

If I had a GUE F instructor like Rob mentions, that may go part way to explaining why I didn't continue with further tech training with them.

Well as you say this is all assumption and we can't know why he didn't continue after fundies. Maybe he had his trimix tickets before fundies and is going to continue with courses... don 't know.

But you are totally right that in tech diving as a whole there still is some "alpha male" "gun ho" mentality. Case in point after my return I got some messages from divers, not asking how my diving went and what we saw, but just how deep we went and how much deco we did. I don't get that?! Of coures I have goals like but it's not deeper or farther (in case of caves), but participating in project work (which I'm already doing on a protected North Sea wreck and want to extend).

All hypothetical but it does lead to me reevaluating my approach to the pre-dive chat with new buddies. Just realising that because someone has a high level card doesn't mean that they aren't also vulnerable human beings as well.

Making it clear that I am ok with you being uncertain and that I hope you are ok with that too may open communication to an extent that this incident could have been avoided.

@beester im pretty sure that if he had said anything about being a little uncertain of the team procedures, you would have been able to deal with that simply and easily. Letting him do his switch first while you watch him for example.

It may even be that a reduction in peer stress before the dive may have allowed him to avoid those mistakes in the first place.

Not saying you did anything wrong, if anything it's hammered home to me again how much influence we as instructors have on our students going forward long after we are "done" with them.

Totally right and to be honest I'm at a point in my diving were I'm totally at ease doing this with divers I know well. I have no problem at all to confess that I'm feeling not at ease, am stressed, something is wrong. I've had occasions on North Sea dives were I would just say to my buddy "watch me more closely underwater, I don't know what it is, but I'm feeling slightly stressed". I have called cave dives because of above.

However that is with "inner circle" divers... people I totally trust. Don't underestimate peer pressure and "losing face" specially when everybody has already invested quite a lot in the planned dive and / or you don't know the dive team very well.

Maybe because of his different background he didn't realise once underwater that it remains a team effort and he could communicate if something was off.

In any case without sounding harsh... I do feel that this incident was a break down of our (ad hoc) team effort.

- We didn't realise that he was maybe out of his comfort zone before the dive.
- We didn't see any clues (plan for example) that could have warned us.
- During our ascend we were slow to catch on to the progressive issues.

I might have asked right questions if I was diving this dive alone with him. But I was comfortable because one of my best buddies (RB80 diver) was with me and we don't need to talk to know what the other is thinking about the dive and are totally confident to speak out to eachother if we sense something is off. I had a sense of team because my RB80 buddy and the JJ divers were there...I didn't had to communicate (besides dive plan, gas, deco), and missed out on any stress symptoms that X might have had.

Team breakdown.