The Sport Diver Team Meet Brad And His Pressured Novices.

Mark Evans, if you didn’t know, is the editor of Sport Diver Magazine, the official PADI publication in the U.K and in December's issue he uses his Editor’s letter column to relate some disturbing incidents that he and his team witnessed whilst on a trip to Malta and Gozo. Here are the relevant (verbatim) bits from Mark’s missive.

Our trip was sadly marred by bad weather, namely strong winds which rendered many sites off limits, yet I was shocked that some independent groups of divers were still attempting to get in, or had got in, at sites that experienced centres had deemed unfit. At one location, I saw three well-known centres rock up in their vans; the instructors surveyed the conditions, and then called the dive, heading off to find more-suitable surroundings for their divers. Yet there were a group of obviously fairly inexperienced divers who were being badgered and cajoled by their group leader that “it was fine” and “this is what we are trained for”, Christ, these were pleasure divers, it wasn’t a Special Forces drill!

At another site, I saw a couple who were clearly novices, and they had a bit of a battle getting out of the water due to the swell washing up and down the ironshore. Their instructor was stood up above them on the shoreline helpfully telling them to hurry up but not offering them any assistance!

So please, whether you are diving in Malta and Gozo, right here in the U.K., or anywhere else for that matter, make your own mind up about the conditions and whether you want to dive. Do not feel pressured to get into the water – any instructor or dive leader worth their salt would not make you do anything you didn’t want to do. And remember if you do go in despite your reservations and it all goes horribly pear-shaped, the odds are that the person who ends up in serious trouble will be you, not your instructor. 

 

Hello, we're your dive leaders for today's pleasure trip - lock and load wimps!

Oh Mark, you’ve made us so happy we want to have your children! Finally someone associated with PADI has spotted what we, and many likes us, have been banging on about for what seems an eternity. Namely, that the world of diving is stuffed to the rafters with Brads; those moronic, badge wearing, hyper-egos who equate being a dive team leader/instructor with being a member of an elite commando unit and consequently tend to get people injured or killed due to their habit of being controlled by their testicles and not their brains.  And Mark, we are also delighted that you have brought to a wider audience our own little piece of advice that we have regularly exhorted on these pages, which is: your safety is, at the end of the day, your own responsibility. There are just a couple of things we like to raise however. We are not sure what you mean by “independent groups” but by the way you highlighted this we assume that they were not PADI registered which, again we assume, means that you are trying to distance the PADI organisation from such events. This would be unwise Mark and a little naive. Just take a peek around the web for diving deaths/incidents and you’ll find that, from Australia to Belize, an awful lot of divers who’ve lost their lives were in fact under the care of PADI registered centres/operations. Brad is everywhere Mark, everywhere!

Then there is something that we found rather disappointing, both your advice and our own requires the “novices” to do something that is often quite difficult, which is to challenge the diver leader/instructor. A lot of people Mark, don’t like confrontation and those who are very inexperienced have no reference point, they are being told to do something by someone who is covered in badges and is “supposed” to be experienced and subsequently “knows what they are doing”. Now we, and you Mark, know that isn’t always true but here’s a thing. You Mark are the editor of Sport Diver, you were with the Sport Diver team and yet you didn’t seem able to challenge those independent instructors either! Could you not have intervened Mark? Could you not have wandered over with your cohorts, flashed your own badges and told those novices that they didn’t have to do anything they didn’t want to? Because Mark, it is a very bad thing for those who are supposed to be the experts to lead those without experience into dangerous situations but it is just as bad, if not worse, for those who are experienced, those who realise that it is just a pleasure dive and not a Special Forces Drill as you say, to just stand there on the sidelines like a bunch of gormless rubberneckers at the scene of a car crash. We would have challenged Mark, we would have said something; in fact we would have ridiculed the instructor mercilessly and deflated their ego very quickly. We hope the next time you see something similar that you and all the other experienced divers out there will do the same. Because in truth Mark, the safety of novice divers is not just the instructors’ responsibility it’s everyone’s responsibility. So next time, don’t just stand there thinking this will make a good few column inches Mark - do something!

