Dive Planning - Did I Miss It?

As usual, I came without a plan to post. I guess I will just write and see what ideas pop up.

Okay. Lets talk about planning! A dive!

Face it. Students are taught about dive planning. "Plan your dive and dive your plan." But in reality, they don't plan ANY dives. It's the instructor who does all the planning.

After your certified, if you go out with a group, someone with more experience or the divemaster of the resort plans your dive.

This leads to a very "fuzzy" understanding of what dive planning really is and why you do it.

Trust me. I've been there. In the beginning I thought Plan Your Dive meant, yes, I plan to go dive in that body of water there.

There's more to it than that.

But I think somewhere along the way we are doing a disservice to dive students. Mostly it's "This is where we are going. This is how long we will be down. This is how deep we will go." But WHY? We have to let them know why we plan the way we do, and they have to see that modeled. So they can do it for themselves in the future. So they can question a dive profile that seems a bit, well, off the chart.

Ahhh. Diving "off" the table. There's another post for me to share another time :)