Diving Education Today

[gcbryan]

In the good old days flying was so expensive that only the rich and businessmen could afford to travel.

Now it's been brought to the masses. It isn't fun or glamorous but many more people can experience places further than they could drive to.

The present isn't the past. You have to take the good with the not so good.

Less rather than more people are dying in diving. It's just irritating to be around less competent divers just like it's irritating to be stuffed into an airline like cattle since it's the price you pay for affordable seats in the case of travel or bringing the masses into scuba.

Of course, once we are in scuba we don't really care if the rest of the masses get involved much like after I get my cheap airline seat I don't care if no one else shows up.

That's not the way it works however.

Whether the sport could be more exciting or not or more challenging just depends on the individual. It's not more exciting or challenging if someone else is doing the challenging, exciting things. Nothing is stopping any of us from learning and training to any level that we wish.

The argument it seems to me isn't an argument at all but rather just a wish or wishful thinking. There is no argument that training could be longer, more through, and more complete. But it isn't going to happen because...it hasn't happened...that's not the way things are going.

It's what more or less would happen in any hobby/past time activity. Keep it limited and the participants will be trained to a higher level and will be more fit in general. Open it to the masses and those things will go down. It's not even surprising. How could it be otherwise?

As an individual each of us can set our own standards and as in much of life we have to let the other guy do the same. Life is messy.

 

[Slonda828]

GC,

I agree with everything that you just said. When diving continues its swirl down the toilet, and more dive shops close, then more people are going to notice that this is not working anymore. I haven't been out on the dive boat in three weeks because they cannot get 3 other people to come out and dive. When we all have to buy our own compressors, I just hope nobody shakes their fist and wonders why, because I sure as heck won't.

 

[Thalassamania]

There have been vague references to the annual DAN report on fatalities, so I thought I would provide some specifics from the most recent report, which covers fatalities through 2006. That way people will be able to use actual facts.

To create its report, DAN has to rely on whatever evidence it has on hand. In many cases they have full autopsies; in many other cases they have precious little such information. In many cases they know a lot about the diver's history; in many cases they know next to nothing.

The report was first done in 1970, but they only covered the United States in those first years. For the last two decades they include both the U.S. and Canada.

In the first decade of study (1970-1979), there were an average of 114.4 annual deaths in the U.S. alone, with a high of 147 and a low of 102. In the last decade of study (1997-2006), there were an average of 84.1 deaths in the U.S. and Canada combined, with a high of 91 and a low of 75. That low was reached in the last year of the study so far, 2006.

The average age of the fatalities has been going steadily upward, and it is now at 48. Age seems to be a very dominant factor, as does obesity and cardiovascular health.

About a quarter of the fatalities were attributed to some form of cardiac attack. They only reached that conclusion when they had definite evidence, though, such as in an autopsy. When you read the individual case reports, the descriptions of many of the other fatalities for which they do not have a clear diagnosis look a whole lot like the descriptions of the cardiac deaths. There could be many more.

Where the information was known, 40% of the fatalities had more than 10 years of experience, 13% had 6-10 years experience, and 15% had 3-5 years of experience.

7 of the fatalities (nearly 10%) had professional certifications, mostly instructors. 6 of them were technical divers, and 5 were on rebreathers. (Those last statistics overlap to a large degree--some were instructors with technical training on rebreathers.)

2 of the divers were conducting scientific research, although it is not clear what their training for that was.

Overweighting was remarkable in some cases, even with very experienced divers. I noticed at least three cases where divers had over 50 pounds of lead. One of those was a DM hoping to assist in a class, except that he sank to the bottom and could not get up without assistance.

All of the above are facts taken from the study. What follows is some interpretation.

I examined every case study in search of divers whose deaths might be attributed to training. I tried to include only newer (2 years or less experience) divers, but I also included some whose experience was unknown but who acted like they were new or inexperienced. I found 7 cases in all, but nothing is clear cut. In the cases where there was a rapid ascent causing an embolism, there was never a clear reason for the rapid ascent. If you read those cases and then read the case studies of the people with the cardiac arrests, you see a similarity with several. The diver seemed to be doing fine and then suddenly panicked. One was bipolar, obese, and taking several medications.

The most clear cut training issue was a relatively new diver who went OOA while deep and was unsuccessful in an attempt to get an alternate air source from his buddy. A couple of other OOA at depth rounded out the 7.

