Biggest lesson I learned early on is to never trust a DM to always do the right thing. Have your own plan and be ready to fall back on it at the first sign of a poor decision by someone else.
Your biggest "lessons learned"
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PantherDiver
Registered
Keep practicing the basics even as you progress in experience and training.
I do a pool dive any time I change something with my gear from BCD's, wetsuits, etc
YOU CAN CALL A DIVE AT ANYTIME!! (I was uncomfortable with my instructor for my Deep diving certification. He wanted to descend quickly to 120' on air in a very dark and cold quarry. I was already concerned about his attitude about the dive and mentally I was in panic mode before we hit the water. We did descend quicker than I was comfortable, the thermocline was a shock and I started shaking and I seemed to not be able to keep up with my instructor. At some point I lost focus and stopped clearing my ears and it was only the sharp pain that made me stop descending or so I thought. My computer profile said I stopped at 60 feet went up 10 feet and descended to 90 some feet. My memory was I went to the surface. I also blew my safety stop, had no idea of how fast I ascended and spun circles in the water and I don't know why. My instructor said he lost sight of me but continued to do the skills with a lock and finger counting with another student and came up 10-15 minutes later. There were several red flags and I didn't listen to myself and was not mentally prepared, I should of called the dive but was more worried about the expense and my own pride forgetting my life is priceless)
I do a pool dive any time I change something with my gear from BCD's, wetsuits, etc
YOU CAN CALL A DIVE AT ANYTIME!! (I was uncomfortable with my instructor for my Deep diving certification. He wanted to descend quickly to 120' on air in a very dark and cold quarry. I was already concerned about his attitude about the dive and mentally I was in panic mode before we hit the water. We did descend quicker than I was comfortable, the thermocline was a shock and I started shaking and I seemed to not be able to keep up with my instructor. At some point I lost focus and stopped clearing my ears and it was only the sharp pain that made me stop descending or so I thought. My computer profile said I stopped at 60 feet went up 10 feet and descended to 90 some feet. My memory was I went to the surface. I also blew my safety stop, had no idea of how fast I ascended and spun circles in the water and I don't know why. My instructor said he lost sight of me but continued to do the skills with a lock and finger counting with another student and came up 10-15 minutes later. There were several red flags and I didn't listen to myself and was not mentally prepared, I should of called the dive but was more worried about the expense and my own pride forgetting my life is priceless)
Divescape
Contributor
At the end of a 35m dive just as i was deploying my SMB a diver had a BC problem and began a uncontrolled ascent. I managed to grab their leg flair, dump my air and signal them to dump air, but id did not let go I got disorientated in a cloud of bubbles from the over expansion valve on the divers BC and wound up on the surface with the diver. My computer shows a 30 sec ascent from 20m . We went straight on oxygen for 20mins even though neither of us felt bad.
Lessons learnt it happens so quickly, you must let go, never be too proud or embarrassed to use oxygen.
A second indecent occurred when i rescued a diver that was drowning in 30cm of water. He panicked and fell onto his back on the shore a started to drown. Remember a panicked diver can be immensely powerful.
Lessons learnt it happens so quickly, you must let go, never be too proud or embarrassed to use oxygen.
A second indecent occurred when i rescued a diver that was drowning in 30cm of water. He panicked and fell onto his back on the shore a started to drown. Remember a panicked diver can be immensely powerful.
As long as you have air you've got time to figure out what's going on snd how to deal with it.
Always breathe off your reg a couple of fast breaths while watching your gauge (the gauge 'sresponse will tell you whether or not your air is on). First time I didn't do it, was the first time the act would have "saved my ass in Roatan " paraphrasing an earlier poster.
This year forgetting this step didn't cause me to find too late that my air wasn't on, but I did find myself down about fifteen feet dropping fast before saying to myself, hmmm, something is missing "oh yeah, my reg its not in my mouth!". Fortunately that was an easy fix at that time but it could have turned out quite differently since I was already "not having air to give me time yo think things out". The second thing I learned from this was on a negative entry dive don't stride jump off the boat yelling "wait for me, wait for me!".
Had to teach one of my dive buddies that there's no crying in diving (unless it's for joy).
Always breathe off your reg a couple of fast breaths while watching your gauge (the gauge 'sresponse will tell you whether or not your air is on). First time I didn't do it, was the first time the act would have "saved my ass in Roatan " paraphrasing an earlier poster.
This year forgetting this step didn't cause me to find too late that my air wasn't on, but I did find myself down about fifteen feet dropping fast before saying to myself, hmmm, something is missing "oh yeah, my reg its not in my mouth!". Fortunately that was an easy fix at that time but it could have turned out quite differently since I was already "not having air to give me time yo think things out". The second thing I learned from this was on a negative entry dive don't stride jump off the boat yelling "wait for me, wait for me!".
