SolarStorm
Contributor
The cool thing is that everyone can win as we each have different goals. "Diving" is widely varried sport. Everyone has different goals. As long as we reach our own goals, we all win!
Diving Education Today
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The cool thing is that everyone can win as we each have different goals. "Diving" is widely varried sport. Everyone has different goals. As long as we reach our own goals, we all win!
OP
Yes, this is true to a point. I believe that the diving instructor is a gatekeeper if you will. S/he has a responsibility to insure that the student can demonstrate the necessary skills and knowledge that will maintain their personal safety and that of their buddy. This is regardless of and independent from the student's goals.
rstofer
Contributor
And MY passion is designing retro computers and implementing them in Field Programmable Gate Arrays. My entire education (not my avocation) revolves around electronics and logic design. Diving? It's a pretty small checkbox about 7/8 the way to the bottom, just above using a 2-hole outhouse. Hm... Only ever used a one-holer...
As to women: women come and women go. Some stay longer than others. Sixteen years with the current incantation.
It's pretty obvious that our checklists vary. Mount Everest isn't even on mine. Shooting a dime sized group at 200m and hitting 5 gallon paint cans at 800 yards are both midscale on mine. And skeet shooting WAS pretty near the top for a long time. Going fast and turning left used to be pretty high when I was young. Apparently the lists are dynamic.
Diving was my entire life when I worked in Singapore. Building a semiconductor plant was pretty far down but it paid the bills.
Richard
SolarStorm
Contributor
and this brings us back to the minimum requirement vs someone elses desired requirements and the personal goals of each diver (instructor and student). I do believe the training is there if the diver wants it. Its just that the only real certification is that first course, and that only so you can get a tank of air. After that it is up to the diver to realize they need more training.I believe you wanted to decrease the accident rate by returning to some of the older training standards/methonds at the start of his discussion. (correct me if Im wrong) I dont disaggree, but for the diver seeking no more adventure than a shallow resort dive twice a year, the current course meets the minimum requirement. Its only when that poeple do things that exceed their training that they start getting in trouble. Look at how many off roaders are hurt each year because they have a drivers lic? Should they take some off road training? Sure, the smart ones even do. Then there are darwins friends....
OP
I believe you wanted to decrease the accident rate by returning to some of the older training standards/methonds at the start of his discussion. (correct me if Im wrong) I dont disaggree, but for the diver seeking no more adventure than a shallow resort dive twice a year, the current course meets the minimum requirement. Its only when that poeple do things that exceed their training that they start getting in trouble. Look at how many off roaders are hurt each year because they have a drivers lic? Should they take some off road training? Sure, the smart ones even do. Then there are darwins friends....
LOL Darwin's friends...
Yes, the first course that certifies the diver to dive unsupervised is the most important. Those that require them just to breath and hold an Instructor's hand are not in the same category imo.
I've always been content not to criticize the supervised diver standards. It's at the level where they go out themselves to gain experience where I'm concerned.
I believe that the most dangerous time for many activities is when the person has attained the minimum level of competence to go on their own. This includes inexperienced drivers, pilots, mountaineers, commercial divers and probably many more activities. They know enough to meet the minimum standards, but not quite enough to stay out of trouble. There are statistics that substantiate this.
I for one had several auto accidents in my teens that could have been avoided if I was required to take more extensive training. I don't know about where you live, but here an increase in the driver licensing standards has saved lives and no doubt prevented injuries. I cannot help but think that in a similar way, this would make a positive impact to sport diving.
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The difference is that our society is not literally built on the presumption that most people dive. There is an immense amount of our society that is built on the premise that most people drive. There are plenty of affordable dive destinations for you and I precisely because there are plenty of resort divers who are out there with enough demand to justify the supply. We start losing diver population due to raising the time and cost bars to entry, then we'll lose a great deal of the existing infrastructure that supports our hobby because there will not be a large enough diving population to support that infrastructure.
