I like to tell people that in Utah, we do things a little bit differently. Utah is the second driest state in the United States. We don’t get that much rain and snow. What we do have, though, is mountains. Mountains are formed by earthquakes, and the earth’s crust is somewhat thinner here. That means we have hot springs. Some are small and only result in a bit of steam or the occasional bit of fog in the winter. Others are big enough to dive in. Some of our hot springs are on land that has been developed. They are times of the year when you can go skiing in the morning, shoot a round of golf and then make a night dive. That night dive can be in 95F/35C water! All dives in Utah are Altitude dives (over 1000feet/300m above sea level). Normally, we warn divers to avoid getting cold when altitude diving. In Utah, we have to warn them about getting too hot.

Enter the Hot Spring Diver PADI Distinctive Specialty course. When diving in new and different situations, you should receive appropriate training. When you dive in hot water, you should know what you’re getting in to.

The Hot Spring Diver specialty course covers:

• where do you find hot springs
• planning for diving in hot springs
• preventing problems with hot spring diving (hyperthermia and dehydration)
• Making two hot spring dives

If you learned to dive in the Intermountain West, chances are you’ve been in a hot spring. If not, you should try it. If you have, remember you can always learn more about the dive sites and how to be better and safer divers. Some hot springs are only slightly warmer than the nearby mountain lakes. Some are hot enough that they can only be safely accessed during winter. Others are so hot that you will be burned if you enter them. Be informed. Be prepared. Become a Hot Spring Diver!

Learn more about Hot Spring Diving here.

Adventure of a lifetime or a lifetime of adventure? I’d choose the lifetime of adventure, myself. With Scuba, you can explore that unknown of the underwater world. Adventure in a nutshell, right?

If you read my recent blog post on the PADI Open Water Diver course, you know that it’s undergone some revisions. For the longest time, we’ve been teaching divers to dive with them on their knees or sitting. Up until the recent course revision, I would have objected: we don’t teach divers to dive on their knees or sitting on the bottom. There’s one step further. In the PADI Open Water Diver course, we teach the basics of how to set up and operate SCUBA equipment and basic skills to handle problems that might occur underwater. Unless you’re an instructor, you aren’t going to learn to dive just so you can remove and replace your mask underwater. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to be an instructor, but as divers we’re on this adventure to explore and to SEE things! Continuing education courses take you from the basics to doing what divers do for fun.

Let’s take a look at the normal progression. After the Open Water Diver course, your next step could be the PADI Adventures in Diving program, leading towards wither the PADI Adventure Diver or PADI Advanced Open Water Diver certifications (or both). Adventure Diver and Advanced take you three or five dives focused on a specialty area of diving. I like to think of it as the beer sampler from your local pub. PADI Adventure Diver requires that you complete any three adventure dives. For example, completing a night dive, a fish identification dive and a digital underwater photography dive. Advanced Open Water might sound a bit daunting. You might think you need to be an advanced diver to take it. Rather, it’s a way to advance your skills and knowledge to make you an Advanced Open Water Diver. The only difference between Adventure Diver and Advanced, other than the number of dives is that for Advanced you need to complete a deep dive and a navigation dive.

Alternatively, after Open Water, you can take Specialty diver courses. While the Adventures in Diving program is the beer sampler, the Specialty Diver course is the pint or even a pitcher of your favorite brew. Here, you’ll go into the specialty diving area in depth (sorry for the pun…kinda). You’ll typically make two to four dives in that specialty area. Here’s the cool part: the adventure dives from your Adventure Diver or Advanced Open Water course can count as the first dive of the specialty course. Similarly, the first dive of each specialty can count towards Adventure Diver or Advanced. I’ll be talking about other specialties in blog posts throughout the rest of they year, so stay tuned for more details.

Divers using a lift bag as part of the PADI Search and Recovery Specialty

Once you’ve completed at least Adventure Diver, you’re ready to take the next step (assuming you’ve also completed a navigation adventure dive): Rescue Diver. Again, this may sound daunting. We’re not looking to turn you into a public safety diver that recovers cars, evidence and bodies. Rather, you’re trained to be more aware of the divers around you and learn how to not only react to but preferably prevent problems. You’ll learn about equipment problems, psychology of rescue and how to manage an emergency scene. You’ll also learn CPR and First Aid, skills that apply in diving and non-diving circumstances.

If you look at the PADI Continuing Education flowchart, it looks like there is a fork in the road here, but not really. It may look like you have a choice, either become a Master Scuba Diver or become a Divemaster. You don’t have to do just one or the other. In fact, if you’re looking to become a Divemaster, I’d also suggest you become a Master Scuba Diver. “What’s the difference?” I hear you asking. A PADI Master Scuba Diver has completed PADI Adventure Diver (with the PADI Navigation Adventure dive), PADI Advanced Open Water or an equivalent, completed PADI Rescue Diver (or equivalent), has completed five(5) PADI Specialty Diver Courses and has logged at least fifty(50) dives.

