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. 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.

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. 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.

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

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?