Getting to grips with CESA (Controlled Emergency Swimming Ascent)

One of the skills a PADI Open Water Scuba Instructor has to teach new divers, is what to do should they run out of air, like CESA, for instance; Controlled Emergency Swimming Ascent.

Our IDC candidates busied themselves with this and other skills earlier this week as they found themselves in the water going through the Instructor Development Skills circuit during the IDC in Sabah, Borneo.

CESA is something every open water diver will learn, but will hopefully rarely use.

As an important, potentially live-saving maneuver, it is vital for instructors to be able to effectively communicate this skill, so that new divers can easily remember it, should one day the need arise.

In a real situation CESA is performed vertically, but because of the risk associated with rapidly rising from depth, such as decompression sickness, the skill is practiced and demonstrated horizontally.

Our Sabah Borneo IDC candidates still have some distance to go, but is already more than halfway through the February IDC.