Technical Dive Rescue… Is it Really so Different?

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Many of the protocols taught and practiced in the classic rescue diving courses are based on three situations and their derivations: Finding a lost dive buddy, helping a buddy in distress, and bringing an unconscious diver safely to the surface.

To some extent, the concepts and skills woven into these courses can also be applied to self-rescue, which means that a well-trained, well-practiced, certified SDI Rescue Diver is a good person to have around a dive site. But how well do these “open-water sport diving skills and techniques translate over to the TDI side of the diving equation?

In the broadest possible sense, a similar approach can be applied to technical dive teams when they experience trouble in the water. And when quick, appropriate action is needed to avoid serious injury or worse, sport-level training can be of use. However, in each of these three basic scenarios, there are some additional factors to consider before rushing in to “save the day.”

LOST DIVE BUDDY

Certainly the basic search techniques for a lost buddy taught in an SDI rescue class can be employed when searching for a lost technical diver, but there are a few details that mark the search for a technical diver as different, just as a sport dive and a technical dive share some common attributes but are really very different “beasts.”

Technical dives tend to be conducted in deeper water, in overhead environments, or in harsher general conditions, such as poor visibility and colder water: sometimes all of them at once!

Deeper water means breathing gas is used up faster (for both victim and searcher) and decompression obligations grow exponentially (five minutes of extra bottom time can require ten or fifteen additional minutes of decompression time for example). This too is a consideration for would-be dive rescuer and victim.

Overhead environments present their special challenges, and both caves and wrecks require special techniques to be searched safely and productively. Both environments may have complex passages and more than one way back to the surface. The first question should always be, is the lost diver still in there?

In some cases, a lost diver may have reduced visibility to zero by disturbing silt. This can be a double-edged sword. On one hand, it can give potential rescuers a clear indication of where to look, but on the other, it greatly complicates the task of finding, communicating and rescuing a trapped or lost diver. Without very specific training, the right equipment and a cool head, this type of rescue can very quickly turn both divers into victims.

Cold water and tough conditions (strong currents for example) can make the simplest search many times more difficult, and rescuers in these conditions have to be careful that they save some energy for the rescue and for the swim “home.” The catch phrase: “Don’t make a victim of yourself” is never more apt than in cold, tough conditions. Once again, training, kit and experience help in these cases.

DIVE BUDDY IN DISTRESS

Part of the pre-dive checks that TDI suggests include a self and buddy stress assessment. This, coupled with a strong buy-in to the techdiver’s credo: “Any diver can call any dive at any time for any reason,” does seem to help to minimize the incidents of technical divers panicking at depth.  But pushing beyond the comfort zone does bring the specter of panic closer for even the most experienced diver.  The emphasis on staying within the limits of the team’s training and experience, coupled with a focus on situational awareness as a required skill for technical divers, remains the best tool for helping manage “Buddy Distress.”

Another help in preventing panic is to work hard to make sure the dive starts with the best possible chance of going smoothly, and on this front there is nothing better than all divers working from a pre-dive checklist. CCR instructors and experienced divers have been pushing this practice for a while and there is starting to be a welcome overlap into the open-circuit community. A crucial element of a checklist is a thorough inspection of each diver’s kit with emphasis on “potential failure points,” such as hoses and o-rings. Prevention is the best policy when we consider the management of equipment failure at depth… one common cause of diver panic.

SURFACING WITH AN UNCONSCIOUS DIVER

This is never an easy task and it’s one that is made much more challenging when the diver is carrying the additional kit required by technical exposures. Also, with the rise in divers using SCR and CCR gear, some of the traditional protocols are out-dated and potentially dangerous for both rescuer and victim. In addition, the situation is made potentially worse when coupled with the requirement for staged decompression stops between the rescue point and the surface.

Each situation presents its own special needs, and the management of stage bottles, expanding drysuit, counter-lungs, wing, and a falling oxygen partial pressure during ascent all present a formidable challenge. The best possible advice to prepare for the very unlikely event that a diver has to bring an unresponsive diver back to the safety of shore or boat is PRACTICE. Remember in this type of situation, it’s results, not style, that wins points, AND surfacing with an unresponsive diver is easy when there is more than one rescuer!

TDI does not have a technical rescue diver program as such, because each TDI diver program contains components designed to teach risk management, rescue, and self-assessment and self-rescue. The secret to keeping these skills ready for actual use, as always, is practice. If you would like to improve your technical rescue diver skills, contact your local TDI instructor.

