Category: Diving

Cool stuff. I’ve always wanted to dive with Whale Sharks, Mantas, Tiger Sharks…but diving with Dugong never crossed my mind. And I have been given the opportunity to do so at Mantanani..or once known to the Royal Malaysian Navy as Station Mike.

Mantanani is said to be good for muck diving. Apart from the usual, one is bound to bump into other species such as the Glassfish, Marbled Stingray, schools of Eagle Rays, Octopus, seahorses, imperial shrimps, blue-ringed Octopus and lots of nudibranch.

Good thing is, I should be able to leave office on Friday, do two dives at Mantanani on Saturday, and fly back to Kuala Lumpur on Sunday…without having to apply for leave.

So eat that you power-crazed a**holes!!

Now officially a Divemaster Trainee….hehehe…2006 is going to be an interesting year.

Now…I have been invited to join a trip to Koh Lipe. Damn…I wanna go so much!!

I’ve completed my Emergency First Response today. Now all I have to do is my Rescue Diver course..then I’ll submit for my PADI Master Scuba Diver rating.

Reference: Bad Diver

I have received positive and constructive comments from readers on this issue. Hopefully with their permission, I will post them here. The question was – Bad Instructor or Bad Diver?:

clos Says:
both

Snafu Says:
Why Both? Is always the instructor & instruction…as for the diver if they are lucky they will meet good diver that will help them BUT most of the case the diver will meet another diver that will slack & put em down insted of helping them to improve by showing it to them.

Most instructor .. MOST INSTRUCTOR do teaching for the MONEY, by cutting time on the teaching, Money they earn become bigger … NEW student wont even know where to start, or what is wrong … dey just ask How much & how long…. den get exploited by DIVING SHOP…DIVING Instructor…etc…etc

By the time they know the right method or right people… new diver pick up BAD HABBIT already & hard to be corrected.

Not that the INSTRUCTOR dont know anyway… but dey keep on doing it, ALL IN THE NAME OF MONEY!!!

Dig It hommieeeeeeEEEeeEEeee!!!!!

idcpro Says:
hhmm…I would say both are not wrong and right. In a scuba lesson there’s 2 things we have to keep in mind. Performance requirements and Mastery. I believe most student divers meet the performance requirements as well as the Instructor, well…as long as they meet all performance requirements, the Instructor can certify them. The question now is did they Master what they have learned? Mastery of a skill involves in the attitude of the Instructor, the Instructor just need to spend a little more time to repeat the skills in the confined water and questions like “why i only can hover at the surface?” or “why I keep floating or get headache after each dive” will not appear.

Good or bad diver depends on both the Instructor and student diver. It’s the student divers responsibility to transfer most knowledge learned in the manual apply it to actual diving and Instructors attitude towards his/her own teaching.

kimi Says:
It’s pity to the student if they got a lousy instructor. For me, the world doesn’t stop there. I’m willing to move forward n to improve myself.

Luckily for me, i got a very good dive buddy who can teach me to be better in every dive i do.

He knows who he is. Thanks bro!

SayLeng Says:
Both. Instructors must teach completely (no cutting corners) and students must learn properly (ask, understand, analyze, confirm & practice).

Ling Says:
I feel it is both. Well, instructions given definitely will affect how one dive that’s where they first contact with diving. But the diver himself must also be open and willing to learn. Be flexible to any constructive feedback.

So far the general concensus is that both parties are equally at fault and otherwise.

idcpro is correct in saying an instructor should not certify the student if requirements or part of, are not or have not been met. The instructor should use a little more time in transfering knowledge to the student. The student, on the other hand, needs to apply knowledge received to his/her diving.

Say Leng has summarised the points above into: Instructors should not cut corners (as in the case of the 20:1 ratio I had seen), and students should “ask, understand, analyze, confirm and practice”.

Ling concurs saying how instructions have been given to the student determines the outcome of the diver. ut the diver must also be open and willing to learn.

We all learn as we go along. The mould the instructor casts is the gateway to either pleasure or torture when one is underwater. However, the diver, as he/she progresses, should be open and learn during each dive. Skills are taught not to be forgotten. Therefore the only way one doesn’t forget is by practising these skills underwater. I may have been diving since 1982, but I make it a point to practice most of my skills (whenever possible) during my first dive of the trip. Still, I do get complacent: I once did rapid descent to about 20 meters without the regulator being in my mouth, and instead of using my octopus which is usually placed at the D-ring near my chest, I did a CESA; second was using twin-tanks ready for rapid descent (wing fully deflated), jumped in and realised that I did not have either fins on. In the first case, had I remembered or practised switching to my octopus regularly, then I would have remembered having an octopus as a back-up. In the second case, had I done my equipment check topside, I wouldn’t have had to struggle using my hands to propel myself back to the surface from 28 meters.

So in my case, I was (and hopefully no longer am) a bad diver.

Bad diver.

So is there such thing as a bad diver?

What makes a bad diver?

When a person learns to scuba dive, he/she takes the mould of the instructor. The person will become a diver based on what is taught by his/her instructor, and whatever knowledge (or crap) that is passed onto him/her. So he/she becomes that mini-me of the instructor…good or bad.

An extension to this would be the loyalty towards the instructor…blind faith, most of the time. This further solidifies the trust and attitude of this former student towards the instructor. This is evident in the former’s willingness to follow each, if not every trip that is organised by this instructor. As a result, any attempt to make this former student see the other side of the instructor, be it good or bad, will be met with stiff resistance.

If the mould is bad, and the diver’s attitude of not wanting to listen to anyone else, not wanting to accept constructive criticism, seeing everything as a criticism towards him/her or his/her instructor, then this diver would be in trouble. We have seen how some money-centric instructors skip certain modules to save time, or because he/she has too many student to instructor ratio (PADI recommends 4 students to 1 instructor for Junior OW, 8:1 for others. Personally I have seen 20:1). As a result, we get divers who stop after completing their OW course and die a natural death; we see divers who continue but do not enjoy diving; and we see lots of marine habitats destroyed through the couldn’t-care-less attitude of the divers.

So who is to be blamed? Just the instructor? Or both?

I heard about someone died during a dive and the person was using the Megalodon CCR. I didn’t realise the person was Zak Jones, a PADI Course Director with the Pro Dive International in the US.

He was on a leisure dive outing and separated with his buddy at 46m to explore a reef but was later seen to be unconscious with the regulator out of his mouth. However, he never regained consciousness despite all efforts to revive him topside.

He was 30 years old.

You can read his biography here.