Dive Training Editorials

ERROR CHAINS

2011-09-19T07:34:00.000-07:00

By Mark Young

“For the want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for the want of a shoe the horse was lost; and for the want of a horse the rider was lost, being overtaken and slain by the enemy, all for the want of care about a horseshoe nail.”
–Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack

The cover story for this edition took me back to an article that ran in the second issue of Dive Training — December 1991. It was a Learning Experience column written by a guy who got into trouble diving from a private boat.The reason that article readily comes to mind is because I never forgot it; I’ve always been amazed that it’s so possible for intelligent people to do dumb things. More about that in a minute, but here’s a recap of the event.

So the author’s friend calls and asks if he would like to go lobster diving. The friend owns a boat, they’re in South Florida and the Gulf Stream should make it an easy drift dive; the divers will tow a float, which the boat will follow to pick them up at the end of the dive.

On this day the boat will be driven (and the float will be followed) by the guy’s new girlfriend. She’s never done this before; in fact he’ll teach her to drive on the way to the dive site. It’s just the three on board so she will also be alone on deck as the sole observer. None of this is too smart so far.

Before leaving the dock they question whether to dive. The seas are running 2 to 4 feet, expected later to become 3 to 5. They decide they can beat that, and go. The wind is picking up when they reach the site so their next good idea is that it’s a good idea to get diving and get back soon. In other words, no time for predive briefings or much of a dive plan or, for that matter, to show her how to use the boat’s radio or find her way back to an inlet if necessary. It’s also getting pretty late in the day. They continue on and make the dive.

You can see what’s coming; why couldn’t they?

We tend to think that accidents come from out of the blue, but most don’t. They are usually at the end of a series of events. In fact far too often accidents or incidents are both foreseeable and avoidable. So why do even smart people do such predictably dumb things?

The best answers come from the archives of the National Transportation Safety Board, the operation that investigates airplane accidents. After thousands of well-documented cases, here is what they’ve determined.

The chain of events leading up to an accident is often called the error chain. At the start of the chain is almost always some human factor of personality, of judgment or fault. It’s the mental mechanism that, for example, keeps the pilot flying into iffy weather eager to make his destination when he probably shouldn’t have left to begin with, or should have fixed his gyro, or taken the time to top off his fuel tanks for margin, or had the opportunity to stop at numerous airports along the way. He instead ends up a statistic.

Those same human factors in play, the author of the story hesitantly yields to the boating experience of his friend, who committed to take his buddy diving and is hesitant to back out while the girlfriend, obvious to all to be incompetent for the task, wants to appear cool, capable and willing. There were also at least six event links along the error chain when any one of the three could have said no, and broken it. The horseman is slain, the pilot is lost and the divers adrift on a dark sea, worried as much about how the girl will get back home as about how they will. Lucky for all of them it ends up OK.

Diving from a private boat is fantastic fun. The how-to-do-it article in this edition is a very good primer. What is left to consider when it comes to both your ultimate safety and enjoyment, is awareness of that chain of events. Those not tuned in to their instincts are rarely aware that an accident is forming, so if divers and boaters pay attention and accept the responsibility for safety, most links will be broken before the chains that cause accidents can even begin. And at that time when your gut does kick in, you only have to break one link in the chain of events to never know what was coming.

In the end, it’s always better to be on shore wishing you were in the water than in the water wishing you were on the shore.

FORGING FISH

2011-07-16T10:53:00.000-07:00

By Mark Young

Perhaps the greatest art forger of the 20th century was Hungarian-born artist Elmyr de Hory (1906-1976). After studying classical painting at institutes in Germany and France, de Hory realized That his true artistic bent resided in the ability to copy the works of other artists, which he did prolifically. Picasso. Matisse. Renoir. Modigliani. De Hory claimed to have sold more than a thousand forgeries to art galleries and wealthy individuals around the world.

Elmyr was different from most art forgers in that he didn’t copy the paintings of famous artists. Instead, he painted original works in their style, which made the forgeries even harder to detect. Part of what makes the art of forgery remarkable is the different forms that it takes in the countless areas that it pervades. Forgery is basically defined as the process of making, adapting or imitating objects, statistics or documents with the intent to deceive. If there’s money in faking it, someone is making it. And the fact that someone’s buying it often adds another layer of authenticity to the hoax. After all, what does the value of a forged item become when you tell about it?

For example, it is beyond speculation that quite a bit of what you see on display in museums is not the real

deal. Museums have been suckered by forgers to the point that known forgeries remain on display, serious efforts to examine questionable objects are rare and, according to one museum whistleblower, “the system is supported by a mafia-like code of silence within museums and academe that conceals information and impedes exposure of the underlying process of plunder, forgery and smuggling.” Add that to the wonderment of your next museum visit.

Mostly we think of forgery in terms of money and art, but it’s rife in archaeology, literature, music, documents, history, perfumes, designer clothing, stamps, relics, religion, baseball trading cards, and even wine. So should it come as a surprise that forgeries are rampant among fish? One company in Florida, aided by export- exporta - mong export ers in Asia, imported thousands of pounds of catfish into the United States labeled and sold as grouper, just to avoid paying duties that the Department of Commerce had imposed on Vietnamese catfish.

That example is just one small act on the grand stage of seafood fraud that includes a multitude of illegal activities, undertaken by countless characters in countless places along the international supply chain. The fraud typically involves mislabeling (forging) seafood through the substitution of one species of fish — usually of inferior quality — for another, mostly for economic gain. The feature story that begins on Page 30 provides an interesting look into fish fraud; it’s a disturbing and informative article.

You can imagine that Elmyr de Hory’s career makes for good reading, and indeed he is the subject of a few books. The best was written by then-respected author Clifford Irving after extensive interviews with the subject. (“Fake! The Story of Elmyr de Hory, the Greatest Art Forger of Our Time” was published in 1969.)

So does the name Clifford Irving ring a bell? Just two years after publishing “Fake,” Irving pulled his own

“de Hory” using forged letters that he said were from Howard Hughes, to trick McGraw-Hill into buying a fake autobiography of the reclusive billionaire. However, while the subject of his previous book worked to

make his forgeries hard to detect, Irving had the brass to perpetrate his fraud and write the autobiography

with much fanfare, and dumber yet while Hughes was still alive. Irving went to prison for the scam, as did the owner of the Florida fish company, mere footnotes to the ever-growing market in fakes and forgeries where not everything is what it appears; perhaps not even that salmon fillet on the plate before you.

Enjoy this edition of Dive Training as you dine on

— whatever that is.

OCEAN'S DAUGHTER

2011-05-25T09:27:00.000-07:00

Written by Mark Young

Midnight on the water

I saw the oceans daughter

Walkn'on a wave she came

Staring as she called my name

And I can't get it out of my head

No, I can't get it out of my head

Now my old world is gone for dead

'Cos I can't get it out of my head

-Electric Light Orchestra

Benchley called his brother to tell what had happened to him and to ask a favor. The story is that Bench’s friends were going to the Caribbean and asked if he wanted to come along. He had to get certified, though, because they were going there to dive. Bench kind of always wanted to do that so he took lessons and a month later was with his buddies in the sun having a great time. He did his checkout dives at the resort and told George how he spent the rest of the week doing the most incredible stuff.

The question for George was more like a plea.“I’m going back. You have to get certified and come. I promise you’ll love it because you’re like me. You can’t say no. Leesy too.”

It’s George’s wife Lisa telling me this on the phone. She and George had talked about diving. They like outdoors stuff but the conversations about taking up diving usually stopped with her and a halfhearted, “Yes we should.” The conversation wasn’t going to end there this time. Bench had dragged Lisa and George off on other adventures and they were always fun, especially when he brought along his eternal fiancée (of seven years) who they all loved and rounded out the foursome. She had agreed to be certified too. There was no saying no.

Lisa went on. “I don’t know why I always managed to put it off, whether it was the money or maybe I was a little chicken about doing it — it was easier to shine it on. But we did it. We found a dive store that we didn’t know was here and our class had two other couples and two other guys. There were eight of us and by the second class we were comfortable with each other, and by the end we were at the bars and having a great time together. We became good friends. Diving was our common bond. But that’s not why I’m calling.”

She was calling to say they went off on their adventure with Bench, and that her life hasn’t been the same. She fell in love with the sea. She hasn’t been able get that phrase out of her head from the song by the Electric Light Orchestra. “They were singing about me, the ocean’s daughter. And how odd the title of the song, “Can’t Get It Out of My Head,” because that’s how I’ve been; profoundly changed. I asked her if George became the same way and she said no, that would be impossible. He loves it too but she’s gone nuts.

Most people come into diving pretty unaware. Blank slates, if you will. They know little about the equipment they will be using, are certainly unfamiliar with the skills and knowledge, and I contend that most new divers have never heard of the island of Bonaire. From the minute they first walk in, diving becomes a total learning experience.

The education goes past the bookwork and skills, to way beyond what they think this will be. New divers are soon to find out more than they know about the world’s history, geography and its people. They will learn some oceanography and lots about marine life and diving’s environments. But when they swim alongside of something alive and the size of a bus, or a wall that descends thousands of feet beyond unlimited visibility, they learn quite a lot about themselves. Prior personal experience and their very familiar world expand past something that they have imagined, to discover that it’s more. For many the observance and appreciation of nature on the scale where divers are privileged to be will become deeply personal. What is really coming in the way of learning, for the new diver, is often unexpected. Sometimes quite unexpected.

She called not just to tell me all that, but to ask if we could write something powerful that would entice other Lisas who are on the fence to give this a try. I believe she just did.

AS HISTORY SERVES

2011-03-27T08:24:00.000-07:00

Written by Mark Young

On the morning of February 17, 1944, in a surprise attack by the United States, aircraft bombed Japanese warships and merchant vessels in Truk Lagoon, a strategic plot of wartime geography in the Central Pacific. The attack continued the next day and when it was over 52 ships and their crews were on the bottom. The destruction would have been far greater had the Japanese not seen U.S. reconnaissance planes overhead days earlier, anticipated the attack, and moved much of the fleet.

