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1/3/2023 1 Comment BCD FailureEvery so often we get the reminder that diving is in fact still dangerous and we risk our lives every time we submerge. But for many of us, that is what attracts us to it. The idea that we are cheating science and evolution, that we are going where humans don’t belong.
Recently, I had an equipment failure and I thought some of you might find some value in hearing about what happened. I just got a new wing. My old buoyancy compensating wing finally wore out after 20 years. It was an old Halcyon Explorer 55# wing, but what I really cherished about it was the old logo Halcyon Patch that bore the old slogan, “The ‘Doing It Right’ Equipment Company. It’s a horseshoe style wing, which I actually still prefer. Nothing against the new donut style wings but I really like the feel of the horseshoe when diving doubles and carrying extra bottles for stage and deco. I’m probably one of only 10 people out there still diving a horseshoe style wing, but what can I say? I’m old school. Now truth be told, I didn’t get a brand new wing. An old buddy of mine who bought a bunch of gear for diving doubles a few years after I started was getting out of diving and he asked if I wanted any of his gear. His wing was only used a handful of times, maybe 5 or 6 dives. It was in beautiful shape and looked like it was new. Most importantly, it also had the old logo with the old slogan on it. I was stoked to get my hands on it. Well, a few weeks ago, my dump valve on my old wing with thousands of dives on it finally gave away. It ripped away from the outer shell material and it was time to part ways with my old faithful wing. Lucky for me I didn’t have to go shopping, I had a new one sitting and waiting. The next week, I was headed down to the Florida Keys to teach a class, we would be wearing doubles down there and I grabbed my “new” wing for the trip. Down in the basement with all of my extra gear down in my diving locker. I opened up a plastic storage box and there she was. My new girl. But I didn’t really do any inspection of it other than blow it up and make sure the inflator worked, that it was holding gas, and that the dump valve fired. The first few days of the class went well. The students were working hard and learning a lot. We were diving everyday, despite a small hurricane trying to disrupt our plans for a week of dive training in Key Largo. Later in the week, we were diving on the Spiegel Grove. Hurricane Nicole broke up on the coast north of us and the seas had calmed down except for some moderate winds and a tolerable chop. Much better than a few days before. I entered the water with a splash. A giant stride from the back of the boat with double 80’s on my back. The waves were choppy and the current was present but manageable, especially with the tag line floating off the back of the boat. I was resting on the surface and holding onto the line while I waited and watched for the other divers to enter. Visibility seemed good and the current would be easier to address underwater rather than on the surface. I signaled my team mate to submerge here and swim the short distance to the mooring line instead of getting beaten up by the surface conditions. As I lifted the head of the inflator and depressed the dump button, the gas started escaping and then the whole inflator came off in my hand. The corrugated hose separated from the inflator and all of the gas started to leave my wing. I quickly became negatively buoyant as I looked at my buddy who was directly in front of me with an expression on his face that clearly stated, “you have got to be kidding me!” This is the absolute worst time for a bcd failure. At the beginning of the dive, all of your bottles are the heaviest because they are full of gas, and now you lose your primary source of surface buoyancy. This is where years of experience and a trust in my diving philosophy came to my defense. Although the water was warm down there, I was diving in my Drysuit. For years I’ve taught the concept of weighting yourself for a balanced rig. Meaning you are never too light when all your gas has been used to hold your shallowest stops on the ascent, but also when your are at the beginning of a dive and everything is full of gas and you are at your heaviest, you can still swim your gear up. The Drysuit adds the benefit of being able to add gas, becoming backup buoyancy, without the need to have a redundant BCD/Wing. Back at the surface my buddy asked me what happened and if we needed to abort the dive. As I looked at the inflator I noticed that the plastic zip tie that holds the hose on to the inflator had broken off. It was old and sitting around for 15 years or so and when I lifted it up through the bungee to deflate it, it caught and snapped and then separated from the corrugated hose. I stuck it back inside the hose but could tell that it was very loose and would easily come right back out. I looked at my buddy and said, “No, give me a second.” I yelled up to the Divemaster on the boat who was standing there on the port side watching us, “Hey, do you have any tie wraps on the boat?” “Yes, I think so,” he shouted back. “Let me check.” A few seconds later he returned with a zip tie, “Yes, here you go. Do you want it now?” “Yes, I said.” He handed it over the side of the boat and I wrapped it around the hose and the inflator, inserted it through the small opening on the zip tie and then pulled tightly to secure it. SNAP!!! It broke in half. “Shit! Hey, do you have another one? This one just broke too.” A moment later he brought me a second one. I put it on a little more carefully and didn’t tighten it up so hard for fear of breaking another one. By now, I was confident that this quick repair job would do. Despite having the tail of the tie wrap dangling outward… a real Rule 6 violation I must say, considering my usually absurd adherence to being clean and tidy underwater. We did the dive and made it home safe and secure. Back at the house, I swapped the old, sun-beaten zip tie wrap for a fresh new one that was tightly secured and ready for the next day. It was a great talking point with the class. Failures do happen and they rarely send you an email to let you know when and where they are going to occur. BCD’s are full of potential failure points. The inflator alone has many more besides what I delt with. O-rings that seal off the dump button, the spring that controls it, the inflator itself sticking open while adding gas. Not to mention many divers have an easy-pull dump up at the shoulder, which is truly in the worst possible position for a failure when you are your heaviest. Retaining pins, cable assemblies, valve cores, gaskets, springs, o-rings… the more advanced the design, the more potential you will have for problems. Regular service of your equipment will help prevent a lot of these possible problems, but the potential for failures underwater will always exist. Diving is a dangerous activity and there is always a chance of things going wrong. For many of us, that was part of the attraction. It’s what got us excited to do it. To test ourselves against nature and defy what we knew of our own human physiology. Good equipment helps, but staying active and building a broad and extensive base of experience is what will