Tough Lesson to learn, I'm not an instructor

[Adventure-Ocean]

I really appreciate the responses. I will own up to the critics. I was wrong. I thought using this forum would help someone realize the unexpected ways people behave or the odd things that might happen. I've learned a lot of dive safety in the 25 + years since I tried this. I want to share my experiences with water safety to possibly help future divers. Thanks again everyone.

---------- Post added May 10th, 2013 at 06:44 PM ----------

We were diving an awesome wall dive. Drop off started at 80 ft. and went down over 600 more ft. I was stupid for assuming he knew he'd never dove and would stay with us. He was crazy stupid period. We were both obviously lucky. Guam diving can get deep fast. It is the tallest mountain in the world from the top of the island to the bottom of the sea bed. The military provided a chamber and it was used by the locals more than it should have been. By the way, this is not BS. I had gauges and knew how to use them.

---------- Post added May 10th, 2013 at 06:58 PM ----------

Thanks for your honesty Jim but this is totally true. My gauge read 175 ft and he was much deeper. Guam is the top of a underwater mountain in the deepest area of the world. Cliff diving all around the island. Very easy to get deep.

 

[Dondon462]

WOW>>this story amazed me..I would have gone to 50 mtrs and then just waved goodbye to him ..then started writing the letter .."Well your Honour????"..and started worrying...

 

[oldschoolto]

I really appreciate the responses. I will own up to the critics. I was wrong. I thought using this forum would help someone realize the unexpected ways people behave or the odd things that might happen. I've learned a lot of dive safety in the 25 + years since I tried this. I want to share my experiences with water safety to possibly help future divers. Thanks again everyone.

---------- Post added May 10th, 2013 at 06:44 PM ----------

We were diving an awesome wall dive. Drop off started at 80 ft. and went down over 600 more ft. I was stupid for assuming he knew he'd never dove and would stay with us. He was crazy stupid period. We were both obviously lucky. Guam diving can get deep fast. It is the tallest mountain in the world from the top of the island to the bottom of the sea bed. The military provided a chamber and it was used by the locals more than it should have been. By the way, this is not BS. I had gauges and knew how to use them.

---------- Post added May 10th, 2013 at 06:58 PM ----------

Thanks for your honesty Jim but this is totally true. My gauge read 175 ft and he was much deeper. Guam is the top of a underwater mountain in the deepest area of the world. Cliff diving all around the island. Very easy to get deep.

So now you did a 680' wall dive on " AIR " with a first time diver. Wait..... OK ,My navy tables stop at 300" for air because air become toxic at those depths... And so narc'd the mind does not work...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qACSuSUbZRM A highly trained diver would have a hell of a time pull off 680' on air.... I call troll..... OR A diver that just got his "bubble maker card" from PADI....

Jim...

 

[aceupmysleeve777]

New divers and student divers do take off and an instructor and or DM should be able to stop them 99% of the time. One way a trained instructor would have not had this happen to him is by never taking these divers to this dive site to begin with, they would pick a nice shallow dive site. It's pretty much that simple. A good DM or instructor that has a student try and dive deeper than the plan will keep them 5ft or less over the depth limit because they are directly supervising them.

It's crazy to think that a brand new diver would 'take off' and descend to 250ft. I don't know that an instructor would necessarily be able to help that type of 'student'. For me - at least on this forum - way too much emphasis is placed on the instructor's responsibilities and not enough on the student's.

Actually, I wonder if an instructor would have necessarily helped in either case.

 

[Adventure-Ocean]

Not a real good reader are you Jim? Maybe never seen a good wall dive either. Swimming along the 80ft drop off area looking over an endless looking cliff was a great dive we made many times for years. Never did make it down to 600 Jim. That drama wih my friend was the only time I went down to 175 and I admit it was too deep, too risky and foolish. It is what happened. Deal with it

 

[kaerius]

Not a real good reader are you Jim? Maybe never seen a good wall dive either. Swimming along the 80ft drop off area looking over an endless looking cliff was a great dive we made many times for years. Never did make it down to 600 Jim. That drama wih my friend was the only time I went down to 175 and I admit it was too deep, too risky and foolish. It is what happened. Deal with it

Extreme stupidity and negligence to take a new diver that deep. And this could easily have been a double(or more, sounded like there were more than two of you) fatality dive. Especially with your "student" sinking down to toxic air depths because he was untrained and you were negligent in your supervision of him. I'd never take a student down to even standard max 60' for their first dive unless I was supremely confident in them(like my easiest student ever, who was a navy diver but they hadn't given him a civilian cert). I'd pick a shallow site with sand bottom available at less than 10 meters/33 feet.

 

[TSandM]

Actually, Adventure-Ocean, I thank you for posting these stories. These are things people might not think about when they decide to take their friends diving, because they think diving is easy, and they don't realize how much care went into the class they originally took. Keeping a hard deck under a novice diver is a very good idea; big walls are beautiful, but they require more buoyancy control and more bandwidth than the average person on scuba for the first time has. It's also easy to forget to counsel people about equalizing, and the little lecture that one should never feel ear discomfort, and should not continue to try to descend if the ears won't clear.

There are a lot of little things about introducing people to scuba that students don't see. And you are right -- people are very unpredictable, especially when they haven't been monitored through a very controlled experience in confined water. After the pool sessions, the instructors know what students are like, and what their rattles are, and can watch the ones that are likely to cause trouble much more closely.

 

[oldschoolto]

I spotted him at well over 250 ft. We sucked both tanks dry trying to decompress.

"That drama wih my friend was the only time I went down to 175 and I admit it was too deep, too risky and foolish. It is what happened. Deal with it"

So was it 250' or 175' ? And no, Never been close to 300' never even made 200' Gone to 150'/170' a very few times " with doubles and a pony " 99% of my diving has been in the 20/80' range with most in the middle 40'... Sorry I miss read the 600' story... You can't change the laws of toxic oxygen and Nitrogen narcosis... And then you need to look at air consumption of a new diver ( can suck 3000psi in 30min) and air volume at depth... The numbers just don't add up... There are a lot of tec divers on this board that know " WAY MORE " then me... I'd love to have them run the numbers... I'm WAY to lazy to do all the math on paper with tables, When they got programs that will do it in seconds...

Now if you said you were at 60' and he got down to 90' or 100' then the story works on paper....

Jim....

Oh...And welcome to scubaboard..... It's a fun place....

 

[Adventure-Ocean]

Thank you for recognizing the reason I shared that story. It wasn't to make me look good. After that I went on and trained to a Dive Master and worked for the Univerisity as a diver for 20 years. It was my ingnorance I wanted to share.

 

[kaerius]

Thank you for recognizing the reason I shared that story. It wasn't to make me look good. After that I went on and trained to a Dive Master and worked for the Univerisity as a diver for 20 years. It was my ingnorance I wanted to share.

And it's good that you did, note however that when we come down on your story like a ton of bricks it's also to make sure there's absolutely no question in any reader's mind just how stupid it was. We don't want people doing this.

Then again instructor labels don't make people immune from being stupid, and I have a friend who could easily have become a fatality when she (as an uncertified diver) was taken down to 30m(100ft) by an instructor "friend" and was feeling the panic coming. He managed to calm her and then take her shallower, but she could easily have bolted and been a fatality. Young, smart, pretty girl. She published a book that became a top10 seller in her country, just a few months later. She got herself certified too.