A Diver Refresher Course is being planned for March 2001. Please contact Laurie Barber if anyone in your unit is interested in this course or Bill Cobb with any questions about refresher requirements.

After six weeks but before six months of inactivity a recertification program consisting minimally of at least a check-out dive is required by the Unit Diving Supervisor/ship’s Divemaster or someone appointed by them. Divers with lapses in diving greater than 6 months who wish to become active again may be required to attend refresher training at NDC. Obviously it may not be easy for a diver to find the time or a unit to find the money for this refresher training. Therefore, please encourage your divers to get in the water at least every six weeks and certainly before six months has elapsed to avoid required refresher training . In the long run it will be easier on them, their diving supervisors (you) and the Dive Center. Refresher materials for all divers and units are available on CD-rom from NDC upon request.

You all probably know by now that a new version of the NOAA Monthly Dive Log has been created and distributed. Please use this new version for all future diving activity submissions to the Dive Center . A copy of this form is included with this mailing. A “fillable” version of this form is now available online (http://www.ndc.noaa.gov/uds/forms.htm). Diver data may be filled in the various fields of the form as it is viewed by a PDF viewer such as Adobe Reader. This data cannot be saved, but a hard copy of the filled form can be printed. Currently logs must still be submitted to the Dive Center as a hard copy by fax or mail. For those of you sloshing around in the deep blue or for those who are internet challenged, an Excel version of the log is available on 3.5” floppy or by e-mail upon request from Bill Cobb (bill.cobb@noaa.gov).

The newest version, Version 1.0, of the Scientific Diver Exam is out in time for the Christmas shopping season. Older versions of the exam are obsolete and should be discarded. Section I of the exam has been extensively modified to clean-out some of the more ambiguous and troublesome questions. The exam and reference materials are spiral bound and are accompanied by a new Scantron answer sheet. Unit Diving Supervisor’s with Scientific Diver applicants should request a copy of this test. Get yours while supplies last...

All NOAA divers are required to dive within the NOAA no-decompression diving tables unless prior approval from the Director NDP is received. This shouldn’t be a real shocker for any NOAA divers. This requirement does not change if dives are performed using a dive computer. Don’t quit reading yet... Bottom time is defined as the time you leave the surface beginning your descent until the time you leave the bottom to begin a direct ascent to the surface. Safety stops at 15’ and your ascent time from the bottom do not count against your bottom time unless you would like an added safety margin. Occasional problems arise because the UWATEC bottom timer/depth gauge records bottom time from the time you leave the surface and descend until you again reach the surface. This added measure of safety for repetitive diving is fine unless the total time surface to surface exceeds the NOAA no-deco tables... (for example a diver leaves bottom from a 60’ dives for 58 minutes and arrives at the surface at 63 mins after a normal ascent and safety stop). If this is the case, please report bottom time as the time at which you left the bottom (58 minutes not 63). This will help clear up misunderstandings about dive logs that contain dives that appear to have exceeded the tables but in reality have not. It will save on the nasty grams until they are really necessary!