really keep you aware and safe when things do go bad. Good training should include critical failures to get you ready for problems in the real world. Just practicing disconnecting and reconnecting an inflator hose underwater is the very elementary basics of knowledge. The next step is an educational model that introduces failures to you in a way that makes you think on the fly, solving your problems underwater, and learning how you react to these problems in real time. Of course, first you need mastery of the Essentials. Buoyancy, balance, trim, body mechanics, propulsion, awareness, and a deeper understanding of how your equipment works. Then you can start to train how “you” work. Learning yourself. Relaxing your mind so you can build confidence underwater. What do think? Have you had any scary moments with equipment breaking on a dive? Have you had any situations like this you want to share? Feel free to email me here or let me know if you want to set up a free live chat over zoom to discuss any questions or concerns you may have with your confidence underwater. James Mott [email protected]
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11/12/2022 3 Comments The Infinite Game of ScubaWhen I think back on my diving education, most of the classes were very short and I never once had the feeling that I might not pass this class. Especially in the early days of my recreational training. Sure my cave class and tech classes were pretty demanding but I had moved on from looking for the big name agencies and was seeking out specific instructors, whom I knew would fully challenge and test me. I wanted that. I needed that.
The longest class I had taken was my Divemaster. Which was definitely long , over a year of internship, which was actually more like legalized slavery. It was never a pass or fail feeling but more like a prison sentence, I just had to do my time breaking rocks. Which for a Divemaster candidate is filling tanks, cleaning wetsuits, fetching coffee, bringing the donuts, setting up the classroom and training sites. But the long term approach gave me ample time to process a way of thinking. I had plenty of opportunities to observe, learn, ask questions and then let it absorb into my own way of thinking. Weeks or maybe months later I would see myself integrating these things into my own style, as I grew into myself as a diver. When I took my instructor class, I was very well prepared. I had basically become an assistant instructor over the last few months without having the actual card yet. A few of my fellow instructor candidates were nowhere near as prepared. They had been on the instructor fast path since their first Open Water certification and were being groomed to be the next, dip and dunk instructor for their shop. OW, AOW and a deep and night cert all in the next weekend, a rescue and a couple more specialties the next weekend, a weeklong Divemaster class, and BAM! Instructor Development Course. I remember doing skills at the Examination and there were candidates who had already been through the entire program who could not get neutrally buoyant. At all! Horizontal trim wasn’t really a concept in the mainstream community back in the late 90’s but they couldn’t do it in any position! How did they make it this far. Not to mention, they couldn’t fully flood and clear their mask without looking like they had just seen a ghost afterward. At the end of the day however, we all walked away as new instructors. At the same time I was training in martial arts. I walked into the school one day, much like many of us first walked into a dive shop. Eager to try and to learn. But the process was completely different. It was not a weekend of learning to punch and kick and then a weekend of advanced punch and kick takedowns. It was monthly dues and consistent training. Trying to be a little better every time I showed up. A little smoother, a little faster, a little less energy wasted. Along the way new weapons were shown, new styles, different instructors, different thinking. The focus was not on copying the lead instructor or completing any special level of training, but instead favored a long-term process of how to make this art unique to each of us. First you have to learn the skills of the art and then you can really start to learn the art. We didn’t have any belts at this school. You were either a teacher or a student. About 10 years later, I was asked to become a teacher. I learned then that as a teacher, I was always going to be a student of the long-game. It wasn’t about the belt or a certification, it was about building the best version of yourself. We just did it with an ironwood stick and a machette. Today I see many similarities in how I teach scuba. First you have to know how to scuba dive. Clear your mask, assemble your gear, share gas, navigate, manage a boat, etc…. But it’s after you have all of that smooth, clean and efficient that you really start to learn how to scuba dive. The advanced level is the very beginning. It’s what you have to know just to get started. Understanding the long-term infinite game of scuba will put you on the real path to learning. Learning to dive better yes, but just as much as learning something new about yourself. Immersing yourself in the art of scuba so you can see yourself differently. It might scare you at first. Most people rarely get a sight of their true selves. But those who seek purpose and are willing to get intimate with their diving will find a lifetime of value. Believing in this new purpose as a diver will let you transcend agency and certification level. Sure, you still need a tech card to get on a boat to dive a shipwreck in 180 ft of water using trimix, but this isn’t about that card. It’s about you. It’s about how you, do you. How you make this dive better than the last one, how you keep learning and keep improving every time. It is not about how you quickly become the best diver with the most prestigious log book, but rather how you continue to ebb and flow, struggle and grow, plateau and then climb again as a diver. As a person. Becoming a better diver takes time not just a class. It takes intentional guidance that is focused on the infinite dive, not one weekend at one dive site. Long-term coaching, like a professional athlete that still listens and learns from a coach decades into their game. Long after they know the skills of their game. You can learn a lot of new skills by taking one class but internalizing those skills, making them your own, and integrating them into your own game is an eternal process. My reason for starting Mott Underwater was to bring this value and purpose to diving. To give meaning to being a diver, more than just a log book. A purpose that will move your diving from a recreation that you participate in once in awhile and make it a lifestyle that requires commitment and intentionality. The value to you is the change in who you are underwater and eventually in your daily life. How you dive but also how you think and act. When all of this starts to come together and you can correlate your underwater behavior on land, then you are on the path. Back at the beginning, to see it all over again, even clearer than the last time. We’ve all been there. Standing on the boat or at the shore next to our gear and then you hear it… Hisssssssssssssss….
