Uncertified divers

[dherbman]

One day as my deck hand and you are shaping up fine! Isn't learning much better than teaching?

 

[MB]

Our apartment is "on the beach" and we have a reef about 200 yards offshore from our private section of beach... On our reef, there is a MAX depth of 15-16' - What would you say if a friend came to visit us, and was interested in diving, but wanted a little taste of it before getting certified... I explain to them, and maybe even get into the pool with them to learn the basics, and we dive our reef.

Now this is hypothetical, since I haven't done it (yet) but I don't see much harm in taking someone to 15'.... Is this terrible?

Once upon a time, before there were people who actualy worked to figure out how to teach people to dive...

But Howard there are enormous differences between then and now. Most people who lkearned to dive on their own in the "old" days had pretty good water skills to begin with. They also had a fitness level uncommon to today's novice divers. The folks bold enough to share this sport with others frequently had way more dives than most divers today, and were probably even professionals of one sort or other (e.g., NAVY demolition divers, commercial divers, etc) who were used to getting in, and out of, doodoo.

No question that many folks had that initial experince and "survived." There's also no doubt that a lot of people got hurt very badly doing that. And this is a bit of a continuum - there's a lot of space between getting killed and loving the experience. Little annoyances like ruptured eardrums, shallow water blackout, lung infections following an unintended breath of salt water, coral cuts that don't heal for months, and others are somewhere on that continuum.

So why would you feel competent in introducing someone to the exploration dive you describe? Its only 15' (the largest change in pressure), and only 200 yards off shore (a frighteningly long way if you have to retrieve a person who panics, dislodes a mask, takes a lung and belly full of salt water)... FWIW, not far from your apartment, in about 15' of water, about 200 yards off shore, an instructor lost a student last year. For real! Sometimes even folks who train for this don't mange this scenario well.

 

[H2Andy]

since this thread has degenerted to Pilot FIsh agreeing to whatever anything
says, it has been closed.

Please PM me with your arguments that it should be re-opened.

lots of good points have been made, but it seems like we're just going around
in circles