PADI – Page 3 – Learn to Dive Today Blog

FAQ: Should I learn to dive with a dive centre or independent Instructor?

Potential students often ask the question, should I learn to dive at a dive centre or with an Independent Instructor? Which training agency is best? PADI, NAUI, CMAS, or SSI? To name but a few.

The goal of all the agencies is to turn you into a competent diver. The Instructor is instrumental in this and it makes no difference where they trained or where they work. They are either good at what they do or they are not.

The important issue is the quality of the training you receive and this is largely dependent on the calibre of the Instructor. Some dive centres have exceptional staff whilst others are worse than dodgy. Some dive centres will take shortcuts in the interest of profit margins and the same can be said for Independents. The Instructor you choose needs to be passionate about diving and if the Instructor sees diving as just another job then the quality of the training will be mediocre. If you do four 20 minutes dives for your Open Water dives you meet the standard for certification with regards to dive time but do you get enough experience from this? If you did four 40 minute dives you would have double the amount of water time. Given the steep learning curve diving has this makes a huge difference.

All certifying agencies have standards, (these being the minimum requirements for certification) and all Instructors are required to follow these standards without deviation. You can add to the number of times you have a student perform a task, or add several dives to the course if you feel the student requires this, but you cannot skip a step or do less than what the standards specify.

Dive centres will sometimes have Instructors on staff, always available and there when you sign up. Some however will rely on an army of freelance Instructors they can call upon when they need to. This often means you sign up, pay and have yet to meet the person you will be trained by. This also means you are on somewhat of a merry go round as there will need to be several calls and “I will get back to you” conversations before you have a time and date for diving and classroom usage.

It can also often result in you having several different Instructors during your training as the freelance Instructor you start with may not be available on the subsequent days. The downside to having several different instructors during your course is that anything you felt uncomfortable with on day one is not necessarily conveyed to the Instructor for day two or for day three and as such you can often be left feeling unsure of your ability and not as confident as you should be by the end of the course. Having the same Instructor for the duration of the course ensures that any weakness you may feel you have can be addressed and the skills redone until you are confident.

Having said this, it is possible to walk into a dive centre, find an Instructor behind the counter, who will sign you up talk you through the stages of the course and the program you will follow and sort out everything in a flash. You then leave happy in the knowledge that you have met your Instructor and had a chat and know what’s next.

I would encourage you to ask questions about who will be your Instructor(s) when you are shopping for a dive course. This is not a small decision and you can avoid being short-changed by being well informed.

Master Scuba Diver

Let’s get this straight, right off the bat:

MASTER SCUBA DIVER

is not the same as

DIVEMASTER

Are we all clear? I know a Divemaster candidate who is proud of announcing to people that he is becoming a Master Scuba Diver. He’s not (and at the level he wants to dive, not knowing the difference is a bad sign…).

A Master Scuba Diver is someone who has completed:

Open Water
Advanced
Emergency First Response (EFR)
Rescue
Five Specialties (mine are wreck, night, deep, navigation and Nitrox)
50 logged dives

You don’t have to do anything other than the above to get this rating – if you qualify, you just ask your instructor or local dive centre to certify you with PADI. They’ll help you fill out an application form, attach a photograph and post it to PADI. It’ll cost you quite a bit of money (about 26 British pounds when I did it) for a certification that doesn’t actually entail any diving but the idea is it’s a prestigious rating that sets you apart among recreational divers.

Not sure about that! But you’ll get a shiny new certification card, a wall certificate, and a decal too, if that’s your thing… Plus, instead of carting a wallet-load of certification cards around, you can just take this one (and Deep, and Nitrox, because the card doesn’t specify WHICH Specialties you did).

Rescue Diver

It’s taken me long enough, but I recently completed the PADI Rescue Diver course. During the Open Water course, there is emphasis on self-rescue (cramp removal, regulator recovery, and so on). The Rescue course teaches you the skills to rescue other divers, and proactively resolve problems where necessary. The Emergency First Responder course (first aid) is a pre-requisite for this course.

The theory aspect was very interesting – there’s a lot about the psychology of stress, and application to the particular environment that divers place themselves in. Unlike a mountain climber or a horse rider, a scuba diver is in an element that is hostile to human life: you can’t breathe water. So a clear head and swift action is essential, as well as resolving problems immediately when they arise. By the time you get to this level of diving, bolting to the surface when you get into difficulties is completely out of the question (not that it’s ever really an option after you get out of the swimming pool on your Open Water course!).