I saw one case of what I believe to be very poor instructor decision-making. The student died during an OW dive in a cold river in strong current and poor visibility. Another student death was to an older woman who had a cardiac condition. (These were not included in the 7 above.)

There were also several clear cases of idiocy, including a young diver who disappeared trying to set a personal depth record on air, doing the deepest segment alone.

There were a number of cases of poorly conditioned people extending themselves beyond their physical limits in rough water, having a fatal event before even submerging.

Let me first warn that the studies did not maintain the same methodologies and thus there is a discrepancy between the NAUDC data and analysis and that of DAN. There are numerous reasons for this that I do not feel are germane here, but this does need to be acknowledged.

The NUADC collected cases based on subsequent investigation of newspaper reports provided by clipping services as well as a network of "reporters" that was developed where a lot of diving was being conducted. DAN has the internet and it's own reporting network. Doing this sort of work today has become much, much easier ... heck ScubaBoard would be an invaluable source.

Cardiac cases are likely underestimated in the NAUDC data, and better and more knowledgeable coroners have shifted the number of cardiac cases higher in the DAN report, so we've got rater severe bias there.

Of the two scientific cases, one (the McMurdo sound case) was, I believe, a Scripps model trained diver, whilst the other was not.

Overweighting seems to have been a major factor since the advent of BCs, my memory is that it was less frequent in the early days.

With respect to training cases, the NUADC classified it as a training fatality regardless of the circumstances, regardless of the cause, if the person was enrolled in a training class and was engaged in a training dive, keep in mind that in the days of the NAUDC there was Basic Diver and Instructor without many other classes. I have always felt that DAN was a bit of a creature of the industry and bent over backwards to present things in best light. I suppose the opposite criticism could be leveled at the NAUDC since they "needed" to demonstrate to their funding sources that a problem worth studying existed.

 

[LaurenW]

Does diving seem safer today because the adventure for the majority of the diving public has been limited due to poorer quality divers that it is more difficult to get hurt, but the sport has become far less interesting as it has been reduced in level of difficulty?

This is simply elitism. You can make it as difficult as you want for yourself to make it interesting, just don't push it on everyone else. You're complaining that diving is easier now, and I think that's really the core of the issue. It's not that diving education is worse (sounds like it is), it's that being a scuba diver isn't as much of an ego boost as it used to be way back when.

If we took the divers of the past and gave them the tools and technical training of today, would their feats blow our minds?

The divers of the past weren't supermen. I expect one of them given the tools and technical training of today would perform just about the same as a current diver given the tools and technical training of today. "Kids these days..." is not a valid argument.

I apologize for my tone, but elitism rubs me the wrong way. I agree that training for new divers has lots of room for improvement, but this is the wrong argument to take.

 

[rstofer]

Hey Richard. If someone wanted their son or daughter to learn how to scuba dive and they were looking for training, I would suggest they compare training programs. If two were available, one at $399 for 25 hours of training and the other $799 for 50 hours of training and all other things being equal I would pick the later if it was my son or daughter. Why? Diving in the North Atlantic can be dangerous. I'd want him/her to complete the most intensive program before I felt he/she would be ready to go diving with a buddy without supervision. Any Instructor, regardless of how efficient they are can impart more knowledge in 50 hours than they can in 25.

I'm aware of the statistics. I'm also aware that there are not many new divers that I see that I would want to dive with. Don't get me wrong, I'm a mentor to several divers and this was the way I was trained. But if I were to go on a dive vacation, I would like my buddy to be competent. Wouldn't you? I can't imagine why people feel that a higher degree of ability is something that shouldn't be sought after?

On a personal level, I would like to see my grandson repeat the OW training at some point. For the moment, he should do just fine in shallow water (30' or so) and near shore with beach entries and exits. But I would be a fool to think he really retained any of the detail of dive tables or any other technical aspect of diving. I am not a fool!

Given that the industry HAS cut back on training time, I don't know where I will send him. LA County comes to mind but as we live closer to Sacramento, I don't know how to work the logistics. If they had a summer program starting after school lets out and before it starts in the Fall, we could just rent a place for the class. From what I have seen of their schedule, this isn't workable.

But maybe it isn't the OW class or the retention that is the problem. He could, for example, take many more classes (AOW, Rescue, several swimming specialties and wind up with the same education I got from the NAUI OW I, OW II, AOW, Rescue sequence. That might be satisfactory.