Oh no! What do I do? Help! Is it safe to still go diving? The sound of an air leak on your equipment can easily trigger fears and anxiety, particularity about the unknown. This is especially exaggerated if the leak was not heard but instead discovered after entering the water. A small leak becomes a frothing and bubbling nightmare. The chaos of the bubbles can easily lead to fear about the dive and whether or not it is safe to enter the water. With a little knowledge and understanding, you can easily determine the usability of your scuba equipment. What might have seemed like an immediate dive-ender can often be fixed right there on the dive boat. Here are five leaks that you may have experienced before that don’t have to end your day of diving. 1 BCD QD The leak- A common leak is at the o-ring connection under the quick disconnect fitting on your BCD inflator. Every time you put your equipment together and take it apart, that connection is subject to a lot of pulling and pushing and twisting. The connector fitting on most inflators is screwed into the inflator body with just little bit of torque past hand tight and sealed by an o-ring. This fitting can come loose and the o-ring can slip out of its groove and cause a loud and intimidating leak when the low-pressure inflator hose is connected and the gas is turned on. The fix- If your inflator has air spitting out around the connection, disconnect the low-pressure inflator hose and see if the leak stops. If it does, look at the base of the connector fitting and see if the o-ring has pushed its way out, or see if the fitting has loosened up and is spinning out. If so, back it off and make sure the o-ring is ok and not torn or badly worn and then either replace the o-ring or if it’s still ok just re-tighten the connector back into the inflator and reconnect the hose. No more leak? Then you are good to go. You just saved your dive. 2 First-Stage Yoke/DIN Connector The leak- You put your regulator on you cylinder and turn the valve knob open, only to hear a rush of hissing air coming from your regulator first-stage. Oh no! You turn the air off and it slowly stops. Open the valve again and the air starts shooting out again. Help! What do I do? The fix- Don’t be intimidated by the air leak and instead investigate the source. Slowly open the valve just a small amount, enough to hear and feel where the gas is escaping from. Many regulators have an o-ring at the base of the yoke or din connection going into the first stage body of the regulator. Sometimes when you are disassembling your equipment, if you haven’t completely purged all of the gas out of the regulator before unscrewing it from your tank, the leverage needed to take it off can break the seal at the first stage body o-ring before it breaks the seal at the tank valve o-ring. So, try to loosen that yoke or din away from the regulator. Inspect the o-ring. If it is ok, put it back in and re-tighten it. If it is worn or torn replace it and re-tighten the connector. Reconnect the regulator to the tank valve and slowly pressurize the system and listen for any leaks. None? Presto! You’re back in the water. 3 LPi Hose End The leak- Returning to the BCD inflator. Sometimes divers pressurize their regulators before connecting the inflator hose to the inflator. When they grab the pressurized hose they hear a soft leak escaping the quick disconnect end. Oh no! What do I do? The fix- Inside the quick disconnect end of your low pressure inflator hose, is a spring loaded valve the screws down into the hose. When connected to the inflator on the BCD, this spring is engaged to allow air to flow to it when the inflator button is pressed. Normally the valve is sealed inside the hose but over time it too can loosen up. If this happens it will leak out of the end of the hose when pressurized but not connected to a fitting. There is a specialty screwdriver that someone on the boat might have or you can fuss with it a bit and get it screwed in enough to stop leaking. Lastly, this leak is only going to be a problem if the hose isn’t connected. 4 Hose End at 1st Stage The leak- This could happen as soon as you pressurize the regulator or it could happen in a sudden and frightening “pop” of air shooting out of the top of your regulator. As long as their is gas in the cylinder, this leak will not stop and it can be unnerving. Oh shoot! Is my dive day ruined? The fix- Turn the air off and purge the system. There should be no air leaking and then slowly turn the air back on and listen for the leak. You can rub your hand around the first stage where the hoses come out and see if you can feel the escaping air. Aha! It’s coming out right at the hose port of your alternate air source. Turn off the air once again and purge the system clean. Grab the hose and try to turn it off, counterclockwise and see if it starts spinning off. Sometimes from carrying them around and knocking and bumping into things these hoses can work themselves loose. Once again inspect the o-ring, replace if necessary and screw the hose back in all the way. Slowly pressurize the regulator by turning on the tank valve and listen for the leak. Hey, it’s gone. You fixed it! Let’s go diving! 