Emergency Swimming Ascents are inevitable, but, I think OWD or Advanced OWD should have an exercise to mount pony tanks to serve as reserve/emergency air resources, SSI will state.. "well you should dive with a buddy" yes.. indeed a buddy serves as a redundant air source, but, I've seen many cases people are buddies but are not at least competent or understand someone in distress, I have not that much dives and I have attached to my left side BCD a pony tank of 5 liters. always full, with it's own regulator first and second stage and pressure gauge, not that I don't trust other people, but so often see buddies not giving a care of there whereabouts. Example, on the last dive I was paired with another diver that simply disappeared, one second she was following me, another she saw something, didn't warn me and went to see some fish, the water was murky with a poor visibility, i did the exercise when we loose our buddy, to discover that she was still submerged by checking out bubbles coming up in the water. Imagine that on that same moment I had a regulator failure while submerged at 12 meters depth , alone? I know that the probabilities are not high for an unfortunate chain of events like that, but I had 2 choices, 1 - Emergency Swimming Ascent with the risk of getting hurt 2 - Calm down and resort to my pony tank, ascend with care, that's why i think people should be encouraged to invest in their safety and have more than one scuba tank for each dive, the same way they are encouraged not to dive alone.
Thanks for your comment! We understand your approach and share the same vision that all skills should be executed in neutral buoyancy. However, from a training approach, we usually teach skills in a controllable environment like a pool/confined water first where the impact on the environment is minimal and beginner students have the chance to practice in a stable position first. Later, training skills get more refined and will be repeated in neutral buoyancy in the open water. The skill videos are meant to show the students which skills they are going to learn in their next pool session, therefore we show those kneeking on the ground at first, but later on skills like no mask swim are shown in a neutrally buoyant position, which is correct from the learning approach. Be assured that we follow our own Blue Oceans code where SSI commits to execute sustainable diving practices and protects the environment as much as possible.
Hello, this method is called "bobbing" and helps saving energy. Basically you use your fins to stay above the water and once you breathe air in the inflator you stop using your fins to save energy and that's why you sink underwater. And this process is repeated until your jacket is full of air and keeps you above the water.
