Dive Training Blogs

Diving and Children: Moving into Open Water

Published

6 years ago

January 30, 2018

PADI MSDT Maryse Dare continues her Scubaverse blog with part two about teaching children to dive…

So our younger divers have achieved their Master Seal Team. Where to now? One natural progression is the PADI Open Water course. By ensuring the children have mastered their skills early on, the Open Water becomes a great course to instruct. The children are starting the course with great buoyancy and confident with mask and reg skills.

We transition into Open Water gently; there is no discernible difference in the structure of the session: brief, dive, debrief. We include some dive time at the end to ensure the sessions are not focussed on skills, but rather the skills feed into the diving. We will cover a little of the theory to help break down some of the concepts.

And then it’s into Open Water! Depending on the time of year a dry suit might be required. We run the orientation after the confined dives but before the Open Water dives. For the Open Water dives the parents have always come along and stayed for the day. We run with only one child in the water at a time, so a ratio of two professionals to one diver. This allows us to have one person focussed on the diver, and one on navigation. Once the diver is completely comfortable then we take more divers into the water at the same time.

We always offer additional dives as part of our Open Water course, so we offer them for the Junior Open Water too. Where children have parents who dive we will offer them the opportunity to hop into the water too so they can dive with their children in a controlled environment before they dive elsewhere with different instructors or divemasters. It also gives us an opportunity to feedback a little about the expectations they should have when they dive in other locations and with other professionals.

Where someone dives with the same instructor for their entire training it can lead to an over reliance on that instructor so the post-qualification dives are important to ensure that doesn’t happen. Having a secure team of divemasters, or other instructors, can help with this as they can conduct the first dives that the children are completing as “proper” divers.

The Open Water course is perhaps the most important of all; get it right here and we’re sending out secure and safe divers who are able to self-reflect, risk assess and ensure they dive to protect and celebrate our underwater environment. By investing heavily into the Junior Open Water courses we are sending out Ambassadors into our community who can lead by example and further spread the love for diving.

Diver Profile

Matthew (pictured) is our first Youth Ocean Diver Ambassador (yes – we rearranged the words to give us a better acronym; he is a YODA!). He started with the PADI Seal Team and took to the water immediately so he continued and is now a Junior Open Water Diver. Matthew’s diving journey is continuing by supporting at pool sessions. He leads by example, demonstrating skills alongside the instructor.

The highlight of his course came when we were in Wraysbury. The tank was very low on air and we put it in for a fill. He was asked why we shouldn’t let tanks go so low and he gave a brilliant and accurate response. On a personal level this was when I realised the value of taking six months to complete the Open Water course; the learning was broad and deep. Add in Matthew’s brilliant buoyancy and I’m looking forward to his Dry Suit course this year (2018) followed by his Advanced Open Water!

You can follow Maryse and her Dive Club / School at www.oceandiver.co.uk and www.facebook.com/OceanDiver.co.uk.

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Maryse Dare

PADI MSDT Maryse runs Ocean Diver, a dive club and school on the borders of South London and Surrey. After many years of warm water diving, she is now a committed UK diver and particularly enjoys introducing people to the delights of the UK! Find out more at www.oceandiver.co.uk.

Blogs

Intro to Tech: What is it about?

Published

2 weeks ago

April 7, 2024

International Training

Article by José Pablo Mir
Pictures by Cezary Abramowski

The world of technical diving is exciting. It opens the door to new sites, depths, and bottom times. More importantly, it opens our minds to a new way of planning, facing, and experiencing dives, even those not purely technical.

Becoming a technical diver is a process, and like in other aspects of life, we should find the proper entry point that suits us best based on our knowledge and experience. The Introduction to Technical Diving course from TDI -the world’s largest and most recognized technical diving teaching organization- is the best option for divers who have yet to gain experience in the fundamental aspects of this new practice. The course’s content and its embrace of new techniques and technologies make it possible to acquire a solid foundation to learn and gain experience in this practice properly.

Becoming a technical diver is not something that happens overnight, whether deciding to become one or receiving a certification card stating we are now technical divers. It is a slow process extending farther away than any introductory course. It requires effort and dedication. But it will bring us satisfaction from day one -or two.

It is a matter of mentality

First, we must understand and accept that technical diving, involving greater depths, longer bottom times, exotic gases, virtual or real ceilings, and more, comes with higher levels of risk than the sport diving we have been practicing until now.

