- Messages
- 22,171
- Reaction score
- 2,790
- # of dives
- 5000 - ∞
I've been giving this topic some real thought over the last day or so and I've come to the tentative conclusion that the problem is not with "trust me" dives per se, it is with the quality of discernment that the individual in the dependent position of the "trust me" dive.
Frankly, I've been, shall we say, "out of my depth," more than a few times in my life. One of the fun things was when someone would come up to me and ask, "how do we do this ... ?" Often the answer was simple, it was something I knew about, but sometimes it was new to me and I had to find out. In finding out I'd reach out to where the experts were. When we started needing to do blue water diving I looked around and there was Bill and Peggy Hamner, and Bruce Harbison and Larry Madin, all people who'd been doing it for years, with well worked out protocols and procedures that had been approved at their institutions. But when I had geologists that wanted to use scuba to sample the Krakatoa site at four to five hundred feet, on a limited budget, Richard Pyle was the lone pioneer. When someone wanted to start working under drifting ice bergs, in their cracks and crannies ... well I was able to find an individual who was experienced with that too.
But in these cases, and many others, I was (at least early in the game) in a position in which my well being was very dependent upon another and the real question in my mind was not, "can I survive this experience if the other guy has a heart attack?" but rather, "what are the odds of the other guy having a heart attack and is the other guy good enough to get us out of any problems that we might get into?"
Let's face it, every time a newbie goes to do something it is, at some level, a "trust-me" dive. Whether it is a first shore dive in a quiet lagoon or a heliox dive to 500 feet with two deco mixes, a travel mix and a bottom mix on your back. These are all "trust-me" dives where you depend on your team leader. But I think I'm a pretty good judge there, since many dives, both routine and extraordinary, require that you trust teammates with your life.
Sure, a surface supplied dive into a hot spring that requires cold water be pumped down into your suit so that you don't poach, has an added element of drama, but when you get down to brass tacks, it's just another surface-supplied dive, and your life depends on your tender, your supervisor and possibly your standby diver.
"Trust-me" dives are not the problem, the problem is that many divers lack broad enough training and experience to be able to effective perform in new and unusual circumstances and many Instructors or would be team leaders can barely take care of themselves, and crack under the burden of a dependent diver.
Frankly, I've been, shall we say, "out of my depth," more than a few times in my life. One of the fun things was when someone would come up to me and ask, "how do we do this ... ?" Often the answer was simple, it was something I knew about, but sometimes it was new to me and I had to find out. In finding out I'd reach out to where the experts were. When we started needing to do blue water diving I looked around and there was Bill and Peggy Hamner, and Bruce Harbison and Larry Madin, all people who'd been doing it for years, with well worked out protocols and procedures that had been approved at their institutions. But when I had geologists that wanted to use scuba to sample the Krakatoa site at four to five hundred feet, on a limited budget, Richard Pyle was the lone pioneer. When someone wanted to start working under drifting ice bergs, in their cracks and crannies ... well I was able to find an individual who was experienced with that too.
But in these cases, and many others, I was (at least early in the game) in a position in which my well being was very dependent upon another and the real question in my mind was not, "can I survive this experience if the other guy has a heart attack?" but rather, "what are the odds of the other guy having a heart attack and is the other guy good enough to get us out of any problems that we might get into?"
Let's face it, every time a newbie goes to do something it is, at some level, a "trust-me" dive. Whether it is a first shore dive in a quiet lagoon or a heliox dive to 500 feet with two deco mixes, a travel mix and a bottom mix on your back. These are all "trust-me" dives where you depend on your team leader. But I think I'm a pretty good judge there, since many dives, both routine and extraordinary, require that you trust teammates with your life.
Sure, a surface supplied dive into a hot spring that requires cold water be pumped down into your suit so that you don't poach, has an added element of drama, but when you get down to brass tacks, it's just another surface-supplied dive, and your life depends on your tender, your supervisor and possibly your standby diver.
"Trust-me" dives are not the problem, the problem is that many divers lack broad enough training and experience to be able to effective perform in new and unusual circumstances and many Instructors or would be team leaders can barely take care of themselves, and crack under the burden of a dependent diver.