Posted by Dave on February 25, 2005 at 10:17:19:
In Reply to: Re: 12 year old certified as Master Diver?? posted by BSF on February 24, 2005 at 22:38:51:
"Come on Dave. The kid doesn't even have a hair on his ass yet."
Dang that's gross. If he does, he needs to go visit the waxing/laser woman. The reality is having terminal hair as a scent transmitter on one's perineum seems to be a rather poor indicator of intellectual ability to perform task loading exercises.
"The ratio between him and his equipment weight, never mind, what ratio? How about the weight ratio between him and your gear. Or for any adult he may dive with. How is he going to be able to handle that load, possibly while dragging someone out of the water. Answer, he isn't. "
Ive' heard similar arguments: "It's not a matter of how you grrrrrip it, it is a matter of weight ratios. A 4 ounce bird can't carry a 2 lb coconut!"
Sounds like a good argument for not letting fat people or petite women dive.
You don' t need to drag someone out of the water to be able to dive, you just need to be able to inflate their bc and if needed, perform cpr while they are floating, a skill that we easily mastered at 13. And at 13, if push came to shove, adrenalin would have allowed me to horizontally drag the average person out of the water. Besides, the average full grown man cannot lift another male diver with all his gear on anyway, so such an ability to complete a task is like making sure your kitchen knife can cut Ginsu like through a tin beverage can, never mind that most cans are aluminum. As a grown guy, I have seen plenty of "big boned" divers that I would definately need a hefty dose of adrenalin to move them, and I'm no slouch.
When I was 18 and was using double 80's, all my equipment outweighed me. Seems to me that dive training bodies don't have a gear to body weight ratio as a dive training qualifier. Instead they make sure you are reasonably safe.
I say let them enjoy life under the watchful eye of a responsible adult, which is more supervision then I had or needed at 13 flying hang gliders solo and diving.