Take a look at TDI’s Decompression Procedures. Chapter eight has great information on problem solving procedures, including anticipating problems before they occur, entanglement, team separation, loss of gas, unconscious diver, missing boat and much more.

Contact TDI SDI and ERDI

If you would like more information, please contact:

TDI

Tel: 888.778.9073  |  207.729.4201

Email: Worldhq@tdisdi.com

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TDI’s Intro to Technical Diving

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Why should I take this course?


Ever wonder what it would be like to take your diving skills to the next level? Ever see the divers messing around with their “doubles” and wonder what it would be like to dive with those on your back? Have you ever thought that technical diving might just take the fun out of diving, but you want to give it a try anyway without the financial or time commitments usually associated to technical diving?

If you answered yes to any of the questions above, then TDI’s Intro to Tech is the class in which you you need to enroll. This is the perfect course for divers who have heard about technical diving and want to find out more about this exciting branch of advanced recreational diving. This course walks students through the special techniques, planning procedures and skills that set technical diving apart from traditional sport diving. It will show them how to improve their dive planning methods, in-water skills and streamline their existing gear configuration, in a non-threatening and fun learning environment. The specific skills this course will highlight are:

  • Advanced Buoyancy Control
  • Gas Management
  • Situational Awareness
  • Trim
  • Gear Configuration and Selection
  • Many More!

TDI’s Intro to Tech course is a useful stand-alone course for the diver who wants to become a more skilled, more proficient diver, regardless of if he intends to move on to technical diving. The course may also be used as an introduction to the TDI Advanced Nitrox course and the TDI Decompression Procedures course. Intro to Tech is strictly a no-decompression course; students are permitted to use enriched air nitrox (EAN) mixes, provided the gas mix is within their current level of certification. And finally, it is also a good refresher for certified technical divers who may want to refresh their skills or have them re-evaluated by a TDI technical instructor.

Don’t wait any longer…take the Intro to Tech course and start your new adventure into the realm of technical diving as an informed diver who is able to make the right choices for your continuing training in technical diving.

Contact your local TDI Dive Center and find out when the next course is set to begin. The academics for Intro to Tech are also available online and this means that you can get started right away!

Contact TDI SDI and ERDI

If you would like more information, please contact:

TDI

Tel: 888.778.9073  |  207.729.4201

Email: Worldhq@tdisdi.com

Web: https://www.tdisdi.com

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Air Management: More Than an Occasional Glance at an SPG!

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By Steve Lewis

You may have sat-in on dive briefings that end with the advice: “Please come back on board with at least 50 bar of air in your tanks (500 psi from US divemasters)… have a good dive.” As far as it goes, not a terrible thing to tell the average sport diver, but does it go far enough?

Ask a technical diver that question, and my bet is you’d get a resounding NO!

There are plenty of ad-hoc definitions pointing out the differences between a sport dive and a technical one, but certainly one of the most telling signs is that the dive plan for a technical dive is a bit more complex than a simple: “Let’s come back with 50 bar in our tanks!” In truth, most technical divers would get sweaty palms when the needle on their SPG hovers close to that level.

From the very start of technical dive training – a TDI Intro-to-Tech program for example – there are two basic rules that instructors and textbooks hammer away at constantly. One is a slight modification of the first rule of scuba “Never hold your breath: keep breathing.” That advice is still valid but in tech diving it becomes: “Always have something appropriate to breathe, because running out of air/gas is NOT an option.”

The second rule deals with trouble in the water. It states: “If something goes wrong at depth, it’s best to fix it at depth, because bolting to the surface is not an option!”  Because of rule one and two, it becomes apparent that proper gas management is somewhat more detailed than taking an occasional glance at an SPG, and as students in their first tech class learn, it takes planning and a little work to stay safe, but the benefits are well worth the effort.

Let’s take a brief look at what’s involved.

Gas management, or more precisely gas volume management, starts with knowing your personal gas consumption rate. It does not matter if you work in cubic feet or litres, the important starting point is to have a figure based on your actual breathing rate.

There are several ways to collect this information. Some TDI instructors ask Intro-to-Tech students to average out actual consumption from previous dives, but most will have students do “data collection” at a set depth for a specific time, noting starting and ending pressure. Back on the surface, these numbers are manipulated a little and used to produce a Surface Air Consumption (SAC) rate. This is the baseline number that will be used in future dive plans.

