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I've received a bunch of interesting responses to the scenario I posed,
some copied to the list, and some in private email. I'm sending out
a summary in a separate message, but I would also like to mention a
few thoughts that floated through my head as I read those responses.
If you're tired of reading my babbling, just kill this message now.
It is true that not every situation we might encounter underwater can
be anticipated, and that we can't always prepare adequately for even
those that we can anticipate. I do believe, however, that awareness of
those situations we can't prepare for is an important part of dive
planning -- if nothing else, to give me a better idea of when I should
just stay out of the water, and to help me gauge my own acceptable
level of risk.
I think the "what if" game is most useful when the scenarios are realistic.
Examining situations that have actually happened -- accident analysis --
is an important educational tool (though not the _only_ one). It's not
just a thought exercise either. In more than one of the responses I
received, the answer started out not with "Here's what I would do," but
with "Here's what I _did_ when it happened to me." So we have the benefit
of not only the collective imaginations of the people on the list, but
also some real-life experience to draw on.
I'm a fairly new diver, just beginning to explore the edges of technical
diving. While I am getting formal training in the type of diving I want
to do, the training currently available for much of this kind of diving
ranges from limited to non-existant. I rely not only on what I learn
in a classroom or out at a dive site, but also on bits of information I
pick up from others who have done what I want to do. The 'net is a
wonderful place to find this information -- I can get a wide range of
possible solutions that aren't skewed by an individual instructor's
own experience or preferences. Even talking to others I dive with
doesn't give me as many different viewpoints, as they may also be
stuck in the "that's the way we _always_ do it around here" mindset.
I don't want to start a debate on the "best" solution to any particular
problem, I just want to hear some different options, maybe some of the
pros and cons for each, and figure out for myself which best fits the
dive I'm about to do. Since technical diving training hasn't yet (and
may never) reach a stage where there are strict standards or a "best"
solution to any given problem (I keep thinking of my PADI open water
class, where I learned the precise order of preference for the various
types of emergency ascents... with no indication of _why_ we'd want to
use one technique over another), learning to use the experience of others
and apply it to my own dives becomes a vital skill.
For those situations I may have to handle in "real time", having these
options floating around in the back of my brain may just save my life
someday -- those spontaneous reactions don't appear out of nowhere, they're
the result of lots of subconscious filtering and digesting of everything
we've seen or heard or done before. And since I haven't done much of it
myself, I'll plant the seed in my own head by reading and hearing about what
others have done. "Learn from the mistakes of others -- you can't live
long enough to make them all yourself."
--tab
--
Tracey Baker tab@pa*.co*
"I don't think safety is the main issue here...
You'd be stupid not to be safe." - J. Comly
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