Taking an open water student below 60 ft?

[Rickk]

The graph showing that about 10% of fatalities occur on training dives is a little misleading.

I have about 200 dives. PADI OW was 5, AOW+ was 9, Ice was 3, Deep was 4 Rescue was also 4 = 25 dives or more than 10% of my total. I really don't think that that is out of line for most recreational divers. The average number of dives per year is somewhere around 5 for a diver and the average retention rate is about 8 years so it follows that the average diver will do about 40 or 50 dives in their diving career. I know that low a number here will seem unbelievable but that is the published numbers.

So someone only doing OW and AOW will have 9 training dives, more than 10% of the total career dives.

What does surprise me is that a fatality could occur with about the same regularity in a training situation, where an instructor is or at least should be monitoring a students actions and be ready to abort if the student is doing something wrong.

Lots of this thread is bashing one agency or the other, While my certification is all PADI, I have read as much as I can on the other agencies diving courses and don't really think much of most of them.

The focus of the main agencies is to get as many people in the water as possible and blowing bubbles. They offer short courses because that is what the market wants and demands. How many casual divers, those only ever going to dive less than 100 dives in their diving career, want to sigh up for an expensive and in depth course with 20 or 30 dives that takes a few months to complete? Remember many divers just view diving as a recreational activity that they may or may not enjoy on any particular vacation or if there are dive sites near home as a weekend activity done once a year?

One article I read split the diving community into 2 groups. Those that were divers and identified themselves es as such, that would be just about everyone here. The picked vacation locations based on diving, they spent weekends regularly going to local dive places, they spent a lot on kit and while not diving participated in diving related activities DIY kit building, on forums like this or hanging out at their LDS talking about the finer details of the pros and cons of a particular regulator or BCD.

The rest are people who do diving, the dive sites available are not a major determining factor where they go for a winter vacation, they have no interest in taking much training beyond the minimum to dive. ( I have met people who just do the discover diving pool session every vacation then dive open ocean, It actually costs less than getting certified then taking a refresher session every vacation because they only dive once a year.)

The training is crap because that is what the majority of the market wants. They want to Pay And Dive Immediately, they are not willing to invest the time in being a top diver. If their skill are something that the dedicated divers and pro's find inadequate, they really don't care. They had their dive day on their vacation and now want to sit on the beach or go on the zip line or mountain bike or go hiking for a different activity.

Even if the courses are crap, I don;t see any standards monitoring by the agencies. If they really cared about producing top quality divers, they would do reviews of all dive shops and dive operators to ensure that the standards, minimal as they are, in their courses were in fact being followed in the field. They don't do that because if they did, then all the PADI shops would be NAUI shops in about a week. (Or the reverse depending on who was enforcing the standards.)

We do have some agencies like RAID or GUE that have a higher level of certification and actually do want to produce skilled divers are not common. In fact until I started posting her and reading the forums, I had not heard of either of these agencies. That alone should tell you something about what the market wants and what it gets.

What can we do?

The pro's can make sure that they exceed the minimum standards of the agencies, they can make sure that every OW diver they sign off on understands the importance of buoyancy control, proper propulsion, the need to respect the environment, the real dangers an mitigation stratifies in the water. You are not going to produce a diver with perfect buoyancy control in only 5 dives, but you an produce a diver who understands the need for good control, how to achieve it and can then practice it as they develop and as they take more training.

The non pro's can help the new divers, provide some encouragement and helpful advice on their skills, mostly by demonstrating good skills ourselves and showing a true safety attitude in the water. Don't skip over your gear checks, do them and be seen to do them. On safety spots practice some skills, plan share air drills, do equipment remove and replace. It will make you a better diver and help the new divers who may only have done these skills once or twice in their OW class practice them again.

 

[TMHeimer]

The graph showing that about 10% of fatalities occur on training dives is a little misleading.

I have about 200 dives. PADI OW was 5, AOW+ was 9, Ice was 3, Deep was 4 Rescue was also 4 = 25 dives or more than 10% of my total. I really don't think that that is out of line for most recreational divers. The average number of dives per year is somewhere around 5 for a diver and the average retention rate is about 8 years so it follows that the average diver will do about 40 or 50 dives in their diving career. I know that low a number here will seem unbelievable but that is the published numbers.

So someone only doing OW and AOW will have 9 training dives, more than 10% of the total career dives.

What does surprise me is that a fatality could occur with about the same regularity in a training situation, where an instructor is or at least should be monitoring a students actions and be ready to abort if the student is doing something wrong.