Some divers (and some instructors… me included) will take the calculation for this baseline even further, and will actually monitor resting consumption rate on the surface while doing nothing more energetic than watching a video or reading a book.  This number has to be modified with some extra loading to take into account the fact that diving puts a bit more strain on the body than sitting reading a book, but in my opinion, gives cleaner starting data.

Whichever method is used to arrive at the baseline, that baseline becomes a constant and we can plug it into all future dive plans. For the record, an average baseline SAC for a relatively experienced diver is around 14-16 litres, or about 0.5 to 0.6 cubic feet, a minute, and in many textbooks, a figure within this range is used for most examples.

The next step is to include the parameters of the dive into the gas management plan. The effects of depth, workload, and other dive factors such as water temperature, visibility, and so on are also considered.

These can vary tremendously. For example, one dive to exactly the same depth as another may require twice as much gas because of stressors such as poor visibility, colder temperatures and current.

At the end of this set of calculations including these highly variable “Dive Factors,” we have converted our SAC rate into something we typically call our Required Minute Volume (RMV). In other words, for a moderately simple dive to 30 metres or 100 feet, our average 14 litres or half a cubic foot of gas needed on the surface per minute can easily become 124 litres or 4.5 cubic feet of gas needed per minute.  That’s a big jump, but perhaps not a surprise.

The final step in this part of the planning process is to multiply our RMV by the scheduled time at depth.  Let’s say we intent to spend 30 minutes on the bottom.  Armed with this knowledge, we can multiply our RMV by 30 to arrive at the required volume of gas needed for the dive… in our example this final figure would be around 3700 litres or 135 cubic feet.

However we slice it, that is a lot of gas, and let’s remember that’s only the gas needed for the bottom time; we have to also consider the gas required to get back to the surface. More calculations including knowing what decompression stops we have to make on the way up and for how long… and what type of decompression gas we are going to use!

On top of all this, we also follow the golden gas management rules of technical diving: The Rule of Thirds for back-gas and the Rule of Halves for decompression gas.

Essentially (and in its simplest form) the Rule of Thirds states that we use one third of our starting volume for the first half of our bottom time (the swim in), one third for the second half (the swim out), and the final third as contingency gas. In effect, that last third belongs to our buddy, and remains untouched at the end of the dive (barring emergencies).

The Rule of Halves says that we take at least twice as much decompression gas on the dive as the plan calls for. This way, we have lots to share and lots of spare air if we get a free-flow or if we have to spend a little longer than planned decompressing.

The final cherry on top of the ice-cream sundae is matching up gas consumption to waypoints on the dive itself. For example, using the case of our 30 metre/100 foot dive for 30 minutes, we would probably have several “Go or Go Home” checkpoints earmarked. At a minimum, these would include one for arriving at depth, one for arriving at the focus of our dive, one for the turn-around point, and one for arriving back at the ascent point.

These waypoints would give each team member an opportunity to say: “Yep, I am fine, let’s go ahead,” or not depending on how they’re feeling and how their kit is behaving. In addition, it gives each team member an opportunity to check his or her actual gas consumption against the expected or budgeted gas consumption used in the dive plan. Their SPG should be used to confirm what they expect to see… and to do this we must first have done some calculations to translate volume into a reading on that SPG. For example in a pair of 14 litre cylinders, a one bar drop in our SPG translates to 28 litres of gas consumed. The calculations for imperial units is less simple, but inevitably we have to be able to read a gauge and work out for every 100 psi drop, we have burned through X number of cubic feet.

If this is starting to sound rather complicated, it is, but it’s not possible to explain a whole TDI course module in a few paragraphs… you have to take the course! And let me assure you that gas volume planning is far easier to manage than an OOA situation at depth when you have a serious decompression obligation to fulfill!

Take care and dive safe.

Steve is an active cave and wreck diver and instructor-trainer with SDI/TDI. He writes extensively on technical diving, diver safety, and risk management for open-circuit and closed-circuit diving. He has served on TDI’s TAP (Training Advisor Panel), and works as a marketing and product development consultant in the dive industry.

Contact TDI SDI and ERDI

If you would like more information, please contact:

TDI

Tel: 888.778.9073  |  207.729.4201

Email: Worldhq@tdisdi.com

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Rescue Diver Course: Recognition Before the Dive

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Scuba diving is intended to be a fun activity that allows you to experience the underwater world as its residents do, living among the sea critters, large and small.  The equipment that divers use allows for the adaptation of the ocean realm to our body.  If breathing out of a hose and having to wear a mask to see clearly feels weird; it is because it is weird.  Our bodies are not designed to breathe and see underwater and therefore, we have to adapt not only physically, but mentally as well.

