Try-Dive Guidelines

Try-Dives should be based on the "Experience SCUBA" course detailed in the Blue Instructor Manual, and dated 04/1998. The course requires 2 hours.

This section is aimed at instructors taking members of the public in for the first time. Here are some hints and tips.

  • Take your time to get in the water, but not because you have briefed them for two hours. Only tell them what they need to know. They don’t need to know how all the kit is assembled – just highlight the main DV and how to breathe off it, and how to inflate and deflate the STAB jacket.
  • Get them to breathe above the water to prove to themselves the DV will give them air.
  • Let them go down in very shallow water and just sit and breathe. This will identify who is confident and who is not. Depending on what you find out, you will have to tailor the try a dive accordingly. If your student is nervous you may not even reach the point where they are happy swimming around the shallow end.
  • Always descent and ascent in the shallow end. Surfacing in the deep end may cause burst lung (if they hold their breath), or they may not be able to provide themselves with buoyancy (so sink back down to the bottom again), which will make them feel out of control. Most people who sink in the deep end, are unable to control the decent so go down too fast, which may cause additional ear damage.
  • Avoid going out of standing depth unless you are very sure of your student.
  • Do NOT do mask clearing.
  • Things that you can do:
    • swim round in shallow water and standing depth (ans possibly the deep end), but remember to watch that they equalise pressure properly.
    • generally finning around and watching others, wave to friends if under the water at the same time
    • buoyancy – lying on the bottom and breathing in and out to sink and rise, but you may have problems - if you have overweighted them, they will not be able to exert the fine control needed to get neutrally buoyant
    • if other people are training allow them to watch them doing skills
    • forward rolls - but watch their heads
    • backward rolls, but only if they are good and confident at doing forward rolls - again, watch their heads
    • if they are very confident and you are running short of things to do, then teach DV retrieval in the shallow end ONLY, by taking the DV out of your mouth, blowing bubbles, placing the DV back in your mouth and pressing the purge button.
    • Repeat the exercise but breathe out instead of pressing the purge button
  • This is a try a dive and not the course, so the only thing that matters is that your strudent ENJOYS THEMSELF.

This page was last updated on : 09 Sep 2018