Why do divers jump backwards from boats when they enter the water? is it always done?
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Well, if they’ve rolled forwards, they’ roll into the boat. Ba-dum tss.
Sry. No, its not done all the time but just very convenient. The heaviest part is the tank, so if you roll backwards, it does not fall onto you. One also sees divers enter via a big step into the water, but thats justcommon when its not suitable to sit or you need to get away from your entering point.
It’s a safe method of leaving a boat in full gear.
Full diving gear is really bulky, and very cumbersome when you aren’t in the water. By sitting on the edge of a boat and rolling off backwards, you remove the risk of falling and hurting yourself or breaking your equipment. It’s way easier to just fall backwards than it is to try and balance your way over.
On smaller boats lower to the surface its the easiest way to get in, air cylinders are heavy so you spend most of the trip trying NOT to roll back into the water.
This also makes it safer then everyone trying to stand up and step in individually as it reduces the chance of unbalancing the boat and/or cracking someone in the dome with a hefty chunk of metal, instead, you count it down and just lean back, gravity and your gear does the rest, you might still get kicked in the head though.
It is just the most practical way to get out of a boat. The diving gear is not made to be comfortable walking around in. The tanks and weight belts are quite heavy and the flippers make it very hard to walk. So divers will typically sit down when dressing in the last of the gear and do not want to get up to walk somewhere to get into the water. The most practical way to do this is to sit on the railing while getting dressed and then just jump backwards into the water.
There are other ways of doing it though. If the boat have a diving platform at the back they might swing their legs onto this through the hatch and then stand up and step forwards into the water. If the boat does not have any safe place to jump from the boat divers will usually take their flippers in their hands and climb down a ladder and then put on the flippers in the water. For more heavy equipment they would have to get lowered into the water by crane.
It is as simple as ‘it stops the tank getting in the way’
A driver’s equipment is designed to be used underwater where the water well help to support everything – this means that out of the water it is large, heavy and unwieldy. Because the tank is normally worn on the back, this means that if you were to enter the water forwards, you would have to ensure you jump far enough forwards so that you don’t catch the tank or any of its plumbing on the edge of the boat, and this has to be done while weighed down with around 20kg of gear – this is absolutely possible (and done fairly often), but it is riskier and takes more effort.
In comparison, entering backwards (either by stepping calmly down a ladder, or by rolling backwards off the edge) means the heavy tank is facing away and enters the water safely without the risk of it striking the edge.
Furthermore, the reason you will often see people rolling back off the boat rather than hopping backwards is because it better allows the diver to pause and prepare – sat down the diver more easily supports the weight of the equipment and is in a calm and stable position where they can easily wait for instruction. Standing up means it is harder to support the weight, and you are less stable and more likely to be knocked off balance by the boat moving in the water or similar.
The downside to rolling off the boat backwards is that you cannot see where you are landing, and will enter the water with a moment of disorientation first – something mitigated by having instructors on hand supervising the divers. So it will be more common for led trips for inexperienced divers to enter sat down and rolling in backwards, while more experienced and self organised divers to be used to entering the water through other methods like jumping
Safety and coordination when wearing heavy gear. Scuba gear is really awkward to move around in.
* You don’t want to get your regulator ( thing that provides you air) caught on a rope or something on the side of the boat, then land in the water face down unable to breathe. Divers will be wearing fins which makes climbing down a ladder near impossible and hitting the water face first both hurts, and has a high chance of mask or regulator coming off.
* More commonly, you‘re in a small boat that’s rocking back and forth and standing up when you’re wearing heavy gear is a recipe for disaster. As the weight balance changes when more divers enter the water, the Boat can rock even more.
But no, it is not always used. There’s another method called “giant stride” which is usually used on larger boats with purpose built dive decks or where the dive deck is too high To safely backward roll. Basically you just hold your mask and regulator with one hand to make sure they don’t fall off when you hit the water and step off the back of the boat.
Those are the two main entry methods from boats, if you have mobility issues or a weirdly designed boat then you might also just slide in or have assistance.
There are two ways to enter the water from a boat or platform: the roll and the giant’s stride.
The giant’s stride is just a big step forward, right off the boat into the water. The benefit here is that you are in a familiar orientation the whole time (head up towards the sky/surface), so it’s very easy to reorient yourself after hitting the water. The drawback is that it requires you to lug your gear around the boat/platform to get to the step-off point, then make a big movement with a heavy weight on your back. For the uninitiated, this can be difficult to accomplish safely.
The roll is easier to do from a lower position, where you don’t fall very far. It’s also easier to do; typically, you are seated prior to the roll, so you don’t have to carry the tank. This is especially true for dive boats that have slots for the tanks built into the seats on the sides. However, one drawback is that, since you’re doing a backwards somersault to get into the water, you may be slightly disorientated once you’re in, so you need to take a bit of time to get your bearings before swimming away.
The joke is that if they jumped forwards they’d end up in the boat.
In reality, of course, the centre of gravity of a diver is well towards their back. The tank is massively heavy. Sitting on the edge of the boat and then trying to maneuver your incredibly unwieldy fins over the side – you might well end up with something unsafe happening. With a specially adapted boat you can just step off – but if you are sitting on the side, by far the easiest way into the water is backwards.
Depends on the boat. The back roll is used on small inflatables and other boats close to the water. On a typical dive boat, the giant stride method is used. Regardless of the method, the purpose is to avoid being donked by your tank and or losing your mask or regulator.
Reading the comments here, it sure sounds as if a lot of people are just giving speculative answers without any practical experience of ever having dived from a dive boat. The ‘back roll’ is one form of safe entry into the water. The forward facing ‘giant stride’ is another. The method that the diver employs is usually dictated by the circumstances. Smaller dive boats and tenders are usually easier back roll from. Larger liveaboard dive boats are usually easier to giant stride from. The diver uses whichever method is easiest and safest. Often the method of entry to be used is given in the dive briefing given by the diver operator prior to the dive.
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