It is important to recognize how you feel before a dive, because this will certainly be a factor in the level of enjoyment that you may experience during your dive.  It is perfectly normal to feel some nerves or to experience stress before getting into the water.  After all, assembling your equipment and getting kitted up is noted as being one of the most stressful time periods, as the diver is about to embark on an adventure into another world.

Having the jitters before a dive may also be a result of a degree of confidence. If you are a newly-certified diver about to have your 10th dive after certification, a case of the jitters is quite normal and frankly, if you weren’t, it wouldn’t be normal. Is this dive going to be difficult?  Am I prepared for this type of dive?  Am I properly trained?  Do I have the appropriate equipment for this dive?  These are all appropriate thoughts to be having and show that your mind is where it needs to be.

As you gain experience you’ll notice an increase in confidence in your skills, an increase in your ability to recognize right and wrong while still maintaining a normal level of nervousness. What you don’t want is to become so comfortable that complacency overrides your nervousness. Anxiety is perfectly normal, and can even be healthy as an indicator of your mental state of mind.   It is usually created by a mix of excitement…and who would not be excited prior to a dive?

It is important to be able to recognize panic or stress before a dive.  Going into a dive with the wrong frame of mind can lead to a dangerous experience.  It is always better to abort a dive and regroup, than to jump into a dive that may lead to a panic situation.  There are many reasons for levels of anxiety to reach dangerous levels including, poor gas management, lack of knowledge of the dive site, adverse weather conditions such as cold climates, surge, and rough water surface.

A large part of the diving instructor’s role, in fact, is in creating a comfort level that induces eagerness rather than anxiety and confidence rather than bravado in the student.  Still, many novice divers will enter the water with the thought that they will always be waging a life-or-death battle with hypothermia, malicious currents and insatiable predators. Stress is a predictable consequence of this train of thought.

Recognizing the signs of stress

  • Withdrawal
  • Constant talking
  • Inappropriate or ‘black’ humor
  • Hyperactivity
  • Gear fumbling
  • Moodiness

SDI’s Rescue Diver course will help you understand prevention of some of the leading causes of accidents relating stress and psychological factors including the panic syndrome in self.  It is important for divers to understand how to read signs in their own behavior, as well as that of their fellow divers.  Learn more about physical conditioning, equipment management, diver assists, surface and underwater rescues and diver first aid.  The SDI Rescue Diver class is not only designed to offer you knowledge in how to prevent unfortunate diving incidents from occurring, but how to properly deal with them in the event that they do occur.  You will find that divers will be much more comfortable after having the SDI Rescue certification and it is a fun class to take with your dive buddy, before heading off for a trip, be it a spouse, parent or offspring or your diving friends.

For more information on this topic, sign up for SDI’s Rescue Diver Course today at your local SDI Dealer.

Contact SDI TDI and ERDI

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The Self-Reliant Diver (Rescue Diving)

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The Self-Reliant Diver

Our view of scuba diving has probably changed somewhat from the time of our initial training program to the time when we’re ready to undertake Rescue Diver training. We’ve broadened our range of experience through repeated diving activities in, most probably, increasingly wider types of diving environments. We’ve learned new skills, ‘tricks of the trade’, amassed more knowledge, and dived with several, if not many, buddies. We’ve gained experience and improved our judgment, the two indispensable keys to safer, more enjoyable diving. Most of our beginner’s jitters and reservations have been conquered and we feel that we’re becoming the kind of diver we always wanted to be; reliable, capable and self-reliant. Self-reliant?

Self-reliance is as important an attribute as a diver can possess. If we haven’t given this much thought before, this would be a good time to do so. Admittedly, the ability to look after all our problems underwater without assistance from a buddy may not be the first thing that would occur to us when we consider what we need to dive safely. After all, the point was made time and time again in our training programs that we always dive with a buddy. This is a good rule that helps us increase our enjoyment of diving, brings people together in a shared social setting and gives us the confidence to explore new areas. So, where does self-reliance come in?

