If you share our passion for creating better, more environmentally responsible divers and for making buoyancy control a habit and not a “skill,” then you probably wouldn’t mind having a few memes you can post on Facebook so that you can share these sentiments with your fellow divers and instructors. Well, we just made it easy for you.
Those of us who teach scuba know all about That Student. You know the one. He or she is a likable person, and it’s clear this person really wants to dive. Overall, his or her skills aren’t absolutely horrible. But there is that one skill (as often as not it’s mask clearing) which has this person absolutely stymied.
There is an instructor practice that we’ve all seen but I don’t think any of us has actually commented on it. The practice is using the bottom (pool, sea, training platform in quarry or lake) as a training assistant. This is actually the basis for exercises such as fin pivots and other exercises that do not teach proper buoyancy control. This practice is widespread and entrenched in teaching exercises starting at Introduction to Scuba on up.
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If you think modern diver training really is all that modern because we now have eLearning or no longer teach dive tables, think again.
Other than taking a lot less time, diver training has not changed significantly in the nearly four decades that I’ve been doing it. And, as a consequence, beginning divers are not much better today than they were in the 1970s. In many respects, they’re worse.
Most dive instructors (and their training agencies) will tell you it’s unrealistic to expect beginning divers to master much in the way of buoyancy control. That, in order to achieve even a modest degree of control over buoyancy, students really need to enroll in a Buoyancy Control Specialty Diver course immediately upon certification. We’re here to tell you that’s bullshit.
At least one diver won’t be spending the holidays with family and friends this year, thanks to the dangerous practice of opening a scuba tank valve all the way, only to close it back a quarter turn. According to an article in the Daytona Beach News-Journal, an Edgewater, Florida, diver perished October 9 with more than 140 bar/2,000 psi remaining in his tank. His valve, however, was only open one-quarter turn.
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In the 1970s, classroom and pool training for the typical beginning scuba course met twice a week for from four to five weeks, providing a minimum of at least 30 contact hours. By the 1980s, this was generally down to twice a week for two to three weeks, providing less than 20 contact hours.
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You may remember the recent news story about the nine-year-old boy in New York state who was punished for trying too hard. It seems the county librarian disqualified him from participating in the local book-reading contest because he had read so many books, no one else had a chance of winning. In the librarian’s estimation, allowing him to compete would be damaging to other children’s self esteem.