My local dive store would never stay in business with only the dedicated few divers around here. They require the constant fair weather open water course takers to keep the doors open. I imagine that is true just about everywhere.
My local dive store would never stay in business with only the dedicated few divers around here. They require the constant fair weather open water course takers to keep the doors open. I imagine that is true just about everywhere.
After you have seen the same threads go through the same process time after time, they get predictable.
This point was raised in a couple of other threads earlier this year: make it really hard for people get certified, and you will not have enough divers to support the existing infrastructure.
Let me save everyone a lot of time by describing what comes next, assuming this will follow the same patter as the previous threads.
The same people will say that will be just fine. It will"free up parking spaces" at the dive sites. We will hear nostalgic tales of the good old days of carrying compressors to the dive sites on the backs of mules and chartering your own boat from some local fisherman.
In other words, what is a threat to the kind of diving you enjoy is someone else's vision of paradise.
I know most of you are tired of this pet peeve of mine, but what if one of the problems is the fact that diving gets called a sport? Name another sport that costs hundreds to thousands of ducats to get the licenses to participate. Skydiving is the only one I know of but at least they do have competitions, even world championships IIRC.
I grew up with a bunch of gifted natural athletes and while some parents may pay for swim lessons or tennis lessons, real sport training usually happens with a coach and usually on a team. How many people spent $300 on ski lessons, a Benjamin on bicycle lessons, a Grant on a basketball lesson? Pretty much the only ones paying for lessons in a sport are the people competing; none of us compete! (except here on SB)
What if a better approach is not calling it a sport, because people are of the opinion they learn sports easily, quickly and mostly without paying for classes. What about a reverse James Bond marketing? A License to NOT Kill, Yourself; A Dangerous Adventure. Of course I would then be looking at a separate warm water certification. Into the Blue; Searching for Jessica.
More people than ever are paying big bucks to climb 2/3rds of Mount Everest, and they are losing their lives in ever greater numbers. I doubt all that money is changing hands because someone is marketing the sport of trekking.
I grew up with a bunch of gifted natural athletes and while some parents may pay for swim lessons or tennis lessons, real sport training usually happens with a coach and usually on a team. How many people spent $300 on ski lessons, a Benjamin on bicycle lessons, a Grant on a basketball lesson? Pretty much the only ones paying for lessons in a sport are the people competing; none of us compete! (except here on SB)
What if a better approach is not calling it a sport, because people are of the opinion they learn sports easily, quickly and mostly without paying for classes. What about a reverse James Bond marketing? A License to NOT Kill, Yourself; A Dangerous Adventure. Of course I would then be looking at a separate warm water certification. Into the Blue; Searching for Jessica.
More people than ever are paying big bucks to climb 2/3rds of Mount Everest, and they are losing their lives in ever greater numbers. I doubt all that money is changing hands because someone is marketing the sport of trekking.
SolarStorm
Contributor
Absolutely, but, until the govts regulate what you can do there is no way to force people to take more training. And if they regulate it, how in the heck are we going to enforce it? (hmm... sounds like a cool job, diving off the coast of mexico sitting at the mouth of a cave asking for their card like cop at a speed trap
So because we lack the regulatory clout and enforcement ability, the only recourse we have is to instill a knowledge of the dangers, and a desire to learn should a diver want to go beyond the resorts.
OP
Absolutely, but, until the govts regulate what you can do there is no way to force people to take more training. And if they regulate it, how in the heck are we going to enforce it? (hmm... sounds like a cool job, diving off the coast of mexico sitting at the mouth of a cave asking for their card like cop at a speed trap
So because we lack the regulatory clout and enforcement ability, the only recourse we have is to instill a knowledge of the dangers, and a desire to learn should a diver want to go beyond the resorts.
For me it's less regulatory, but a moral responsibility to properly prepare the diver. It seems we do have a choice in what we provide to varying degrees.
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