In 1945 the American government relocated the residents of the Bikini Atoll to another place in the Marshall Islands, to create an isolated spot and test the damage that could be inflicted by nuclear weapons. Among the tests, they wanted to see the effects on war vessels, and anchored a mock fleet in the blast area. Among the vessels sent to the bottom were the 880-foot (267-m) aircraft carrier USS Saratoga and, in a blast of irony, the Japanese battleship Nagota, from which Admiral Yamamoto directed the attack on Pearl Harbor.

November 23, 1984. A powerful storm ripped the Mercedes I from its temporary anchor in the Atlantic and landed the 194-foot (59-m) freighter up against a sea wall, literally next door to the Kennedy family’s Palm Beach, Florida, compound. The ship’s owners slithered off, and it took months for the state of Florida to have it pulled off the beach. Because of the unusual stranding, the moneyed neighborhood and the drama around the removal, the ship became a media celebrity. Just a few months later it began service as an artificial reef off the coast of Fort Lauderdale.

Shipwrecks, like people, have stories to tell. They rest where they are because of war, weather, malfunction, accident or by plan. A major allure of shipwrecks, certainly for divers who visit, are their histories. Certainly they all have interesting how-I-wound-up-on-the-bottom stories, but they have others. Many of the military ships that we are privileged to dive served in war. Others patrolled during peacetime to protect their country and the peace of others. Some ended up tracking space launches, or became spies, or were used as movie sets.

There are also very deep personal histories ascribed to each ship. Within each sailor who served, a military ship occupies a place usually reserved for a childhood home. For many it forged the rest of their life. For far too many, the ships became their grave.

And shipwrecks are surrounded by history. The push for America to stay ahead as a war power sent the Bikini fleet down. A total of 242 naval ships, 156 aircraft, 25,000 radiation-recording devices and some 5,400 goats, rats and pigs were subjected to the initial atmospheric nuclear blasts, which eventually numbered 23 over a 12-year period. Topping the chart was the monster of its time, a hydrogen bomb that vaporized three of the islands and spread radioactive debris over 50,000 square miles (130,000 sq km). In many ways the area is still reeling. The Bikini ships and the Ghost Fleet of Truk Lagoon essentially represent a placemark along man’s advancement from being savage to someday becoming civilized.

And finally, each wreck has an aftermath. Beyond any damage of war, or wear, or the sinking itself, ships are profoundly changed by the sea. They become cloaked in living biomass. Paradoxically colorful life camouflages the muzzles of guns as old ships become new environments. That part of a shipwreck’s history — the story to come — is the subject of the article in this edition as Alex Brylske talks about the ecological issues surrounding ships in their role as artificial reefs.

Quite a few ships have recently gone to reef by plan. In July 2000, the HMCS Yukon, a destroyer that served in the Royal Canadian Navy, was sunk by the San Diego Oceans Foundation after nearly 2,000 volunteers spent more than a year gutting and cleaning it for its role as a California artificial reef and dive site. Consider that, and you basically have the story of the USS Spiegel Grove, USS Oriskany and General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, all put down by divers and interests in the state of Florida, and the MV Captain Keith Tibbetts, and most recently the USS Kittiwake in the Cayman Islands. The success of those efforts has fueled the desire to send more mothballed military and other idled ships to the bottom as recreational, financial and ecological attractors. It is something that our diving community will continue to support, for divers to continue to enjoy, as history continues to serve.

LIONS AND TIGERS AND BEARS

2011-02-10T07:28:00.000-08:00

Written by Mark Young

It’s scary down there. Professionals in this industry face that every day when trying to entice people to try diving. The people who raise their hands high enough to actually inquire about diving do so at their own peril. We don’t have a shot at the others, who know enough to never ask. Just ask divers how hard it is to convince their friends and relatives to give it a go.

We in the industry know too well about the “Jaws effect.” It’s a metaphor now, referring to what happened to the diving business in the mid-’70s, when the movie made people aware that to become certified was to become chum. Didn’t we hide that fact from the public for a long time? Then the movie came out. Then we had to wait out the downturn in business for the post-Jaws movie generation to come around. Well, then came Blockbuster. No matter. Since then, this sport has become dominated by daredevils. Why else the popularity of shark dives?

Speaking of sharks, we may not have to fear them much more. Along with many of the ocean’s biggest predators, sharks are going away — basically, they are overfished. No wonder; it took from the beginning of time until the start of the 19th century for the first billion people to populate earth, now here we are at 6.9 billion. Fish just can’t keep up.

That’s not a problem for sustainable fish populations, where reproduction exceeds catch limits. But it is a problem when, for example, shark fin soup becomes the culinary rage in very populated places. That dish alone takes out an estimated 73 million sharks each year.

Did I actually say that it’s a problem? So getting rid of the scary stuff, why is that a bad thing? Of course everyone has opinions, and another view is that it’s the predators, not us, that should be in fear. Fish don’t fear so that’s ridiculous. Still, some divers, along with their science buddies, want to argue that healthy populations of ocean predators is actually a good thing. Alright, I misspoke; most divers and scientists believe it. These would be the same people, I suppose, who claim that diving in the same ocean with sharks and big grouper is safe. Still, let’s look at their case.

They argue that predators are essential to the ocean’s (the world’s) ecology. Everything is hunting something, and the “balance of nature” is a theory that ecological systems are basically in a state of stable equilibrium. But other scientists disagree. They point to observations that indicate predator and prey populations instead are in a constant state of disturbance and fluctuation, rather than in balance. They propose that equilibrium is illusory; more like a seesaw, where the size of prey and predator populations constantly change based on the relationship between populations and their food source, and differing external factors. I don’t know. Both theories sound like different ways for nature to achieve the same thing.

Except for one thing. Everyone seems to agree that the external factors are becoming more radical. According to reputable sources like the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, almost 70 percent of the world’s fisheries are fully to overexploited, depleted or in a state of collapse. And, as for the big boys, the ones that keep our potential divers away, about 90 percent of large predatory fish stocks, worldwide, are already gone.

Wait a minute. It is scary down there.

This editorial is in reference to the feature story, “Predators as Protectors,” that begins on Page 30, Dive Training magazine, March 2011

SEA STATESMEN

2011-02-05T07:10:00.000-08:00

Written by Mark Young

What comes to mind when you think of Benjamin Franklin? We know him as a statesman. One of our founding fathers, he helped frame and then signed the Constitution. He was a prolific author, a printer, an inventor (the furnace stove, bifocals … a carriage odometer?), political theorist, satirist and a philosopher. He formed the first lending library and fire department in Pennsylvania, published and wrote Poor Richard’s Almanack and The Pennsylvania Gazette, and had a major role in founding both the University of Pennsylvania and Franklin & Marshall College. Not bad for a guy whose formal schooling ended at the age of 10.

But your first thought might be the image of Franklin flying a kite during a thunderstorm; he was also a scientist (or, in his day, a natural philosopher). What many people don’t know, however, is that Franklin was also an early oceanographer. He became that by way of his position as deputy postmaster general of North America. It started with a question posed by the English Postal Authority. How, they asked, can American postal ships make the journey back from England to the colonies sometimes weeks faster than the English mail ships. Franklin consulted his whaling captain cousin, Timothy Folger. He learned of an ocean current that American and Spanish ship captains were aware of. They knew to sail with it traveling to England and stay out of it when returning to the colonies. The English mail packet captains were sailing dead against it.

It took years of blank stares before the British followed Franklin’s advice about navigating the current, but that’s another story. Franklin became intrigued by the idea of a “stream” existing in the ocean. During his trips between the colonies and England he took measurements and notes about the water temperature, currents, water color and Gulf weed content. He knew that the current carries warm water from the south to the north, and that his measurements would mark the location of this “river in the ocean.” He also gathered data from Folger and other ship captains, learning enough to chart the Gulf Stream, and giving it the name by which it is known today. It’s a hoot that the first map of the Gulf Stream, published by Franklin in 1768, so closely mirrors today’s satellite images.

Franklin was by no means the first oceanographer. Although it is one of the newest fields of science, formally dating to organized expeditions in the late 19th century, oceanography can be traced back tens of thousands of years to the earliest seafarers who began observing the waves, tides and currents that carried their boats. Oceanography has essentially evolved from the need to find fish along coastlines, past the discovery that the Earth is not flat and can be navigated, past Franklin’s observations about currents, to today’s need to understand the place of the oceans in global climate.

The history of oceanography is as interesting as the discipline itself. In this issue, for our perspective as divers, author Robert Rossier examines what we know about tides, currents and waves, and most of what we know is from the observations made by Franklin and countless others who came before and after he turned his remarkable intellect to the sea.

Franklin’s unique genius was turning his observations to practical use. While the next guy to research electricity with a kite in a storm was killed doing it, Franklin invented the lightning rod. In the same way, the publication of his accumulated oceanographic findings, “Maritime Observations,” contains Franklin’s ideas for sea anchors, watertight compartments, catamaran hulls, shipboard lightning rods, and even a soup bowl that stays in place in rough seas. Oceanographic observation has done much for our lives, and we have benefited as divers — certainly for our ability to understand and continue learning about what we are most privileged to observe.

THINGS WE NEVER KNEW

2010-12-23T07:24:00.000-08:00

Written by Mark Young

It takes a drive through Kansas to really understand why it’s called the Sunflower State. In places, sunflower fields extend in every direction, and as far off as you can see. If you have never observed a large field of sunflowers, the sight is awesome beyond the expanse of yellow. You think at first that it’s because the plants are so much taller and larger than you imagined. Then it dawns on you. In stunning symmetry, they appear to be around the same height, and face in exactly the same direction. You may not even realize at first why they are aimed the same way, and that’s the next cool thing. Before they reach full flower, they face the sun as it comes up in the morning and the entire field rotates in grand unison as the sun moves across the sky, to the west by the end of the day. At the top of the Earth, where the sun never sets, scientists have observed sunflowers strangle themselves as they follow the sun circling the rim of the horizon. Any question where the plant got its name?

Even if you don’t know or care anything about sunflowers, this scant bit of information puts them in a whole new light (sorry). It can make you wonder about other things like, gee, what causes them to do that? Do they unwind at night? Do they follow the full moon, too? And even if these few facts don’t make you want to know more, it becomes great trivia for a dinner conversation.

