On Saturday, April 26, 2003 8:53 PM, Lee Bell wrote:

(snip)
> > Christian, for example, mentioned downwellings and suggested that a, "
> significant
> > percentage of divers wouldn't even know what a downwelling was."  He may
> be
> > right!  But there's sufficient information in the open water manuals
about
> longshore,
> > offshore, rip currents and upwelling currents for most divers to make an
> accurate
> > assessment of what a downwelling current is and how to handle it -
> assuming that they
> > actually read the manual!  :-)

> Assuming that somebody read the manual is a pretty big assumption for
> somebody that didn't realize there was a risk to be considered.  How would
> somebody that doesn't know about a downwelling, know to study up on them?
> My first exposure to downwellings was a few years ago when somebody wrote
a
> "I learned from that" kind of article in one of the popular dive
magazines.
> I've still not encountered a strong one, but having been warned, I've got
a
> plan if I ever do.  Closer to our personal experience, how many people who
> had never dove in Cozumel do you suppose read up on poisonous fish,
corals,
> etc. unique to the area before our 1999 trip?  Hell, it's been years since
> we went and, until just now, I didn't even think that I don't know whether
> Cozumel has poisonous or, say, electric creatures I would not recognize.
I
> simply didn't see the risk and, therefore, didn't take the simplest of
steps
> to mitigate it, i.e. read the manual.  8^)  If I missed something so
> obvious, even with my concern over teaching risk assessment, how many
people
> who've never considered the subject, do even worse?

G'Day, Lee!  The inherent truth behind the old saying, "You can take a horse
to water, but you can't make him drink" applies as much to divers as it does
to horses;  i.e. if the horse subsequently gets thirsty then  it has nobody
to blame but itself!  In the case of divers, it's no good saying that the
training agencies don't do a sufficiently good job in training people when
they don't read the manuals, or follow the advice that they offer!  :-)

In the case of Cozumel - because I'd never dived there before - I followed
the Open Water manual advice about gathering as much information as possible
about the style of diving; the environment, visibility, currents, bottom
composition; aquatic plant and animal life, tides, etc. through books and by
asking questions of the folks on the list who had experience of the area.
That, it seems to me, is an elementary part of dive planning as covered in
the enry level diving courses. :-)

Strike