5 Leak at Pressure Gauge The leak- This one can be tricky because a lot of divers have their submersible pressure gauge contained inside of a rubber or plastic boot that also houses their computer, depth gauge and maybe even a compass. If your gauge is leaking air, right at the bottom of that boot or it is coming out of the swiveling end of the hose underneath the pressure gauge, your leak is easily fixable. The fix- The spg has a brass tube with two small o-rings on it that seal one inside the gauge and one inside the hose which allows the gauge to spin around on the end of the hose. These o-rings can collect salt and sand and corrosion and can easily start to leak. By turning the air off and purging all the gas out of the system, you can then disconnect the spg from the hose, pull out the air spool and check the o-rings. They might just need a little clean up, a dab of grease or possibly new o-rings but once they are back in place, reconnect the hose, slowly pressurize the regulator and listen for leaks. You can also drop the pressurized gauge into a rinse bucket to see if there are any bubbles escaping. If not, you are good to go! Air leaking out of your scuba equipment can be scary but it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re done diving for the day or that you need to buy new gear. A little bit of patience, awareness and investigation might show you the problem isn’t so bad after all. Of course if you’re still pretty new, asking a Divemaster or maybe another seasoned diver to assist you in your discovery is a good idea. You’ll find that the more diving you do, eventually you will have to deal with a leak from time to time. Don’t panic. Stop, look and listen. You just might find yourself finding the leak and making the fix yourself. Have you experienced any of these before? Any others you’ve dealt with yourself and you saved a dive? Let me know. Send me a message and tell me the story. 5/24/2022 0 Comments SuperDiverWhat makes you great underwater? For so many divers, their time below the surface ticks away breath by breath or minute by minute as the limits for no-decompression obligation dwindle. Like a nagging babysitter, the dive computer beeps, buzzes, or flashes a warning at you. It reminds you that it is time to go home, that the fun is over. Often this worry of overstaying that countdown takes away from our enjoyment of the dive. Or worse yet, is the complete abandonment of care because the current view is too spectacular to care about remaining gas or decompression times. Divers underwater can easily fall victim to the technology that carries them away from and back to the surface, never really understanding the matrix of numbers that lie upon the face of their gauges. 100 feet of seawater is a mark. For some it is a goal. For others it is a limit. A fear or a euphoria may occur when the depth gauge approaches the three-digit number that certain divers use as the measuring stick for success. But is just going to depth the real mark? Is the deepest diver on the boat the best? What makes one diver in deep water better than another? Having the right equipment is a good start. Below 100 feet of water on a single tank is possible for a quick dip but not for spending any real time on a real dive. Having the right amount of gas in reserve for an emergency at the deepest part of the dive is the first step in smart planning. Knowing that we are humans underwater and need to breathe to survive, we must make the assumption that we could lose that possibility with an equipment failure. Diving deep and then making a mistake or having a problem that results in having to bail for the surface, is not the sign of underwater greatness. Having the ability to solve major problems underwater in a controlled manner is. The right training for the environment is also a key indicator. Just going to depth because your dive computer keeps recalculating the no-decompression limit is not the way to go deeper. The advanced diver is one who can determine their time and gas limitation prior to entering the water. They know beforehand what they need to take with them to do the time they want to do at the depth where they want to go. And they take that with them. Gaining experience can be productive but it can also be reckless. Just pushing past limits in a quest for ego fulfillment can lead to a dangerous place. Moving too slowly and not challenging ourselves can leave us stagnant and not ready for the next deeper move when the opportunity comes. Having a mentor to guide you through the increasing challenge to your skill level will keep you in the zone of improving your performance. Getting more comfortable with your skill and ability is essential. That’s where you put in the hard work of improving buoyancy, balance, trim and propulsion techniques. Not just learning how to do a better frog kick but training to excellence the ability to integrate any kick necessary at any given moment, without thought, just execution. This is a foundation that the great divers have taken many years to build and it’s why they can adapt to many environments and different situations. Because their minds are free from being concerned with performing these skills and tasks. They are in the moment, in flow, in the zone. It takes a lot of committed practice, not just learning once. Confidence is indispensable. Without it, everything else is a mirage. The best equipment with all the certification cards will fall apart in the water if the diver has not built that essential foundation. Without the balance of skills and equipment, challenges and perfection, training and experience, the diver will always struggle with confidence underwater. Some divers hide from it and others push past it, just to keep going. Deeper. But the answer to the greatness of a SuperDiver is in their comfort, ability, and confidence. Confidence in their equipment, their dive team, and themselves. What do you think? Let me know. Send me a message and let’s discuss your needs underwater. 1/3/2022 0 Comments Resting Trim What is that one thing you see in other divers that you desire? Is it their fancy, new, feature-packed, full-color dive computer? The limited-edition, titanium-coated, ruby-encrusted regulator? Maybe their 6-pack abs while donning their wetsuit?
