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Can a recreational diver Avoid "DIR"
Diving's cardinal Sin??? |
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"Breaking Rule Number One" is an expression popularized by dive related groups on the Internet. It refers to the most important rule in diving, one that "DIR" divers believe you should NEVER, EVER break…to break it is to invite disaster…("DIR" refers to "Doing it Right" style diving, initially popularized by the WKPP, the world record holding deep cave dive team). "RULE NUMBER ONE" is: "DON'T DIVE WITH STROKES ", which essentially means, don't buddy with unsafe divers. In addition to the obvious, you can take this to mean anyone who doesn't dive the same way you do. Lets take the diver who has read all the "DIR" theory, they have even had some "DIR" training, and now they have decided they want to dive fully "DIR" on all of their recreational dives. There are more than a few obstacles to overcome for this new "DIR" compliance to occur. Most difficult, and most important, will be buddy choice. As you know, even if you are fully trained in "DIR" diving, until you have a "DIR" buddy, you are NOT diving "DIR". Breaking Rule Number One can be traced to more deaths of good divers than virtually any other diving issue other than deep air. So how do you find buddies to dive with, if you don't know anyone who wants to dive, and your only option is just, "showing up" at a charter boat? The best way to solve this problem is to prevent it from ever happening (typical "DIR" problem solving---be pre-emptive). You start by finding a dive shop, OR dive boat, that caters to "DIR" divers. If you can find one, you have this problem halfway solved already. Lets say you can't find a boat or dive store in your area that has even "heard" of "DIR" diving. Now what? Certainly GUE will be one resource, in that they are constantly updating their website and records as to GUE certified divers around the world---since a GUE diver is by definition, totally "DIR", this is another easy solution, if you live near one of their divers. OK, say you don't… and the nice people at GUE have no advice for you about finding a "DIR" diver in your neck of the woods…. Next step could be grooming your significant other to be a "DIR" buddy (certainly something you should do anyway) or putting some big efforts into interesting your friends into learning to dive. If one of these solutions worked, fine, you're on the right path. If not, you are now sitting on a dive boat, no one on it is "DIR", and you need to pick a buddy. First, you will scan the available group, looking for those you will immediately exclude as a potential buddy choice. Gear configuration will be the first thing to scan. While a non-"DIR" group is unlikely to have any long hose divers among it, it will have gradations of competent, on down to horrifyingly incompetent. The gear goes along way toward identifying the potential accidents. Look for the divers who have computer consoles which hang down far below the waist---the farther down they hang, the more horrifying the diver. The same can be true of the octopus----if it is on a long hose, allowed to drag along behind, this diver has a terribly sloppy mindset, and cannot be trusted to dive with. If the octo is stuffed into a pouch, or "tied" up with a mouthpiece protector, you can expect they are poorly prepared to help anyone other than themselves---so assume thinking about others does NOT occur to them, another contraindication against accepting them as a buddy. Are they terribly overweighted?? Sometimes this is obvious, sometimes not---it's always worth a look. What about the BC? How does it fit them? You may not know this until everyone is nearly ready to get in the water, but it's never to late to avoid buddying with an accident waiting to happen. If they stand up, and the BC fits so poorly that the tank falls down to a foot below where it ought to be, you know that once this person hits the water, their BC and tank will be all over the place. They will swim with huge drag, like a puffer fish fully puffed out. Most guilty of this level of incompetency, are equally unable to use their fins properly, never having learned how to kick or propel them selves well. You do NOT want to be with this person, no matter what. If the whole boat stands up and looks like this, tell the boat captain you need your money back, because you bought a trip on a boat expecting it to have competent divers, not a boat full of rescues that just haven't happened yet(1). So lets say you have narrowed down the group from 15 divers to five divers. How new is their gear? Ask them how long they have been diving if it looks brand new. Do they look comfortable and relaxed? Is everything rigged properly, given the "limitations" of traditional equipment configurations? You don't want macho buddies, but you don't want scared ones either. You don't want a photographer as a buddy, because they are typically too focused on their objective to be attentive to you. They really need to be part of a 3 buddy team, the photographer being a "dependent buddy", that the other two check on. If you like covering a good distance, looking for impressive structures to check out, buddying up with a macro photographer may be preferable to shooting yourself in the head, but not always :-) Unless you are a shell collector yourself, you don't want a shell collector as a buddy, for several reasons: typically they like to scour sandy areas most divers see as waste lands, and the speed traveled at may be as slow as 15 feet forward per 30 minutes of dive time. Also, as focused down as they are, you can not count on them making eye contact with you every 20 seconds----which means a properly functioning buddy team is unlikely to result. A spearfisherman or lobster diver may be a good buddy right up until the quarry they have been looking for shows up, and then they are off in pursuit mode, and buddy protocol will take a back seat to the evening's dinner J Clearly, this behavior excludes them from being buddy material. You "can" have a "DIR" buddy that spearfishes, lobster dives, takes pictures or collects shells, but this will be a person who has made a real effort to adopt "DIR" over the natural inclinations of the "hunt" they are engaged in. If you think you can find a person like this out of the blue, on some charter boat you just showed up at, it's pretty likely you also expect to win the lottery every week….Sure it would be nice, but just don't expect itJ Back to narrowing down the remaining candidates. Strike up a conversation with a few of the best you have not yet excluded , and tell them you have been reading a thread on the Internet you found on rec.scuba, about how different divers handle OOA emergencies. Ask them what camp they are in (It would not hurt to do a Deja News search and actually read this thread---its huge, and good for you to have read anyway!). If you don't like their answers, then you move on. If they sound OK, talk a little about your "DIR" configuration, and the why's of it, and see if you can convert them for future dives J, and then make sure you can buddy up with them on this dive. If the only acceptable choice is an existing buddy team, there is no problem with you making up a three-man team with them, as long as you work toward keeping everyone in the 3-man buddy team in eye-to-eye contact every 20 to 30 seconds, and assuming they are willing. If it works out well, you may have just found one or two new buddies, which will become "DIR" divers in the near future. If you go through this procedure enough weeks in a row, sooner or later you will end up with a list of good buddies to call when you want to dive. If you only get to dive on trips to exotic locales, then in time, you'll get pretty good at the screening process :-) Return to Home Page |
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