The guide/instructor/buddy will take care of me.

The guide/instructor/buddy will take care of me.

It’s amazing to many of us how easily supposed well-trained divers can turn into “sea sheep,” simply following the herd without asking simple questions like, “where are we going, and how long will we stay?” All too often, divers regard dive guides as unerring, and will simply follow along. And while most of the time professional dive guides will be sufficiently conservative as to avoid decompression obligations, there are exceptions. According to the latest DAN data, 7 percent of the 348 divers injured in 2002 were relying on someone else rather than the tables or their own dive computer. What were they thinking? The take-home lesson for our students is that each of us is responsible for our own safety, and that means doing our own planning.

Other diving myths revolve around physiology and the physics of diving. Here again, we find some common myths and misconceptions that should be cleared up.