I guess I can understand the fit abs;) Of all the tips, tricks, and skills that I teach, the one that most divers ask me to help them with is the quiet calm of “Resting Trim.” This skill, when fully internalized will give you the calculated control in the water that so many divers long for. I am delighted when I see divers moving underwater with grace and fluidity. This can only be done with proper buoyancy control and the ability to remain infinitely still in the water column. This characteristic has become a focus of my training, a core value that I help guide my students to learn and help them to master. Buoyancy control is nothing new to scuba diving. We have been wearing BCD’s underwater for half a century now. It has been a part of scuba education and a required basic skill for certification for decades. So why then is it still something so rare to see? Please, let me take a moment to clarify. Buoyancy is not pivoting on your fin tips. It is not floating in the buddha position, or swimming around for 20 minutes without crashing into the bottom. It is not something you get by letting air in and out of your BCD. Buoyancy control is a never-ending quest for the mastery of breathing, balance and trim. From the very beginning of the dive all the way until the last breath has been taken underwater. Never for one second or one breath do we ever let ourselves regress back to losing that control. It takes strong determination and will to achieve this level of perfection and ultimately peace while diving. It is a flower that needs to be tended to and cared for on every dive. It starts with a lot of work but ends in complete rest. This is the secret of buoyancy control. It is about your resting trim. Any diver in the matter of a few hours of instruction can learn to put gas into their bcd and let gas out in order to prevent violent destruction to themselves and the environment, but that is only the very beginning. True buoyancy control requires a balance of your equipment so that it works in your favor to maintain your horizontal trim. Trim that is controlled with awareness, breathing, and body mechanics rather than perpetual swimming. This is the next wave of change that divers need to take control of. Resting trim is your ability to maintain neutral buoyancy, holding horizontal positioning, eliminating extraneous movement, staying in one place without touching any part of the environment other than the water you are immersed in. Resting trim is beautiful to see and you will not forget what it looks like when you see a diver that has mastered it. It is graceful and artful. And if you struggle with it, it will make you hunger for it. Resting trim is how you approach a delicate subject and take a picture of it without selfishly interfering with the environment for your own personal gain. It is how you and a dive buddy effortlessly communicate with clear and understandable messaging, free from confusion. It is how you make a free ascent without the need to hold tightly onto a line, how you can problem solve on that ascent in mid-water, how you clear a mask on the edge of a wall without losing your control of depth. Resting trim is how you stay calm, collected, and confident in all of your diving without worrying about “what if.” Because mastering your resting trim puts you in a place of control and awareness that will ready you for engaging in an unexpected situation. It is the position you will need to know intimately and trust when you need to act on any situation. So again, what is it that you see in divers that you want? What skill do you lack that you desperately want to add to your diving ability? As I’m sure you’re beginning to understand from most of these emails, it is rarely a product you can buy and add-on. Instead, good diving takes time, practice, and patience. Your resting trim is what will identify you as a confident diver. Thanks for taking the time to read this, let me know if you have any further questions, comments, or concerns. Thanks to my dive buddy, podcasting partner, and photo guru, Brando, for the top photo of my resting trim on a recent ascent at Gilboa Quarry. 11/25/2021 0 Comments ThanksgivingThanksgiving is a special time of year, especially for midwestern scuba divers who make the annual plunge into our local lakes as the water temperatures creep closer and closer to freezing.
I am thankful for the community that my local diving builds. The friends you make along the way, the die-hards, the cold water divers. Before the Thanksgiving Day dive, there is a lot of understandable procrastination. Although everyone is there for the dive, nobody really wants to jump right in. It’s not like a charity polar plunge where you’re in and out in less than a minute, the veterans all know that in 20 minutes we will all be saying to ourselves, “what am a I doing here?” The new divers are buzzing with excitement and often say, “it wasn’t as c-c-cold as I thought is was going to be,” as they try to play off the fact that their near hypothermic body temps are making them delusional. If you’ve done this dive more than 5 times or so you are probably talking to the crew and saying with a boisterous humor, “you know, we could just head over to the pub and say we did it… no one would know.” And with a laugh and a chuckle from everyone around, you realize you better get your gear on because once again nobody is taking you up on your offer. I am thankful for these times with real people. Humans sharing and engaging in an activity that most people reserve for the television, maybe on shark week but other than that, scuba diving is forever a dream. And cold water diving, probably a nightmare. As I think of things to be thankful for this year, I want to share 3 specifically for my diving friends. 3 things I learned along my underwater journey that have made diving so much more enjoyable for me. I share these with you in hopes of you finding more things to be thankful for on your days under the sea. Teammates Underwater we are all taught to dive with a buddy but rarely are we guided through the process of building a teammate. That is the hard part. But like all difficult endeavors, they are the most rewarding. If you are looking to get more fun and enjoyment out of your diving, then building a team that you dive with is a sure way to accomplish this. Divers who enter the water on the same page, never get separated, and are always where they are supposed to be is not a thing of fiction or a happening that occurs rarely by chance. It is the product of good training with a focus on a team that is unified in thinking, process, and goals. Clear communication is routine and regular for a teammate, whereas confusion and frustration is the normal feeling with just having a dive buddy. To those divers who worked tirelessly with me over the years. Investing in education, equipment and experiences so that we can orchestrate the wonderful dives we are doing today, I am very thankful. Buoyancy