Let's keep it complicated

[Finless]

Finless,

You claim to know what to do, and how to respond to a situation, but you don't practise those scenarios with your dive partner? "You don't want to "waste" 5 minutes of your 30 minute dive" The whole point of this constant practise is to have "muscle memory" when the situation presents itself.

I usually dive solo. How much muscle memory is required to shut down my manifold isolator valve? I do check I can reach them at the start of every dive. In the exceptionally rare event of suffering a free flow or burst hose during a dive then I accept that the dive is over and I make it up on, at the least, my remaining cylinder or, if need be because of a double failure, I'll make a faster ascent on my high O2 deco mix.

An example I can offer is this: Several years ago I was a CPR Instructor, teaching every other week or so. One evening my wife had an issue, where by I had to pull over (we were out in the car). The local police stopped to investigate me, and while talking to them, my wife went into a severe cardiac issue, which when I evaluated her, I could not discover any pulse. I had her out of the vehicle and was doing a much more comprehensive evaluation in a split second. I was not conscientious of what I was doing, rather I was doing all of this from "muscle memory". My point is this, when placed in a situation I was dealing with it before I had time to stop and think about the steps.

Good job. Hope all is now well.

That in a nutshell is the DIR approach to their training and their gear configuration. You are dealing with a situation immediately, rather than looking for gear and trying to determine what is and what is not available to be used.

DIR appears to do many divers a great disservice - what makes you think DIR is the only way to do it and survive an incident?

You do a "modified S drill" (saftey) drill in which every piece of gear is called out and checked. The contents of your pockets are called out and checked to ensure everyone has them in the same pockets.

Many call out the DIR folks for being dogmatic about gear, and it's configuration and placement. There is a specific reason for each piece of gear and it's placement. Why be so dogmatic? Simplicity and redundancy are the blunt explanation. Surviving a problem is measured in mere split seconds, one can not waste any of them.

DIR is not the only way to do things. Many divers with years of experience do it their way because it works for them (that includes kit placement). It is all a question of perspective. To jump to another extreme have there ever been any diving incidents due to hypoxia or hyperoxia? OK, forget hypoxia as that is most like to affect CCR divers but how about hyperoxia? Of course there have. Would DIR not consider, for example, that wearing an FFM might be a good thing if diving with EANx and doing accelerated deco where a hyperoxia is a possibility and a FFM will stop you drowning? Oh, also, there are many reasons to go diving and not all should be covered by one kit configuration.

There are many training organizations "on the water", unfortunately most of them are trying to turn a profit, and often compromise certain aspects of their curriculum so as to complete the class and pass the student on to the next class (which is more money in the chest).

IMO the basic training courses are fine for what they are designed for which is to get people started.

Why is it met with outrage when someone is not automatically passed on, even when they are not competent in the classes skills? Diving is not a right, it is a privelage, don't make it one.

Firstly, how can anyone fail a basic OW or equivalent course - it is hardly rocket science. Secondly, failing a course wouldn't worry me but the reason I failed would. Thirdly "a privilege"? At the risk of being even more confrontational that statement is downright pretentious and elitist. How dare you/DIR make judgements for other people about what they can and can't do. Introductory diving is not an extreme sport and should be a chilled out and relaxing event IMO which pretty much anyone can do. As people progress and develop as divers they are capable of deciding the risks for themselves.

So Matt shouldn't dive? - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/scubadivingdream/

I recently read in DAN's "Alert Diver" magazine that 74% of all diving accidents happen to over-weight individuals, 47% of them obese. Why not tell that individual "NO", you are not ready for diving?

I'll bet at least 80% of them had hair. That DAN statistic, unsupported as it is, means nothing unless it can be shown that being overweight was the cause of the incident.

There are a lot of good things about DIR and I've taken on board what I consider worthwhile as I have done throughout my diving career from other more experienced divers on boats and, even, through the internet.

Just because GI3 would consider me a w****r and would not be in the same bit of sea as me (allegedly) worries me not one bit. I have been diving over a period of many many years before I'd ever heard of DIR.