Underwater Wakulla
By RUSTY MILLER
Instructor and training.In this article I would like to talk to you about being a scuba diving instructor. I know in several past articles I have shared with you about open water, advanced, rescue, and dive master scuba divers certification. I’m going to give you some insight that I have gotten over the more than 30 years as a scuba diving instructor.
All instructors are not the same, even though we teach pretty much the same standards from several different agencies. I will not go into the different agencies, whether one is better than the other, which would be a fool’s errand. What I can say to you is that no matter what agency you have used or want to use; they all have the same standards we teach to. There are no federal or state agencies that regulate the scuba diving industry other than DOT – which regulates the standards for the high pressure scuba tank and its transportation.
I have been a certified instructor with several different agencies over the years. For one reason or another, I have changed agencies based on my likes or dislikes of the internal workings or I just don’t agree with their leadership on changing the standards just to make a profit or the elimination of a standard just because the leadership doesn’t like it. Pretty much most instructors have had several instructor certs from various agencies over the years.
I’m what you would call old school when it comes to diving instruction but I’m also a practical instructor when I teach. I have set in stone priorities that I will not compromise on. My biggest one is the student’s safety. To me I will not allow any student to do just enough to pass a skill but do it over and over until they are comfortable with it and I am confident they can do it well. The student has to know that I am truly concerned with their safety, comfort, and the ability to have fun and enjoy their new found sport of scuba diving.
I have seen many instructors over the years that treat their students like a dollar sign and don’t really give attention to the different pace that people learn new skills. They try to put as many students as they can through a course and are not too concerned about the overall safety after their certification is complete. Those types of instructors usually never stay in the business too long. It’s the instructors that have a passion for the sport and the individual they teach. Being an instructor in this sport is a lot of responsibility and you have to understand that you are responsible for the safety of the folks you teach.
Through the years I have seen a lot of improvement in the type of scuba gear versus what was used 30 years ago. The gear has become more reliable and safer to use. This certainly does not take away the responsibility of the instructor for the safety of the students. Let’s look at dive computers as an example. Dive computers have gotten very advanced over the years, so much so that certain scuba agencies have pretty much stopped teaching the use of dive tables. I too have gotten used to my dive computer because it not only gives me the contact pressure reading in my scuba tank, it calculates during my dive my air consumption and lets me know that if I stay at depth how long my air will last and my nitrogen and oxygen saturation will be.
Does this mean I stop teaching the dive tables? NO. I still go through the tables because not everyone can afford an expensive computer plus if something happens and that computer dies while you are diving, what then?
I tell my students that when I dive I keep a set of dive tables in my BC pocket, an extra submersible pressure gauge on my regulator, a depth gauge on my BC, and an analog type dive watch on my other wrist. If my computer dies I will know what depth, time and air pressure I have so I look at my dive tables and figure how much longer I can stay down.
It is a very redundant system but I owe it to my students to be prepared for the unknown possibilities under water. Next article I will give you my impressions on the modern BCDs.
Until then keep making bubbles.
Russell Miller is the manager at Wakulla Diving Center in Medart. NAUI Instructor #59999