Buoyancy Control: More
Than Just a “Skill”
Odds are, your training agency has a “standard” that requires students to hover, motionless, for 30 seconds without touching the bottom. The implication is that, if students can do just this much, they have somehow “mastered” buoyancy control — even if they spend the balance of the dive sitting on their butts on the bottom. Duh!
Now if I’d written that standard, it would read something like this:
“To be certified as an Open Water Diver, a student must demonstrate the ability swim under water for at least ten minutes while maintaining control of buoyancy through a combination of proper weighting, BC adjustments and breath control. The student is to respond instantly to changes in depth by adding or venting air from his or her BC as needed. During this time the student may not touch the bottom or ascend, out of control, to the surface. If asked to stop swimming, the student should be able to maintain his or her depth without having to kick to stay up off the bottom.”
Now if that’s not the definition of buoyancy control, I don’t know what is. The catch is, the only way you can develop this ability in students is to get them out diving. And students aren’t going to have that opportunity if all they do is spend their time on the platform or bottom, waiting for their turn to do next “skill” — like “hovering.”
If you read “Teach Different, Teach Better,” you know that the “hovering” exercise, in particular, drives me nuts. It conveys to students that it’s somehow okay to hover in a fins-down position, inches away from what could very well represent fragile coral or aquatic life. (The only thing worse are “fin pivots,” which convey to students that it’s okay to touch the bottom, under the guise of controlling buoyancy.)
Okay, is there a way to meet your agency’s requirements for “hovering” without adding another several minutes to the amount of time students spend on the bottom doing nothing? You bet.
You teach students to make safety stops at the end of all but the shallowest dives — right? So, do you have students actually practice making safety stops during open-water training dives? You should be. Now, what can students be doing during those practice safety stops? That’s right, they can be hovering — and for much longer than the 30 seconds many agency standards require.
Now you’ve killed two birds with one stone and, in the process, gotten your students up off the bottom and out diving as many as five or more minutes sooner than you would have had you kept them on the training platform and taught hovering as just another “skill.”
One day, more training agencies will recognize that getting entry-level students out diving is every bit as important a part of open-water training as staying in one place and doing “skills.” Until then, a little creativity on your part can help ensure your students learn more effectively.
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