Scuba Diving, 1984 to Now

My kids, Jade and Evan, 16 y.o. g/b twins learned scuba diving this year. I followed along in their studies, their pool work, and participated in their open water training dives. This gave me an interesting perspective; I learned to scuba dive in 1984 and I can tell you much has changed from then to now. Training has changed, customer service has changed, and last but not least, the underwater habitat has changed. While I would like to say that all the changes have been for the better; my truth is that many of these changes have been for the worst.

Training Changes

Just so you know that I’ve had significant experience; I went scuba diving on week-long live aboards in Grand Cayman, Belize, Fiji, the Philippines, the Red Sea, and the Australian Great Barrier Reef. During these trips, I learned underwater photography; owning a Nikonos-V, a Pentax 67 (medium format) with an underwater housing, and a Sony DCR-TRV900 video camera with an underwater housing. I continued to dive in Northern California. I have over two hundred dives.

I learned scuba diving in Northern California. I had an eight week course with the Vaqueros Del Mar, the scuba diving club at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The club had started in 1958 when the Livermore Lab was doing nuclear testing at the Pacific atolls and needed scuba divers to collect samples. These folks came back to Livermore to start the Vaqueros Del Mar (Cowboys of the Sea in Spanish). The first four weeks were devoted to skin diving in Northern California. The waters there are cold, so a full wetsuit, gloves, booties, and hood are needed. Since the wetsuit is buoyant, a significant weight belt is needed.  We learned surf entries and how to harvest abalone, an underwater snail that is good eating. The next four weeks of the course were devoted to scuba diving.

My kids learned scuba diving in less than two week, while my training was eight weeks. They learned to put on their weight belt before the BCD, I learned to put the weight belt on last. They learned the maximum safe accent was thirty feet per minute, I learned the maximum safe accent was 60 feet per minute. They learned to buddy breath by giving their regulator to the out-of-air diver, then using their secondary air supply. I learned to buddy breath by sharing my regulator with the out-of-air diver.

One of the biggest changes is safety stops. When I learned scuba diving, safety stops were used for decompression diving. That later changed to safety stops being advisory for non-decompression diving. Currently, a safety stop is common practice with a three-minute stop at fifteen feet.

Customer Service Changes

The kids did their study and pool work for their open water certificates in one of the suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona. I am not going to reveal the names of the dives stores or boats. That said, the customer service described seems to be common for other dive stores and boats. I wanted to take my kids to a more interesting place to dive. The dive shops in Phoenix dive in the lakes nearby; which I think are as interesting as a TV test pattern. So we did the open water dives needed to complete their open water scuba certificate training in Maui, Hawaii. These are called referral dives, where one dive shop does the study and pool work, the other dive shop does the four open water dives.

But I’m jumping ahead. On the evening of the pool work, I asked if I could scuba dive with them in the pool. The instructor asked that I sign a waiver and also asked: “Did you have a positive response on the Divers Medical Questionnaire?” I’d filled out two Divers Medical Questionnaires for my kids; so I was familiar with the questionnaire. I replied truthfully, yes. 

The Divers Medical Questionnaire states: “A positive response means that there is a preexisting condition that may affect your safety while diving and you must seek (my italics) the advice of your physician prior to engaging in dive activities.” My kids, 16 y.o. b/g twins had no preexisting conditions, but I had several: nasal surgery, high cholesterol, a family history of heart attacks, and frequent sinusitis.

The instructor said that I could not be diving in the pool unless I had a medical doctor’s release showing that I was fit for diving. I did not. Strangely, I don’t carry a medical release for scuba diving with me at all times. She claimed that this restriction was due to the shop’s liability. The instructor added that I was not to swim in the pool, but I could sit at the edge of the pool with my legs the water. In her world she was following the shop rules and gracious to allow me to sit at the edge of the pool with my legs in the water. In my world, this was highly insulting. I looked at the pool, it was twelve feet deep.

I thought about some of my more difficult scuba dives; The Arch which is a mile off-shore of Yankee Point in 110 feet of water, the unnamed submerged reef in the Philippines where the two to three knot sudden current pulled me off the reef into deep water, or the night dives at San Nicholas Island looking for lobster. The pool was twelve feet deep.

I asked the instructor after the kid had their C-cards (hey, I’m no dummy) if noting my scuba diving experience would have changed her mind that evening. She was adamant; experience didn’t matter.

After the kids finished their study and pool work, we went to Maui Hawaii for the referral dives. I read the Maui dive shop’s website, I could go on the referral dives with my kids as a companion diver, but I’d need a medical release. So I want to my doctor and he signed my forms. He checked the box: “I find no medical conditions that I consider incompatible with diving.” As I left his office, I realized that I was a better judge of my fitness for scuba diving than my doctor because I had more experience scuba diving and I certainly had more skin in the game.