When I first became an Open Water Scuba Instructor in the late 90’s, I was in my early 20’s and teaching with a bunch of veteran instructors at the shop who had been at it for a few decades already. I was the new kid and when I tried to teach neutral buoyancy as an art I was mocked and laughed at. “You can’t teach neutral buoyancy,” the head instructor used to scoff at me, “they just have to learn it themselves, over time.” I had another friend, who I worked with for a few years that moved to the Cayman Islands and was teaching down there. He used to tell me about cruising down the reef and getting neutrally buoyant and upside down, and with using just his breath he’d exhale and drop his head down in an opening in the reef to take a look and then inhale and rise back up. I was fascinated and made this a major part of my teaching despite the pushback I received from the rest of the instructors. In 2009, I was invited to be one of 10 original founding instructors for Unified Team Diving. UTD Scuba Diving would become the first agency to offer an entire training program from recreational to technical and cave that was taught 100% neutrally buoyant. I am very thankful that I ran into the right divers over the years. In the early 2000’s I learned the DIR style of diving from some of its early pioneering instructors and it would change the way I dive and teach ever since. DIR was the only place you heard about buoyancy, balance, and trim back in those days. I am thankful for some of those instructors for taking me under their “backplate and wings.” Propulsion I started diving in 1989 as a 15 year old kid. My first fins were a lightweight but rather stiff and were vented fins from TUSA. All I really cared about was that they were red! I later switched to the Mares Plana Avanti’s, it was the Instructor choice at the shop. A few of the older guys dived the Power Plana Graphite but those were out of production and getting hard to find. Over the years I would experiment with all kinds of evolving technology in fin designs. Some of them pretty wild. The Blades from U.S. Divers, Turboflex and Integra from Dacor, Reeflex from Wenoka that had different stiffening bands you could insert, bungee powered turbo booster fins from Aqua Lung, the original split fin from Apollo, the folding transformer fin from Omega, pivoting hinged blades, long bladed fins, rubber Power and Rocket Fins. For years I used the Mares Quattro, then Jets and Hollis fins, so many different styles. The materials were another piece of the puzzle, heavy rubber vs lightweight plastic, multiple materials, flexing membranes, carbon fiber, EVA… so many different materials. The scuba world is full of engineering and technological innovations to keep you excited with the newest style of underwater propulsion. These new designs will help you swim faster, swim easier, give you more power, reduce the strain on your legs or knees or whatever, they might float, maybe sink, have vents for water flow, splits for propeller effects, so many different gadgets. I am so thankful that I learned about underwater propulsion and that swimming is all about technique rather than a need for innovative technology. It is a simple matter of physics, the same laws we learned in grade school from Sir Issac Newton. The only way you swim forward is if you can push the water in the opposite direction. Any thrust or movement of water that doesn’t deliver water exactly where you need it to go to get the desired result is a waste of effort and energy. Energy that leads to CO2 production and buildup. Even the most technologically advanced fin will perform terribly if the diver does not have the proper technique to put the water where it needs to go. Learning how to properly swim underwater and have a toolbox of different kicking styles to deliver forward thrust, backwards thrust, turns, yawls, 90’s, 180’s, 360’s, big powerful kicks, easy efficient kicks, small delicate kicks… all of these finesse techniques are far more valuable than the most perfectly designed “Golden Magic Fin.” I am thankful for learning that swimming is about technique and not technology. I hope you enjoy your Thanksgiving holiday with friends and family, and maybe some dive buddies too. Please share this with your buddies and send me a message too. Let me know what things you’ve learned along the way that has made your diving better. The things you are thankful for this diving year. 8/26/2021 0 Comments Building Better DiversWhen I took my first IDC, Instructor Development Course, there were zero scuba skills taught. In fact, there were not even any scuba skills corrected or improved. To be honest the Instructor Examiner looked the same underwater as he did in the classroom, standing behind a podium.
I traveled across multiple states for this leadership transformation and expected some kind of personal growth. However, there was no magic underwater, no revelation that awakened the underwater spirit of evolving from basic scuba diver to instructor hero or underwater badass once we submerged below the surface. Teaching a scuba class was not much different than teaching wood shop, algebra or home economics. It was well known that we were supposed to show up knowing all the skills, equipment, and physics because what we were being taught was not how to dive better but how to present the agency’s program and marketing agenda. How to teach a skill was covered but not how to do the skill, or do it well, or do it well in a practical environment. By this, I mean that the focus was on slowly showing the critical attributes of a mask clear, step by step, so it was easy for a student diver to see, on your knees so it was easy to be seen, negatively buoyant so multiple students could semi-circle around you and view it at the same time. But never once was the idea of how we really do this in real life discussed or practiced. This was in the late 1990’s and the problem I see is that decades later, this is still the formula for most instructor development. There is no time in the standard IDC to teach or correct buoyancy and breathing. The agency standards and forms and quality assurance and insurance alone are multiple days of curriculum. The Divemaster program has been adopted as the place where a diver learns how to become a leader and develop a leadership level of performance with their diving skills. But the Divemaster Candidate too has so much to learn and focus on that most programs just get them to improve their basics, just enough to slow them down. But once again it is not in an environment or application that is representative of real diving. These performance skills are constructed for a perfect world, perfect student, nothing will ever go wrong anyway, sugar-coated presentation. So, if the DM candidate shows up not knowing how to apply real diving skills into a real diving environment, or a real diving emergency, and they don’t learn it in the DM course or the instructor course… what