This sidelong example shows that even seemingly simple things can become interesting with knowledge and a few basic facts. Now take something that actually interests us, like diving. As we become better informed the experience becomes more interesting and, in the process, in a way, so do we.

We have entered our 20th year publishing this magazine. There is so much about this activity and its environs to know, for anyone who wants to, and we felt that an educational publication that follows the light was more than needed. So we consider our tenure grateful confirmation that the interest in learning more about diving and what surrounds it is indeed pretty strong. People wondered early on if a magazine themed Dive Training would have enough to write about; there has certainly been enough content.

And it doesn’t run out. There is a long list of interesting dive-related topics that we would like to share with you in this edition, and in future editions. Take jellyfish, for example. We all know what they are but what really gives? This creature is complex in its simplicity. It turns out there is an awful lot to know about jellies, and author Greg Laslo takes us on another tour of a bizarre subject with the cover story that begins on Page 20.

We hope that after reading the article you will never look at jellyfish the same way again. Just like you may never look at sunflowers in quite the same way. So, do they unwind at night? When it comes to pondering what we know and what we don’t, perhaps the best questions revolve around the things that we are interested in and think we know, or never knew, but would like to learn much more about. To help make your diving experience complete, we will continue to keep you in the know about lots of different and interesting topics — lighting interest, we hope, for a few more decades.

EVERYBODY'S BACKYARD

2010-10-18T15:14:00.000-07:00

By Mark Young

European explorers led by Christopher Columbus were actually searching for a sea route to Asia when by luck they discovered the Caribbean and the Americas. This wasn’t so lucky for the various native populations, however; they couldn’t defend themselves against conquest, but the most devastating import was biological. Where the people of the three known continents had long been exposed to each other’s diseases and developed a strong immunity, the cultures that the “Columbuses” discovered were powerless against the import of smallpox, measles and influenza. Mere contact killed millions of indigenous people.

In a sense you could say that throughout history subsets of man have been an invasive species. And wherever we humans have gone, nature has been along for the ride.

People tend to think of “invasive species” only in negative terms, but the phrase has several degrees of definition. Toward the “OK” scale it refers to “introduced species or nonindigenous species that are rapidly expanding outside of their native range.” A not-so-OK connotation is, “alien species whose introduction or spread threatens the environment, the economy, and/or society, including human health.”

Degrees of the definition are appropriate. For example, an argument can be made that the introduction of most exotic species has richly enhanced biodiversity. Consider traveling plants; more than 4,000 species introduced into North America during the past 400 years make up nearly 20 percent of our current plant biodiversity. And, with no evidence, according to some biologists, that a single resident species has been driven to extinction. In other words, with some pesky exceptions, plants that invade fit in.

As divers we tend to think negatively about the arrival of nonindigenous marine life, yet the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 introduced 250 new fish species into the Mediterranean from the Red Sea, reportedly resulting in only a single extinction. So there’s that.

On the other hand, who wants the Burmese python at the top of the Everglades food chain? (Have you seen the YouTube video of the snake that exploded while digesting an alligator?) Their numbers in the Glades are estimated at more than 100,000, growing fast, and pose a threat to natural balance in a truly spectacular ecosystem — all because a few pets outgrew their welcome. Perhaps the Nile monitor lizard, an African heavy that grows to 7 feet (2 m) in length can give the pythons a run for the top; they’ve also established Florida residency. Kind of makes the U.S. invasions of zebra mussels and Asian carp seem tame.

This month’s cover feature is an update on the Atlantic/Caribbean invasion of lionfish, another pet let loose. There’s no debate that this has the possibility of an environmental disaster. One hope against it is the commercial potential of lionfish as a culinary dish; that would at least put something above them in the food chain. Another possibility is whatever mechanism keeps them in check in their far-Pacific homeland, something that is being studied to determine.

However this plays out, we’re about to see in the extreme how well natural balance can occur where it must, while we humans continue to move nature past the geographic boundaries that once contained the Earth’s biota, and into our own backyards.

TIES THAT BIND

2010-09-18T13:28:00.000-07:00

By Mark Young

A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen.
~Edward de Bono

During a business trip to Florida I wound up near where I used to live, and stopped into a small airport where I kept a plane for a quite a while. I’m not quite sure, after nearly 20 years, why I decided to visit the flight center where I was based, but it called me back.

I’m guessing that the flight instructor behind the counter was in diapers when I was a customer there. We had a great conversation and some laughs, me sharing stories about how the place was, she telling how it is, and the old wooden flight center felt like home. Just the smell of the place summoned fond memories, and the experience was nicely nostalgic.

It's surprising how much memory is built around things unnoticed at the time. What from today will cause you to look back tomorrow and smile? You might just be in that place; you were probably introduced to this magazine at your local dive center and someday that store, the people you meet there and the experiences that you collect might mark a considerable time of your life. Most store owners and dive instructors are in this business to pass on to you what has such importance to them, so connecting you to diving, and a lot of great things to remember, should be natural. But sometimes even important things need a solid introduction to help them stick.

I mention this because of how the initial introduction to diving has changed. Not many years ago, people who learned to dive went through about 40 hours of face-to-face instruction. That amount of classroom and pool time allowed instructors and students to get to know one another, and a provided good conduit for the passion of diving to transfer. At some point, the industry decided that so much of a commitment to scheduled time was limiting participation, so they set out to shorten it with home study options to attract more people. As a result, some of today’s students may not spend as much time with an instructor outside of the pool sessions. But are they missing an important connection? Did we abbreviate ourselves out of the bonding that comes with spending time?

I wondered about that as I read this issue’s Instructor Tips column about the positive learning effects of instructor storytelling. It’s a reminder that much of learning happens outside the lines of a book or the glare of a screen. Observing that young flight instructor, I imagined how well she must be bonding her students to the excitement and the possibilities of aviation. I thought of her importance as a mentor, and her ability to inspire her students through the emotional desert of dry textural material.

I remember that learning to dive was an escape from my cubicled world; not a drag at all. Learning doesn’t just involve what you know; it inspires what you do with what you know. It is the emotional, not textural information that forms the strongest attachment. There is terrific benefit to being surrounded early on by the diving environment, the enthusiasm of a good instructor and sharing the excitement, anticipation and even some of the apprehension with other people who are learning too.

We in the industry want to connect you. It is important for you to help establish the connection too, especially if you don’t feel that it exists for you as it should. You don’t want to let this experience unhappen. Stop by your dive center to linger a while, and you might just find yourself stopping back in 20 years, and finding memories.

EDITORIAL September 2010: ENDLESS DIVING

2010-08-10T11:03:00.000-07:00

By Mark Young

I know a couple who fell so hard for diving that they racked up close to 200 dives in just their first year. Living in South Florida made that easy. She would pick him up after a business trip, and head straight from the airport to a midnight dive. They dove the local charters; they bought their own boat which, since they were always under it, they renamed Two Down; they went east to the Bahamas, south to the Keys and into the Caribbean. They couldn’t get enough.

But there was more to get, like diving to the North. Any clue about Florida’s springs, just a few hours away, escaped them for years or they would have been there, next chance. He recalls that regretfully, like they were robbed.

Connect that to this. The nation’s highway system was built with materials that were mined along the way. The abandoned quarries filled with groundwater and many were reclaimed as recreation areas. Divers came along and populated the bottoms with things like airplanes of all sizes, helicopters, school buses, semitrailers, busses, boats and things you wouldn’t imagine. Some of the quarries are absolutely beautiful with a wide range of aquatic life, forests and sheer rock walls. Many have camping facilities and some even host outdoor music concerts. Their proximity to the highways that they built provides divers with easy access. As you would guess lots of quarry diving goes on in the United States.

Lots of other diving goes on too. Within our borders there is endless spring, lake, river and coastal diving. Heck, you can even dive in many of the nation’s aquariums, a theme park and in a major Las Vegas show. Local dive outings are an important business and social component for many of the nation’s dive centers.

The purpose of this editorial is to call your attention to a resource that we haven’t talked about much. It is the local diving component of our magazine and website. Many people who get certified limit their diving to foreign trips, and some of that is simply because they aren’t aware of the opportunities that are close by. It’s why we introduce two local diving spots in these pages each month. The couple that I talked about was also the inspiration for the “Diving USA: Dive Sites Across America” section at dtmag.com. That they were so nuts about diving but didn’t know about nearby dive sites raises the odds that lots of others don’t know about theirs either, especially newer divers.

For a number of years we have been compiling our local dive writings on the website, and now have hundreds of sites pinpointed on the map so that you can see the proximity and read about diving’s local opportunities. It is the most visited area of our website, and we encourage you to use it.

A great thing about diving is that it happens everywhere. Not many activities can match the experiences, the diversity, and the friendships that diving presents. Diving is literally available worldwide in such wide range. And whether you live in California or Arkansas, it is also close by.

Care to comment?

We add locations to the local diving site at http://www.dtmag.com/ monthly. If you come across a place that we haven't covered. or would like to tell others about a local site that you visit, post your comments below.

NO DUMB QUESTIONS, SEPTEMBER 2010: Diving After Flying, How Much is Too Much and Altitude Issues

2010-08-09T11:18:00.000-07:00

By Alex Brylske

Q: Joe Plocinski wrote with a question that’s rarely considered concerning flying and diving. “I would like to know if there is a recommendation or rule of thumb for any ‘ground time’ interval between flying and making your first dive? During our certification class we were told that the recommended surface interval for flying after diving is 12 hours after a single dive, and 18 hours after repetitive/multiday diving. However, I do not recall hearing anything about diving after flying, or if there are any possible effects on the body. We will be vacationing in the Caribbean, arriving early afternoon and was wondering if it would be OK to get a dive in that day?”

A:You bring up an interesting point that’s rarely discussed, though given how common your experience is, it certainly should be addressed more often. Most informed divers assume that flying before diving poses no problem. In fact, you can make a logical argument that diving soon after a flight could impose a safety factor because you start the dive with less nitrogen in your tissues than you would if you were saturated at sea-level pressure. In theory, this might make sense. In practice, however, it might lead you to a recompression chamber.