Divemaster is the first of the professional levels. To start down the path as a PADI Divemaster, you need to complete the PADI Rescue Diver course (or equivalent) and have logged at least forty dives. Then, you’ll complete extensive training in diver supervision (both students and certified divers), dive management, dive physics, physiology and equipment and learn more about the business of diving. To complete the program, you’ll need to have completed all academics and in-water training and logged a total of sixty(60) logged dives. From my point of view as an instructor, the ideal Divemaster is also a Master Scuba Diver. That way you know what goes on in Specialty diver courses and are in a better position to help out.

What’s next? Instructor-level training and Instructor-level continuing education. There is much to be said here, so I think I’ll leave that for some future blog posts.

PADI has had the most popular entry-level scuba course in the world market for years, the PADI Open Water Diver Course. In 2013, they released a revision of this popular program with some great enhancements. Suggestions from divers over the past several decades and input from PADI Instructors around the globe went into this revision. Why change a program that has worked amazingly well? [PADI certifies the majority of Open Water Divers around the world, often 75-85% each year.] Input from what divers want and what they found out when they left the course as well as ways to make divers safer.
 

Enough about how great the PADI Open Water Diver Course is, let’s look at what goes on in the course. The course is broken up into three segments: knowledge development, confined water and open water. What does that mean?

Knowledge Development: when I learned to dive, this meant reading a chapter in the student manual, then going to a two-hour lecture where they showed a video, actually lectured from slides and then had us take a quiz. Who has time for that these days? [We can still do it, if you want, but…] We’ve options for this now. There are five sections in knowledge development. You can do independent study with the course manual and DVD, then we just meet and do a quick review and take a quiz for each of the first four sections and a final exam for the fifth section. Or, you can complete eLearning, an online version of the manual and video. Then we don’t even meet for quizzes. You only take a quick review quiz when you’re completely done with knowledge development. Coming later in January 2013, Open Water Touch will be released for Apple iOS products like the iPad (Android version following later in first quarter 2013). This is an app for your tablet. Once it’s installed, you don’t need an internet connection—great if your connectivity is iffy or if you’ll be traveling. For this version, we’ll still meet for quizzes and a final. Open Water Touch brings the best of all worlds in an interactive learning environment you can take with you. That’s the way to go.

Kids as young as 8 can explore the underwater world.

Confined water: Pool training if there’s a pool, or open water that has pool-like conditions if there isn’t a pool. Let’s face it, you don’t learn to dive from reading a book or watching a video. The Knowledge Development section supports you learning the motor skills of diving. This is one of the places the revised PADI Open Water Diver course shines. We used to teach and evaluate most skills with you kneeling on the bottom. Divers don’t dive kneeling on the bottom. In fact we heavily encourage you don’t even touch the bottom in an open water environment, but we’ve been training that way for years. Now, we try to get you, the new diver, into a trim and neutrally buoyant position early in the program. While we used to make sure you were competent with the skills, as Instructors we didn’t always know if you felt confident about them or if you could apply them in a situation where you weren’t kneeling on the bottom. The revised course fixes that. We also spend more time on planning your dives, so you’re not relying on an instructor to plan every dive you ever go on.

Open Water: Confined water was a good place to teach, but it was a pool or pool-like. The ocean is big. I mean really big. No four walls like on your pool. Pools typically don’t have waves and they’re typically no deeper than 12ft/4m. You need to practice what you learned in confined water in a much bigger environment. Some sites require you to use a boat to get there, others require a bit of a walk over rocks or with mud—things we can’t really simulate in a pool. You’ll practice skills on three dives and your fourth dive will be one you plan with your buddy under the Instructor’s supervision. Your instructor will closely supervise the dive. If you had some issues on the third dive, your instructor might also do some additional training with you before letting you conduct the portion you and your buddy planned. These four dives will be conducted over at least two days. Depending on your dive environment and logistics, your instructor might also integrate skills and specialty techniques for the environment and you might be able to earn an additional specialty certification at the same time as your PADI Open Water Diver Certification, for example the Altitude Diver Specialty if you’re diving at Altitude or Boat Diver if you’re doing all the dives from a Boat.

After successfully completing all three sections, you will earn the PADI Open Water Diver Certification. This is probably the best recognized diver certification in the world. While you only have to earn this certification once in your life, if you’re not diving often, your knowledge and skills deteriorate. You should plan on diving frequently or completing additional training or, at a minimum, refresher training before you make dives after a period of inactivity.