I don't have any real objections to the OW class for the vast majority of divers. I do believe, however, that if they want to become independent divers, they should get more training.

All the industry did was divide the program up into modules and offer them piece-meal. It's the diver's responsibility to understand the scope of their ignorance and get additional training.

Richard

 

[dadediver]

Then why do warm water recreational divers, who do not engage in rough, elitist, macho underwater activities, and whose goal is to survive an easy fun day of diving, perish in easily preventable accidents?

I have a lot of experience in warm recreational waters. Your post implies a lack of respect for those waters.

As a dive guide in those waters, in one day I made as many saves as my lifetime total in 23 years of lifeguarding.

Having to assist tired divers, rescue panicked divers, and keep divers from running out of air was a weekly occurrence. Some weeks it seemed to happen every couple of days.

When it is you, your kid, your spouse, or someone you care about in trouble, you'll be glad that "macho elitists" like me, whether they be dive pros or rescue trained divers, train hard and run in the cold when our knees hurt.

But, that isn't because I'm a macho elitist. It's because I am extremely experienced and know the benefits of preventative lifeguarding for others and oneself. Physical fitness and good skills go a long way to that end.

How do you know how "hard" the training to which I refer is until you have undergone it? Divers aren't beat up senselessly, but conditioned over a period of 8 - 10 weeks to be better physically able to handle the rigors the oceans and waterways may throw at a diver and to overtrain for emergencies. By training beyond the minimum, a diver will be able to handle the typical emergency or problem with ease and also have had an opportunity to experience and prepare for a worst case scenario.

If anything recreational divers need the better training because unlike some of us "macho elitists" they really are not okay with dying down there.

Spoken like a true Macho Elitism....

Just because you made some saves, dont put yourself too high on that pedistool. I am invovled in Lifeguarding (YMCA, ARC, BSA and USLA) and the topic also comes up with poor training, lack of fitness and guards drowing during training and actual rescues. I keep hearing from "the old guard" that the training is softer and dumbed down. Why should we let these 17 year old 100 pound female guard. Are they able to tow a 300 pound drowning victim to safety or perform an escape from a 200 pound surfer. Used to be an 800 meter swim test, now it is only a 500 meter swim. Used to have perform saves without any cans or tubes and now always with a can or tube.

I spent sometime in the military, attened a few schools, involved in a few conflicts. Guess what. Same crap comes up. Our military is getting weaker, our soliders are getting less training, less PT, more fatty foods. The "old days were tougher".

I skydive and guess what...same crap come up. The "old days blah blah blah"...


Macho elitism is all it is.

 

[dadediver]

Is diving seemingly safer today because the mid-1970's saw a rise in cave diving deaths while the sport was moving into places and depths divers had not experienced, and for which they had not developed adequate training, for the new envelopes to which they began to push exploration as better equipment became available?

Does diving seem safer today because the adventure for the majority of the diving public has been limited due to poorer quality divers that it is more difficult to get hurt, but the sport has become far less interesting as it has been reduced in level of difficulty?

In the past, did more accidents happen because the average diver was diving in riskier areas and profiles? If we took the divers of the past and gave them the tools and technical training of today, would their feats blow our minds?

I'm thinking, yes, because some of those divers of the past who stayed with the sport were also the ones who began agencies like IANTD, TDI and PSAI. A new generation of smart divers through GUE and UTD is expanding on the lessons of yesterday and training smarter - of course most of these divers now employ scooters rather than swim and rebreathers are giving divers more time to break past yesterday's barriers.

But, I wonder how much more fun diving would be in warm water resort areas if we weren't treated like cattle, and how training that stressed physical as well as mental fitness would reduce rebreather and other technical diving fatalities.

I have a good one for Spike TV's Ultimate Warrior series - 1950's US Navy UDT "Frogman" vs. today's U.S. Navy SEAL - under the water.

Versus what.

These guys bleed red also. They drown just like the rest of us.
I had seen a SEAL lose is life in West Virgina on the New River Gorge. He jumped out right before a class V rapid and tried to swim the rapid. Guess what? It took 2 days to retreive his body from the hydraulics.