The practical aspect of the course involves dealing with unresponsive and panicked divers, and effecting various rescue scenarios. Kate and I practised some of these skills in the pool in preparation for her Instructors’ course. When it was her turn to be the panicked diver underwater, she displayed a level of malevolence and forethought that I hope never to experience in real life! She accidentally unclipped her own weight belt, and then yanked off my mask and removed my regulator. I was wiser the next time, and jumped onto her cylinder so that I was out of reach. Decisive action is often required in these situations. The alternative – if you’re going to get injured trying to assist – is to allow the other diver to exhaust themselves, and then perform a rescue.

There are no dives as such – you will do rescue skills as part of your dives, but many of the skills (such as the ones shown in the pictures) you will practise on the surface, in the surf zone, and on the beach. The skills can be quite strenuous. I also found it tiring to be the panicked diver for Kate to practise skills on – uses a lot of air! One thing that was immediately obvious was that it’s important to be in reasonably good shape to be a safe diver. Not being able to do things for yourself means you definitely won’t be able to help another diver.

The Rescue course is a prerequisite for Divemaster and Master Scuba Diver (and Instructor, obviously), but should also be seriously considered by divers who plan to move on into technical, cave or deep diving. It’s a great confidence-builder, and if you’re the sort of person who finds themselves not enjoying dives (or the build up to them) because you imagine all sorts of problems arising, this is a very good course to do.

Enriched Air/Nitrox Specialty

If you’re a Cape Town diver, and serious about enjoying the huge range of wrecks and reefs we have here, there are two Specialties that you should seriously consider.

One is the Deep Specialty, which qualifies you to go to 40 metres. (The depth it qualifies you to go to is actually less important than the skills you will learn on the course.)

The Number One cat helps Tony apply a Nitrox sticker to one of his cylinders

The other is the Enriched Air/Nitrox Specialty. Enriched air is ordinary air that has been enriched with extra oxygen. This reduces the nitrogen concentration, which is a good thing for two reasons.

When we breathe air under pressure, nitrogen is absorbed by our body tissues (particularly quickly by fat). While you’re at depth this isn’t a problem, but it becomes a problem when you ascend too fast and neglect to do the required safety stops or decompression stops. The nitrogen forms bubbles in your blood, brain and joints, and you will get bent. This can be fatal, and it’s a horrible way to go. You can think about what enriched air does for you in two ways: you get extended bottom time within the no-decompression limits, or a margin of safety because if you follow the dive tables for air when breathing nitrox, you will have absorbed less nitrogen into your tissues by the time you ascend. The risk of decompression sickness is thus reduced.
Nitrogen has a narcotic effect when breathed under pressure, and this can impair judgment and lead to all sorts of stupidity on a dive. Less nitrogen in the mix you’re breathing means less narcosis.

It’s not as simple as just putting more oxygen in your cylinder and jumping into the water, however. Oxygen is toxic when breathed under pressure (you just can’t win!) and can cause convulsions. At the bottom of the ocean, a convulsion is bad news. So while you are free to add oxygen to your breathing mix, your maximum depth is restricted by the richness of the mix you choose. Nitrox mixes are referred to according to the percentage of oxygen in the mix. Normal air has 21% oxygen: Nitrox 32 means that the cylinder has 32% oxygen in it.

The Nitrox Specialty is mainly theory – there are some formulas that you need to get to grips with, and you need to understand the two-edged sword that is enriched air. Once you’ve mastered the theory, you’ll learn how to use a Nitrox analyser, and probably do two dives on Nitrox.

As you dive more and more, your air consumption gets better and better. When you get to the point where your dives are limited by the no-decompression limits of air rather than the amount of air in your cylinder, the Nitrox specialty becomes extremely attractive. If you’re in the group of divers (such as older, or overweight) who are most at risk of decompression sickness, diving on Nitrox is a huge investment in your own safety. And finally, if you do repetitive dives (several dives in a day), diving on Nitrox will extend your total bottom time tremendously.

Bookshelf: Diver Down

Diver Down: Real-World Scuba Accidents and How to Avoid Them – Michael R. Ange

This book should be compulsory reading for all careless, lazy, poorly-trained, slapdash or happy-go-lucky divers out there. In fact, for all divers.

This book is short with lots of sidebars (I don’t like these in books – they make it hard to read smoothly). Each chapter starts with an account of a diving accident (not all of them fatal). An analysis of what went wrong follows, as well as a short checklist of what you can do to avoid a similar fate.