After the kid’s referral dives, we all went diving at Molokini Crater and Turtle Town on a boat. The scuba divers on the boat were divided into two groups of approximately six with a guide assigned to each group. The guides gave a pre-dive lecture that included the equipment, rules, and fish that we might see during the dive. My guide queried each diver as to their experience; I noted that I had 200-300 hours of scuba diving experience. Our guide was adamant that the group follow the buddy system, stay with him underwater, notifying him when any scuba diver had one thousand PCI (pounds per square inch, the tank pressure), and the three-minute safety stop. He treated us like we were all beginning scuba divers.

The buddy system and buddy breathing has been one of the mainstays of safe scuba diving. The idea is simple; you always dive with another scuba diver. If a buddy encounters a problem, you have two divers to solve that problem. Buddy breathing is when one of the buddies is out-of-air and the other buddy shares their air. This technique is practiced multiple times for a diver’s open water certification. The technique is so important that the hand signal for “out of air” is standardized and emphasized.

Consider if rental car companies: Hertz, Avis, Budget had the same concern for liability. Perhaps they should, driving is a dangerous activity where the liability could be greater than any scuba diving accident. There is much liability: the driver, the 40K$ car, and possible collateral damage to pedestrians and buildings. You could imagine that the rental car companies adopt the buddy system for driving, mandating that a second qualified driver be present at all time in the front passenger seat to take over driving in the case where the driver is incapacitated. The rental companies could standardize the word or hand signal for the driver to utter to let the buddy driver know to take over the wheel. 

The rental companies probably would also screen all potential drivers and their buddies for certain medical conditions: heart condition, seizures, pregnancy, insulin-dependent diabetes, head injury, or mental or behavioral problems. These are the same problems listed by the Arizona and Hawaii dive shops. If any of these conditions are present, mandating that the potential driver be signed off by a physician. No sign off, no car. And of course, the buddy driver must also meet the same screen and potential physician sign-off. If a potential driver is alone, a known unsafe situation, a guide would be appointed to act as the buddy driver. I’m sure that the cost of the guide buddy would be approximately +$400 per day, but that is a small cost for liability protection, I meant safety.

The first dive was at Molokini Crater. Jade and I were buddies; Evan and the guide were buddies. When the first diver hit one thousand PSI, the guide took the group back to the boat and our safety stop. After three minutes, he motioned me to the boat. I was appalled; I climbed into the boat with over one thousand PSI. In my mind, I was not done. The guide must have assumed that everyone in his group was an air pig. He could have asked how much air I had left. But safety first, scuba diving second or third or fourth, or whatever; or maybe it is liability first, forget the scuba diving. 

The second dive was at Turtle Town. It is a shallower dive. Again Jade and I were buddies; Evan and the guide were buddies. Visibility was less than Molokini Crater. The guide kept turning around to count the group which was difficult as one of the divers kept wandering away. The guide was also looking for turtles, colorful fish, eels, and octopus. As the name suggests, we were looking for turtles; Jade and I saw one, Evan and the guide saw two. We saw an eel that the guide missed. I felt that the guide was a babysitter and a very poor spotter. Again, I was treated like beginning scuba diver.

Habitat

I expected the reefs in Hawaii to be less than the best. Hawaii is geologically isolated, so there are fewer variations of the species because there are fewer variations to mate with in Hawaii. Also, Hawaii is geologically new, so that, again, there are fewer variations of the species because there is less time for variance. But I was surprised, and not in a good way. I was at Molokini Crater in the mid-1990s and in my opinion, the reefs look far worse today. There were large sand fingers with no coral, lots of dead coral on the reefs, and very few fish and invertebrates. The growing coral is small and homogenous. I talked with the captain and crew, they cited (in order): increasing water temperatures, storms, and sun screen [in particular: oxybenzone and octinoxate] as harming the reefs. Luckily, my kids had never seen a warm-water reef, so they were impressed. 

Summary

I would say that training needs to be longer, but the newer instruction, in my mind, results in safer scuba diving. 

As for customer service, the dive shops and dive boats need to understand that the instructor that barred me from their pool and the guide that wanted me to return to the boat with one thousand PSI are the face of their business. And the face of their business is frowning and saying NO.  I am in no hurry to do business with the shop or boat again. The implicit message is that liability is the number one priority, pleasing customers appears to be a secondary or tertiary consideration.

As for habitat, Hawaii needs to launch a significant and successful rescue of its reefs; otherwise the scuba diving tourism will decrease. Scuba diving on sand and dead coral is of very little interest.