Diver training

From Free net encyclopedia

Diver training is essential for safe diving. Not only is the underwater environment hazardous but equipment such as SCUBA can be dangerous to the untrained.

Many diver training organizations exist, throughout the world, offering diver training leading to certification: the issuing of a C-card or qualification card. Reputable dive operators, dive shops and compressor operators refuse to allow uncertified people to dive, hire diving equipment or fill diving cylinders.

A good dive training organisation, such as a dive school based at a dive shop, will always offer courses to the standard of a recognised certification organisation, such as those listed below. Many dive shops in popular holiday locations offer courses that can teach you to dive in a few days, and can be combined with your vacation. Upon completing the course the student is issued a certification card.

Contents 1 Sources of diver training 2 Location of training lessons 3 Training topics 4 Scuba training for younger memebrs 5 External links

Sources of diver training

Many diver training organizations exist:

• Entry-level recreational SCUBA diver training organisations:
  • using professonal instructors. Examples of this type are PADI and NAUI
  • amateur instructors. An example of this type is British Sub Aqua Club
• Technical recreational SCUBA diving organisations. Examples of this type are IANTD, DSAT Tec (PADI), GUE and NAUI Tec
• Commercial diver training organisations. Train divers for professional diving using SCUBA, surface supplied diving and saturation diving equipment and techniques.
• National navies and armed forces. Train divers for ship maintenance, salvage and repair, rescue, mine clearance and covert operations using SCUBA and more advanced equipment and techniques.

Location of training lessons

Initial training takes place in three environments:

• Classroom - where material is presented and reviewed
• Pool - where skills are taught and practiced in confined water
• Open Water - where the student demonstrates the skills he or she has learned.

Typically, early open water training takes place in a local body of water such as a lake, a flooded quarry or the sea. Advanced training mostly takes place at depths and locations similar to the diver's normal diving locations.

Training topics

• Basic diving theory:
  • Diving physics
  • SCUBA Equipment
  • Physiology
  • Diving hazards and precautions
  • Diving signals
  • Buddy system

• Basic water skills:
  • Finning
  • Wearing a diving mask
  • Snorkelling
  • Shallow free-diving
  • Entering and exiting the water (ie. seated entry, ladder exit)

• Basic Aqualung skills:
  • Preparing the Aqualung
  • Buddy check
  • Breathing from an Aqualung
  • Buoyancy control using the Buoyancy Compensator and the lungs
  • Ascents and descents
  • Diving mask clearing and demand valve clearing
  • Air sharing
  • Air sharing ascent

• Basic Rebreather skills:
  • Preparing the Rebreather
  • Buoyancy control using the Rebreather
  • Ascents and descents
  • Diving mask clearing and mouthpiece draining
  • Bailing out
  • Bail out ascent
  • Diluent flush

• Dive planning skills:
  • Buddy system
  • Use of decompression tables
  • Use of Dive computers
  • Breathing gas requirement calculations
  • Safe dive site selection
  • Precautions for night diving and drift diving

• Dive leading skills:
  • Compass navigation
  • Underwater pilotage
  • Use of surface marker buoys
  • Use of decompression buoys
  • Use of distance lines
  • Use of diving shots
  • Decompression stops

• Diver rescue techniques:
  • Controlled buoyant lift
  • Towing a diver and landing a casualty
  • In-water artificial respiration
  • CPR on land
  • Oxygen first aid on land
  • General First aid

• Technical diving techniques:
  • Using Nitrox as a bottom gas
    • Analysing proportion of oxygen in a breathing gas
    • Calculating maximum operating depth of a breathing gas
    • Calculating equivalent air depth of a breathing gas
  • Using Nitrox as a decompression gas
    • Planning accelerated decompression stops
  • Normoxic Trimix as a bottom gas
  • Hypoxic Trimix as a bottom gas

• Vocational techniques:
  • Cave diving techniques
  • Wreck penetration
  • Underwater photography
  • Underwater videography
  • Underwater archaeology
  • Marine life identification
  • Marine biology

• Dive group leading skills:
  • Selecting dive sites using nautical charts
  • Tides and use of tide tables
  • Weather influences and prediction
  • Group diver rescue management techniques
  • Dive group safety, prevention and supervision
  • Underwater search and recovery skills
  • Underwater survey skills

• Logistical skills:
  • Boat handling and seamanship
  • Boat navigation and position fixing
  • Diving air compressor operation
  • Gas blending
  • Use of group equipment such as diving shots and decompression trapezes
  • Recompression chamber operation

• Instructor skills:
  • Teaching diving theory
  • Teaching personal diving skills
  • Teaching group diving, safety and rescue skills
  • Teaching boat handling, seamanship and navigation skills
  • Teaching instructing skills

Scuba training for younger memebrs

See About training younger children to scuba dive. Some clubs restrict younger children to snorkelling; some do not. Some clubs have a special name for their younger members' group: one word sometimes so used is "Tadpoles" (by extension from the word "frogman").

External links

• The British Sub-Aqua Club - BSAC Welcome
• Nautical Archaeology Society