I was at first reluctant to read this book because I thought it might scare me, but Tony devoured it and suggested I read it. It was disturbing, but didn’t give me nightmares. Michael Ange doesn’t write in a prurient or senstational manner – he just presents the facts. He has ample experience reviewing diving accidents.

Most of the time it was really simple things that caught people out, or a cascade of trivial compounding errors or problems. Often it was ego or over-confidence that led to the problems. Controlling partners or well-meaning parents who pressured their loved ones into doing things they shouldn’t also feature strongly.

The emphasis is on training, experience and common sense – every single thing you learn in your dive courses is vital. PADI and friends want to make diving fun and accessible, and they’ve pared down the manuals to be as concise and un-intimidating as possible… So EVERY SINGLE WORD counts. This is both a good thing (no scary huge textbooks) and a bad thing (you NEED to pay attention when you read and watch the DVDs and spend time with your instructor).

Dive briefings are also important. Your local Divemaster isn’t trying to dampen the mood by warning you not to surface without an SMB – he’s ensuring that you don’t end up out at sea without a signalling device, or with an unwanted Yamaha haircut. When the skipper and Divemaster speak they’re doing it out of a wealth of local (and that’s important) experience. Pay heed.

You can get a copy of the book here if you’re in South Africa, and here otherwise. If you want to read it on your Kindle, go here. If you dive, you should read it. And you should do a Rescue Diver course.

FAQ: Diving in Cape Town

Tony and I recently had to put together some material for an advertising brochure, and were invited to submit a 400 word advertorial on diving in Cape Town. It has some salient points in it, so we thought we’d include it here for your reading pleasure.

What is there to see while diving in Cape Town?

The waters around the Cape Peninsula are extraordinarily rich with marine life found nowhere else in the world. The clean, cold waters of the Atlantic and the warmer waters of False Bay are host to countless fish species, giant sting rays, beautiful sea plants, and extremely diverse invertebrate life such as nudibranchs (colourful sea slugs), molluscs and brightly coloured sea anemones. Diving in Cape Town is colourful and always exciting.

There are many wrecks to explore, easily accessible either on a dive boat or from the shore. Some of these were deliberately sunk as artificial reefs, and others fell victim to winter storms and now have a permanent home on our coastline. There are also rocky reefs and mysterious kelp forests that hide a multitude of fascinating inhabitants. You can even do dives with seals or with remarkable sevengill cowsharks if you want to – the options are endless.

What’s the best time to learn to dive?

Summer is an appealing time to learn to dive because the weather is sunny and warm, and this is a busy time for diving in the Cape. However, the best water conditions in False Bay are in winter: the water is clean, clear, and not too cold. Cape Town is a year-round diving destination and there’s no bad time to sign up for a course. If you’re planning a tropical holiday where you hope to dive, we’d recommend getting your dive qualification before you go so that you can have the best possible experience on your holiday.

Which diving course is right for me?

There are a couple of options for a beginner diver. The first is called Discover Scuba Diving. You will learn some very basic skills, and then do a proper sea dive under instructor supervision. It’s not a qualification, but gives you a chance to decide if diving is for you.

If you do decide you want to become a qualified diver, the course to start with is the PADI Open Water course. This course qualifies you to dive to 18 metres, anywhere in the world – all you need to do is show your PADI certification card to book a dive or rent equipment. The course takes about four days to complete, and can be done part time and over weekends to suit your schedule.

Where can I get more information on diving in Cape Town?

Check out www.learntodivetoday.co.za, and our blog at www.learntodivetoday.co.za/blog. We’re happy to answer any questions you have!

Discounted DSD on Dealio

How’s that for Monday morning alliteration?

Learn to Dive Today is offering PADI Discover Scuba Diving experiences at a huge discount on group buying website Dealio – if you’ve been thinking about scuba diving but not quite sure what to do about it, why not sign up and use the opportunity to try diving! The weather in Cape Town has just turned and we expect fantastic diving conditions from here on through to next summer.

If you’re not familiar with the idea of group buying, it’s a fantastic concept that enables customers to harness the power of bulk buying to obtain good prices from goods and service providers. Provided a minimum number of people buy the deal (in our case, six), the merchant agrees to offer the goods at a huge discount. If not enough people sign up, the deal falls away. Check out the How it Works page on Dealio for a much better explanation than this!

