Is certification necessary??

[agilis]

Yes, very. She's a 35.5 ft Beanatu sailboat. Her picture is on my profile page

Is the photo background just inside Barnegat Inlet, near Meyer's Hole?

 

[knotsmart]

Is the photo background just inside Barnegat Inlet, near Meyer's Hole?

nope.. I took that on my mooring in Raritan Bay.. I keep the boat in Perth Amboy. It takes me 2hrs to get around Sandy Hook and get to the outside. Ive been doing my homework and I see a fair number of wrecks and manmade reefs to tool around in. im interested in just seeing the live coral and fish. Maybe some spearfishing, definitely somebody's showing me how to catch some bugs.. and appropriate refreshments will await in the fridge when the fun has ended..

"Given that Jason has a decent size boat, he could probably cultivate a friendship with an instructor or two who could become his hypothetical friend."

ding ding.. can I get a winner?? no. but seriously .. anyone in my area that

 

[oldschoolto]

I was 12 years old when I taught myself how to scuba dive, Read the book science of skin and scuba and off I went... Dove for 30 yrs without a c-card... But it's getting harder and harder to dive without one.. So I got a friend that is a instructor to give me the class and got my AOW card.. It just makes life easier...

 

[agilis]

nope.. I took that on my mooring in Raritan Bay.. I keep the boat in Perth Amboy. It takes me 2hrs to get around Sandy Hook and get to the outside. Ive been doing my homework and I see a fair number of wrecks and manmade reefs to tool around in. im interested in just seeing the live coral and fish. Maybe some spearfishing, definitely somebody's showing me how to catch some bugs.. and appropriate refreshments will await in the fridge when the fun has ended..

"Given that Jason has a decent size boat, he could probably cultivate a friendship with an instructor or two who could become his hypothetical friend."

ding ding.. can I get a winner?? no. but seriously .. anyone in my area that

We are much too far north for coral reefs. There are interesting reef fishes in late summer brought up by the Gulf Stream, with lots of information in that connection on this board. You will first encounter some corals in the Carolinas, and some great offshore diving there. I now dive in and near inlets and jetties in NJ. This kind of diving can be glorious when conditions are right. Most of offshore NJ is a sandy desert except for the artificial reefs, wrecks, and rock piles.

The diving here can be very demanding and requires highly developed skills and experience. I have all sorts of certifications, but stopped most offshore diving when I passed my 70th birthday. I suppose you could say I was trained well enough to know what was no longer safe for me.

 

[knotsmart]

No, there's no hypothetical friend, I just wanted to define the parameters

Anyone who wants to dive please message me..just bring a sandwich for yourself and the beer

 

[Germie]

No, it is not necessary, there is no law that says you need a cert. The dive agencies are no officially agencies from the government point of view. You can start your own agency if you want and teach all courses you want (including trimix and cave). For insurance you don't have problems if you dive without cert.

But, if you have a cert from an unknown agency or no cert, then you can get problems at divecenters.
So by law it is not needed, but at divecenters yes.

 

[radtype]

Life is easier with the card. If your skills are pretty good, you should be able to finish the course in no time and you might learn something up in the process.

 

[NAM001]

insurance companies do do that
most cases the need for a card is for liability CYA as mentioned before. Imagine you rented a gun to someone that was never trained to use one and they hurt them selves or others. The business is sued for enabelilng one to harm some one as a contributing cause. Your level of training is a factor of your insurance rates. OW is usually no charge , diving below 60 ft is many times an additional surcharge for activities of risky nature. Some certifications make you virtually uninsurable. There are ways around it and the ins sellers know them. if you are an OW then you die at 90 ft the ins may or may not pay off, depending on whether the cause of death is believed to be your exceeded your training level. I guess an overly simplistic explaination might be dive beyond you training it is suicide not an accident. boat waivers are designed to make the operators faultless for when you exceed your training. If you want to dive 100 ft and guarentee your insurability then take the AOW course and you are free from interpretation by the ins companies. Our sport is self regulated. HA HA. for the most part however the ins companies and the legal system force the hands of how we self regulate. Other countries have official state regulation on the scuba industry. So where other countries formally require a diver to have a "license to dive" , in the us the system through liability insurance forces proof of required training to rent equipment or get air. Our country takes the position that a business should know about you before they provide services. your omission is their fault till you can prove the omission. So long as you can find a way to dive without going through any "checkpoints" like getting air fills, you can do what ever you want and the problems will be between you and your ins companies, the business then is most often out of the picture.

I also wonder if an insurance company might use it as reason to not pay if you make a claim for anything that happened while diving. They could claim that a course might have better taught you how to not to fall victim to all sorts of misfortunes, therefore you are entitled to a lower claim payout, or none.
If you are diving with someone and something goes wrong, this might also make you an attactive target for a lawsuit -same reasoning.


No law whatsoever requires the paper of you, but most instructors of advanced classes, shops filling tanks, boats taking out divers, etc. use the existence of a cert as proof that you know what you are doing. By having checked your cert they cover their own risk by having shown due diligence.

 

[flots am]

.
-is there a law that says I cant dive without a cert?? similar to the concept of you cant drive without a DL??

Not in the US.

Not sure about France or Australia.

Doubly not sure about Quebec, which has some sort of weird French certification thing going on.

.
-can the coast guard or state police pull up and give you a ticket if youre diving without a cert?

Not in the US.

.
I understand that the certs prove that you've achieved a level of knowledge.. but other than yourself whom do need to prove it to?

Dive operators and tank-fillers, so they have something to point to when you or your survivors sue them for letting you hurt/kill yourself.

.
lets say hypothetically my dive instructor friend taught me everything he knows and we've been on 100 dives off the back of my boat..but I don't even have a basic OW cert . is there a negative consequence??

Nope.

You'll need a compressor, since pretty much nobody will fill your tanks.

Inspections are easy, since any DOT cylinder re-tester will clean/inspect/hydro your cylinders with nothing more than a Visa card.

Unless you actually know what you're doing, make sure you contract for compressor maintenance, service and air testing. You don't want to kill yourself, and bad gas is an easy way to do it.

flots.

 

[sheeper]

yes you do. because no operator i work with, nobody i dive with, nor i would even think about diving with you. the consequences and liability are just beyond crazy