First thing’s first — we are officially Rescue Divers! Andrea and I completed our Rescue Diver course on Saturday, successfully passed our exams and performed the skill requirements. So we are PADI certified rescue divers! The class was really fun, but to be honest, it scared the shit out of me. We learned skills to handle diver emergencies, ranging from easy ones (a tired diver at the surface who just needs minor help) to the severe, dramatic cases (a diver with decompression sickness or a gas embolism (nitrogen bubbles in the brain), or an unconscious diver still underwater), and the obvious fact is that I hope I never have to put these skills into use, especially with regard to the really bad situations. Diving is a pretty safe sport, if done properly and safely. The vast majority of dive-related accidents happen on the surface and are not life threatening, but with that said, the vast majority of dive-related accidents also result from poor judgment of the diver. As we progress through our training, my confidence and Andrea’s confidence continue to grow, and we feel safer and safer in our own skills. But there is no way to control the judgment of other divers, or to prevent all accidents or mistakes from other dives (whether they are students in our class or divers on the same boat as us) and that is where these skills may be put to use. As I said, I hope neither Andrea nor I ever have to put these skills to use. But, God forbid we someday have to, I hope that we are able to recall these skills and leave the diver in a better position than he would have been had we not intervened, and hopefully have a successful rescue.
So in the end, Rescue Diver certification is an important one, and the skills are important skills, and the class was a great class, but it is a serious topic that reminds you of the significance of being a safe and responsible diver, and encouraging others to do the same.
So now that Rescue Diver class is done, we begin Divemaster training on Monday! Divemaster is the first professional level of scuba diving, so this should be fun and exciting!
I want to follow up on something I mentioned in my last blog entry, about some of my classmates who are former Navy divers, and who are super-muscular and look like Baywatch lifeguards. As I mentioned, during our training I learned that despite their past navy experience they were not significantly better divers than we are (if they are better at all). Since that post, I feel even more so that they are not better divers than us, and it seems that they are in fact somewhat jealous of our diving experience! They have very little recreational diving experience, and while they might have defused bombs underwater, they have never swam with sharks or manta rays, never explored wrecks, and have been on very few pleasure dives in very few locations. It just goes to show, the grass is always greener. In any case, these guys (and the rest of our class) are very friendly and it should be enjoyable to go through training with them and benefit from the different perspective that they bring to things. Also, as a quick aside, during Rescue Diver training you have to practice getting a victim out of the water, and I had the not-so-good fortune of having one of these big navy guys as my partner for that exercise. I’ll just say that it was quite a site to see me trying to lift 220+ pounds of muscle on my back as I tried to drag my partner out of the water. Someone observing from the side might wonder who the “victim” really was. :-p
Yesterday we were scheduled to take a Nitrox diving class, but we didn’t have to because Andrea and I are already Nitrox certified. The air that we breathe has 21% oxygen and 78% nitrogen, and Nitrox is a blend of air that contains a higher percentage of oxygen (between 22% and 40% for recreational diving purposes). When diving, the body absorbs nitrogen as you go deeper, and releases it as you ascend, and this increased nitrogen in the body is what limits how deep you can dive and how long you can stay down. Because Nitrox blends have a higher percentage of oxygen and a lower percentage on nitrogen, it means that the body absorbs less nitrogen, allowing you to stay down deeper for longer periods of time.
Even though we didn’t need to take the Nitrox class, we did go on the dives that go along with the class, for two reasons. First, diving is fun, so it’s always good to get extra dives, especially recreational dives where we don’t have to practice skills and can just enjoy ourselves. And second, the dives for the Nitrox class were night dives! Night diving is super-fun! It is an entirely different experience because the water is dark and you can only see what is within the scope of your light. Diving usually feels like you’re in a different world, and this feeling is accentuated in night dives, where it looks like a group of lights floating through darkness. It is very cool. Think about taking a walk on your street at night (other than in a big city, where there’s not much difference). The same things are there, but the darkness brings out different sensations and your senses react differently. Night dives are like that. Also, you see different animals on night dives, as some creatures only come out at night to feed.
So last night we did two dives, both night dives and both Nitrox! Our first dive was a wreck dive, the Hog Heaven. It was 90 feet deep, and because we were diving Nitrox we got to stay down for close to 30 minutes. We got to see the wreck, lots of fish, and best of all, a HUGE sea turtle. It was very cool! Our second dive was on a shallow reef 30 feet deep. Nitrox has less of an effect at a shallow depth, because you can normally stay down for a long time at shallow depths anyway. But it was still a great dive, and we stayed down for about 40 minutes, shining our dive lights on all sorts of cool creatures, from turtles to lobster to eels. The shallow dive was a true night dive (the wreck dive was actually at twilight, so there was still some visibility, although you really did need a dive light as well), and it was a blast!
So today is our day off before Divemaster starts, and we’ll spend it basking in the sun and reading our divemaster manuals. I hope all of you enjoy your Sunday as well, and that you’re getting the same great weather we are. So until the next update…..
GO TEAM SCHMOOP!
Go team Schmoop, indeed!