Diving Fundamentals

"No performance requirement in SCUBA Diving is more poorly defined or less often achieved than....Buoyancy Control."

OPEN CIRCUIT SCUBA DIVING

has been around for more than 70 years....

THAT'S HOW LONG....divers and too many of their instructors have been ignoring Buoyancy Control SKILLS and other foundation abilities.
Read almost any tutorial about SCUBA Fundamentals and you will think that buoyancy control is what is lacking with beginners.
The cyber divers ( who probably do their best diving on line) call them newbies and are condescending, often suggesting that sculling is OK as long as you are not an "elite diver" like them. The fact is; poor buoyancy control can be found, in abundance, across all certification and leadership levels. AND it is contagious!
JUST ABOUT EVERY DIVER....wants to gain "bragging rights" to something more glorious and spectacular than just having sound basic skills and so they skip over "first base" on their path to that perceived reward.

WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE STATUS QUO?

Underwater skills do not equal surface swimming skills. This author has seen magnificent surface swimmers who were hopeless divers and has know some truly spectacular divers who had surface swimming skills that were barely sufficient to keep them alive in an emergency. Equating good swimmers with GOOD SCUBA Divers is a profound mistake that has been perpetuated by the "Status Quo" because they are unable to agree upon or recognize a standard for truly exceptional foundation skills. These are the same people who share their less than remarkable buoyancy control talent and are not bashful about charging "good money" for "poor mentoring" followed by awarding c-card that no one will ever ask to see.

THE PERFORMANCE REQUIREMENT FOR FUNDAMENTALS
Has it always been surface swimming ability???

john noftall

STILL PHOTOS show how good a diver was for a fraction of a second....VIDEO IS BETTER!

"LEARN TO FROG KICK!"

" IMPROVE YOUR SCUBA!"

meet us in: MEXICO

AS MOST BUOYANCY CONTROL SKILLS CLINICS

YOU WON'T wear doubles. YOU WON'T get a C-Card. YOU WILL improve your buoyancy. YOU WILL learn to frog kick.

WE WON'T DRESS IN CAVE GEAR TO SHOW YOU HOW....AND YOU WON'T NEED TO DRESS THAT WAY EITHER

ABOUT SWIMMING

We agree that swimming is a good thing to know....and not just for divers. This author conducted beginner classes through a local dive center for nine years and certified almost 600 divers of different levels up to divemasters. The training agency required a "swim test before certification" but, because they did not want the test to appear to be a condition for taking the course, they suggested waiting until the end of the confined water (the pool) sessions to apply the swim test. IF the reader has not already guessed, there were no less than five students during that time that failed the swim test on the 5th night of confined water training AFTER performing well on SCUBA in both the shallow and deep ends of the pool. The first thing that this brings to mind is the comfort level that must be required to pull that off. This defies imagination if you are a swimmer. This is followed by the realization that , if a non swimmer could out perform a swimmer on SCUBA, and in some cases this was true, then surface swimming becomes "only" a test of surface skills, without equipment. We agree that there should be a test for minimal surface survival. What we object to is the use of superb swimming skills being substituted, under the moniker "watermaship", for a "real standard" for Buoyancy Control Skills. We would prefer.....an encouragement to exceed any and all standards for FUNDAMENTAL DIVE SKILLS.

john noftall