The issue really isn’t the amount of nitrogen in your body, but rather the fact that a diver arriving at a dive resort after several hours of flying is not likely to be in his or her best shape. The stresses of the airplane cabin air, dehydration, restricted circulation from sitting in a confined position, and general fatigue from the journey are all factors that could place the diver under an increased — not decreased — risk for decompression illness. The best advice is to avoid diving until you are completely recovered and rested from the stress of flying to your favorite resort. Of course, that means there can be no hard-and-fast rule. Every individual is different, the actual stress of a flight depends on many factors, and only you know your body well enough to make the final decision of when it has recovered. Do many divers make their first dive just after unpacking their bags? Of course. Do some of them get the bends or incur other problems? Again, yes. Was their flight a factor in the outcome? No one knows. Perhaps a good compromise is that, if you do decide to dive immediately on arrival, make sure it’s a shallow, easy one.

Q: Deidre Levin had a question that I wish more divers considered. “I was on a live-aboard dive trip recently where most of us made between 20 and 25 dives during the five days we were aboard. One evening toward the end of the trip, our discussion centered on an issue that I’ve never seen addressed in any publication or discussed by any diving authority. But it seems like a simple and important matter. Can a diver do too much diving? I’m not talking about decompression sickness. Assuming that’s not an issue — the person feels perfectly fine — is there still a point when, like most things, there’s too much of a good thing?”

A: You have entered a very interesting realm of discussion, and you’re right; it’s rarely if ever addressed. Perhaps the reason almost no one ever talks about it is because we know so little about the long-term effects of diving in recreational divers.

It is, however, well documented that some commercial divers do suffer long-term effects. Hearing loss is one common ailment. However, another is a lesser-known condition called dysbaric osteonecrosis, literally, “bone death due to uneven pressure.” While to my knowledge it hasn’t been proven conclusively, many medical authorities blame this disorder on the extreme and continued conditions encountered by commercial divers, especially those who have a lot of deep-saturation experience. (By the way, it’s even been reported in sperm whales.)

The good news is that it’s believed that recreational divers spend far too little time underwater in their careers for this to be of any concern. However, there has been some evidence that dive professionals who spend extreme amounts of time at depth, such as divemasters and instructors, may be susceptible.

Still, my concern gets back to the issue that you dismissed: decompression. Even if someone does not manifest any symptoms of bends, we really don’t know what the cumulative effect may be. We do know that silent bubbles develop commonly in recreational divers, and that they most often resolve without any problem. But could they have a cumulative effect over many years or decades? Could age have any effect on this mechanism? Or, could more diving actually help build some form of immunity to bends? We just don’t know.

Personally, I’m a cautious person. And, probably like a lot of folks, I’ve gotten more so as I’ve gotten older. Now, in my diving, I almost never make more than two dives a day, and three is the absolute limit. I know that may sound unduly conservative — and I do have the advantage of diving just about any day of the week I care to — but that’s my decision. So, does the concept of too much of a good thing apply to diving? Probably, but we have no idea where that limit lies, and I personally don’t plan to provide any evidence.

Q: Dave Lewis sent in a question about altitude and diving. “I wonder about the oxygen content of compressed air in a scuba tank when it is filled at altitude where the lack of oxygen tires out hikers. Do dive centers at altitude enrich compressed air to normal levels?”

A: Your confusion is understandable given that hypoxia (low oxygen) is a common concern for anyone at high altitude. After all, who hasn’t watched a film about pilots or mountain climbers in which they didn’t see oxygen masks at the ready? As we’re reminded in the required announcement prior to every flight we’ve taken, supplemental oxygen is readily available in the event of loss of cabin pressure.

But let’s think more closely about this for a second. The concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere everywhere on the planet is 21 percent. (If you’re a stickler for accuracy it’s really 20.946 percent.) What’s more, that value holds true no matter where you are in the atmosphere, be it at the surface or about to step on the peak of Mount Everest. That means no matter where you fill a scuba tank, as long as it is somewhere on Earth, it will always contain 21 percent oxygen (assuming it’s not a nitrox fill, of course). So, if the oxygen fraction of air is always the same, where does all the concern over hypoxia come from?

The answer involves not pressure, but percentage. The physiological effect a gas has on our body depends not on the fraction of a gas within the mixture, but on the actual number of molecules we breathe. This is a function of the partial pressure of the gas in question within a gas mixture. An example will illustrate the point.

If you’re a nitrox diver you know that the oxygen partial pressure (ppO) at the surface, 1 atmosphere, is 0.21 ATA (reflecting its gas fraction, 0.21 x 1.0 = 0.21). At 2 atmospheres (33 feet [10 m]), where the pressure doubles, this increases to 0.42 ATA (0.21x 2.0 = 0.42). However, if you ascend in the atmosphere to a height of about five kilometers (16,400 feet), the pressure will halve. This means the oxygen partial pressure drops to 0.105 ATA (0.21 x 0.05 = 0.105). While we’d experience no problem whatsoever at the surface or at 33 feet [10 m], at altitude this low value is insufficient to maintain consciousness and we’d black out. Remember, however, that the percentage of oxygen in every case has not changed; it’s always 21 percent.

Q: Patti W. writes, “What should I use to rinse the inside of my buoyancy compensator (BC) after diving in salt water?”

A: First of all, it’s always good to give your gear a quick rinse in fresh water after an ocean dive, to rinse away the seawater. If you aren’t in the habit of rinsing your gear, you should be, because salt crystals that form on your gear when it dries can abrade surfaces, wear out threads and cause corrosion. A longer soaking at home after a dive trip — ideally in warm water — is also recommended.

Now, to the question of rinsing the inside of the BC, I’ve never actually used anything but fresh water.

Some divers use the eco-friendly product Simple Green® or similar mild detergents. There are also a few commercial products available just for rinsing scuba gear, so ask at your local dive center. Some have speculated that because a BC might be inflated orally, its interior should be disinfected periodically. So, a very mild bleach solution could be used for this purpose. In addition, some rebreather manufacturers offer nonbleaching disinfectant solutions, which are a better choice but, again, I think that good-old water should do the trick.

EDITORIAL, AUGUST 2010: CANDY COATED DIVERS?

2010-07-19T13:56:00.000-07:00

By Cathryn Castle Whitman

I got an e-mail from a reader recently, expressing her concern over a photograph that appeared in a recent issue of Dive Training. Every now and then a “no-no” photo slips past us — maybe the diver is wearing his snorkel on the right side of the mask instead of the left or a way-too-long weight belt is shown dangling. It happens sometimes. And readers take us to task. But this time, rather than point out the problem, the reader simply asked, “What’s wrong with this picture?”

I scanned it carefully, looking for the glaring error that got overlooked. The photo was of a group of wet-suit-clad divers preparing to gear up for a dive. In it, no one had a snorkel attached to a mask incorrectly, or a too-long belt. The scuba units were stowed properly and no one, heaven forbid, had their mask perched on top of their head, or some other obvious “no-no” likely to set off a letter to the editor.

I didn’t get it.

So, I offered to discuss the reader’s concern in a phone conversation. She e-mailed her phone number, I called, and after we exchanged a few polite greetings she asked, “So, what’s wrong with this picture? Do you get it yet?”

I stared harder. Still, nothing jumped out.

“They’re all obese. Or at least overweight.

”Oh, boy. How I wished I hadn’t started the workday by checking reader mail. As I thought to find a way to address her concern — I figured maybe she was upset that we’d depicted plus-size divers in an unflattering way — she went on to explain that she was a diver and healthcare professional and that, in her opinion, Dive Training wasn’t doing enough to drive home the message that diving is a sport that sometimes requires rigorous physical activity. She encouraged me to get the word out to our readers that being overweight puts divers at increased risk of cardiac arrest while diving, which can prove fatal, especially if a heart attack occurs underwater.

“For years this industry has been candy-coating diving as a ‘leisure activity’ or a ‘pastime’ rather than what it is — a sport that requires a certain degree of physical fitness and athleticism,” she said. “And as a result, we’re seeing more and more overweight, unfit divers who may not fully understand they’re at risk. The fact is, divers need cardiovascular fitness, and obesity puts a strain on a diver’s heart — not to mention the increased risk of Type II diabetes, which brings its own set of dangers to overweight divers. You need to start by making divers aware of their Body Mass Index (BMI), why it’s important, and how to manage their weight.”

As we finished our call I thanked her for her input and considered ways to include more health-related articles in the magazine. And then I did what I always do when I have a diving medical question. I consulted Divers Alert Network (DAN) for more information.

Here’s what the experts have to say about BMI, excerpted from the DAN Annual Diving Report 2008 Edition: “Data gathered by DAN in recent years indicate that high BMI values are common in persons involved in incidents. The measures are included where available to allow further evaluation of this trend. As a point of personal awareness, BMI is a reasonable benchmark to monitor. Tracking your own score can help you keep your personal fitness efforts focused.”

So there you have it. The report goes on to suggest alternate ways of gauging your own personal fitness for diving. To obtain a downloadable copy, go to http://www.diversalertnetwork.org/ and click on “2008 DAN Diving Report.”

To calculate your own BMI, you can use an online calculator found on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website, www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/assessing/

bmi/. A BMI of 25-29.9 is considered overweight. A BMI of 30 or greater is considered obese.

So, dear “Anonymous,” I’ve kept my promise. As I mentioned in our phone conversation, we value our readers’ input. While we’re on this subject, we’d like to get your opinion in our Web poll at dtmag.com: Has this industry been candy-coating diving too much as a “leisure activity”?

NO DUMB QUESTIONS, AUGUST 2010: Pacemakers and Diving, Advanced Training, The Effect of Crude Oil on Corals

2010-07-19T13:53:00.000-07:00

Q:Thomas McGill had a follow-up question regarding a feature article I did a few months ago called “The Telltale Heart” (April 2010). Could you expand on some information on diving with pacemakers for me? The article states, in part, ‘there is no reason why a pacemaker should automatically disqualify anyone from recreational diving.’ I and the pacemaker manufacturers seem to agree with this. The article goes on, ‘the real issue is why the patient needs a pacemaker. If the device was implanted solely to correct a problem with the rhythm of the heart, then the candidate can dive. If, however, the heart showed other problems or disease, then the pacemaker candidate should not dive.’ Could you expand on that last sentence for me? My pacemaker was installed because of a slow heart rate. Otherwise, I have no heart difficulties, and I do maintain myself in reasonable physical condition for diving.”