Lots of this thread is bashing one agency or the other, While my certification is all PADI, I have read as much as I can on the other agencies diving courses and don't really think much of most of them.

The focus of the main agencies is to get as many people in the water as possible and blowing bubbles. They offer short courses because that is what the market wants and demands. How many casual divers, those only ever going to dive less than 100 dives in their diving career, want to sigh up for an expensive and in depth course with 20 or 30 dives that takes a few months to complete? Remember many divers just view diving as a recreational activity that they may or may not enjoy on any particular vacation or if there are dive sites near home as a weekend activity done once a year?

One article I read split the diving community into 2 groups. Those that were divers and identified themselves es as such, that would be just about everyone here. The picked vacation locations based on diving, they spent weekends regularly going to local dive places, they spent a lot on kit and while not diving participated in diving related activities DIY kit building, on forums like this or hanging out at their LDS talking about the finer details of the pros and cons of a particular regulator or BCD.

The rest are people who do diving, the dive sites available are not a major determining factor where they go for a winter vacation, they have no interest in taking much training beyond the minimum to dive. ( I have met people who just do the discover diving pool session every vacation then dive open ocean, It actually costs less than getting certified then taking a refresher session every vacation because they only dive once a year.)

The training is crap because that is what the majority of the market wants. They want to Pay And Dive Immediately, they are not willing to invest the time in being a top diver. If their skill are something that the dedicated divers and pro's find inadequate, they really don't care. They had their dive day on their vacation and now want to sit on the beach or go on the zip line or mountain bike or go hiking for a different activity.

Even if the courses are crap, I don;t see any standards monitoring by the agencies. If they really cared about producing top quality divers, they would do reviews of all dive shops and dive operators to ensure that the standards, minimal as they are, in their courses were in fact being followed in the field. They don't do that because if they did, then all the PADI shops would be NAUI shops in about a week. (Or the reverse depending on who was enforcing the standards.)

We do have some agencies like RAID or GUE that have a higher level of certification and actually do want to produce skilled divers are not common. In fact until I started posting her and reading the forums, I had not heard of either of these agencies. That alone should tell you something about what the market wants and what it gets.

What can we do?

The pro's can make sure that they exceed the minimum standards of the agencies, they can make sure that every OW diver they sign off on understands the importance of buoyancy control, proper propulsion, the need to respect the environment, the real dangers an mitigation stratifies in the water. You are not going to produce a diver with perfect buoyancy control in only 5 dives, but you an produce a diver who understands the need for good control, how to achieve it and can then practice it as they develop and as they take more training.

The non pro's can help the new divers, provide some encouragement and helpful advice on their skills, mostly by demonstrating good skills ourselves and showing a true safety attitude in the water. Don't skip over your gear checks, do them and be seen to do them. On safety spots practice some skills, plan share air drills, do equipment remove and replace. It will make you a better diver and help the new divers who may only have done these skills once or twice in their OW class practice them again.

Seems to be a pretty good assessment. The only thing I really question is will shop owners pay instructors (and DMs) for the extra hours/time spent going beyond the minimum standards? As you pointed out, main agencies want as many people certified as possible in minimum time. I am not one who wants to work overtime without pay. As a Band teacher I did a lot of that, but there were other "perks" (time-wise) I won't get into. Plus, a teacher's salary is a set amount per year, not an hourly wage, or one tied to number of students. There is also the question of pool fees a shop owner may have to pay on an hourly basis if the shop has no pool on site.
There may be a related question as to exactly what should be listed as stuff to be covered beyond the minimums. PADI has minimum standards, with instructors being allowed to "exceed" them but can't "grade" on them. NAUI gives instructors "more lattitude" if you will, which is nice. Neither spells out any of the "extras" to my knowledge.

 

[Rickk]

I understand why we get dive education as being a series of short quick courses. It is what the market wants.

It is actually good for the sport in some ways. How many people became hard core divers after trying a resort course and out in the ocean right after that. ( That is how I started, and decided to become certified because I realized the dangers, I knew enough physics to realize the dangers of gas expansion injury and this was never mention ed except to keep breathing, no mention why to always breath. I wondered what else they never talked about that could kill me.) Remember that about 80% of the people that put ion a weight belt are only "doing" diving they will dive less than 5 dives a year and drop out of the sport in about 8 years. The remaining 20 % of us will be the ones going on to accumulate a lot of bottom time.

Two things missing, enforcement of the standards by the certifying agencies and a path of dive education that will make someone into a good diver.

