Task Loading?

Hey all - so over the weekend, I ran a number of charters for shark's teeth and worked on some Advanced Open Water and Wreck classes. So, the news from the boneyard was good. 6 meg teeth, the largest one was 5". Viz was okay, not great, about 5 to 8 feet. Viz at Silvertooth was better with almost 15 to 20 feet on Sunday morning with 10 to 15 in the afternoon. Water conditions all through the weekend were great, with almost no chop at all within a couple of miles of shore.

As part of the courses I was teaching this weekend, we had a good discussion about task loading and diving. Two great examples of what I mean by task loading are when somebody uses the compass and starts swimming, but instead of holding their depth, they begin to ascend without even knowing it. Another great example is when a diver is working with a wreck reel, their air consumption goes up dramatically. Task loading is something that every diver faces on every dive and in extreme cases, the diver who becomes over loaded under the water will begin to ignore some of the more important aspects of diving. As divers become more comfortable, first with the safety aspects of diving and second with how their gear works, they can take on more complex tasks like underwater navigation or wreck reel use.

I see a number of divers that have issues with task loading with equipment. This most often occurs when a diver rents gear for the first time and is not used to how the regulator and BCD will end up in the water and they find themselves fumbling for an inflator or a computer. Combine new gear with a small problem like a fin that is not correctly secured and you may overload a lot of divers who will ignore of get into a position that they shouldn't be in.

How do we prevent this?

• Practice, practice, practice. Best when you start with an instructor that can give you lots of shortcuts and practical ways of doing things underwater like navigation or reel use, but even after you finish a class, get out there and practice. Build the muscle memory so you don't have to really think to do a task.
• Gear. Can you find your way around your gear without looking? Are you comfortable enough that you could quickly respond to a rapid ascent? Is your safety sausage becoming tangled around your octopus? Getting comfortable in your own gear is the first major way to reduce task loading underwater in new divers.
• Stop, breath, think and act. This is the real "golden rule" of diving. Solve those small problems quickly. Fin not fitting right? Stop and fix the problem right then and there. Do what it takes to fix the issue so when something else comes up, you don't get overloaded by two problems and forget to take care of the other things that you need to do.

Greg