A:Thomas, sorry I wasn’t able to answer your question fully in my earlier feature. The issue is not one of technology but the same concern we have with any medical condition: Might the underlying problem for which the pacemaker was installed affect one’s fitness to participate in scuba diving?

Pacemakers are installed to address abnormalities in the heart’s electrical conduction system. Often, though not always, patients with such abnormalities have some form of cardiac disease as the underlying cause of their abnormality. For example, congenital heart disease, certain valvular heart diseases (aortic stenosis with valvular and AV-ring calcification), cardiomyopathy and coronary heart disease all may be associated with chronic conduction system abnormalities. Any of these conditions can mean that an individual may lack the cardiovascular fitness required to safely participate in diving. In fact, according to the Divers Alert Network, the most common reason for a pacemaker is underlying ischemic heart disease. This is a huge concern in diving because an increasing number of recreational diving fatalities each year are attributable to coronary artery disease. Another complicating factor is that diving often takes place in remote locations far from facilities that provide emergency cardiac care.

In your case, it appears that there was no underlying heart disease, and the pacemaker was installed solely to correct an arrhythmia problem. Assuming you have sufficient exercise tolerance, you are exactly the type of individual who need not be disqualified from diving.

One other issue I also failed to address in the feature involves the pacemaker itself. Any device used while diving must be up to functioning in the underwater environment. Therefore, the pacemaker must be rated to perform at least to a depth of 130 feet (39 m), and must operate satisfactorily during conditions of wide pressure changes, such as during ascent and descent.

Q:Darlene Latamara writes for some direction on what her next step should be concerning training. “I’m a new diver but I really love it. In fact, I’d say I’m addicted. There’s just no other sport, or any leisure activity, that I enjoy as much. So, I want to get as good at it as possible. I’ve made a dozen dives since I was certified, so I’m nowhere near what you’d consider an expert. I loved my Open Water class, and was just about to sign up for an advanced class when one of my dive buddies suggested that I wait. His advice was that I’d get more out of my training if I waited and put a few more dives in my logbook before taking the next step. What do you think, wait or do it now?”

A:This is a debate that has raged among diving instructors for decades and we’re not likely to settle it here. I will give you my opinion, but let’s clarify a few matters. First, the term “advanced diver” can be a bit misleading. Most diver training organizations offer a course designed to introduce divers to advanced diving techniques, and it typically involves only five or six dives. Some programs require a bit more but, bottom line, you’re looking at no more dives than you’ve already amassed. So, the question begs, what’s the point? Or, from a different perspective, does such minimum experience really make you an advanced diver?

Some diving educators say that you really don’t get much out of any advanced training unless you have a reasonable base of experience to build upon. Thus, they encourage divers to defer additional training until their logbooks are a bit meatier. Personally, I don’t buy this.

My concern is over experience, and whether divers gain that experience under the supervision of a trained professional. My view — and it’s backed up by accident data — is that divers are far more likely to get into trouble very early on in their career than even a little bit later. Specifically, 25 dives seems to be the magic number. Get divers to that point, and they’re less likely to be an accident statistic.

So, if the initial phase of a diver’s career is the most potentially dangerous, then that’s when they’d benefit most from competent professional supervision. Furthermore, from a learning perspective, it’s more effective to learn something the right way first, rather than have to unlearn the wrong way and relearn.

There’s also another issue, and it’s one from the student’s perspective, rather than the instructor’s. Regardless of how firmly instructors caution divers that advanced diving doesn’t make them an expert, some students come out of advanced training believing that they’re the second coming of Jacques Cousteau. Leave the ego at home. You’ll never become an expert in 10, 20 or even 100 dives. In fact, researchers have been exploring just what’s required for expert-level performance in many fields, and what’s interesting is that, regardless of the field, it seems to come down to one thing: 10,000 hours of experience doing something. That’s right, 10,000 hours — the equivalent of five years of full-time work. So, don’t fool yourself into believing that any training alone — in any form or from any organization — will make you an expert.

My advice is to take the course, and take it now because now is when you want the guidance of who will, hopefully, be an expert. What designation appears on the c-card is irrelevant.

Q:Richard Werling writes with a concern about the recent devastation in the Gulf. “I’m both angered and sickened to watch the news about BP and the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. I can’t imagine how this will turn out, and my heart goes out to those whom this will so dramatically impact. On a more selfish note, I’m also planning to go diving in the Florida Keys in a few months. I keep hearing about how the Loop Current could carry this oil around the Keys, into the Gulf Stream and up the East Coast. So far, it seems that the Keys haven’t been affected, but I wonder what might happen in the near future. What are the effects of oil on coral reefs?”

A:Richard, this event is unprecedented in American history so there’s simply no way that anyone can give you an accurate answer to your question. What I can tell you is that, aside from some studies done after a tanker accident in Panama back in 1986, there hasn’t been a lot of research on the effects of oil on coral reefs. Many laboratory experiments have been conducted — some even indicating that crude oil alone may not be all that bad — but field studies where massive amounts of oil have spilled near coral reefs are, fortunately, pretty rare.

From the studies that have been done, it’s clear that coral reefs that are exposed to crude oil or chemical associates have shown the following list of problems: tissue death; impaired feeding, polyp retraction, sediment clearance ability, larval settlement and mucus production; reduction in calcification rates; gonad damage; larval death and premature extrusion of planulae (larvae); bleaching; and reduction in zooxanthellae primary production. As if this wasn’t bad enough, studies have also shown that the chemical used to disperse the oil can be more harmful to coral reefs than the crude itself.

A more recent experiment in the Keys wasn’t encouraging. Dr. James Cervino, a marine pathologist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, exposed coral samples to various concentrations of petroleum. He found that the oil interfered with zooxanthellae photosynthesis, making it more difficult for the corals to lay down reef structure. “They are slowly dying,” he said. “Oil would literally wipe out the corals. They are already stressed from temperature. The reefs are just hanging on, and this would tip them over the edge. There would be a mini-collapse of the food chain. If it does come here, there would be nothing we could do to help them.”

However, much may depend on the condition of the oil when it reaches the Keys. According to Dr. John McManus, professor and coral reef specialist at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, if the oil arrives as tar balls, it could just float over the reefs without causing much damage. The real problem is that an unknown amount of oil is in the form of undersea plumes, which could be more toxic.

As of now, no oil from Deepwater Horizon has reached us. The press reports about tar balls in the Keys have all been shown to come from other sources. Perhaps by the time you read this, we will know more; but with nothing to compare it with, right now no one really knows what will happen.

Keep your fingers crossed.

BUDDY LINES: LETTERS TO THE EDITOR, AUGUST 2010

2010-07-19T13:48:00.000-07:00

Thoughts and feedback on what constitutes a safe diver, tipping your dive crew, adaptive scuba diving, and remembering Andy Letourneau, all in this month's edition of "Buddy Lines."

Sometimes the 'Safe' Diver Can't Dive at All

Alex Brylske is right on with the question, “What really constitutes a safe diver?” I was certified in 1963 and I have always maintained a strict diving code. Whenever a dive is planned from the beach, rocks, boat — wherever — if it doesn’t feel right, don’t dive!

I live in Northern California, and the diving can be tough even on a good day. My son drove down from Washington to dive for abalone with me — a four-hour drive one way to reach the dive site I usually visit. Day 1 was great. We got our abalone, drove home, had a family abalone feast and looked forward to the next trip, planned two days later.

Even though we drove another four hours to the dive site, all excited about getting another shot at more abalone, the condition of the water had changed for the worse. We watched as the breakers rolled in, churning the bull kelp into what could be a death trap. We looked for safe entry points. There were none. I looked at my son and said, “Sorry, even though we drove all this way, this is a walkaway day.” He was disappointed, but knew it was the right thing to do. We could have risked diving that day; it would have been tough, but I knew the risk wasn’t worth the reward.

Diving equipment has progressed and made diving safer, but your priorities must remain — safety, personal responsibility and accountability. The buddy system is just that, keeping check on each other before, during and after entering the water.

Mike Melton

Via e-mail

Andy Remembered

I just wanted to thank Dive Training and Marty Snyderman for the article acknowledging Andy Letourneau [“Appreciating Andy: Honoring an Unsung Hero,” May 2010].

I was fortunate enough to have known Andy for about 10 years before his unfortunate accident. I knew Andy both as a diver and in a professional capacity, but the times we spent diving were certainly the most memorable.

To reinforce Marty’s description of Andy, I am reminded of when I was finishing my Divemaster class and Andy helped me map a dive site in Hood Canal, Washington. We drove nearly 300 miles [480 km] round-trip for a day’s worth of diving and mapping. Andy brought reels, surface markers and pretty much everything else you might need to map the site.

About a week after we returned home, I found a couple of my measurements just weren’t lining up and I knew I was headed back to the site to remeasure things. When I told Andy, he never hesitated, grabbed his gear and the two of us were on the road back to the site. Andy had no reason to go up with me either time, other than it needed to be done and so he was going to help make sure it did.

Andy touched a lot of people’s lives in the Pacific Northwest, and whether you are a diver or not, you always knew he was one of those special people that you were glad to have known. We will miss him, but we are all better for having known him and won’t forget him.

Eric R. Bressman

Via e-mail

Don’t Forget to Tip Your Dive Boat Crew

I thoroughly enjoyed “Dive Boat Defined,” Dive Training, May 2010. As an instructor and avid diver I’ve had many positive experiences on dive boats. Whether it’s been on the Great Lake Erie or off the Florida and Carolina coast or abroad enjoying the islands, I’ve found a great boat captain, a great divemaster and a great crew not only assist your safety but can make every experience from dock to seabed enjoyable.

Your article failed to mention tipping. While boat captains who are owners do not want to be tipped, boat captains who are not the owner, divemasters and crewhands not only appreciate tips but often rely on the money. I’ve always reminded my students that if you’ve been helped by the crew, reached your dive site safely and returned from it safely, and a divemaster has expertly briefed you on your dive and showed you the lay of the sea bottom, make sure you tip.