chance does an advanced open water diver have or a newly certified open water diver have in understanding and applying their weekend scuba class to the realities of long-term growth as a diver? Although buoyancy control is a big point of discussion today, or rather the lack of its importance in elementary development, the rest of the skill set is just as miserable. Standard open water diver course skills like forcibly swimming to the surface on an ascent, dumping gas and falling to the bottom to descend, and pre-dive acronyms that create more anxiety over my dive buddy’s competency than preparing our buddy team for a safe dive; all of which are systemic viruses that need a cure. The focus on growth and comparing our dive industry to other recreations has created a general acceptance of the lowest possible common denominator regarding the interest and ability of the student diver. The assumption that they will not be around in five years, so we need to get as much out of them for as cheap as possible while we can, negatively effects the long-term possibilities of the new diver. This thinking has been destroying the lasting viability of our industry for decades and unfortunately it has been foolishly adopted and accepted by the uninitiated mainstream as the way we do things. If we want to be serious as a community about improving the overall quality of divers out in the field, we must demand from the entitled collective of agencies that we need to raise the standards, as well as the required experience and abilities of our instructors. Are you an instructor? Divemaster? Concerned diver who cares? What do you think? Please let me know. Send me a message, call or email. James Mott [email protected] Do you want to improve your diving or your instruction of divers and ascend above your competition? E-mail me for a free private talk. 6/3/2021 1 Comment Weeding Your Scuba GardenIt is springtime in Michigan and the weather this year has been difficult to say the least. Quick and teasing warmups followed by a cold snap that reminds us that winter was not that long ago. These realities make it difficult to get a garden ready to grow.
Not only has this made it difficult for weeding a garden or cleaning up the landscaping but it has also made it difficult to get ready for a safe and fun diving season. For me to enjoy my backyard deck and patio with my wife and friends this summer, I need to have the area cleaned up. The space around the deck and between the trees must be free of weeds so I can lay the mulch and get the tiki torches placed. For me to enjoy my summertime diving here in the Great Lakes, I need to have my scuba garden weeded also. Weeds in your scuba garden include sloppy kicks, choppy movements, losing buoyancy, struggling with clips, target fixation and disturbing the visibility. All of these and other basic skills that lose their fluidity and form over time when not practiced will take away from your overall global awareness underwater. Although we have certification cards that say we can perform these skills, they need constant attention and practice. If you want to maintain your scuba garden, you will need to weed it much like you will need to weed your home garden as well. After a few weeks of teaching The Essentials, I spent last weekend doing some much-needed yard work. And while weeding an area I found myself rushing to get the job done and lay the mulch. I was focused on the end goal rather than putting the necessary work in which was the weeding. I was reminded of my students who easily get focused on receiving a card and celebrating that accomplishment instead of enjoying the practice. Here are a few things I learned while weeding this past weekend that will make your diving better. Try These 5 Tips To Weed Out Your Scuba Garden 1- Weed after it rains After it rains the soil is softer, so the weeds are easier to pull. It is best to weed your scuba garden immediately when you get back in the water after a break. Before you go back into doing bad habits the same old way, which only reinforces their presence in your game, weed out your inefficient movements. Clean up your kicks. Cut down the time it takes you to complete drills. Retrain yourself when your personal soil is soft and ready to be groomed. 2- Get the root How you first learned something is the most natural way you will perform it. Whether you learned it right or not. Taking the time to evaluate your natural movement and how you flow through a skill or drill underwater will let you see what you are doing. A good instructor can help you make these movements more fluid and take less step to complete. Breaking down fundamentals will give you more freedom to enjoy your dives. 3- Use the right tools Just like there are tools to help with weeding your garden, there are tools to help you clean up underwater. Get a camera. Get an instructor. A buddy or mentor to help you see the things that you can’t see in yourself on a dive. Seeing yourself underwater from a third person perspective will help you notice the things you really need to work on. 4- There is always more On thing I learned while pulling weeds was that I was never done. Every time I got up to grab the mulch, I noticed more weeds. They never stopped showing up. Instead of focusing on finishing the job, I needed to learn how to find peace in the moment. To be meticulous and focus my attention on doing the job right. Just practicing a mask clear once or twice is not that same as putting your awareness into all the little details of clearing your mask. Buoyancy control, body position, balance in the water column, awareness of depth, awareness of your buddy, awareness of the environment and visibility all play a role in doing a mask clear. And every one of those little details can be weeded. 5- Enjoy the practice My biggest takeaway was noticing how much I wanted to rush and get things done. I was willing to cover up and hide a few little weeds and get right to my reward of enjoying a cold beer and a pretty view. I had to stop and remind myself that I have this very same discussion with my Essentials students every class. We have been conditioned as divers to take a class and get a card but there is no other sport or recreation that focuses on the goal rather than the process of continual practice like scuba instruction tends to do. Slowing down and enjoying the work will give you more happiness in the long journey. So, get out there and weed your scuba garden. Get back to enjoying the practice and the rewards it will bring you. The attention to detail will help improve your awareness, it will give you a quiet time to learn about yourself and let you find peace underwater. 3/11/2021 0 Comments Worst Case ScenarioSome of my underwater educational philosophy comes from the martial arts that I studied when I was younger. I always enjoyed those demanding sessions and I’ve tried to incorporate the mental training and awareness into my diving for many years.
