Diving Education Today

[gcbryan]

That is the biggest failure in our waters. Certification dives aren't fun. I didn't expect them to be but they should be. If you are going to freeze and not see anything and then you go on vacation and are warm and see a lot I can see why you might never buy an expensive drysuit and get the chance to go to some of the fantastic sites that are local.

Most of the fantastic sites just aren't ones where you would chose to hold a certification class.

I've always thought that the certification dives should be more in number but less about skills. Or rather the skills should be naturally incorporated into the dives so the student hardly realized that it was a certification dive.

 

[rstofer]

But the problem with standards being lowered is that it DOES allow less-than-water-safe divers to be certfied.

If the standards have been lowered, you still can't show that the divers are dying as a result. All you can prove is that diving after 40 is hazardous to your health. There just aren't very many recorded accidents that are directly attributable to a lack of training. Sure, they can be attributed to a lack of following the training but not the training itself.

Every single student is told to not run out of air. More than once. And OW divers are limited to 60' (limit of training) and have no deco obligation requiring a stop. How many breaths does it take to reach the surface from 60' at 60' per minute? How many if you really don't have any air? Can you really do a 60' CESA if your life depended on it? Probably.

But dive outside that training window and the opportunity for disaster increases.

Maybe the divers aren't safe in all environments. I sure don't intend to dive in Antarctica. But in clear warm water, I'm perfectly content.

Richard

 

[gcbryan]

I'm hearing that divers may be trained OK for hand holding warmer water dives but aren't for local dives...but aren't most divers trained locally? Therefore they are trained for local diving conditions. They may be just barely trained but that's where going out and gaining real world experience comes in.

Most of this has to do with the motivation of the diver. Those motivated will become good divers. Others may not. What's new?

 

[Trace Malinowski]

But I do have a problem with the type of harassment Trace has proposed. It isn't necessary. This whole "come up behind the diver and turn off their valve" is nonsense. There are many other ways to teach this skill. If it's even necessary. How in the world could a jammed open valve turn itself off? In a recreational context now, I'm not talking about cave diving. And I'm not buying "the kelp did it!".

My girlfriend who was a PADI DM before becoming a PDIC instructor, witnessed 3 valve roll-offs in OW classes at Dutch Springs while divemastering because students rubbed knobs on the ascent lines. Kelp might not do it, but anchor lines can. Divers enter the water without their air turned on. This is the best reason to state that a valve drill is necessary.

When did I say that I come up behind a student and turn the student's air off?

I do not advocate instructors shutting off a student's air.

I only advocate that in tech or cave class in critical skills training in shallow water to test the student's ability in an air share to check for a left post roll-off if he is out of gas during a donation. I will never do that to a tech student inside a wreck or cave or in deep water.

In a previous post, I said that the student should be able to perform a valve drill. These are the steps for a single tank valve drill:

1) Student gets the attention of his buddy to act as a lifeguard.
2) Student signals buddy, "YOU WATCH ME - VALVE DRILL - OKAY?"
3) Upon receiving the okay from the buddy acting as a lifeguard, the student tests his back-up regulator, shuts off his OWN air, breathes the regulator down, then turns his air back on.
4) Student then checks both primary and back-up regulators, locates his SPG, performs a flow check, and signals his buddy that he is okay.

Air gunning could be added in a situation to teach the student to differentiate between a fixable and non-fixable failure. Small bubbles directed by the air gun to a low pressure hose may get the student's attention. The student can signal his buddy to look for bubbles. The buddy checks, sees that an LP inflator hose is leaking, mimics fixing the problem and the air gunning ceases. In the same situation, a fast stream of bubbles may be directed at the tank O-ring. The student hears the problem, signals the buddy to check, and the buddy determines that the tank O-ring is leaking and to abort the dive. They begin to swim home with the buddy prepared for an out of air situation. The gunning stops, as if the tank is empty, and the student with the failure is told that he is out of air. The team begins to share air and swim home. This scenario creates both understanding of the working relationship between the tank, first stage, LP and SPG hoses, regs and BCD. The student is able to gain experience hearing the difference between types of leaks and the buddy team can work together to diagnose and fix or manage the problems. This might not be necessary, but the students actually enjoy trying to figure out what is wrong and learning about their regulators.

Yes, I realize Trace didn't actually include the description for this particular drill. As you point out, I am just imagining[/B] because even he admitted the length of the actual harassment list was much more extensive than posted.

We will disagree about the quality of Trace's program. I wouldn't come within 100 miles of it and I sure wouldn't recommend PDIC to anyone. There's only a certain demographic that will put up with that kind of thing and I'm not in it.

Richard, I'm beginning to find you to be personally insulting.

You know little, yet ASSUME a lot. You condemn me, the quality of my training, and that of my agency having ABSOLUTELY NO EXPERIENCE with any of these.

Your experience is, as you admit - IMAGINED.

My point is that what Trace describes resembles in large measure the kinds of things the military would do. Now, I haven't taken a military dive course but I have no doubt that it includes huge helpings of harassment. Everything else in the military does. Except the firing range - how odd. I have fond memories of the firing range.