Many divers do not know that 10 percent to 15 percent of what they pay for their dive excursion should be tipped. Count on the captain, crew and divemaster to each get 10 percent to 15 percent if their assistance warrants. You can tip each or just the helpful divemaster or crewmember. It is customary. Bring some extra cash in your dry bag for tips. Often it’s helpful to give your tip to the captain or crew when enjoying the boat ride back. If you wait until the boat docks, you may miss the opportunity to tip. No one will ask for a tip. Give it if you feel your experience was top-notch, which I’ve found is often the case. You also want to consider tipping in front of the other divers.

Bob Kaschalk

Berea, Ohio

Adaptive Scuba Clarification

I believe there’s an error in the article about Handicapped Scuba Association (HSA) [“Defying Gravity and Disability: Adaptive Scuba Programs for Divers With Impairments,” Dive Training, June 2010].

The article states, “These divers [Level C divers] are certified to dive with three buddies, one of which must be trained as a Rescue Diver or above” while the HSA website, www.hsascuba.com/scripts/AboutTraining.php,

states, “a Level C diver not only requires two dive buddies, but one must be trained in diver rescue.”

Other than that, the article was excellent. Keep up the good work!

Kees Beemster Leverenz

Via e-mail

Editor’s note: Jim Gatacre, who founded the Handicapped Scuba Association, said the reader is correct.

On Mammals

I wanted to point out an incorrect answer in your June 2010 quiz. In Question 2 you said that all mammals are warm-blooded vertebrates that share the following characteristics: use lungs to breathe air, bear live young and have fur or hair at some stage of their development. In fact, the duck-billed platypus and four species of echidna are monotremes. These animals bear eggs that hatch into mammals. All reside in Australia and Tasmania.

Matthew Cummings

Via e-mail

Contact Lenses and Diving

In reference to “No Dumb Questions,” Dive Training, July 2010, acanthamoeba is a free-living parasite and is commonly found in chlorinated pools, hot tubs and freshwater lakes. Acanthamoeba corneal infections can be difficult to diagnose, extremely difficult to treat and visually devastating. Wearing contact lenses increases the risk of this infection. Since this infection is rare, a controversy exists concerning the use of contact lenses while participating in watersports. Since our current contact lens care products are not adequate to kill this parasite, disposal of the contact lens after watersports has been advocated by some.

However, I recently saw a healthy teenage patient who routinely wore his contact lenses in a chlorinated swimming pool. After a corneal biopsy at a university hospital, the diagnosis was a contact lens-related acanthamoeba infection. It should be emphasized that the patient was not otherwise abusing his lenses.

I have personally used contact lenses while diving, but this experience has caused me to rethink my usage. I have since switched to a prescription dive mask, and have recommended this to my patients.

Vincent J. Crispino, O.D.

River Falls, Wisconsin

Editor’s note: For more information and a contact lens care guide, visit the American Optometric Association website, www.aoa.org.

EDITORIAL, JULY 2010: SPILL, BABY, SPILL

2010-06-06T23:39:00.000-07:00

By Cathryn Castle Whitman

By the time you read this, we may be in the midst of what could become the biggest environmental disaster in US history. Then again, if we can turn off the spigot, maybe not. Of course, what I’m referring to is the oil spill—or what Florida Governor Christ Crist has more aptly termed the “oil volcano”—off the Louisiana coast.

Given its location, some have likened this disaster to Hurricane Katrina, but the analogy doesn’t hold water. True, humans were responsible for what happened to New Orleans in that, for decades, politicians and other decision-makers were warned about the sorry state of the city’s crumbling levy system. But, ultimately, it was Mother Nature who put those events into play. This time it’s different. Mother Nature has little to do with the environmental havoc making its way to shore, aside from creating the crude oil in the first place. This debacle was brought to us entirely by the platform owners Transocean and BP, who convinced government officials that they could easily manage the worst-case scenario of a blown well several thousand feet deep on the sea floor – despite the fact that they didn’t have a proven, fail-safe plan in place before the drilling began.

If the spill creeps its way down the Florida Loop Current and has an impact on my home here in the Florida Keys, a local disaster unlike anything anyone has ever seen or imagined could result. The possibility that this already stressed ecosystem could be dealt a punch it might never recover from in our lifetime is an idea that I don’t believe I’ve yet fully grasped. It’s just too horrible to seriously consider.

But let’s be honest. Certainly, after any disaster, as much energy is put into assessing blame as in responding to the actual emergency. And, make no mistake; both BP and Transocean make excellent targets. Yet to find the primary culprit responsible for the spill we have to look in the mirror. In my view, this mess was caused by hubris, assuming that we had a technical capability that, as events have shown, we clearly don’t. (And let’s not forget that government officials signed off on this project, too.) It’s likely that, while serious, the incident might be all over by now had it happened in shallower water. The heart of the issue is that, unlike their promises otherwise, BP and Transocean couldn’t handle the technical challenge of the depth. The assumption that responding to an emergency 500 feet below the surface was no different than 5,000 feet clearly was a foolish and costly mistake.

So, the question must be asked, why are companies pushing the technological envelope so far? The reason is no secret; it’s our addiction to oil. It’s clear that we won’t get serious about weaning from the petroleum teat until we have to pay for it.

We’ve gotten used to paying at the gas pump, but soaring fuel prices don’t seem to put a dent in our addiction. Now the price has skyrocketed yet again – only this time the currency has changed. Can we really afford to pay for our oil dependency at the expense of fragile coastal ecosystems?

EDITORIAL, JUNE 2010: WHERE THE BUCK STOPS

2010-05-13T13:04:00.000-07:00

By Alex Brylske

I dive off charter boats frequently, so I have lots of opportunities to observe divers. I see good divers and bad, experienced pros and neophytes, and locals as well as tourists. With such variety, it’s tough to draw any uniform conclusions. But there does seem to be a trend and, from my vantage point, it’s not a good one: My admittedly unscientific assessment tells me that divers are assuming less and less responsibility for their own well-being. In fairness, it’s not really restricted to divers; it’s been a societal trend for some time.

When something goes wrong the answer is to blame anyone but ourselves. Abandoning responsibility even happens when nothing goes wrong, as I saw on a recent dive.

I was seated next to a couple, and as we assembled our gear, I noticed that both were diving nitrox. A few minutes later, the divemaster began passing around an oxygen analyzer, asking everyone on board who was using enriched air to test his or her gas. “Why do we have to do it?” I heard one of the buddy pair ask the other. “You’d think for what they charge, they’d do it for us.”

“Absolutely!” responded her buddy.

For those of you not familiar with nitrox, whoever fills a tank with enriched air does, indeed, do an analysis. But a second analysis by the diver who will actually use the tank is not only a standard operating procedure, it’s a common-sense practice. As even a slight difference between the assumed and actual oxygen content in a nitrox mixture can lead to disastrous consequences, not doing a predive final analysis of the mixture is foolhardy to the extreme. Yet the couple was not only willing to have someone else do this, they expected it.

I’m willing to bet these are the sort of folks who, in the event something had gone wrong, would probably have called their attorney before 911. Let’s be clear about something: No matter how well supervised the dive, or how safe you’re told it will be, or the reputation of the operator, there’s only one person on earth who can assume responsibility for your safety, and that’s the person you see in the mirror every morning. If you believe otherwise, you’re deluding yourself.

Any true understanding of personal responsibility requires that we ask the question, what really constitutes a safe diver? To me, a safe diver is one who is vigilant, not oblivious; is never afraid to ask questions; assumes nothing and, in the end, accepts that even a well-planned dive can go wrong. A safe diver speaks up when he feels uneasy about some aspect of the dive. Unlike my nitrox divers, a safe diver also refuses to let others do things for him. And a safe diver is the one who, when something just doesn’t look or feel right, isn’t swayed by the herd mentality of “Oh, it will be OK,” and has the guts to say, “I’m not diving today.”

Some of my diving colleagues call me an old curmudgeon, and insist that I’m over-reacting and longing for the good-old days that never really were. I think not, but you be the judge. Take a few minutes, log on to www.dtmag.com and let us know what you think. Curmudgeon or not, my favorite expression of personal responsibility was illustrated by a small sign that President Harry Truman kept on his desk in the Oval Office. It read simply, “The Buck Stops Here.” If I was king of the universe for a day, I’d have that little tidbit of wisdom tattooed on the forehead of every diver on the planet . and I’d start with those nitrox divers.

EDITORIAL, MAY 2010: ISN'T IT TIME?

2010-04-09T09:12:00.000-07:00

By Alex Brylske
Photo by Joseph C. Dovala
(Readers, please comment at bottom of editorial)

Unless you were on some other planet recently, you no doubt heard about the recent event at Orlando’s SeaWorld in which a trainer was killed by an orca. Clearly, it was a tragic situation made worse in that it was apparently a very public spectacle. And unlike what was initially reported by authorities, the victim did not fall into the pool, but was grabbed and dragged into the water by the whale. Some were surprised that the animal wasn’t put down, as would have been the case with a dog; and many even expressed alarm when it was made public that this was the third fatality involving the whale, Tilikum. (Although, in fairness, it’s far from certain that he was the cause of one of those deaths.) Personally, I was heartened to learn that Tilikum wasn’t euthanized. It also made me question the purpose and true cost of turning marine mammals into circus performers.

As expected, everyone and their brother who could possibly pass the acid test of being an expert was interviewed about what had happened. So far, “experts” have blamed the incident on everything from boredom to stress to mating behavior. Frankly, the cause seems irrelevant. The fact is that these creatures weren’t intended to live in an aquatic kennel, or what one advocate describes as “straitjackets of concrete.”
Orcas are considered by many marine mammalogists to be the most social, intelligent, family-oriented member of the dolphin family. Just a few weeks ago an Emory University biologist, Lori Marino, in a presentation before a conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, explained that captive whales and dolphins suffer real psychological stress. “Dolphins are sophisticated, self- aware, highly intelligent beings with individual personalities, autonomy and an inner life,” she told the group. “They are vulnerable to tremendous suffering and psychological trauma.” If that doesn’t earn them the right to be left alone to live free in the open ocean, then I can’t imagine what would.

I’m fully aware of the argument that had it not been for places like SeaWorld turning “killer whales” into cuddly performers, our attitudes toward them may have never changed. It’s now well known that there has never been a documented account of a person being killed in the wild by an orca. But that just as well could be because very few humans are ever in the cold and often distant waters where orcas live as to any temperamental aversion to considering us prey.