Had to teach one of my dive buddies that there's no crying in diving (unless it's for joy).
Listen to the pre -dive briefing, even if you are giving it. Follow the dive profile planned, especially if you are leading the dive. Stay in close proximity and be aware of your dive buddy at all times.
ALWAYS do a pre-dive buddy check. Check your gauges regularly. I have observed all of these to be problems with some certified divers I have led on dives. One reason that it is a delight to dive with newly certified divers is that they have not developed bad habits yet. Be as safety conscious on your next dive as you were on your first dive.
DivemasterDennis
ALWAYS do a pre-dive buddy check. Check your gauges regularly. I have observed all of these to be problems with some certified divers I have led on dives. One reason that it is a delight to dive with newly certified divers is that they have not developed bad habits yet. Be as safety conscious on your next dive as you were on your first dive.
DivemasterDennis
There will be times in your diving when for some reason or another you are behind everyone else in preparing to get into the water. Everyone else will be waiting for you to be ready. You will feel the pressure to hurry. That is when mistakes get made. That is when it is important to take extra time to be certain you have not skipped anything in your predive preperations.
Don't trust a dm, or anybody else, to take care of your equipment. On a recent dive in Roatan, the DM told us to go relax at their dive center during the SI, and they would take care of changing the tanks. I thanked him, but changed my own, but left my buddy's (wife) for them to do while I made a pit stop. When I got back on the boat, I double checked both tanks, even though I changed mine, only to find my wife's tank still had the 400# from the previous dive. We would have caught the problem before getting in the water again, but it was a lot easier to do it before departing the dock. After a WTF discussion with the DM, it was obvious he got distracted by something else and simply forgot to change the tank. We all know that people make mistakes, especially if they are dealing with stuff that is not their own, so plan on it happening to you. Be proactive.
bmlbytes
Registered
I know it's not quite what you mean, but how about "there's no crying before diving".
Last weekend, my girlfriend got stung by a bee for the first time in her life. She wasn't expecting the bee sting to hurt as much as it did, and it caused her to tear up. It was only a few minutes before our first dive that day. We pulled the bee sting out, and got some lidocaine wipes from the first aid kit. She said it was feeling OK, so we decided to do the dive.
The dive itself was fine, until it was time to surface. On the way back up, she got a seriously bad reverse block in her sinuses. We would go up about 5 feet, then she would signal a problem, and we would decend a few feet to let her clear it. We'd go up about 5-10 feet again, and have to go back down. Our ascent probably took 10 minutes longer than it should have. I'd learn later that she could feel her eye bulging when she would go up, which scared her. Once we were about 5 feet from the surface, she looked up and her sinuses cleared by shooting all the mucus out of her nose, somewhat explosively. The crying had caused her sinuses to fill up and create the block she was feeling.
After our surface interval, she was good to dive again. Her sinuses had completely cleared up, and we had no issues on our second dive.
When I was a new diver, I was chasing as many dives in as little time as possible. The earliest lessons I learned were:
1) Get enough rest before diving. My first trip after OW involved an overnight drive to the dive site, then first dive at 9am. I had been awake for 24 hours at that point, and during the dive I got a headache and threw up :yuck: Fortunately after spending the rest of the day sleeping, I felt much better and could resume diving.
2) Go for quality dives not quantity. My second trip had four dives planned in a day. 2 or 3 would've been enough, but we wanted to cram a 4th one just before sunset. We spent an hour not seeing much because it quickly got dark, and most of us didn't have lights.
1) Get enough rest before diving. My first trip after OW involved an overnight drive to the dive site, then first dive at 9am. I had been awake for 24 hours at that point, and during the dive I got a headache and threw up :yuck: Fortunately after spending the rest of the day sleeping, I felt much better and could resume diving.
2) Go for quality dives not quantity. My second trip had four dives planned in a day. 2 or 3 would've been enough, but we wanted to cram a 4th one just before sunset. We spent an hour not seeing much because it quickly got dark, and most of us didn't have lights.
Was diving off a pretty small boat in Cancun. Second day of diving. You back rolled in for dive 1. End of dive took off gear and climbed aboard. Mate pulled in your gear. New "mate" helping that day. Same DM. By time I got to my seat my gear was already on the next tank. There were only two divers. Mate said it was all set. I got gear on and looked at gauge. Said full tank. Took a deep pull on the reg looking at the gauge. Reg breathed fine but needle plunged way down. Air was only turned on maybe a quarter turn. I opened it up all the way. We were doing hot drops to 60 ft in a current. Would not have been fun when reg stopped at about 20 ft as I dropped.
Puff of air to vest, breath and look at reg. That is my ritual. Puff of air to vest checks the inflator hose which earlier on in my diving career I forgot to hook up once but caught on the boat. Again due to last minute distraction.
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