Imagine for a moment that you and your buddy are nearing the end of what has been a truly memorable dive: the walls were vertical and blanketed in the kinds of marine life seen only in the magazines, the warm water was clear enough to see from here to next week, and the prospect of relating the dive to envious friends back home beckons. Then you realize that your buddy is gone. Which of you is responsible for this: you, because you were daydreaming, or your buddy, because he stopped to take just one more photograph? Your own air supply is dwindling and you suspect that your buddy may have even less. It dawns on you that you’re not even sure where you are; you weren’t paying that much attention on the way back, and your buddy was doing the navigating anyway. What should you do?

Self Reliance

  • Understand your dive equipment
  • Take personal responsibility
  • Develop self awareness skills
  • Become more aware of your underwater surroundings
  • Plan for contingencies
  • Learn to handle your own underwater emergencies

Looking around more carefully, you see bubbles in the distance and swim to your buddy who’s trying hard to tighten a loose weight belt while balancing the camera and the demands of buoyancy control at the same time. With a little help from you, the crisis is quickly resolved and you’re both soon back on the boat again and reliving the highpoints of the dive. Some new lessons have been learned, too. Never again will you leave the navigation entirely in someone else’s hands, and you wish to seek out a buddy who is independently capable of looking after typical underwater problems without causing you moments of anxious concern.

SDI believes that all divers should be trained to be self-sufficient.  This means that each diver accepts the responsibility for his or her own planning, equipment and performance underwater. We are all ultimately responsible for our own safety and conduct on a dive. Any time our problems require assistance from our buddy on a dive, we disrupt the flow of the dive at the least and possibly endanger them at the worst. In fact what we strive to be is the ideal dive buddy; able to plan and lead the dive, capable of looking after most underwater problems, attentive and responsible. We can become better than we are by practicing and refining the basic skills of diving and by developing new skills and knowledge. Many of the new assessment and problem-solving skills that will make you an independently capable diver will be learned in SDI’s Rescue Diver course.  Along with this will come the knowledge that you’ll also become a more valuable dive buddy. We look forward to working with you to help you become a safer diver.

Contact SDI TDI and ERDI

If you would like more information, please contact:

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Air Management and the Importance of Learning Surface Air Consumption Rate (SAC)

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Scuba diving has come a long way over the years. In the early days, divers were equipped with the most basic of dive equipment, which included a cylinder with a “J” valve and no SPG. While this early equipment did allow for exploration and some basic safety protocols, there was certainly room for improvement. Along with that basic equipment was the primary knowledge that was passed on to future divers. This knowledge was gained from military and commercial applications and distilled down so it met the needs of recreational divers. Where is this short history lesson going – stressing the importance of air management!

Back to that J-valve, the basic concept was; if the J-valve was in the proper position (which was up) when the diver started the dive, once the cylinder reached a pressure of roughly 34 bar / 500 PSI, the diver would pull a bar that was attached to the J-valve down and get access to the reserve air for their ascent. Let’s just say this was not the perfect system for more than one reason. Another flaw was, it was not common for divers to be taught how to calculate their air consumption. Fast forward to today, and we have all the needed technology and the necessary information is right at our fingertips. There are dive computers that calculate our air consumption, decompression information and even our heart rate; we can’t ask for much more than that! The problem here is, not all divers dive with these types of computers. In fact, some divers don’t dive with any computer. So what is a good back-up system for divers that don’t have computers that calculate air consumption or don’t dive with dive computers? The surface air consumption or SAC rate formula.

The SAC formula helps a diver understand, on an average basis, what their air consumption will be at a given depth. This allows the diver to better plan how long their dive can be, giving two points for dive turn times: no decompression times and available air. The SAC formula is: SAC = (PSI at depth used/time) x 33/(depth+33)). To perform this in metric units, use bar instead of PSI and 10 instead of 33.

An exercise to perform which helps plan air consumption in various conditions such as currents, high workloads etc is to find a site where you can sit in one atmosphere of water (10 metres / 33 feet) and take three samplings of air consumption: resting, moderate workload and high workload. For the resting, using a slate to note your starting air pressure and sit or swim very lightly for 3-5 minutes, then note ending pressure. For the moderate workload exercise follow the same air pressure noting procedures, but this time swim at a moderate pace making sure to stay a depth of 1 atmosphere. For the high workload exercise, find an object such as a rock or wreck (something that will not move and where you will not damage marine life) note your starting pressure and place your hands on the object and try to push it while swimming, after 3-5 minutes note your ending air pressure. After performing these three exercises, you will have a clear picture of air consumption rates for low, medium, and high workloads.