Although this discussion usually starts with a warning about risks, as I’ve done in the previous sentence, our practice is not a game of chance.

Technical diving is a rational activity that requires maturity and good judgment, and we will put everything into ensuring that each dive is a successful one -meaning we return from it safe and sound. With this understanding, we will strive to establish a mental attitude more aligned with our practice and its realities.

This new “technical diver” mindset we will develop will lead us to be more cautious in our executions, more analytical in our plans, more rational in our strategies, and more detailed in our procedures.

Experience will keep teaching us to know ourselves better, to keep our anxiety and other emotions under control, and to manage our impulses. Over time, our senses will sharpen, and we will be more attentive to the particulars of the situation we find ourselves in.

tech diving

Strategies and procedures

Our strategies, those broad guiding lines tracing the path to follow, from how to approach planning to where, with what, and how we are willing to get there, will be more specific and more practical. Not because they magically become so, but because we will consciously and deliberately frame them that way.

We will establish clear, concise, and realistic procedures. Not only for the undesirable situations that may present themselves but also for those that are part of our dive objectives.

Even though, as technical divers, we often use equipment different from what we were previously accustomed to, it is essential to note that the gear does not make the diver. In a way, we could consider such equipment as the necessary tools to implement what our goal seeks to achieve, according to our strategies and procedures.

Technique plays an important role

We must put our greatest effort into learning and perfecting the different techniques we will be acquiring. Buoyancy, trim, propulsion, cylinder handling, deploying DSMBs and lift bags, valve drills, and more are essential skills we must begin to master to progress in our art. What we cannot do, when we need to do it, can harm us.

Our techniques must be effective and achieve the purpose for which they were devised. But they must also be efficient and require the least resources possible, including the time they take and the effort they demand. Effectiveness and efficiency will prevail over beauty and other considerations that may come to mind, although none of them should be mutually exclusive. A technique executed efficiently and effectively tends to have an inherent beauty.

Refining techniques is a lifelong mission. Some of them will be easy to master from the go; others, on the other hand, will be our life mission and will require many repetitions just to resemble the idea we have in mind of how they should be executed.

We must consider the environment

Our learning, the needs and musts of the practice we engage in, the experience we gradually gain, our strategies and procedures, and even our equipment and tools change with the environment.

Diving in the ocean, everything about us must be suitable for ocean dives. Conditions there rarely emulate those found in a pool, lake, or river. Variable winds and currents, greater depths, visibility conditions, other divers with uncertain skills around us, marine life, maritime traffic, distance from the coast, and many other factors add complexity and uncertainty.

It is never necessary to master the pool on the first day, but planning and aspiring to gradually cope with the ocean’s conditions is essential.

The cost of good training

We are aware that our resources are often scarce in relation to the possibilities of use we could give them if they were not. To a greater or lesser extent, we are part of the economic reality in which we are embedded.

Fortunately, the cost of good technical diver training is not an entry barrier. Comparing training and equipment costs, we see that the former are generally lower. Yes, lower cost for personalized service, essential to our future

performance and safety, than for a series of mass-produced products that are mere, albeit necessary, tools for an end.

The value of good training

The value of the training we received encompasses a range of characteristics, from emotional and methodological to technical and technological. TDI and its Introduction to Technical Diving course offer a deep and modern approach, with a teaching strategy that aims to create thinking divers, not merely obedient ones.

As technical divers, our knowledge is our primary tool. In this type of activity, what we don’t know can harm us.

Is this course optional?

Unfortunately, the fact that this Introduction to Technical Diving course is not a prerequisite for any subsequent training is an invitation to consider it optional. And we all know what usually happens to “optional” under budget constraints.

However, this course should be seen as optional only by those divers who are somehow familiar with the use of technical equipment, who have a mindset more in line with the requirements of this type of diving, who plan and execute the dives the proper “technical” way, who know their gas consumption rate, who are not intimidated by non-decompression tables, who feel comfortable using their dive computers, and know the techniques and have at least an acceptable level of buoyancy, positioning, and propulsion. Those can go straight to a more advanced training course, such as TDI’s Advanced Nitrox.

We must ask ourselves whether or not we are in that group.

Remember our goal: to have fun

Recreational diving is our passion. Jumping into the water carrying heavy equipment and having properly dotted our I’s and crossed our T’s have only one ultimate goal: fun. This is the activity we have chosen as a hobby. We must enjoy it; it must give us pleasure and make us vibrate.

Having a good time is not optional!