A dive instructor doesn’t stand firmly on the bottom with both fins.
Dive instructors face a difficult question when training beginners. We want to train autonomous divers; students should be able to dive alone after the course. But while they are learning, we are responsible for ensuring nothing happens to them.
How to deal with this is discussed in every dive instructor course, and I just discussed it very intensively in our last ITC. There are different styles, adapted to different conditions, and I don’t know the one right way either. But I recently observed one that I clearly consider wrong, and I would like to use it to explain what I consider reasonable – and what not.
Scenes from an Instructor Training Course
Somewhere in a dive instructor training course. Open water, a good 5 meters. Clear visibility, no water movement. Conditions don’t get better than this, even in an aquarium.
On the agenda: How do you organize a group of students in open water? An exciting question. But it’s not asked. Instead, there’s a clear instruction: students on the buoy line. And the Assistant Instructor holds them additionally, from behind. Two hands are better than one.
Then the demo. The instructor makes himself as negatively buoyant as possible, plants both fins firmly in the sand, grabs a student by the dump valve – and holds him while the student presses the inflator. Oh, how dangerous.
The exercise is called “neutral buoyancy.”
Yes. REALLY.
Honestly: This student has already practiced the skill in shallow water until they mastered it – mastery, not “it somehow worked,” if the dive instructor did their job correctly. In open water, they are only demonstrating that they can do it here too. On the dive immediately afterward, they constantly press the inflator without anyone holding onto their BCD. And two days later, they go diving with their buddy. Without a line, without an assistant, without an instructor in the sand.
If you have to hold them like that during the exercise – what exactly are we certifying then?
What it’s really about
Group control sounds like a shepherd and flock, but it means something quite precise: The dive instructor knows at all times where each of their students is and how they are doing. And they can intervene before a small problem becomes a big one.
The SSI standards state it soberly: Students remain under direct supervision while performing exercises, “so that physical contact can be made at any time” – so that physical contact is possible at any time. Being able to make contact – not maintaining contact.
Exactly this difference is at the heart of everything that goes wrong in the scene above. Let’s look at this in three questions about safety and control.
Buoyancy as a habit – how do you get there?
“Buoyancy is not a skill – it’s a habit.” Buoyancy is not an exercise that you demonstrate once and check off. You constantly adjust – during descent, with every meter, with every breath. Air. Rises. Up. Always.
That’s why our students practice buoyancy from the very beginning. We show the Diving Position – lying, hovering, with more or less bottom contact. Kneeling is okay at the beginning if it helps at that moment. The instructor remains neutrally buoyant; that’s the version to imitate. By the end of the Open Water course, no one needs the bottom anymore to perform a skill. For more details, see our blog post on hovering or kneeling.
We are not alone in this. SSI’s standards have the clear goal of getting students into the “Diving Position” as quickly as possible; for PADI, neutral buoyancy during skills is also highly desired, and some organizations with more of a tech-diving focus even make it a requirement.
Anyone who teaches their students to hover should demonstrate it themselves. A dive instructor who plants themselves heavily in the sand stirs up sediment – turning excellent visibility reliably into poor visibility. And they clearly show how one should absolutely not behave underwater. But students copy what their dive instructor does. Even what they shouldn’t imitate. Especially that.
Group control is not touching
The scene above is not an isolated case. The assistant holding a student from behind during the exercise. The instructor clinging to the BCD – not just during ascent, but for the entire skill. All in the name of safety.
You only have to ask yourself briefly what the student actually learns: Someone else takes care of my buoyancy. That’s not safety awareness. That’s a crutch – and one that is taken away from them precisely when they have become most accustomed to it: after certification.
And another thing: Anyone holding the student can no longer see if they have their buoyancy under control themselves. The exercise then simply proves nothing.
How to do it better? The dive instructor is neutrally buoyant themselves. One fin kick, and they have the student. They remain mobile – forward, sideways, upward. An arm’s length distance, no more. But also no holding on. That’s exactly what the standards mean by “physical contact can be made at any time”: physical contact is possible because you are close enough and mobile enough.
And on the tank? NEVER.
The escalation of holding on is grabbing the tank. And that is absolutely unacceptable.
Just imagine: It’s your first time underwater, you’re nervous, excited, a little scared – and then you realize you can’t move, not even simply go up if it gets too much for you down there. Someone you can’t see is holding you underwater. Your mask fills with water, you just want to go up, but you can’t…
Does it take anything more to produce panic?
When newcomers see their dive instructor swimming in front or beside them, radiating calm, discreetly adjusting buoyancy if necessary – then they learn trust and safety.
Octopus in hand – prepared or unsettling?
But it’s not just holding on. Safety is also supposed to arise from many other small habits. Like with the octopus, which many consider to be particularly safety-conscious. If a student takes the regulator out of their mouth, you hold your own octopus ready – preferably right in front of their face.
Really?
We train autonomous divers!
What does the student perceive when a yellow alternate air source dangles in front of their mask during a regulator exchange? Probably not: “I can do this.” More likely: “Oh, this seems very dangerous.” And immediately after: Someone will hand me air before I even realize I need it.
Being prepared means: I know where my octopus is, I’m close enough, and I can offer it in a second. But I’ve probably already returned the student’s own regulator to their mouth even faster. For that, the octopus doesn’t have to be in my hand. And certainly not in front of my student’s face. And I don’t have to put my octopus away again after the exercise.
Conclusion
Group control means: I can reach you at any time. Not: I’ll never let go of you.
We prepare students to become autonomous divers. For this, we practice in the pool or in shallow water, and are prepared for them to make mistakes. We correct these, and before we go into open water, they manage everything with quite passable buoyancy – still wobbly, sure, but if they go up, they catch themselves, and if they bump the bottom, that’s fine too. You still have to watch them very carefully, stay close, occasionally signal to add or release some air from the BCD – but then you also have to let them do it.
And neutral buoyancy is not a skill you practice once; it’s a state we always want to maintain underwater.
A dive instructor doesn’t stand firmly on the bottom with both fins. Neither do their students.