Why Dive?

If you’re a diver, you know why. If you’re not a diver yet, let’s talk about why you should dive.
Chances are that if you’re viewing this, you’re interested in diving. Maybe a friend told you about how cool it is. Or maybe you’ve seen one of the Drop Zone movies. Or maybe you’re old school and remember Jacques Cousteau or Sea Hunt and have always wanted to try it.
Our planet is misnamed. Nearly three-quarters of the planet called Earth is actually covered in water. Divers get to explore that space. When diving, divers strive to be neutrally buoyant—weightless. NASA only accepts a handful of people to become astronauts, so short of being part of that incredibly small minority or paying a ton of money to become a space tourist, SCUBA is you can experience weightlessness.

In fact, NASA actually trains astronauts in an aquatic environment at the Neutral Buoyancy Lab. In fact, the Neutral Buoyancy Lab is one of many places for professional divers to work. Maybe you’re not looking for work, so let’s focus on the adventure.
It’s been said that SCUBA is ‘fun.’ SCUBA is more than fun. It’s an adventure. For those of us that walk on land, there are very few places that are unexplored—back to that lingering twenty-five percent of our planet’s surface. Underwater, there is a chance you can see something that no one, I repeat NO ONE, has ever seen before. In fact, several new species of aquatic organisms are discovered each year.
SCUBA diving can be done pretty much wherever there is water. For example, I live in the second driest state in the US (by rainfall, not other metrics). We have a very active local diving community. BUT…SCUBA is your gateway to exotic travel. The Caribbean, central and southern America, the tropics, Japan, South China Sea or even oil drilling rigs off of southern California. You name it, the world is your oyster. SCUBA divers travel the world over to see amazing things. Divers dive for amazing experiences like swimming with sharks (they’re not nearly as dangerous as you might believe) or to see historic ship wrecks.

Okay, you want to start that adventure, right? Every adventure requires some preparation and the kit to do it safely. You can do it on a budget if you must, but you get what you pay for. SCUBA requires training so you can do it safely. You don’t need to drop a ton of money on your SCUBA kit, but investing in your own SCUBA kit can make your training easier and future diving more enjoyable. To get started you need:

• an Open Water Diver course (such as the PADI Open Water Diver course that I teach)
• Some basic equipment of your own: mask, snorkel, fins and probably some boots and a mesh gear bag to hold it.

If you want to go all out, contact your instructor first. He can advise you on what gear is appropriate for the diving you want to do. Also, many dive shops will let you try out gear before you buy it.

Remember, you get what you pay for. SCUBA training teaches you how to use life support equipment in a hostile environment. Remember, human, you can’t breathe underwater. SCUBA equipment makes it possible, but you need to know how to do it safely.

My next blog post will discuss the revised PADI Open Water Diver course, so stay tuned.

*What’s PADI? PADI is the Professional Association of Diving Instructors. PADI Instructors around the world teach the vast majority of recreational scuba divers. I’m a PADI Course Director, meaning that I’m a PADI Instructor and an Instructor Trainer; I train new PADI SCUBA Instructors.

Okay, things got a bit crazy for a while. Time to get back to Q&A. As a CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) and First Aid Instructor, I often get asked lots of questions. Here are a few of the questions from my most recent CPR & First Aid class.

Q: Will we be doing CPR on each other?
A: No. You only do CPR on someone that is not breathing and has no signs of life. You’ll practice CPR on a manikin that will simulate how it feels to work with a real, unresponsive, non-breathing human.

Q: What if they have a burn and a chemical spill and…
A: Remember, focus on life threats first. C-A-B, Circulation, Airway and Breathing. After that, focus on serious bleeding, shock and spinal injuries. If the bleeding is serious (a lot of blood or it’s arterial and spurting), you need to rapidly apply direct pressure and get some help. Most of the what-if questions can be resolved if you remember to focus on life threatening injuries first.

Q: What should I have in my first aid kit?
A: It depends. If you have rapid, easy access to EMS and hospital services, maybe just a bare minimum. If you’re in a remote location, probably more. At a minimum: barriers (gloves & CPR ventilation barrier), sterile dressings (gauze pads), adhesive tape or roller bandage to secure the dressings in place.

While not a question that was asked, it seems like in training many people think they have to do everything. If there is something life threatening, call for help (dial 9-1-1 in the US). If the person is alert and responsive, have them help. If they’re bleeding, have them apply direct pressure to the wound while you get a first aid kit and call for help (if necessary). If you’re trained and bystanders aren’t, have the bystanders call for help or fetch the first aid kit. You can also direct bystanders to do things, like put on gloves and apply direct pressure.