Holy Diver Intro

[Granville Turley]

Thereis a pride and a sense of accomplishment in anything we do in life, whether its obtaining a pilots license, completing your first ski hill successfully, jumping out of your first airplane, or taking your first step as a diver and completing Open Water Certification.

In the business of diving, we have a couple of laid out progressions for us that guide us down a list of courses and experiences that get us to our end goal. For some its that they want to be a Master Scuba Diver, for others a Divemaster or Instructor, while other divers take a more serious path towards cave, wreck, or technical diving requiring more disciplined skill sets, better more streamlined equipment alternatives and are presented with a myriad of amazing course options after their first level of training which is a higher skills course like Intro to Tech.

Sharing Gas Deployment of your long hose regulator holding the hose, passing off with the mouthpiece up, second stage purge button free for diver to clear, while simultaneously switching to your necklace regulator, once obtained, release long hose to primary diver while un-tucking long hose from weight pocket or canister light on the right hip to fully deploy it. Skill is done neutrally buoyant, in trim, staring face to face with diver in need of aid.

Taking our Intro to Tech Course or a Solo Diver (Self Reliant Diver)course will introduce you to these basic skills with 2 different levels of skill performance and equipment configuration requirements.

Diving is an enthusiast sport of exploration, where we go and see the world and the many amazing things beneath that worlds surface, but like anything there are new environments and new experience to be had in each of those environments, whether its mastering how to deploy an smb and be able to send it up in a challenging dive environment with a strong current, or using a flashlight and learning how to communicate with your lights to your dive buddy and not blind everyone, to how to use an underwater scooter or DPV, run a line in a shipwreck or a cave, how to take underwater photos but stay still in one position without moving up or down/front or back, there are a range of environments to gain proficiency in and diving in all of them is the only true way to master your skills.

The fresh water diver who gets tired of the same boring down south reefs dons a drysuit and experiences what its like to scuba dive in Les Escoumins, British Columbia, Alaska or Newfoundland and finds that there are colours there that they never knew existed.

Working with 1 decompression/stage/pony bottle can be easy with practice to take on and off and gas switch to and re-stow the hose, whereas a second bottle can send you out of sync and make you feel like an open water diver all over again.

As a Dive Instructor our job is to mentor divers, shape them, and encourage them to live the diving life and enjoy the greatest sport in the world. Selling is a part of diving, selling the next big trip, charter, piece of gear, continuing education course, but if you only hear from your instructor when they need another body to fill a class, are they really looking after your best interest or theirs?

By providing amazing training, advice, engaging them on fun dives, encouraging them to dive as much as possible, while not on a course, but of course keeping in touch with them for all their training needs when you both together feel that moving to the next level is a viable option.

Career counselling for divers can be a fun, simple and easy thing to integrate into your dive store routine, while the students should always feel they have the ability to contact you about anything big or small.

By keeping an open line of communication and diving with your divers frequently, you can also see changes in their abilities and watch them progress, so of course you can invite them to come out and take their next level of training with you too.

Divers who see the challenge and embrace diving as their sport have a lifetime of happiness underwater and the training just keeps getting more and more challenging, fun, unique and the dives continue to upstage previous ones.

I firmly believe and I firmly encourage anyone interested in being a Divemaster or Instructor to become a Tech Diver or Cave Diver First. As a matter of fact, all of our Active DDS Instructors are certified Cave and or Technical Divers. These are true role models and experienced professionals in the industry.

Trust Yourself, be smart and look after yourself and ask yourself if you feel safe diving with someone who is too eager, too excited, too pushy or too unaware of their own diving abilities and seek alternate role models.

Recreational Divers Should Only dive Sidemount if they already have mastered buoyancy, trim, alternate fin kicks and are exhibiting demonstration quality execution of their Foundational Skills. Unfortunately many Sidemount Students who enroll at our store do not possess the skills or even the proper BCD.

At DDS, we teach our Sidemount Divers to be as streamlined and simple as possible. All of your accessories are located in the same places as your back mounted kit, with the only difference being the location of your main breathing tanks.

