I was reading a post on Scubaboard about DIR and the upline. One person argued that DIR divers were forbidden to lay one finger on the upline. I found this comment rather silly. If there is a DIR rule book, I’ve never seen it. So I doubt the argument forbidding DIR divers from using the upline holds much water. As we gain more diving education and experience, we should be moving towards a thinking diver and will start to see that there are some instances where divers to need to use the upline.
Divers and the Upline
Uplines are normally called mooring lines in boat diving. They are attached to an anchor or shipwreck and have a float at, or near, the surface for boats to tie off to. When divers are ascending, they need to know where that upline is in order to get back to the boat (or the correct boat if the site is busy). That’s all up lines are for. “So you agree that divers should not use the upline?” No, I do not agree. Divers should not be using the upline as a crutch. That is, divers should not be holding onto the upline as a replacement for poor buoyancy control.
Below is a list of reasons when it’s OK for divers to hold onto the upline.
- Emergencies:
- No mask ascent
- Out of gas ascent
- BCD Failure
- Free flowing regulator (even though you should be able to do this neutrally buoyant
- Ascending in a strong current
- Temporary stability
- Zero visibility
I’m sure there are a couple other reasons I’ve forgotten, but the thing to remember is that the upline is there to use in an emergency. Divers should not be using it to control their buoyancy, or lack thereof.
Got any other reasons when it is OK to use the upline?
Dive Safe,
Duane
Precision Diving
About Duane Johnson
I have seen a diver use the upline to stay negative and slow his ascent when a weightbelt was lost.
I’ve seen a diver use the upline to wrap his foot/fin in so he wouldn’t be blown from the buoy at the surface.
This write up has nothing to do with our dives yesterday I hope
If you put on a different undergarment and find out that you are now 3 lbs. positive, you’ll need to use the upline to keep from floating to the surface during deco. Of course, this has never happened to me
Or you could flood your suit to maintain bouyancy and keep in trim like a real man.
xcuse my english (i’m danish).
Thinking divers and DIR is not easy to balance. With the introduction of rules the thinking part is sort of neglected. “we should be moving towards a thinking diver”. We start with rules and we end up with the perfect utopia of thinking 100% (aka no rules). Somewhere in between are u and me. If DIR-diver means that u are at a specific place in this multidimensional function, or in a spesific area of the euclid vectorspace if u like, then there is nothing right about it, and everyone calling himself DIR should rephrase. Right is not obtainable unless we rephrase to somekind of a degree og rightness, and if we do that DIR should be DITACDOR (doing it to a certain degree of rightness). Since that’s a little to close to the word DICTATOR it would probably be better to cal it DIR, keeping in mind thats it not really right. This is all philosophically speaking.
If the word rules could substituted to something like: the intersubjective understanding of what is the best solution(s) of whatever solutions we had up til present time reflected on regarding various aspect of (scuba)diving. We are of course talking intersubjectivity confined to the group of people who calls themselves DIR-divers.
If the site where i’m posting this dont find my post relevant u are welcome to remove it.
It depends on how people view DIR. DIR should be viewed as the path to better diving rather than the goal, the thinking diver is what DIR is evolving to. When DIR is the goal (and label), then it becomes subjective and your example of a certain degree of rightness applies. There are many people, like myself and UTD, that are trying to evolve DIR into the thinking diver by applying the spirit of DIR into the decision making process.
Thanks for the comment.
Duane
Thxs for the reply!
It’s a tough jungle, to sort out the many sources of DIR on the web. I do not belong to any DIR-group, but i am a (bit unexperienced) thinking diver, and i’m learning a lot, also by readings in rule focused DIR-sites and discussiongroups. I like your answer, and i’m looking forward to browse your site even further.