Bookshelf: The Art of Diving

The Art of Diving – Nick Hanna & Alexander Mustard

Tony gave me this book out of his collection when I was lying in bed with a cold, needing entertainment. It’s hard to pinpoint the genre. The best part of the book is the magnificent photography by Alexander Mustard – not all of his pictures are to my taste (I don’t much like motion blur) but in general his contribution is magnificent.

The text deals with the history of scuba diving, as well as tips for improving your skills. These can be distilled into relax, slow down your breathing, and swim slower! Hanna meditates on different sea creatures that have been demonised in literature and film – sharks, rays, octopus, moray eels – and shows how these perceptions are wrong. Michael Rutzen, South Africa’s own shark man who free dives with great whites (when a very precise set of conditions are met – he’s extremely careful) also gets a mention.

Hanna also discusses the merits of touching sea creatures, and acknowledges that a complete prohibition may be the best thing given that not all divers have the knowledge and experience to determine when it’s a good idea to reach out or not. He does mention that many creatures, such as morays and groupers (e.g. potato bass) appear to actively enjoy the interaction.

Later sections of the book talk about the intersection of yoga with diving, the practice of yoga before and during dives, and an alleged PADI specialty called Mind, Body and Spirit (MBS) diving which advocates a more meditative approach (only available in the Carribbean – like they need it there!). I am prepared to acknowledge that (perhaps of necesstity – one tank full of air goes further than a lungful) our freediving friends get this right more often than us scuba junkies. Hanna talks about being more mindful underwater, cultivating an attitude of playfulness, and gives suggestions for changing one’s perspective when diving gets too much like a chore. I really liked this section of the book!

The section on free diving is beautifully written and illustrated, and even though the sport doesn’t appeal to me at all, I can see the magic of being so free to move, having to listen so closely to one’s body, and being able to interact silently with creatures who’d be scared away by scuba.

The authors’ official website for the book is here. You can order the book here or here.

Chamber dive revisited

We recently did a chamber dive to 50 metres. A hyperbaric chamber is a sealable chamber, or pressure vessel, somewhat like your dive cylinder (just larger), and has hatches large enough for you to climb in. It is connected to an air compressor or a bank of compressed air, and once you’re in and it is sealed the pressure is increased just as the pressure around you increases as you descend. You need to equalise as you do under water, the only real difference being is that you are dry. A fast descent means constant equalizing and ensuring deep breaths are taken. You will experience nitrogen narcosis, the extent will vary from person to person and you voice will change.

The video below shows us counting backwards from five, showing the correct number of fingers and turning our hands round after each number. It’s hard when you’re narced!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWX-X5RngUs&w=540]

As a recreational diver you will find that your PADI eRDP will not allow you to enter a depth greater than 40 metres when you plan a dive, and the recreational dive planner (RDP or dive tables) will not allow planning deeper than 42 metres. The chamber operator or anyone that does deep technical diving will have a program to enable proper dive planning and ensuring the correct dive profile is maintained, by means of decompression stops.

Checking on the first group of chamber divers

On our dive we descended to 9 metres, and paused whilst two way communication was tested and the operator checked everyone was okay. Thereafter we dropped like a stone down to 50 metres in two minutes. Our bottom time was nine minutes. Nine minutes at this depth gives you quite a decompression commitment and we ascended slowly doing several deco stops on the way up with a total dive time of 39 minutes.

My Mares Nemo Wide showing the dive stats

Our dive computers all joined us for this dive and were placed in a bucket of water (some dive computers will not go into dive mode unless the water contacts are activated). I had a Suunto Mosquito, a Mares Nemo Wide, an Uwatec Aladin Prime and a Citizen dive computer as well as a wrist mount depth gauge.

My trusty Suunto Mosquito showing the dive stats

The computers were all similar in readings and were all between 50.1 metres and 50.4 metres whilst the depth gauge showed 59 metres! It’s safer for your instruments to err on the side of conservatism (i.e. tell you you’re deeper than you are, rather than the other way around). This depth gauge probably didn’t know what hit it!

Analogue depth gauge with red needle showing maximum depth

A very important deep skill on a PADI Advanced course is to compare your depth gauge with your buddy and your instructor. There can easily be huge variations in depth gauges.

FAQ: Don’t you feel claustrophobic underwater?

Many people seem to think that they’ll experience claustrophobia when they put their faces in the water, with their breathing restricted to their regulator, wearing a wetsuit, and having all that water around them.

