Tec Instructors and Cigarettes

[GoProHonduras]

Hi All,

As an Instructor Trainer for both PADI and IANTD I've been noticing for a while that there is a high percentage of recreational Scuba Instructors I see that smoke cigarettes. Whilst I don't condone this as the healthiest of practices I accept that people, even scuba Instructors will smoke!

However my concern now is that I am seeing a high percentage of technical diving Instructors also smoking cigarettes and often during training. At Utila Dive Centre we do not allow any of our Instructors, recreational or technical to smoke on duty.

A technical diving Instructor teaches programs that allow us as divers to gently push our limits of training and to enter delicate models of decompression. This side of the sport is often more strenous, demanding, susceptible to DCS and requires a higher degree of physical fitness from both the diver and Instructor.

I'm looking for some feed back here, would anyone's choice of technical Instructor be influenced by the fact that they smoke?

Also if you are a technical Instructor and you do smoke how do you explain this to your students? Maybe a reference to the latest edition of the PADI Undersea Journal on health/fitness and technical diving might give some interesting reading.

 

[roy_nexus_6]

Breathing compressed air or helium mix @ 200' could be much more hazardous to your health then smoking. Everybody should relax a little bit and stop being so politically correct.

 

[Ahmed]

Hi All,

As an Instructor Trainer for both PADI and IANTD I've been noticing for a while that there is a high percentage of recreational Scuba Instructors I see that smoke cigarettes. Whilst I don't condone this as the healthiest of practices I accept that people, even scuba Instructors will smoke!

However my concern now is that I am seeing a high percentage of technical diving Instructors also smoking cigarettes and often during training. At Utila Dive Centre we do not allow any of our Instructors, recreational or technical to smoke on duty.

A technical diving Instructor teaches programs that allow us as divers to gently push our limits of training and to enter delicate models of decompression. This side of the sport is often more strenous, demanding, susceptible to DCS and requires a higher degree of physical fitness from both the diver and Instructor.

I'm looking for some feed back here, would anyone's choice of technical Instructor be influenced by the fact that they smoke?

Also if you are a technical Instructor and you do smoke how do you explain this to your students? Maybe a reference to the latest edition of the PADI Undersea Journal on health/fitness and technical diving might give some interesting reading.

This is a very very interesting subject and have no doubt about it!
I was a smoker for 15 years and have been teaching diving for the last 11 years. Also for the last 3 years, I have been teachning technical diving.

For the last 15 years, people have generally told me I should stop smoking.
For 11 years have been bewildered on how an instructor can smoke!
For 3 years I have told my tekkies that smoking is really bad for deco and CO2 build-up etc.... on ly to get funny looks and people lighting up fags before dives!

I quit smoking 6 months ago which was a bit hard. But with the amount of shit I give to smokers now, the pain of stopping was worth it!

Now, when I tell my tekkies that smoking is bad for diving, the smokers of the group don't dare have a fag! Already, 10 people who did rec courses with me have already quit smoking too.

The moral of this story is that smoking stinks. A diving instructor is a role model. People will copy a good role model.
Quitting smoking has been a great success for me and I feel like an idiot for ever smoking. But we are today what yesterday made us to be.

So good on you. Don't give people reason to smoke by allowing it. It is socially unacceptable.

Ahmed
Marlin Inn Dive Center

 

[island_sands]

I wouldn't smoke if i was a diver or not.
Check with your health centre to see the "benefits" of smoking...

and check your text book again.. to see the "benefits" of smoking while recreational or technical diving...

I know sooo many instructors who smoke.. the best reason i heard from a female instructor was

"i wont give up smoking as it helps with my breathing... i have an amazing RMV..."
:duh :duh

 

[Cliff Etzel]

Breathing compressed air or helium mix @ 200' could be much more hazardous to your health then smoking. Everybody should relax a little bit and stop being so politically correct.

Who in their right mind breathes compressed air at 200'???

Secondly, it's not about being politically correct as you state - Scuba diving is an extreme sport. The very thing that has been shown to be a predisposer to DCS is the very thing that people don't think twice about practicing.

As a current DM candidate and eventual Dive instructor by end of Sept 2005 - it will be SOP for me that anyone who comes to me looking to dive and smokes will be informed that they should take up another non-life support dependent sport - such as Golf or Tennis...

 

[Veronika]

I totally agree with what Cliff said. If you smoke on a regular basis, diving probably isn't the sport for you. Someone who thinks that smoking and diving go together IMHO hasn't got very deep into decompression and micro bubble formation issues or hasn't enough self-discipline to behave accordingly.
If I would accept an instructor who smokes ? Well, if he / she can teach me the skills I need better then everyone else then probably yes, for the time of the course. I would not want to dive with a smoker on a regular basis, though.

Veronika

 

[Alison]

Who in their right mind breathes compressed air at 200'???

Well I have on a few occasions in my younger days and I smoked in then too (feel better now Ive stopped) It was the norm in the Dorothea in those days long before mixed gasses were available to the recreational diver. How times have changed, for the better I might add

 

[WICKED_WIZARD]

In response to the original question.
Yes my choice of both technical and recreational instructor is influenced by, if the instructor smokes and or drinks alcohol directly before, between and directly after a dive.
I am currently a Naui DM and started both Naui and IANTD instructor training, and have changed instructors cos of the above reason.

You put you live in both the equipment you use and the buddy you go with, make sure they are up to the dive.

All the best.