The 20 foot long hose is the perfect tool for the of back-to-basics training we
offer in ESM. Many divers get so focused on their gear that they lose awareness of what is going on with their bodies. By taking away all the equipment,
we take away all the distractions. What remains is for students is to focus
on themselves: their bodies, their skills. Then, as we give the students their
equipment back piece by piece, they learn to maintain the same buoyancy,
trim and positioning they had in their swimsuit. As the ESM class progresses,
the looks of increased comfort and confidence on the students’ faces are
priceless. By the end of the class, it’s the same old equipment, but with a
brand new diver underneath it all.
While the in-water portion of ESM is packed with revelations, the ESM
classroom session also rewards the experienced diver. For many students, the
biggest “aha” moments come during the Neutral Buoyancy and Min Deco
discussions. In Neutral Buoyancy, students discover why it’s dangerous to
carry all their weight in ditchable pouches, and how wearing a thick (7mm)
wetsuit for dives past 60 feet (19m) can be fatal in the event of a BC failure. These are topics that are rarely
discussed even in advanced recreational training at other agencies. These subjects provide another great opportunity to show students how the UTD approach is so different from their previous training experiences.
The biggest revelation many students have in the ESM classroom session is how Min Deco removes their
need to rely on complicated dive tables or the mysterious blinkings of their dive computer to safely execute
recreational dives. They are always surprised how easy it is to calculate Min Deco time on the fly, using
simple Scuba Math. During a day of repetitive diving, they will also feel better and have more energy doing
nice slow Min Deco ascents, instead of rocketing straight to 15 feet for a single 3 or 5 minute safety stop.
Hopefully this benefit of Min Deco will become clear on their next boat or live-aboard dive trip. They’ll be
getting ready for their fifth or sixth dive of the day when nearly everyone else has called it quits.
By the end of the class, everyone is
tired, happy and grateful. Most students
have been able to shed weight from their
systems, and they go home with multiple
new insights on their diving. I leave my
students with the hope that they send
me photos of themselves later on, shots
that show them in the water having fun:
happy, neutral, and in trim.
Peter Vanags UTD Instructor, San Diego,
CA, USA
The results: new diver’s explore the Caribbean after ESM.