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WARNING : TO BE AVOIDED PRACTICE Perhaps one of the scariest things I have ever witnessed in dive instruction happened last weekend. Bill Mee and I were doing a simple single tank trimix dive with 19 ox 20 helium and no deco gas , scootering a moderate wreck ( 170-80 max, 150 ish profile ), and an instructor had a single student for this dive. The student was a little shakey, her hair was all in her mask, she was sweating, she was nervous, etc, and was displaying all of the usual signs of stress. I helped her with her mask, not thinking much of it since it was none of my business, and helped her into the water ( her instructor had jumped in already). I grabbed my scooter , clipped in on and went, and as I was dropping down and coordinating with my buddy to get ready to hit the trigger, I saw her struggling. I buzzed to her real hard with the scooter, and grabbed her by the tank. At that point I saw a small piece of tape which read "25%". We can take that up in a minute. She was having an ear-clearing problem, so I lifted her with the scooter a few feet, and she cleared. I asked if she was "ok" via hand signal, and she returned it, and we continued down, only without triggering the scooter. We were at 70 feet, but the vis was good enough that I was able to see her instructor's bubbles down at the bottom, and we reached him as he was standing on the sand inflating his bc, but he had his back to us and did not see us. Bill and I leveled off with the student, who bounced off of the bottom and kicked up as well, and were wondering what the problem was when Bill gave me the "narced" signal and pointed at the instructor who was now wallowing in the coral on the gunwale of the wreck. Bill Gave me the "they never learn" signal. The student got herself stablized and chased after the instructor. We scootered off to have some fun. Later, when I asked her about the ear, she said she was aftraid to go back up to clear it since the day before the same thing happened, and she lost her instructor and missed the wreck. Forgetting the obvious here with the instructor, lets go back to the tape on the tank. Why do we have instructors teaching on narcotic mixes ( I saw the same "25%" on the instructors tanks later on the boat). This seems a little dangerous to me. I do not even like the student diving narcotic mixes, but having the instructor also on a narcotic mix does not make any sense to me at all. Am I nuts, or is this a case of drunk teacher teaching drunk student? Am I the only one who is seeing this, or is it common. I am sure there are not standards that actually say this is ok, so these guys must be in some violation of something other than just common sense. Anyone? -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send list subscription requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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