 

[Teamcasa]

.. You can make it as difficult as you want for yourself to make it interesting, just don't push it on everyone else. You're complaining that diving is easier now, and I think that's really the core of the issue. It's not that diving education is worse (sounds like it is), it's that being a scuba diver isn't as much of an ego boost as it used to be way back when.

I think this is exactly right.

The divers of the past weren't supermen. I expect one of them given the tools and technical training of today would perform just about the same as a current diver given the tools and technical training of today. "Kids these days..." is not a valid argument.

We sure felt like it though.

 

[Trace Malinowski]

Spoken like a true Macho Elitism....

Just because you made some saves, dont put yourself too high on that pedistool. I am invovled in Lifeguarding (YMCA, ARC, BSA and USLA) and the topic also comes up with poor training, lack of fitness and guards drowing during training and actual rescues. I keep hearing from "the old guard" that the training is softer and dumbed down. Why should we let these 17 year old 100 pound female guard. Are they able to tow a 300 pound drowning victim to safety or perform an escape from a 200 pound surfer. Used to be an 800 meter swim test, now it is only a 500 meter swim. Used to have perform saves without any cans or tubes and now always with a can or tube.

I spent sometime in the military, attened a few schools, involved in a few conflicts. Guess what. Same crap comes up. Our military is getting weaker, our soliders are getting less training, less PT, more fatty foods. The "old days were tougher".

I skydive and guess what...same crap come up. The "old days blah blah blah"...


Macho elitism is all it is.

The National Park Service lifeguards at Gateway National Seashore at Sandy Hook, NJ have increased their swim test standards and are the highest in the United States. They have many young petite female lifeguards on the sand.

Most of my lifeguard instructors, and the toughest, who demanded the most of me, were women. There is a difference between sexism and elitism.

My last rescue this past Spring, while teaching a scuba instructor course from shore, involved swimming a good distance in 3 foot chop to put the victim in the old cross-chest carry and tow him to safety in a rip. Without the old training and the principle of primacy having learned those skills from day one, that rescue could have been more difficult, or resulted in the inability to rescue. That guy is alive and smiling. Rather than put him down for getting in trouble, I praised him for knowing when to call for help and having the smarts to realize he was in trouble before he was in grave danger. Since I'm so "macho and elitist" I obviously didn't have any concern for the guy's emotional state and preservation of his ego. Sometimes it takes guts to call for help. I told him that. Coincidentally, I just started getting back in decent swimming shape a couple weeks prior by swimming Master's workouts and workouts pulled from swimplan.com. Lucky for both of us. Nothing elitist about it. My old instructors set the bar for training and I did what they told me. As a lifeguard instructor today, another lifeguard instructor and I, still teach the old stuff in addition to the standards. That LG instructor is a high school teacher. He just wants the best for his students whether in his high school class or in the pool.

Looking back, I love my hard teachers now more than the easy ones I liked better at the time.

As a scuba instructor, I didn't think my skydiving training was very good. Talking to a skydiving instructor from the Blue Sky Ranch in New York state, I was right. I quit skydiving because I didn't feel that I was really prepared. That skydiving instructor quit scuba diving because he didn't think his class in Mexico was very good. From talking to him, he was right. Had both of us received better training, our lives would probably be richer today.

One person's macho elitism is another's care and concern.

 

[Trace Malinowski]

[/B]


Versus what.

These guys bleed red also. They drown just like the rest of us.
I had seen a SEAL lose is life in West Virgina on the New River Gorge. He jumped out right before a class V rapid and tried to swim the rapid. Guess what? It took 2 days to retreive his body from the hydraulics.

The scenario would test the watermanship ability and in-water and underwater combat capabilities of the old school training vs. the new school training. It would be interesting to see if naval combat swimmers of the past could best today's elite warriors despite their better technology.

They wouldn't stand a chance against the firepower the modern Navy could bring to bear on the surface. SEAL support is daunting compared to what UDT's had on the surface in the 1950's, but it would be interesting to see how they'd match up in the water.

The comment was directed at anyone who enjoys The Ultimate Warrior TV show on Spike since they will pit out of time warriors such as Ninjas against Spartans, Apaches against Gladiators, and current warriors like Green Berets vs. Spetsnaz or Irish Republican Army vs. Taliban against one another based upon points earned for weapons and tactics to determine who would emerge victorious from single combat.

It is only related to our discussion because it would be interesting to pit the combat divers of yesterday against the combat divers today for fun.