Here are some facts…

Breathing from a regulator

A regulator or demand valve is a brilliantly designed piece of equipment that attaches to a hose linked to a cylinder of compressed air. It’s constructed so that it’s easy to breathe from – no more effort is required than breathing without one, it gives you as much air as you need, and you can even cough or (I know this from sad experience) vomit with it in your mouth and you won’t have ANY trouble at all with the consequences… If you get my drift. In the unlikely event that it fails, it won’t fail in the “off” position and stop your air supply; it will free flow (deliver a continuous stream of air). One of the skills you do in your Open Water course is breathing off a free-flowing regulator, so you are fully equipped to handle this situation.

Your regulator delivers more than enough air, NOT less than you get breathing on land. If you do at some point feel as though you’re not getting enough, it’s because you’re breathing too shallowly. When you dive, your breathing must be deep and slow. Extracting the full goodness out of each breath maximises your enjoyment: your air will last longer, and you’ll feel more relaxed.

Having to breathe out of your regulator – as opposed to being able to go take one breath in each corner of the room, or open your mouth as wide as it can go – is not restrictive at all. If you think about it, when you breathe on land, you’re drawing in the air that is in front of your face. There’s no hardship in not being able to take in the air from down the passageway – that’s not where you are.

What’s more, having the regulator in your mouth only feels funny for the first few minutes. It’s made with soft rubbery flanges that fit in your mouth (mouthpieces come in different sizes, too) and once it’s seated properly you won’t even know it’s there. If you’ve snorkeled, you know what it feels like to have a mouthpiece between your teeth. Breathing from a regulator is easier than breathing from a snorkel, and what’s more you don’t have to worry about rogue waves splashing water into your breathing apparatus! So if you can snorkel, you can definitely scuba dive.

All that equipment

Some people worry about wearing a mask, and think they might feel closed in with one covering their eyes and nose. Firstly, it’s important to note that it’s essential for the mask to cover your nose so that you can equalise your ears . If you wore swimmers’ goggles, they would get compressed onto your face at depth (which would hurt, and might look funny). This way, you can exhale through your nose into the mask to equalise (one of many techniques).

To be honest, a mask is no more claustrophobic to wear than a pair of wrap around sunglasses, and it’s probably going to be a lot more comfortable once you’ve found the one that suits your face shape.

Others worry about wearing a wetsuit, that they won’t feel free to move. They’re right about that: wearing a wetsuit on land is one of the least comfortable things you can do. They’re hot, restrictive, and tight. In the water, however, you won’t even notice it’s there. Wetsuits keep you warm (important in the Cape) and protect you from marine creatures that might sting or scratch you as you pass through their domain. Deciding you won’t like or try diving because wetsuits make you feel cramped is like deciding you aren’t going to eat Haagen-Dazs ice cream because you don’t like the font they write their product labels in.

All that water

Finally, some people worry that they’ll feel trapped under the weight of all the water above them, and that it’s impossibly far to get to the surface. There are a few answers to this:

Firstly, you’ll learn a skill called a CESA, or Controlled Emergency Swimming Ascent, on your Open Water course. This enables you to swim for the surface in a controlled, non-panicky manner if you need to. This is not something you’ll just do if you’re feeling uncomfortable one day – it’s for when you run out of air and have no buddy nearby to borrow an octo from.

Second, when you learn to dive you’re not suddenly going to start spending all your time at 30 metres. The PADI Open Water course qualifies you to dive to 18 metres, and you have to do an Advanced course to get to 30 metres, and a Deep specialty to get to 40 metres. So these things come with time. Some divers have no interest in deep diving, and there’s nothing wrong with that – Tony and I spend most of our time in less than 10 metres of water because the best and easiest photographic opportunities are there, and we can stay down a looooong time because our air lasts forever! Your first diving experiences will be in relatively shallow water, and only as you get used to being underwater will your instructor gradually increase the depth you go to.

I will admit that when visibility is poor, one loses the feeling of having three beautiful dimensions around one to play in. But this is infrequent, and if you’re diving for fun, then you hopefully won’t have to get in the water when conditions aren’t great (unless you’re desperate to get wet, in which case you won’t care!). But the feeling of space when one drops into the gin-clear water of the Atlantic on a summer’s day is so extreme as to make one almost dizzy. Being underwater is the closest I get to flying, and I love it.

In conclusion, diving involves a fair amount of unfamiliar equipment, and is quite different to our day-to-day experiences as human beings on planet earth. You may not like it; but you probably will. If you’re not sure, sign up for a Discover Scuba Diving experience (DSD). Tony even sometimes does these in people’s swimming pools – just to give you a taste of the freedom that comes with breathing underwater. You can make an educated decision about diving after that.