I also agree that, in the past, there may have been justification for keeping marine mammals captive so that humans could have a more intimate and accurate experience with them. For example, I remember an episode of “Sea Hunt” in which the matter-of-fact premise of the story was a killer whale eating a diver. But that was in the 1950s, and it’s no longer the world we live in. Today marine mammals have what may be the strongest conservation advocacy of any animal on the planet. In all forms they are beloved, so it’s pretty clear that we got the message. Therefore, trying to justify the captivity of orcas by asserting that it’s a way to prove they aren’t “killers” — aside from the evidence of the Tilikum incident — is just a very thin veil to hide the truth: As The New York Times stated when it weighed in on the Tilikum incident, “that’s a big money-making animal.” I think it’s time to own up to that truth and leave these magnificent creatures where they belong: in the sea.

NO DUMB QUESTIONS, MAY 2010: A PHYSICS PRIMER FOR SCUBA DIVERS

2010-04-07T08:34:00.000-07:00

by Alex Brylske
Photo by Joseph C. Dovala
Readers please submit comments at the end of the article.

Q: Al Pinzon had a question about tank capacity. “My wife and I are recently certified Open Water divers. I use an 80 tank and my wife uses a 50. Our question is how do we know exactly how much air is left in our tanks at the conclusion of a dive? Even though each of our submersible pressure gauges (SPGs) may both read 500 psi, we know we don’t have the same amount of air. So how do we determine the amount of air left in the smaller tank so my wife doesn’t risk running out of air?”

A: There’s a very simple way to convert psi to cubic feet. Just take the capacity of the cylinder in question and divide it by its maximum working pressure. The product is, in essence, how many cubic feet of air is accounted for by each “psi.” Let’s take the standard 80-cubic- foot cylinder as an example. By dividing 80 (its maximum capacity) by 3,000 (its maximum-rated pressure) we get 0.0266. In other words, we can assume that each psi of pressure accounts for 0.0266 cubic feet of air. Thus, if the tank is filled to only 2,000 psi, rather than its maximum 80 cubic feet, it contains only 53.2 cubic feet (2,000 X 0.0266).
In the case of your wife’s 50-cubic-foot tank, the value is 0.0166 (or if she uses the more standard 63 cubic footer it’s 0.0210). Therefore, if you each end your dive with 500 psi remaining, you have 13.3 cubic feet of air left but your wife has only 8.3 cubic feet.

Of course, even though your wife would have less air remaining, it’s likely she also uses less air, which is why you can both plan to exit the water with 500 psi. So, with all things being equal, you’d both have about the same usable reserve in terms of time underwater at the same depth.

More questions after the break...

Q: Carl Kroenig had another question involving physics — it also involved scuba tanks — but from the perspective of buoyancy. “I have one of those questions that seems to be logical, but when I try to visualize it in my mind, it doesn’t seem to make sense. So here it is: If you take a finite amount of air with you underwater, why does it affect your buoyancy only when you inflate your BC? You’re not adding anything you didn’t already have. I’m sure this must have to do with why your tank gets lighter at the end of the dive, but that’s a bit confusing to me as well. You’re probably not surprised that I didn’t do too well in school when it came to science.”

A: Don’t be so harsh on yourself; lots of phenomena are counterintuitive when it comes to diving physics. In a sense, you can ask your question in a different context: Why does a 1-pound diving weight sink like a stone, yet something as large as a ship float? Or, better yet, how could you make a 1-pound piece of lead float? The answer, of course, is to change its volume.

You’re absolutely right; every diver begins a dive with a finite amount of air. But it’s what we do with that air that determines its effect on buoyancy, and it happens in a couple of ways. First, as you’ve no doubt noticed, subtle changes in your buoyancy occur when you breathe underwater. On inhalation, you tend to rise (become slightly more positive) and on exhalation you tend to sink (become slightly more negative). The reason is that your chest cavity expands and contracts while breathing, thus slightly changing the amount of water you displace. More displacement equals more buoyant force, and less displacement means less force.
Perhaps the confusion comes from how we refer to tanks, using their potential volume of air at the surface. For example, while a standard scuba tank contains the equivalent of 80 cubic feet of air — about the size of a small closet — that large volume of air is compressed into a very small area (that’s why there’s so much pressure within the tank).

Therefore, while something with the volume of a small closet might float like a cork, a full standard scuba cylinder does not because it weighs more than the water it displaces. But while the volume of your tank doesn’t change, there is something else that does besides your chest cavity: your BC. Inflating your BC increases its volume (displacement), and therefore your buoyancy, while deflating it decreases your buoyancy by decreasing the BC’s volume.

The second part of your question — why empty tanks weigh less than full ones — is because of yet another counterintuitive characteristic of air, and that’s that it has weight. In everyday life, it’s easy to think of air as “weightless,” but it’s not. (The weight of air is also why we have atmospheric pressure.) In fact, 80 cubic feet of air weighs about 4 pounds. That means that at the end of your dive, when your air supply is nearly depleted, your tank is about 4 pounds lighter, and therefore more buoyant, than when you began your dive. As anyone can tell you who has tried to maintain a safety stop with a near-empty tank, and didn’t start the dive with a little extra weight to compensate, that little bit of weight (or lack thereof) makes a big difference. This difference in displacement is why it’s important to determine the amount of weight you need using a near-empty about 500-psi)tank, rather than a full one.

Q: Heather Walters wrote with an incident that any traveling diver might encounter. “I recently returned from a trip to Thailand. Diving was only a small part of what my husband and I did, so we chose not to take any dive gear except our masks (we both have prescriptions). We expected to use rental gear, and were pleased to find that the equipment they provided was top-notch. However, there was one thing we forgot to consider. The dive operator catered mainly to Europeans so the gauges were all in metric units. Reading my depth in meters and making the mental translation to feet was tough but I finally figured that out well enough. But having to deal with pressure readings from my SPG in bars rather than psi made me constantly think that I was low on air. A full tank, which contains only 200 bar, seemed somehow disconcerting. Is there any quick way to make the conversion to psi?”

A: Although converting from one system of measurement to another is a simple matter of using the right formula, pulling out a pencil and calculator isn’t very practical when you’re 100 feet (excuse me, 30
meters) down. Rather than mathematics, I’ve always preferred some quick-and-dirty method of guesstimating the conversion.

Probably the best way to deal with tank pressure, for those of us schooled in the Imperial system, is to keep in mind that a “bar” equals an atmosphere, which equals about 15 psi. (OK, those values aren’t exactly equivalent, but they’re close enough for government work and recreational diving.) Using this rough equivalency guide, 200 bar is equal to 3,000 psi (15 X 200). That, of course, means that 100 bar is equal to 1,500 psi, and 50 bar equals 750 psi. So, when I’m using a metric SPG, I just remember three things: A full tank is 200 bar. A half-full tank is 100 bar. And 500 psi — the typical “return to surface” value in most circumstances — is about 35 bar. It’s kind of like watching the fuel tank on your car. Each gallon that you use isn’t accounted for, but knowing the major increments (full, half, quarter, red zone) works fine. Someday the United States will join the rest of the world in the much more sensible metric system but, as in diving, don’t hold your breath until that happens.”

Q: Jessica Fajan wrote in with a question on air consumption that I address routinely at least once every year. So, for this year, here it goes. “I’m not an advanced diver so please forgive me if this is a really stupid question. I know from practical experience that I get less air as I go deeper, but I don’t really understand why. I kind of understand all that stuff about decreasing volume with depth, but my tank certainly doesn’t decrease in size when I dive deeper. A tank of air is a tank of air, so what gives?

A: First of all, this column is called No Dumb Questions for a reason: The only dumb question is the one you don’t ask. It’s also easy to understand why you’d be confused given all that’s drummed into a diver’s head about pressure/volume relationships in relation to lung and sinus injuries. Actually, it’s the same principle with air consumption, but what’s confusing is how the pressure/volume relationship applies.

Now, if pressure increases, as it does during descent, the volume of a container decreases, but only if that container is flexible (like our lungs). The volume of a rigid container like a tank, as you stated, remains unchanged with descent, so the internal volume of a tank is the same whether it’s at the surface or at depth.
The reason we get less air out of a tank as we descend has nothing to do with what happens to your tank; it’s because of the effect of pressure on another item of equipment, your regulator. No matter your depth, your regulator always delivers air to you at the same pressure as the surrounding water. As the ambient water pressure increases, the regulator responds by drawing more molecules of air from the tank. For example, if each breath you take at the surface takes X number of molecules, then it will take 2X to fill your lungs at 33 feet (2 ATA).

At 66 feet, three times the number of molecules are required compared with at the surface. So, you see where this is going — as you go deeper more air is used to fill your lungs. That’s why the tank will last only about half as long at 33 feet, one-third at 66 and one- fourth at 99 feet. As you rightly surmised, it has nothing to do with the tank being “squeezed.”

BUDDY LINES: LETTERS TO THE EDITOR, MAY 2010

2010-04-06T13:48:00.000-07:00

Readers may add additional comments at the end of this article.

SOLO DIVING SHOULD BE EMBRACED

I am in total agreement with your editorial, “To Buddy or Not to Buddy,” Dive Training, March 2010, and would like to thank you for this long overdue discussion. I have been diving since 1968 and was an instructor in the earlier days of scuba diving. My interest in underwater photography and videography brought me to many international open waters. I appreciate the evolutionary technical, physiological and teaching improvements, however, I think this at times forced “buddy system” has reached an excessive level.

The increased focus on “self-reliance” would necessitate a better understanding of one’s own equipment and capabilities, and it would not degrade any safety procedures.

I am a divemaster and do understand the psychological intent of the buddy diving teachings, however, especially in underwater photography and videography, a buddy is not necessarily a positive part of the dive. Having been on many live-aboards, I appreciate (as some live-aboards now practice) my diving-solo-privacy. Though I generally travel with two longtime diving buddies, our actual diving is not keeping your buddy at arm’s length and/or annoying him/ her with the frequent “Are you OK?” hand signal.

