What the ****?? - Rescue Diver Course.

[Philelmer]

This weekend I finally embarked on my rescue diver course. I may get around to writing a course report once I've done the open water section in a few weeks but for now I thought I'd jot down a couple of points here, because genuinely I did learn a couple of things from an incident we had.

To give you a build up of the picture we found ourselves in prior to the incident at the bottom of the pool.

First thing Sunday morning we did a swim test. I'm not entirely sure that it's a requisite on the course any more, but like our DM said, you're not much use as a rescuer if you can't swim very well. Fortunately I can and so the 400m swim didn't cause me an issue, and neither did the 20 minute water tread with arms out of the water for 15 seconds every minute. One of the lads though, was a slightly weaker swimmer. Still completed the task, but certainly looked to be struggling, to the extent that when after the water tread when we had a 2-lap race i opted to dawdle along with this chap at the back and keep an eye on him.

After more towing round the pool (with two open water students hanging onto the victim's feet), rescue breathing, stripping kit off unconscious divers, more towing and rescue breathing, a couple of mini scenarios etc, we finally hopped into the bottom of the pool to do unconscious diver lifts, toxing diver lifts and a basic skills assessment consisting of underwater BCD replacements, weight belt removal and replacement, mask-fallen-off-and-landed-on-the-pool-floor-in-bad-vis drills, and so on. This was where it went a bit wrong.

(Now I should point out that I've mentioned the swim test and the towing 3 people round the pool thing and everything else to make the point that by the end of the day when we got to the underwater bit, we'd been physically working quite hard all day so maybe concentration wasn't what it might have been - but maybe that's a good thing on a RD course. Dunno. Never done one before)

One of the basic drills is regulator recovery. Standard enough stuff - chuck your reg dramatically over your head, blow little bubbles, tilt right, put your right arm on your arse, make a big sweeping motion et voila, you have an LP hose by your shoulder with a source of air at the end of it. One of the chaps, who also felt uncomfortable doing a mask removal earlier, really struggled with this. Basically it looked like he didn't like the idea of not having a reg in his mouth, which 5m underwater, is quite normal, I'm sure.

On his first attempt, our local friendly DM, hovering behind, put the reg in an obvious easy to reach place when he missed it first time, and so he succeeded in recovering it. After he'd regained his composure, the instructor asked him to repeat the skill. Again he failed, but then in about half a millisecond, his mouth was wide open with no bubbles coming out of it, his eyes were like saucers and he was off the surface, with a DM hanging onto his leg, an instructor in hot pursuit and two other rescue students kneeling (sorry) on the bottom looking at each other going "what the f*ck just happened then???"

Kudos to the DM and Instr, they got him settled, brought him back down and we continued the session.

So what I learned about diving from it.

1. When it goes wrong for someone it goes wrong very very very fast, and while you're watching them and figuring out what's up, they've launched for whatever option 1 was - in this case the surface, but equally it could have been my primary reg or a mad scramble to unhook my octo in its non-standardised "somewhere in a triangle" position on my BCD.

2. I'm not as experienced as I thought I was. That's the first time I've seen anyone properly panic underwater.*

3. The lad had been diving 3 years, his last dive was 5 months ago. It was only afterwards I found out he'd only done 14 dives in total. If I'd known that, and combined it with his slightly weak swimming, maybe I'd have put two and two together and kept a closer eye on him as my co-student/buddy.

*talking through the whole episode with the instructor afterwards, I've offered to come and hang out at the back of a few OW classes where I'm told such incidents are a bit more commonplace which I think will help me identify the warning signs of a potential underwater incident.


If this has been a bit rambling or is the most obvious thing in the world to you old hat instructors then I apologise, but I figured if I learned something from it then others might too.

[simon varley]

3. The lad had been diving 3 years, his last dive was 5 months ago. It was only afterwards I found out he'd only done 14 dives in total. If I'd known that, and combined it with his slightly weak swimming, maybe I'd have put two and two together and kept a closer eye on him as my co-student/buddy.

what are the entry requirements for RD? you shouldn't have to know the detailed history of all your co-students. You should be able to rely on the course provider to have done this, and to assume a certain minimum standard of competence. Fitness shouldn't necessarily be an indicator of diving competence - it sounds like this guy didn't have the basic skills down and shouldn't have been on the course. Well done for being aware of the situation though

[ScuBen]

prerequisites for rescue diver course are 20 logged dives IIRC.

[Philelmer]

It's 20 logged dives for certification. You can do the course any time, you just can't have a card before you fulfill the criteria.

[Morag]

Oh dear.

I rarely (or never) teach the rescue course, but IIRC, there is no water skills assessment,so things such as the 'swim test' are outside standards.

Also, if i have read your post correctly, you were expected to tow a diver (that is in the cousre) but with the additional burden of 2 divers holding on - essentially to make it more difficult.

that is the single most ridiculous thing I have ever heard of.

The resecuse course is supposed to give divers the confidence to deal with unexpected situations. How does knackering the student in an unnecessary skill help?

TBH, mask off and reg out skills are something that we should all be comfortable with, but IIRC, they are not part of the course either. They may have been part of the required assessment of a student prior to undertaking a course though.

I hope the guy is OK though and this hasn't put him off.

[Philelmer]

I hope the guy is OK though and this hasn't put him off.

No, he was fine afterwards, once he'd calmed down he came back down the bottom of the pool and continued the session. Still keen and still up for the open water section, which he'll be doing in the East Sea next weekend.

You're an instructor - in your experience do you see warning signs of people who are about to panic, or do they literally just go into "get me the f*ck out of here" mode as quickly as it seemed to me that they did? Literally, in what seemed even in hindsight like under a second?

[Morag]

No, he was fine afterwards, once he'd calmed down he came back down the bottom of the pool and continued the session. Still keen and still up for the open water section, which he'll be doing in the East Sea next weekend.

You're an instructor - in your experience do you see warning signs of people who are about to panic, or do they literally just go into "get me the f*ck out of here" mode as quickly as it seemed to me that they did? Literally, in what seemed even in hindsight like under a second?

Sometimes you just 'know' that it might happen becasue of out of water demeanour, but the two (yes, only 2) full on get me out of here panics were both pretty quick state changes, but both brought on by the lack of confidence in doing a skill. In both cases we were in 6m open water.

[James The Badger]

" toxing diver lifts and a basic skills assessment consisting of underwater BCD replacements, weight belt removal and replacement, mask-fallen-off-and-landed-on-the-pool-floor-in-bad-vis drills, and so on. This was where it went a bit wrong"

Just to clarify, is this the PADI Resucue couse we are discussing?
Oversealouse instructors are accidents waiting to happen. Adding unessasary skills to course is just as bad as leaving skills out.
None of these skills appear on the course. I would discuss this with the PADI Asia Pacific office rather than a forum.

Pre requisit for RD is just Adventure diver with Deep and Nav core dives completed. This allows it to be complete before AOW.

[matt 232]

prerequisites for rescue diver course are 20 logged dives IIRC.

only if from another agency,i assume you completed the EFR beforehand aswell

[Philelmer]

Adding unessasary skills to course is just as bad as leaving skills out.
None of these skills appear on the course. I would discuss this with the PADI Asia Pacific office rather than a forum.

Personally I don't have a problem with the extra non-syllabus bits. On any course I'd rather cover the basics and some extra stuff than leave anything out. Would you not? And you can't deny that being comfortable taking your mask of underwater's useful. (although admittedly I can't see a situation where I'd take my weight belt off and put it back on again...)