SCUBA.SKILLS.QUESTIONS.&.VIDEO

SCUBA Diver Skills

We'll meet you in:
COZUMEL

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

"LOOK....NO HANDS!" is our motto because SCULLING is the HALLMARK of a SUBSTANDARD DIVER!

BuoyancyQuest promotes high quality mentoring of both Buoyancy Control Skills and an alternate propulsion method; i.e. Frog Kick. This training is offered within the context of a dive travel adventure in Cozumel, Mexico and features 13 dives with mentoring before during and after.

Trips are lead by John Noftall, a cave diver and his partner Maureen Miller. Both are instructors for a major training agency, but invite you to view their videos and decide to dive with them because of how they look underwater rather than because of how they look on paper.

BuoyancyQuest's Workshops promise noticeable improvement of your skills without the formality of certification. We believe that skills define your diving, not how many toys you own or how many cards you collect. Other entities offer fundamentals, usually cloaked in tech diver images. We offer an alternative; a tech diver worthy foundation without the carrot on a string.

It is not necessary to dress up in cave diving gear or to pretend to be a technical diver in order to teach or demonstrate competent fundamentals such as Buoyancy Control, propulsion methods ( fin kicks) or a proper horizontal body posture.

GOOD Buoyancy SKILLS are for all divers....not just TECH DIVERS!

Don't expect your equipment to make you a better diver!

GOOD DIVERS look good underwater because of GOOD Buoyancy Control Skills

EVERYTHING ELSE IS SECONDARY!

Most divers are much more interested in collecting more C-Cards and more fancy dive gear, and even more T-Shirts, than they are in perfecting foundation skills. Like it or NOT, SCUBA Diving is an EGO Sport! "Bragging Rights" and "STATUS" , are more prized than actual diving ability.

Moving pictures are all that is needed in order to evaluate dive skills. Any use of hands for steering and propulsion is too much! Seeing a diver through the face plate of your mask is even better than watching video. Danglies can be seen in still photos. In fact, photos of danglies are a regular feature of dive magazine pictures. Both SCULLING (using the hands) and DANGLIES (hanging consoles, slates, octos and retractors) are all hallmarks of a substandard diver.

STILL PHOTOGRAPHY: records how skilled a diver was for a fraction of a second.

"IF YOU DON'T HAVE ANYTHING TO LEARN....WE CAN'T HELP YOU!"

YOUR CRAWL STROKE is a poor indication of your Fundamental SCUBA Skills!

THE STATUS QUO has failed, for 70 years, to establish a STANDARD for "Neutral Buoyancy Control SKILLS".

SO surface swimming skills....HAVE BEEN SUBSTITUTED i.e. "watermanship" ~ "POSITIVE BUOYANCY SKILLS"

SCUBA Diving FUNDAMENTALS: are the basic skills that are needed in order to operate in an alien world. They are the foundation that supports everything else that a diver will ever pursue or accomplish. Buoyancy Control, underwater propulsion skills ( fin kicks ) and a horizontal profile with streamlining are as basic to underwater pursuits as walking and running are to terrestrial activities.
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 same people, many of whom never bothered to perfect their own fundamental dive skills, share their less than remarkable buoyancy control talent, with their students, and promote and advance the culture, of substandard SCUBA Skills, that continue to prevail and dominate the sport.
EVEN WITH THE BEST INTENTIONS: ability that has not been mastered, cannot be shared with someone else. This is true regardless of the credentials that are held or the reputation that has been established. A reputation that may exist mostly on paper or plastic and that may or may not be deserved.

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 "watermanship" that is used as a substitute for a "real standard" for Buoyancy Control Skills [neutral buoyancy skills]. Better still.....we would prefer to see and hear an encouragement to exceed any and all standards for FUNDAMENTAL DIVE SKILLS.

My first dive mask was an "Adolph Kiefer" signature model from Sears Roebuck. It was triangular in shape, blue in color and included no option for pinching the nose to aid with equalization of the ears. Adolph was a champion swimmer from the 1930s & early 1940s. Nobody in the United States had ever heard of Jacques Cousteau or Mike Nelson [ both were still years* away from their TV impact ] so "a swimmer" was chosen to endorse a dive mask. I'm not suggesting that this was the beginning of substituting swimming skills for dive skills but I think comparisons can be drawn as to why so many current "elite divers" are forgiven their less than spectacular fundamental dive skills "IF" they are good swimmers!

Let's STOP pretending that a "GOOD CRAWL STROKE" equals a diver with good FUNDAMENTAL BUOYANCY SKILLS!