Here at DDS, we want all of our Instructional Staff to hold at least the level of Intro to Tech, while all of our Instructors are actually Cave Divers! This is a major reason why many of our DDS Students are more polished and better Divers than the other agencies highest qualified Divers.

The basic rules of cave diving aside (lights, thirds, gear, training, team, etc.), why do people think diving in an overhead environment is a good place for them? Especially if all they know is diving in a jacket bcd with plastic fins, a clear skirted mask and flutter kicking?

Since August People have been emailing asking or Ice Diving Training. UNLESS YOU ARE A CERTIFIED INTRO TO TECH OR TECHNICAL DIVER IN A DRYSUIT WITH DOUBLES OR SIDEMOUNT, YOU SHOULD NOT BE THINKING OF ICE DIVING.

We have seen more equipment failures in Ice Diving Courses than all levels of technical diving, recreational and cave diving courses combined. Diving Under the Ice is just stupid without the right gear and training.

In life nothing good comes easy without a fight or working to earn it, unless you win the lottery. The same can be true moving through a more Progressive Scuba Diving training philosophy where the divers are taught a higher level of knowledge, skills and techniques. Your Personal Challenges Will Reward Your Longterm Scuba Diving Goals.

As human beings we can always learn more and the same is true in scuba diving, except most dive training has become outdated and boring. All divers should be more aware of their dive profiles, gas requirements with proper gas reserves built in, no stop time limits and what is happening within their bodies as they spend more time underwater and as they ascend or descend.

If divers took more time to learn about dive planning, gas calculations, gas consumption, decompression theory and dive sciences, they would be much more ready to take diving to the next level. This knowledge can help us not just in diving, but also in every day life.

Divers who are taught to manage stresses underwater are more able to handle the every day curveballs life throws at you on a daily basis, as well as how to focus better on challenging tasks, yet the number of divers who progress through Advanced and Rescue diver courses drops as students seem less engaged in some graphic regions than before.

Divers who learn the foundational skills to make themselves a better diver and put the time in to become proficient in all aspects of their diving often become a much safer, more aware diver with superior team diving skills, refined buoyancy, flawless horizontal trim, proper ascents and descents, better fin techniques (utilizing a modified frog as their primary kick, modified flutter, ability to turn 360 degrees and do a reverse frog kick to go backwards) rather than flutter kicks, and exceptional problem solving skills. You even master surface marker deployment, rescue techniques, valve or regulator failures and more.

With the help of a Canadian Diving Pioneer John Reekie (passed away several years ago) we helped introduce the Canadian Diving Market to Technical Diving and Cave Diving gear and procedures as early as 1986! We were one of the first North American Dive Stores to offer Nitrox as an alternative breathing gas in 1992 when the traditional agencies were Anti-Nitrox and causing riots at dive shows because they honestly believed Nitrox to be Voodoo Satan Gas! True Story!

We began offering Progressive Doing it Right based (DIR Diving) training and equipment, including the offering of backplates to new open water sport divers a part of basic training and introducing recreational divers to the long hose/short hose regulator configuration or the Hogarthian method of diving.

In 2007 we began offering more modern and progressive Sidemount training. We are happy to be offering training on several different rebreather configurations, especially the modular and most versatile machine on the market, White Arrow Explorer Rebreather System, capable of any configuration.

Every recreational diver can benefit from our experience, the new skills that we offer and every day diving techniques that we introduce from basic open water programs. Horizontal Trim, Buoyancy, Team Awareness, S-Drills, Bubble Checks, SMB Deployments, Air Sharing horizontally in neutral buoyancy with a long hose regulator, Team Diving Protocols and more.

We believe Technical Diving is simply extending your range both with respect to knowledge, but also extending the scope of your abilities beyond what is known and offering new challenges along the way.

Our Intro course begins with the tightening up of the divers buoyancy and trim, cleaning up and streamlining the entire equipment configuration, introducing new surface protocols and pre-dive regiments like safety drills, SADD checks, Bubble Checks and Heat to Toe checks which improve safety and awareness.

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