My First Panicked Student...

Being a scuba instructor in a resort environment, many of the courses you teach are ‘Referrals’ which means the Open Water student took the first half of their course at a local dive shop near their home. They completed their book-work and learned to do skills in a swimming pool, and all they need to become certified divers is to review what they learned and then perform the required skills on 4 dives in Open Water. Sometimes the students come ready to dive, well prepared and well taught. Sometimes, however, referral instructors find themselves in interesting and potentially dangerous situations!

Keeping in mind that these Referral students have never been deeper underwater than the bottom of a swimming pool, the first Open Water dive at a resort is kept fairly shallow, with the skills portion and exploration portion not to exceed a depth of 40’. That is still plenty deep for injury to occur, should a student panic, so as an instructor you are always on the lookout for the telltale signs of diver stress. A diver who is constantly coming up with equipment issues when their equipment is working perfectly fine, for example, or one who talks incessantly – or not at all – can all be signs of diver stress.My very first Open Water Referral student was a young woman who had none of the signs of stress, passed her review brilliantly and seemed anxious to get out there and dive! At our resort there was about 100 yards of very shallow water to swim through before we got to the 20’ depth area where we would descend and perform the skills for the referral course. The whole time she was swimming, her eyes were glued underwater, looking at all the beautiful coral and colorful fish. This was a diver in the making!One of the most difficult skills for a brand new diver is simply descending. Breathing tends to be your enemy, as you are a little nervous, you over-breathe, keeping you lungs full of air and acting as a flotation device. The more you struggle, the more difficult it is to descend. My student had only minor trouble, and soon we were kneeling on the sand at a depth of 20’ performing skills. The skills went well, and our Open Water dives progressed right according to plan. The student wasn’t a natural diver and she had some trouble with her buoyancy, but that is common and we were working on it, and since she absolutely seemed to love the creatures, I knew she would make a good diver some day.And then, we reached the dive where the student must remove, replace and clear their water-filled mask. Even though an instructor watches their Open Water students extremely closely, this is a skill where an instructor must not only pay attention, but physically be close enough to subdue to student should they try and rush to the surface, as it is the most common point of panic during a scuba course. If a student has difficulty clearing their mask, their brain tells them they are in trouble and the first instinct is to hold their breath and race for the surface; the absolute last thing they should do!

Once you are an experienced diver, you realize that you are breathing through the regulator in your mouth; your air source is not compromised in the least by a little bit of water (or a lot of water) surrounding your nose and eyes. There is no need to panic. But for an inexperienced student, this can be a scary moment. After successfully removing and replacing her mask, my student struggled with the task of clearing and was not having success. The more she tried to empty her mask of water, the more water she let in. Her movements became more rapid, her body language screamed stress, and within a few seconds she went from an enthusiastic, average, calm student to a panicked person about to bolt for the surface, risking serious injury.As a new instructor, one never knows exactly how you’ll react to such an event, and my response was to instantly reach for her BCD with one hand to keep her on the sand, and for the nose of her mask with the other hand, to stop her – in her stressed-out state – from attempting to breathe through her water-covered nose. There wasn’t enough water in her mask to prevent her from opening her eyes, which she did. We stayed like that for what seemed like an eternity, face to face with my fingers pinching her nose and my other hand securely wrapped around the strap of her BCD. In reality was only a minute or so, according to Jim, who was acting as my assistant for this course. During that time, I kept my eyes as calm as I could and kept them glued to hers; my goal was to get her to relax; then, we could ascend safely and practice the mask-clearing skill on a later dive. I watched as her expression slowly began to change from sheer terror; her eyes relaxed, her body stopped fighting against my grip, and after a few minutes she signaled that she was OK and I could remove my hand from her nose. She cleared her mask beautifully.With her no longer a threat to bolt, I removed my hand from her BCD and there we stayed, kneeling on the sand, for another couple of minutes, relaxing and breathing. I then signaled to ask whether she wanted to cut the dive short and return to the surface, but her response was to remain and complete the dive. It was a miraculous transformation. Where on our previous excursions she had trouble maintaining a consistent depth and was (as is common for a new diver) constantly adjusting the air in her BCD, on this dive she was completely relaxed, focused and neutrally buoyant. She looked like someone who had been diving for years; comfortable, aware and observant of the creatures we saw during the dive.

Back in the dive shop, and throughout the remainder of the Referral Course, my student couldn’t stop talking about her experience. She said it was something in my eyes that told her a story. At first, she thought my holding her down would drown her, but as she looked into my eyes, she saw she wasn’t drowning, that everything was OK and she was safe. I somehow calmed her down during a very stressful moment, and at that point, she said something ‘clicked’ in her. Whatever that might have been, it certainly had the effect of making her relax and start enjoying herself underwater – a great step toward becoming a good diver.Author Ellen Debboli is a PADI Master Scuba Diver Trainer, Web Developer and owner of MagnetFotos, a company selling photo refrigerator magnets to scuba enthusiasts and tropical fish lovers world-wide!