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Let me begin, as I often do, with a short story.
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Something I try to do in my series of scuba books is identify and discuss disconnects between expectations and reality in scuba diving today.
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— This is the second piece in a two-part article, adapted from a chapter in my book, Scuba Professional – Insights into Sport Diver Training and Operations.
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It is this balance of risks that is often hard to understand when something goes wrong and a diver is killed, injured or has a really “scary” moment.
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— This is the first in a two-part article, adapted from a chapter in my book Scuba Professional: Insights into Sport Diver Training and Operations. Part two will be featured in the next issue.
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In the last Scuba Confidential column, I took a long, hard look at the buddy system and solo diving. Whatever you may feel about the issues, there are definite benefits—both tangible and intangible—to diving with someone else.
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Ego simply refers to self and how we feel about ourselves. This results in our thoughts, emotions and behaviour. Where an ego is arrogant, overbearing, misguided or delusional, then bad things can and often do happen.
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If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same...
Yours is the world and everything that's in it...
— excerpts from the poem, "If", by Rudyard Kipling
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Recently, while working my day job, I was at Heathrow Airport in London for three days to work with a group of very talented executives who ran a successful multinational company.
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Over the years, I have had the privilege of being involved in some fantastic teams, sometimes in a leadership role, sometimes as an advisor helping to form a great team, and in others, as a team member.
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But let's look at this seriously for a minute. Why do these things appeal to us? Why do we like to be recognised and to have a group identity?
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Until you get into deep trimix or cave diving training, there is little emphasis in diving qualifications on anything other than meeting performance-based skill standards.
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The buddy system, as it was originally conceived, was a procedure whereby two confident divers operate as independent members of a two-person team—with their shared equipment, experience and gas supply—making the team stronger and safer than its i
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Accounts of diving accidents hold a hypnotic fascination for us.
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Surprisingly perhaps it is not the most talented that always succeed.
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Much was made of dropout and failure rates, as if the quality of an instructor resided not in how many students passed the course but how many failed.
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