Diving Education Today

[LeadTurn_SD]

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....

Hi Richard,

You are 100% right. I certainly can't prove it. And the vast, VAST majority of dives are conducted safely.

I so often agree with your posts, that I hate to disagree with you this time....

But I get concerned when I read about divers who drown on the surface before or after a dive with fully functioning dive gear, no health problems.... These are not heart attacks.... they are panic-induced drownings caused by poor water-skills.

These panic cases were typically induced by a small problem at the surface (for example, diver spalshed in the face by a wave, inhaled some water) which caused them to forget their training (drop weights, inflate BC, etc.).... but my feeling was that these were probably divers who were "marginal" in their OW classes, but still got passed because they "met" the current swim standards (but would not have in past years). These incidents have been published in scuba magazines and here on scubaboard. They don't happen everyday, but the do happen every year.... and they really shouldn't.

My point is that lowered standards combined with a few divers coming in to basic OW with low swimming and water-safety skills is potentially a problem.

Best wishes.

 

[mdb]

Leadturn-SD

Your statement summed it up quite well:

"My point is that lowered standards combined with a few divers coming in to basic OW with low swimming and water-safety skills is potentially a problem."

It is more than a potential problem, it is a huge problem. The instant courses now produce way too many so called divers who are not capable of diving.

The lowered standards are a big factor in the much lower numbers of new divers-IMHO.

 

[gcbryan]

I really hate to see the deaths that could have easily been prevented...drowning at the surface for example. Additional initial training may have made a difference but it may not have. Even if you have great initial training and never dive very much the same thing can occur.

I'd much rather see mediocre training and a lot of diving after that training than great training and little diving afterward. Of course the two aren't mutually exclusive and you can have both but the accidents in large part are because of lack of time in the water it seems to me.

 

[rstofer]

That's another training thing, isn't it! I was taught that I should, at all times, have something in my mouth. Either the regulator or a snorkel. I have tried to pass that on to my grandson. Fortunately, he is a quick learner! Every time he fails to comply, nature reminds him that the ocean isn't his living room and this isn't PlayStation.

I don't want to restart the "throw away the snorkel" thread but, for me, it works great. Especially when the surface is rough. There are other points of view. I even have a different point of view when I am using my double hose regulators.

Why is the diver at the surface in rough water if they weren't trained to be in that environment? It is the responsibility of the instructor to teach to the environment at hand. It is the responsibility of the diver to dive within the limits of that training. So, if the diver is exceeding their training, who's responsibility is it?

I would be out of my league in Antarctica. But I haven't been trained to dive in Antarctica. If I attempted the dive, and died, who's responsibility is it? Clearly not my instructor's!

That said, TSandM related a story of just such a drowning in the not to distant past. The diver didn't even drop their weights. The very first thing a new diver is taught! Get rid of the weights. This was a real accident that happened to a real diver. What should have been a relatively simple OOA problem turned into a tragedy.

Now we can blame the lack of performance on panic (which should not happen, but does) or a lack of training. I just can't get to a lack of training. Certainly, every diver should have been told to drop the weights. I can't imagine it not coming up. I haven't taken a class lately but I'm hoping this skill hasn't been deleted. So I have to come back to panic. Not a lack of training.

There will be other points of view.

Richard

 

[gcbryan]

I've been running classes in a similar way for the past 37 years and don't have a problem in getting students. That's not to say that some people wouldn't want to make the commitment; while others who currently don't would be drawn because of the challenge involved.

Divers would be more competent; safety would increase. Just a thought...

So, there really isn't a problem here then. You can run the kind of classes that you want to run and you can get all the students that you want.

Those who aren't interested have another option as well.

Is there really anything wrong with this system?

 

[rstofer]

Now we can blame the lack of performance on panic (which should not happen, but does) or a lack of training.

I guess someone could make the case that more training would have reduced the probability of panic. They could be right. But some people just don't handle stress very well. Others eat it up!

Richard

 

[gcbryan]

That's another training thing, isn't it! I was taught that I should, at all times, have something in my mouth. Either the regulator or a snorkel. I have tried to pass that on to my grandson. Fortunately, he is a quick learner! Every time he fails to comply, nature reminds him that the ocean isn't his living room and this isn't PlayStation.

I don't want to restart the "throw away the snorkel" thread but, for me, it works great. Especially when the surface is rough. There are other points of view. I even have a different point of view when I am using my double hose regulators.

Why is the diver at the surface in rough water if they weren't trained to be in that environment? It is the responsibility of the instructor to teach to the environment at hand. It is the responsibility of the diver to dive within the limits of that training. So, if the diver is exceeding their training, who's responsibility is it?

I would be out of my league in Antarctica. But I haven't been trained to dive in Antarctica. If I attempted the dive, and died, who's responsibility is it? Clearly not my instructor's!

That said, TSandM related a story of just such a drowning in the not to distant past. The diver didn't even drop their weights. The very first thing a new diver is taught! Get rid of the weights. This was a real accident that happened to a real diver. What should have been a relatively simple OOA problem turned into a tragedy.

Now we can blame the lack of performance on panic (which should not happen, but does) or a lack of training. I just can't get to a lack of training. Certainly, every diver should have been told to drop the weights. I can't imagine it not coming up. I haven't taken a class lately but I'm hoping this skill hasn't been deleted. So I have to come back to panic. Not a lack of training.

There will be other points of view.

Richard

The other point of view will be there he really wasn't trained. If he didn't get enough experience in his OW class to be able to use that info in the real world he wasn't really trained he was just shown once or twice or told once of twice and if it didn't "take" he wasn't really trained.

I don't totally buy it but I do get the point. I just think making changes to the system if possible to get divers out there diving more does more good than simply making training take longer. There's a point of diminishing returns. It's not all about the training.

 

[BDSC]

The lowered standards are a big factor in the much lower numbers of new divers-IMHO.

OK, help me with this one. I would have thought the results would have been the opposite. If stds are lower and it's easier to pass folks through, wouldn't there be more new divers? Has there really been a big drop off in the number of new divers getting certified? I think I read on here somewhere that PADI certifies over 100,000 divers a year but I guess that could be a big drop if they had been doing 200,000 a year in the past. I don't know.

 

[rstofer]

I posted the latest PADI statistics. I don't think you can say that training numbers are declining. Give or take a couple of percent, they are probably static over several years.

Statistics, Graphs & History about PADI Scuba Diving Certification, Diving Instructors' Membership & Resorts

Over 1/2 million new divers worldwide in 2008 and 181,000 in the Americas of which I would bet the vast majority are in the US. Canada is not included in "Americas" but they trained something less than 9000. And that's just PADI!

Here's a pretty impressive graph:
Statistics, Graphs & History about PADI Scuba Diving Certification, Diving Instructors' Membership & Resorts

I don't know what NAUI, SSI, CMAS, BSAC or all of the others are doing. But you sure can't say that PADI isn't training a lot of divers.

It could be that there are so many instructors that the students/instructor ratio has dropped. But, in aggregate, there are a BUNCH of new divers.

Richard

 

[rstofer]

What you can say is that the rate of growth of new divers has flattened. The industry isn't growing like it was in the '80s and '90s. I suppose it could be argued that the industry isn't growing at all. But it's still a lot of new divers.

When a small company doubles their sales from $1000/yr to $2000/year, they can be the 'fastest growing company in the industry!'. Of course, their major competitor could be selling $100,000,000 per year and growing at only a few percent. Their incremental growth swamps the 'fastest growing' company.

Richard