Our art was a knife fighting style based out of West Java, Indonesia and it focused a lot on “worst case scenarios.” For instance, we didn’t really train or study any standing ready positions because we always approached the fight with 3 primary assumptions. Assumptions that would demand your awareness and attention and help direct your flow and techniques in a battle. We always assumed that you would be:
This worst case thinking built an inner calm and awareness while fighting, especially if you were facing someone without a weapon, or only one opponent or if you saw them coming. We trained to be over-prepared for the confrontation, knowing that in real life we would be surprised by the conflict, as well as being out-numbered and unarmed. If you learn to consider your diving like a fight, you will walk away with a new balance and centered state of mind. Nature is not on your side underwater. Physics and physiology are fighting against your human terrestrial existence and the only way you’re getting out alive is if you are smarter than nature and are over-prepared for this battle. Not only will this allow you to remain calm in the midst of chaos, once you’ve trained this into yourself, you will find more mental and emotional space to enjoy so much more of your underwater experiences. When you begin every dive assuming that things can and might go bad at any point and how can you plan for that before the dive starts, you will have a new set of tools to use and a clarity to solve problems. Your gas planning will change or maybe it will finally start. Your decompression strategy will begin to develop and your buddy awareness and navigation will become proactive instead of reactive. Contrast this with the way most divers learn, which is to follow the leader and wait for the beep. If we learn to make similar assumptions as divers, we can turn our underwater street smarts on high alert. Always aware and ready to be caught off guard, because we are training for the worst case scenario. If we always assume:
Things go wrong all the time. Why would you assume they wouldn’t underwater? Learning to start the dive knowing what you need when everything goes wrong, should be mandatory for any diver; especially, if you’re trying to graduate beyond holding the Dive Masters hand on every dive. Unfortunate circumstances underwater usually escalate and get worse. A little problem underwater is like kerosene on a flame: it causes some anxiety, which alters your breathing and alters your positioning, and that effects your buoyancy and it generally gets worse from there. Very rarely is an underwater emergency just one big thing, instead, it is usually many little things building and building until you are overwhelmed. Regardless of how bad and inconvenient the situation becomes, we must remember that we are diving and we have to finish the dive clean and safe. Just shooting to the surface in a panic is not acceptable. Going to the hospital is not an ideal way of addressing an emergency situation. We prepare by assuming that something will go bad, and we will have the gas and the teammates with us so that we can still get everyone to the surface safely. Creating Confident Divers This worst case scenario thinking is at the core of my educational philosophy. It is extensively pursued in a class like The Essentials and broken up into smaller sample sizes in various workshops and writings I put together on the Mott Underwater website. If you have further questions about this or would like more information, or to talk one on one about how to make you or your dive buddies a safer and more confident team, email me for a free consultation. I would be happy to spend some time talking to see what goals Mott Underwater can help you achieve. James Mott Creating Confident Divers 12/9/2020 6 Comments Dancing With The BubblesEvery scuba diver carries a card that they show to get on a boat, to get gas or to rent equipment. This certification card lets the world know that they have learned the necessary skills that let them go below the surface and visit the underwater world. The c-card identifies the human as a certified scuba diver.
Although all scuba divers carry the card, they are not all the same. Some are simply better divers than others. Maybe because of a longer class, a better instructor or more experience along the way but it becomes clear that there is a magic that can be seen in the truly artistic masters. These underwater artists have a way of moving, breathing and being underwater that transcends others who just have a regulator in their mouth and a bottle of gas on their back. Scuba divers across the world share a dream. A desire to be in another world, always optimistic of its rewards and beauty. Some fight through the elements to see as much as they can until the last of their bubbles sends them up, while others become one with this new world. It stops being alien. It stops being a battle. These scuba divers become masters in an underwater art. The scuba and the diver. The magic within the masters is a balance of the two, the scuba and the diver. The scuba is the equipment, the textbook, the class. It is the confined water skills you learn, the new dive computer, it is the apparatus. But the diver is different. The diver dances with the bubbles. The diver is the artist in flow who becomes one with the water. The scuba is the technology. The diver is the magic. The underwater world, when not disturbed by humans is perfect. Perfect in its balance and beauty. It can be powerful and harsh, but it will remain without struggle. When we enter the water we can crash, fight and destroy or we can be part of that same dance with nature. Beautiful, artistic and real. Learning to dive requires reading and memorization, rote skill development for clearing a mask and assembling equipment, quizzes and exams to ensure comprehension. However, the magic of diving requires sacrifice, humility, patience, and respect. The real lessons we learn by studying the magic of diving will teach us mental and emotional strength, problem solving and courage. When you make the journey of the artist you will find the pleasure in the work that gets you to that dance. We are told that diving is a sport, but we have no competitors other than ourselves. When you are underwater there is no one to talk to and ask questions to. The only one you can talk to is yourself. The real you. Your challenge is the competition with yourself and your ego. It is between you and the bubbles. The dance of the underwater artist reflects our best selves. Above as well as below the surface. The magic is being able to bring it out, always. |
James Mott
James has been a PADI instructor since 1998 and was one of the original 10 instructors for UTD Scuba Diving in 2009. Archives
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