The purpose and importance of incorporating air consumption into your dive plan is that the only reason you are able to stay underwater for a prolonged period of time is the air you have in your cylinder. If you do not know how long your air supply will last, or you are not tracking your air during the dive, you could run out and risk serious injury from a rapid ascent or not having enough air to perform a proper safety stop. In days past running low or out of air was a function of the equipment at the time (no SPG or dive computers) the limited knowledge available to sport divers and scuba equipment that was not built as well as it is today. Those times and reasons are far behind, and now a days there is no excuse for running out of air.

For more in-depth knowledge of dive planning and SAC, go to https://www.tdisdi.com/sdi/get-certified/Deep-Diver/ to learn more and locate an SDI Dive Center near you. With some basic precautionary steps in place your dives can be fun and enjoyable.

Contact SDI TDI and ERDI

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Wreck or Wreck

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Wrecks are one of those things that cause a lot of people to learn to scuba dive, but not all wrecks are created equal. For the sport or technical diver, the wreck is a piece of history or a location where marine life congregates, creating a colorful palette for the eyes or the photo opportunity of a lifetime. But some divers don’t see wrecks this way.

Public safety divers unfortunately dive on different types of wrecks. In fact, sometimes they never even see the wreck they are on, experiencing it by touch only. While there may be some common elements – an over head environment that does not belong in the water or sitting below the surface – this is where the similarities end. Even the training received in a sport or technical wreck diving course doesn’t really apply for Public Safety wreck diving. Sure you can learn how to manage confined spaces and how you are unable to make a direct ascent to the surface, but there is so much more to learn about diving on the wrecks that public safety divers experience.

There are some major differences in these dives that require Public safety divers to obtain special training. First, the wrecks are new, and still contain fuel oils and battery acids. The can also wreck be very unstable. Generally, it is a crime scene until ruled otherwise and thus wreck reels are not used for navigation. There is also a distinct possibility that the diver will not even see the wreck, but rather find it by running into it. The public safety diver does not know what to expect: the windows and doors may still be closed, requiring the breaking of glass and the cutting open of doors to gain entry. In some cases, the wreck may be lifted and pulled to the nearest shoreline before any doors or windows are opened. In addition, on should consider that most wrecks that are regularly dived by sport divers have also been cleaned of most entanglements. This is not the case for Public Safety Divers, making their dives more dangerous than those of recreation divers.

The best way for PS Divers to prepare for their kind of wreck dives is to take a specialized ERDI dive course. The course generally starts in a pool or controlled environment where the diver can start to understand the tasks they need to perform and the associated safety protocols. Eventually, the diver will perform all of these tasks in a blacked out mask and progress from a simulated aircraft fuselage (or car or boat), to the real thing. Working as a team, the target is identified and then the decision is made on how to proceed; leave the target where it is and perform a search or float it and bring the target to water’s edge.

When the time comes, it is best to be prepared and practiced. Part of being prepared means receiving the proper training, and not a “modified” course. Being prepared also means having the proper SOPs in place for the type of diving the divers will be performing,. For example, when it is a known overhead environment, it is common practice to send two divers in at once, rather than the normal procedure of only sending one. One diver will always remain on the outside in the event they need to assist the other diver.

Again, not all wrecks are created equal and remember the number one objective – bring back safely what YOU put in the water.

Take a look at our specialized ERDI dive courses >

SCUBA vs. Surface Supplied Air

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Číst dál

Public Safety Dive or Salvage Dive

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Let’s face it; public safety divers are called out to do all kinds of strange things. Why, because the people in the community (and the other departments) know that PS Divers work in some of the worst conditions and have a wide range of experience when it comes to accomplishing tasks both under and above the water. PS Divers currently work (in the US) under an Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) exemption. While there is some debate on the finer points of this exemption, there is no doubt that some actions/dives performed are clearly outside of its provisions. But when is a call for a PS team exempt and when is it not exempt?

It is not uncommon for a department to be called out for a vehicle, aircraft or boat recovery. Generally, PS divers are requested because there are missing persons or they are trying to determine the cause of the crash/sinking. The team willingly packs up their gear and heads to the scene and in most cases, if the team has the training, recovers the vehicle, aircraft or boat and safely brings it to the surface for closer inspection. Exempt or non-exempt dive?