The attitude in existence today forces one to pretend to agree to the “buddy system,” which oftentimes leads to the “once we are underwater I’ll do it my way” situation. The situation described in the article creates uncomfortable and resentful feelings and is not a positive experience. The “solo diver” should be accepted and accommodated, especially since everyone signs all legal responsibility “absolution” papers at any and all scuba diving activities, from “air fills,” to rental equipment, to boat dives.

Heinz W. Blaume
South Lake Tahoe, California

BUDDIES CAN INSPIRE

I wanted to comment on the article about the solo diver [“To Buddy or Not to Buddy,” Dive Training, March 2010]. I am just an Open Water diver and my instructor apparently left out a few things. I found this out when I got on a dive boat full of guys and girls who were trained well above my level. I think there was a game of “rock, paper, scissors” to see who had to dive with me, and, thankfully, I got a very nice man who helped me. I think he was a solo diver too. We went over each other’s gear and he told me that when my dive was over to do a safe ascent and a safety stop and the boat would come get me (it was a drift dive). That let him finish his dive without me getting in the way.

Granted, I knew the basics and didn’t need a baby sitter. It wasn’t my first dive after my class but it was the second on my own gear. I learned a lot that day and I am still learning.

My point: Yes, it sucks being stuck with the newbie, but if you take the time on one dive to help that person you might just change the way they think of diving, as that guy did for me.

Steven
Via e-mail

THE WATERPROOF CHECKLIST

I was pleasantly surprised to open the February edition of Dive Training to notice that Alex Brylske and photographers had addressed a query I posed in the section “No Dumb Questions,” referring to conducting predive discussions with unfamiliar buddies.

He offered several excellent suggestions, including one in particular, the waterproof checklist. I plan to work on forming one to present to members of our local dive club. The advice should prove very helpful and is appreciated.

Thanks again to all who contribute to organizing this excellent magazine. I look forward monthly to reading the interesting and informative articles. A month doesn’t pass that I do not learn something new about this great sport from reading your magazine.

Bob Costigan
Maine

THANKS FOR THRE LOOK BACK

I just finished reading the “Early Days” article in the February issue of Dive Training [“A Long Way From the ‘Early Days’: How Innovation Has Transformed the Diving Experience”]. I enjoyed the article and hope to see more like it. I always enjoy perusing the “artifacts” and “old equipment” normally on display in the local scuba shops here in Indianapolis. I love the “nostalgia feel” I get when looking at “technology of the early days” — be it scuba or my other hobbies.

Seeing how technology has progressed, in a relatively short time period, is very interesting.

Doug Brindle
Via e-mail

COVER PHOTO QUESTIONED

The first thing I asked myself about the cover for the March issue is, “Why are the divers looking at the pressure gauge?” Their hands are both on the valve knob, so are they turning it on? Also, where is the dive flag?

You have a great magazine and I make sure all new students have one.
However, I feel you dropped the ball on this. “Safety” should be used when turning on the air. The pressure gauge should be facedown or at least turned away, in case it breaks. Dive flags [are needed] to indicate scuba divers are in the area. Still, you have a great magazine.

Ed Finck
Via e-mail

SHOULD AQUARIUM DIVING BE PROMOTED?

People certainly have a right to dive in confined, unnatural environments, such as aquariums. But there is another perspective worth considering.
While aquaria certainly have a role to play in raising awareness, education and research, problems arise when ethical lines are blurred between these laudable goals and the desire to enhance their bottom line. Should whales, other marine mammals and large, pelagic fish be held in captivity and exploited like circus acts? If we accept that the many forms of aquaria exist to truly inspire, educate and raise awareness, then the answer is clear: There must be ethical limits applied when considering which species are appropriate for displays in captivity. If confinement is to be considered, it should be measured by the ability to accurately replicate a species natural habitat.

There are more legitimate ways to raise awareness and little real value to learn from research obtained by keeping whales in a staged, anomalous confine. If we really want to learn more about these species, then we must afford them respect and study them in the wild.

If instead we wish to use these animals for self-serving entertainment, then we should at least have the decency to present it as such. A quote from Jacques-Yves Cousteau seems apropos: “No aquarium, no tank in a marine land, however spacious it may be, can begin to duplicate the conditions of the sea. And no dolphin who inhabits one of those aquariums or one of those marine lands can be considered normal.” His son, Jean-Michel, recently posted a befitting reaction to the recent SeaWorld calamity: “We need to look at ourselves and decide that the time has come to view captivity of whales and dolphins as a part of our history, not a tragic part of our future.”

Steve Mussman
Lawrenceville, Georgia

THE LONG AND SHORT OF IT

2010-03-18T13:02:00.000-07:00

By Alex Brylske

Recently I saw an ad from a dive center proudly announcing, “Learn to Dive in only three days!” It’s not that big of a deal, given that many dive centers have for years been offering programs to train divers in as little as four days (normally over two weekends). But it got me thinking about how much diving has changed over the years, and whether it’s all been for the good.

To provide some perspective, when I learned to dive — at least when I got around to getting formally certified — training involved three months. Indeed, for 12 solid weeks I had to spend three hours on Sunday mornings in the pool and three hours Wednesday evenings in a classroom. That’s 72 hours, and that’s before I went anywhere near open water.

While the classroom was a challenge, it paled in comparison with the pool training. First, anyone in the class who could not swim a quarter mile without stopping, and swim the length of the pool underwater on one breath, was told to leave. Then it took three weeks of intensive “skin diving” training before we even saw our first scuba tank. Not that tanks were any relief from the sadistic training ritual. For example, our scuba exercises included ample no-mask drills, and an exercise called “station breathing.” In the latter, one fewer tanks than there were students were first arrayed on the pool bottom. Then, wearing only mask and fins, we had to swim from tank to tank giving up the air supply once it was approached by another diver. The culminating pool training exercise was a session beloved by my instructor and his staff called, threateningly enough, “harassment.”

Fast-forward 40 years. Today, students are lucky to receive more than a dozen hours of contact time with their instructor. And, in my view, anything that smacks of challenge has been all but eliminated from the curriculum on the assumption that we don’t want to stress student divers unduly with unnecessary or unrealistic knowledge and skills.

The rationale, of course, has been to make diving more fun and accessible to more people. Perhaps it would be simpler just to issue folks a C-card with their birth certificate and be done with it.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of those dinosaurs who think diver training has gone to hell in a handbasket. First and foremost, the data on diving accidents just doesn’t support this conclusion. As measured by fatalities, diving is demonstrably safer today than when I started.

So what’s the problem?

The problem is that it appears that we haven’t achieved our goal of getting more people into the sport, at least nowhere near the number we had hoped (especially young people). Yet, given that this campaign to make learning to dive easier has been going on for 30 years without success, you’d think we’d start looking elsewhere for a solution.

Now, as a disclaimer, I have to admit that as someone once responsible for the educational programming of the world’s largest diver training program,
I played no small part in the move to simplify diver training. (The pejorative term used at the time was the so-called “short course.”) But what I also have to admit is that it appears that I was wrong in assuming easier training would equal more divers. The logic was there but the experience seems to have proven otherwise. And I think that I know why.

Looking back over the three decades since the “short course”

controversy began, I believe that we missed one important point: In learning to dive there is value in significant face time with an instructor. Sure, we can make a person comfortable enough to fulfill the certification requirements in only a brief exposure, and maybe even motivate a percentage of them to continue diving after their training. But I don’t think we instill any strong passion for diving in the vast number of trainees simply because we no longer spend enough time with them to gain the requisite comfort, and establish the necessary social relationships with other divers and in the diving community. As a result, while we might certify more divers today than in the past, that hasn’t seemed to translate into more active divers.

I’m not yearning for a return to the old days of station breathing and harassment training, but I do think we should consider swinging the pendulum in the other direction for a while. We certainly have nothing to lose by trying. Three days to get certified? Maybe. Three days to become a committed diver? I have my doubts.

To Buddy or Not to Buddy

2010-02-03T01:05:00.000-08:00

By Alex Brylske

Photo by Joseph C. Dovala

A funny thing happened to me this past weekend.

I was on a dive charter that included mostly tourists from up north who were escaping the ravages of winter. As is common, some were couples while others were alone. The couples of course had their buddy assignment covered.

The singles were a different matter. So, the divemaster proceeded to assign buddies to those on board who had none. As this is standard operating procedure, I went about my business thinking nothing of it. But my attention was soon drawn to a rather heated discussion between the captain and one of the lone divers.

The diver in question was vehemently refusing to dive with a stranger, insisting that he be allowed to dive solo. (He also apparently produced a card verifying a “solo diver” certification.) The captain would hear none of it and broke off the confrontation with the ultimatum that “you either dive with a buddy or you’re not diving from this boat.” Begrudgingly, the diver agreed.

After the dive, the angry would-be solo diver was more than eager to talk, so I spoke to him about the incident. It turned out that, indeed, he had taken a course in solo diving and said that he rarely ever dived with a buddy. His rationale was, in my view, quite solid and involved two premises. First, he resented having to dive with someone who he believed was less qualified than he was. He saw it as, in his words, “a baby-sitting assignment for which I had to pay.” He went on to cite several examples from past experience where he had to assist less qualified buddies with problems, thus ruining his own dive.

Second, and more importantly to him, what he enjoyed about diving most was the solitude, and that experience was spoiled by having an “intruder” (buddy) along for the ride. He also believed that, in most cases, people delude themselves into thinking that, just because you have a buddy, you’re safer than if you don’t. According to him, even if a buddy pair stays close enough to realize that the other has a problem (which he thought rarely happened), they probably wouldn’t be prepared to render any useful assistance, anyway. “Divers never practice emergency skills once they get out of training,” he insisted, “so good luck if you ever really need a buddy’s help in an emergency.”

I have to admit that the only two people who I personally enjoy diving with, and welcome as buddies, are my wife and my best friend. Anyone else is just an imposition and, frankly, I too would prefer to go it alone. I know for many of you reading this, that’s heresy, but I’m willing to wager that more folks subscribe to the sans buddy position than we realize.

So, I’m eager to hear what you readers think. Please post your comments below. Meanwhile, whether you dive with a buddy or you don’t, safety requires prudent, sensible decision making. And it requires that you regularly practice what to do in an emergency, too.

So, before opting out of the buddy system, particularly, make sure you know what you’re doing.