Badges! We don’t Need No Stinking Badges. PADI Launches Freediving Courses

Do you want to be a freediver? Perhaps the thought of descending to depths of 100 metres or more on a single breath gets you all excited. Perhaps you’re a mainstream diver who’s tired of strapping on all that equipment every time you go in the water, tired of scaring away all that marine life with your bubbles and Darth Vader breathing noises. Or perhaps, the thought of having to spend another small fortune to buy another piece of unnecessary “technical” kit just to keep up with the diving Jones’ has finally got to you. Maybe you’re a new age, mystical sort of person who adopts the lotus position whenever you can and believes freediving could help you get closer to nature, to balance your life, to free your mind whilst you free your body of oxygen. Altogether now.. Ohmmm. Perhaps you’re the sort who’s looking for a new challenge and the thought of pushing your body to very edge of it’s physiological capabilities in search of competitive glory is the very thing, or perhaps you just fancy Tanya Streeter and want to see her in that bikini close up. Or maybe, just maybe, you’re the sort of person who just thinks that being able to descend to twenty-metres for a few minutes at a time unencumbered by tanks, regulators, and people called Brad would be a bit of fun when you go on holiday. Now, whichever category you fall into, you’re probably thinking to yourself that you should get some training before you take the plunge so to speak. Freediving, after all, is rather dangerous and at its competitive zenith it can be positively fatal but where do you get that training?

What a reason to Freedive!

Luckily there are a multitude of training organisations out there ready to teach you to stop breathing in exchange for cash and in this very month, PADI is launching its own freediving courses. The course tiers will be PADI freediver, PADI advanced freediver and PADI master freediver. There will also be several grades of instructor, freediver instructor, advanced freediver instructor, master freediver instructor and finally freediver instructor trainer. A basic freediver course will also be included which, according to PADI, will prepare swimmers for freediving in “confined water”.

When we first heard that PADI was going to launch it’s own freediving courses our little group immediately thought of the Mel Brooks film Blazing Saddles and one scene in particular where the Mexican bandits refuse to be deputised by the films villain. Offered the deputy sheriffs badge, the moustachioed brigands reply with heavy accents: “Badgeez! We don’t neeeed no steenkin' badgeez! PADI likes badges and judging by the bewildering array of tiers they’ve developed they’re going to have a lot of badges to sell wannabe freedivers. This is probably being a bit unfair on PADI, as we say there are a whole host of companies, associations and operators out there offering freediving training and all of them have structured tiers of training with equally ludicrous titles and there is currently nothing to suggest that PADI’s courses will be any better or any worse than those already available.

With so many training organisations out there then, which one should you chose? Well before you hand over your hard earned cash in exchange for a few days training and a badge that can be eventually sewn onto your bodybag we’d like to offer you some humble advice.  Before you do anything you need to speak to an independent expert – your doctor. Tell him or her that you want to learn to freedive and this means holding your breath for long periods. If your doctor suggests you should probably stop smoking first or that your morbid obesity, diabetes, incompetent heart valve, that pacemaker you’ve just had fitted or the fact you cannot swim makes you singularly unsuitable for freediving we think you should probably stick to a little light gardening. If however your doctor can find no medical reason why you shouldn’t go freediving we suggest you go and have a look at the freediving clubs in your area. Clubs are a great way to meet like-minded people and get a feel of the experience and quality of the available training. The club may well have their own instructors or be able to direct you to instructors they’ve used before. Speak to the instructor face-to-face, find out how they trained, what their experience is. This will give you a sense for the depth and quality of the training they offer. There are many experienced divers out there, but just because they are experienced doesn’t mean they can teach. We’ve met a lot of divers with instructor badges sewn onto their baseball caps and some of them are, to be blunt, damn idiots. So finding an instructor that can teach and that you trust is imperative. You are, after all, putting your life in their hands.

Make sure that the company/club that is training you is freediving based. What we mean by this is that the company or club was established and run by freedivers. A good example of this is Freediving Instructors International or Performance Freediving, which were established by Martin Stepanek and Kirk Krack respectively. Check that the courses on offer have an AIDA equivalent. AIDA is the international freediving umbrella organisation for competitive freediving. We also suggest that you speak to or join your countries national freediving association who will be able to offer advice and guidance on training, clubs, competitions etc. Finally remember that a couple of days training does not mean you are an expert. Freediving is a competitive sport, SCUBA diving is a recreational sport and there is a big difference in the type of training and type of people you will come across. That doesn’t mean that you cannot be a recreational freediver but it does mean that you have to really understand your own limits. Don’t be pressed or bullied into pushing those limits by others who are overly competitive or talk nonsense about “mystical experiences” and in freediving you will meet these people. Freediving is, by its nature, inherently dangerous so start by enjoying yourself and build slowly, very slowly, or you will kill yourself. Finally, remember that the training you undertake should be about knowledge gathering. It should equip the mind and body to deal with the demands of the sport, it’s not and never should be about collecting badges. As those Mexicans in the film said: Badges! We don’t need no stinking badges – even if they’ve got the word “master” on them. 

Diving Safety