A call comes in saying, ‘we have bridge pillars that need to be inspected, can the team come out and do it’. The team, looking at this as a good training exercise, packs up their gear and drives to the location. Following all normal SOPs, they gear up at a slower pace, get in the water and inspect the pillars. They also take this opportunity to put a couple of the ‘new guys’ in the water and establish a baseline topography should they ever be called to this site again. Exempt or non-exempt?

The phone rings and it’s a familiar voice a friend of one of the team members. The caller says their boat sunk on its mooring in the river during a storm. He knew the team wanted to do some training exercises (search and recovery, light lifting etc.) would the team be interested in taking advantage of this opportunity? They discuss the options and decide the conditions are good, the team could use the training and it will save money, so they mobilize. Exempt or non-exempt?

Harbor patrol comes by the station and says they saw some suspicious activity near the docks, stating “we thought we saw bubbles where we do not normally see them”. As harbor patrol is a credible source of information, the team mobilizes and arrives within an hour. Dive briefing starts with observations from previous inspections and PS dive team members are assigned respective areas of search. Exempt or non-exempt?

The message here is that exempt and non-exempt dives, can sound very similar and both are beneficial to the team. It is always good to get training dives in, and providing a valuable service to the community is what you are there for. But there are the downsides to non-exempt calls as well; you need to be fully OSHA compliant for commercial diving activities and your department insurance may not be in effect leaving high liability exposure and no workers comp.

A basic rule to live by is: if it is not for potential saving of life, or limb or part of an investigative process, it is outside the OSHA exemption.

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The Value of a Wreck Diving Course

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Wreck4

Photo Provided by Bill Downey

Many divers think that wreck diving is the most exciting underwater activity that you can pursue. Whether you are exploring the liberty ships or submarines off the east coast of the U.S., the WWI German fleet off Scapa Flow in Scotland, “wreck alley” off San Diego, or the galleons off the Florida keys, there’s something about shipwrecks that stirs most divers into a frenzy. Perhaps it’s the thought of finding sunken “treasure,” the chance to photograph the guns on a warship, or the beauty of a wreck as it slowly becomes an artificial reef that lures you.

Shipwrecks are bits of history, frozen time capsules of the era they sailed, even on the day the ship went down. To explore a shipwreck is to learn about the past. Once you visit a wreck, you’ll almost always want to know more about it. Or, you may learn about an undiscovered wreck and feel the urge to research it and locate it for diving.

The wreck of the Royal Mail Steamship Rhone is an example of a classic shipwreck and one of the most picturesque wrecks that you can explore. She sank in 1867 in a violent hurricane that ripped through the British Virgin Islands. The huge open end wrenches used to work on her engine are still in place, as are the cannons used to defend her. You can see the crow’s nest, the mast, and many other parts of the engine and ship’s fittings.

As you become involved with shipwreck diving, you’ll undoubtedly want to know why each wreck sank, how it sank, and when it sank. The stories behind wrecks are almost always fascinating to discover!

Additionally, shipwrecks are great places to see marine life, because they provide hiding places and opportunities for both small and large marine creatures. Lobsters can be found inside ship’s cabins, under deck plates, and inside masts and pipes. Barracuda swirl around tropical wrecks. Tiny fish known as “glassy sweepers” school by the thousands inside warm water wrecks around the world. Soft corals wrap their tentacles around the railings of old freighters and spiny oysters grow on any available surface. Yet, the shape of the wreck can still be seen beneath these mantles of living creatures.

For underwater photographers, shipwrecks present an infinite variety of photographic opportunities, whether you want to shoot macro close-ups or wide angle. You can capture images of tiny, colorful starfish living on the hull of a ship, or frame a diver examining a giant ship’s propeller. If you shoot video, your viewers can make a “virtual” dive by watching your explorations on tape or computer.

The experiences, tips, and techniques in SDI’s Wreck Diving Course are the result of many years of diving. This course will cover, in considerable detail, all the elements of diving from both commercial charter vessels and private craft. Everything from how to stow your gear, to applicable local and government regulations will be discussed, along with valuable explanations of methodology and etiquette. And since many sites require divers to deal with currents, we have incorporated special instructions on drift diving practices as well.

You’ll find this text to be a valuable resource on an exciting subject. We’ve enjoyed putting it together and hope you’ll enjoy the wonderful benefits of boat diving and the exploration of wrecks as much as we have. Good diving!

SDI Wreck Diver Course –

SDI Wreck Diver eLearning Course –

TDI Advanced Wreck Diver Course –