You mean what you IMAGINE that I describe resembles the only experience you've ever had with what you IMAGINE it to be like which is the military. My friend "Schlitz" was an Army diver. He's a PADI instructor. Ask him if my classes are anything like his experience in the Army diving program.

It's okay to disagree about philosophy, but IT IS NOT OKAY to disparage the quality of my training when YOU CAN ONLY IMAGINE IT.

 

[TSandM]

Frankly, I am amazed that new divers even come back to Monterey. It's a beautiful place - if you like that kind of thing.

Really? I think the diving I've done in Monterey is right up there with the most fabulous diving I've done -- and I've been a lot of places!

 

[gcbryan]

Really? I think the diving I've done in Monterey is right up there with the most fabulous diving I've done -- and I've been a lot of places!

I haven't been there but could it be a Whytecliff kind of thing?

I really like Whytecliff and some people who were certified there say it's boring. It turns out they were certified in the cove where there is absolutely nothing to see and hadn't been over to the right to the Cut or out to the left to the Islet.

Maybe Monterey is the same?

 

[Slonda828]

You mean what you IMAGINE that I describe resembles the only experience you've ever had with what you IMAGINE it to be like which is the military. My friend "Schlitz" was an Army diver. He's a PADI instructor. Ask him if my classes are anything like his experience in the Army diving program.

It's okay to disagree about philosophy, but IT IS NOT OKAY to disparage the quality of my training when YOU CAN ONLY IMAGINE IT.

I can say, in all honesty, that you are one of about 7 living people whom I would trust to train me to instruct diving. Considering that the others include DCBC, Walter, Thal, Jim Lap, and several of the guys in the NAVED, I would say that anyone who questions your dedication or skills is just peeing on your head and trying to tell you that it is raining. For what it is worth I have been through some of the harder regular training that the military has to offer, people have tried to kill me, and nothing that I have done in the civilian world to include bridge jumping, rock climbing, diving, or anything else comes remotely close to the potentially punitive and humiliating experience at the hands of a non-commissioned officer who has had a bad day or a guy in a pile of dirt with the trigger to a home-made bomb in his hands.

I just cannot wrap my head around the person who whines about a dive instructor raising the bar. When did we become a society of people who tell their loved ones that we achieved the bare minimum standard?

 

[rstofer]

I haven't been there but could it be a Whytecliff kind of thing?

I really like Whytecliff and some people who were certified there say it's boring. It turns out they were certified in the cove where there is absolutely nothing to see and hadn't been over to the right to the Cut or out to the left to the Islet.

Maybe Monterey is the same?

Monterey and on down toward Carmel can be quite nice. But generally it takes a boat (charter or other) to get to anything worth seeing. Boat dives can be fantastic!

Unfortunately, I find myself stuck at Breakwater or Lover's #3. You have to swim a very long way to get to 30' and, even then, there isn't much to see or do.

I have the disadvantage of beginning my diving in south east Asia. T-shirt diving. Coming home to Calif was a shock. I know for a fact that if I had taken my training in La Jolla as a much younger person, I would have made my checkout dives, got my C-card and chucked the sport.

I don't like cold, I don't like dark, I don't like wetsuits, I can't afford (or don't want to afford) a drysuit. I hate beach entries and I like the exits even less. Then again, I'm 64 years old and pretty beat up! Cranky, too!

So, no, there isn't much for me to like about diving locally. However, my wife, son-in-law and grandson DO like diving locally (they have never been to warm water) so I provide the funding for all of us and tag along. I don't especially like it; but I do it!

Richard

 

[rstofer]

It's okay to disagree about philosophy, but IT IS NOT OKAY to disparage the quality of my training when YOU CAN ONLY IMAGINE IT.

Actually, you described it and you attributed it to PDIC and you brought it up as forms of harassment. I didn't do that. You did! You were the first to use the word 'harassment' in the context of OW training. Not me!

I only object to the concept of harassment and by extension, anything related to it. If your agency promotes harassment, I can do without it. So, yes, I will give the agency a pass! But from your descriptions, not mine. I didn't even know it existed before today! See post #325

When you take the time to actually describe the exercises as 'failures-based' training, toning down the rhetoric from "harassment", it makes a lot more sense and it becomes a lot more palatable. As I replied to Thal, I have no objection to training and more is better.

Richard

 

[Kingpatzer]

And, to answer King's question about wanting cave trained instructors, yes, I look to recruit candidates who are highly trained divers such as cave divers and cave instructors for PDIC and PSAI.

No, that's not my question.

My question is if higher standards are better regardless of cost and time investment requirements simply because they produce better divers, then why not make the standard for certification be that one is trained to the level of a cave instructor?

That person would, after all, be about as well trained as we could make them, right? Sure it would take years to get there ... but hey, quality and safety are apparently the only considerations in this argument.

So even though doing that would probably not dent the number of dive fatalities, since the older divers would still be having cardiac events, everyone would be happy that the only divers were committed, lived in florida or could afford to travel to locations with cave instructors, and everyone would be nice and elite.

As an aside, I find it wonderfully amusing that you go from bragging about harassing your students to pointing out how you'd never do anything to stress them out like have them dive in cold water.

Really, you need to pick a side of the fence.