I doubt if the agencies will ever enforce standards by doing site checks and verification of operations. All we can do is observe and report violations to the agencies, we will never see them all but take a lot of reports for any agency to take action other than send an email asking if the operation did violate the rules.

To become a good diver, we are pretty much on our own unless we have access to one of the small agencies that really teach diving. We, non pros, can read everything we can find about diving, talk about it on forums like this( but never trust what you read on line), we can form clubs where experienced divers will guide newer divers, we can watch YouTube videos ( although some of these are not the best.) We can get wet and blow bubbles and think about what we know and how we were trained in all situations, we can practice basic skills so they become muscle memory and automatic in an emergency we can learn new skills.

The pro's can try to provide as much knowledge and skills to students as they can, as far as economics and employment concerns allow they can provide additional transfer of expertise, they can provide good diving tips to poorer divers on recreational dives.

It is incumbent on us to be a better diver tomorrow than we were yesterday and to impart a culture of safety and responsible diving to the rest of the community.

 

[TMHeimer]

Rickk, Again, some good points. I am not a fan of Discover/Try/Resort dives due to reasons I've beaten a dead horse over on Scubaboard. I'm gathering your OW course was quite lacking, as in below even minimal standards. It happens. There are crappy school teachers too.
The many folks who average 5 dives a year (ie. "Vacation" divers) are, IMHO very foolish. My Northern inland location is why I didn't take OW 'til age 51. I would never feel safe diving 5 times a year. And, unlike the way too many people who take OW who have little or no previous "water" activity experience, I was a fish since maybe age 6.
I'm afraid it is the way it is today with the dive industry. Good luck in your quest to vastly improve it.

 

[Rickk]

Rickk, Again, some good points. I am not a fan of Discover/Try/Resort dives due to reasons I've beaten a dead horse over on Scubaboard. I'm gathering your OW course was quite lacking, as in below even minimal standards. It happens. There are crappy school teachers too.
.....

Actually my OW course was quite good, my AOW+ (the old PADI 9 dive vs 5 dive AOW) was OK, not the best but no the worst.

The really only crappy course I had was my rescue and first aid one. The first aid was a joke.

It is not so much the course teaching that concerns me, it is the fact that completing an OW course does not make someone a diver, but they are lead to believe that they now know everything that there is to dive and they are experts.

It should be treated like what I was told when I passed my private pilot exam, "You now have a license to learn how to fly." OW and AOW should be represented the same way, you now know enough to start learning how to dive, and you now know enough about a few different types of diving to try them and learn about these.

Rescue diver should be a strenuous and difficult course, it was 4 dives (Actually 2 dives and about an hour doing surface recovery, tows etc.), and more than half of the dive was called the fun part, we would go out, do say a panicked diver underwater,hold their hands, make calming gestures then go blow bubbles and look at the fish.

 

[TMHeimer]

Actually my OW course was quite good, my AOW+ (the old PADI 9 dive vs 5 dive AOW) was OK, not the best but no the worst.

The really only crappy course I had was my rescue and first aid one. The first aid was a joke.

It is not so much the course teaching that concerns me, it is the fact that completing an OW course does not make someone a diver, but they are lead to believe that they now know everything that there is to dive and they are experts.

It should be treated like what I was told when I passed my private pilot exam, "You now have a license to learn how to fly." OW and AOW should be represented the same way, you now know enough to start learning how to dive, and you now know enough about a few different types of diving to try them and learn about these.

Rescue diver should be a strenuous and difficult course, it was 4 dives (Actually 2 dives and about an hour doing surface recovery, tows etc.), and more than half of the dive was called the fun part, we would go out, do say a panicked diver underwater,hold their hands, make calming gestures then go blow bubbles and look at the fish.

I probably agree that a large % of OW graduates believe they have the knowledge to be as safe as possible. And that many instructors don't mention that they are just beginning to learn. Some do a good job though, such as my Wreck instructor, who told us personal a story that made you sit up and think.
The first aid course can vary a lot. I took two PADI EFR courses that were vastly different, each with it's down sides. St. John's Ambulance here in Canada was much more thorough, but still had me raising questions about how it was run (took that 2 times as well). They're both worth squat unless you're anal like me and review a page of that stuff daily. Who's gunna remember all that stuff by taking a course every 2-3 years?
Rescue, so I've read, varies greatly according to instructor. The one I took was not all that demanding physically (at age 52), but there were some spots. I found it more challenging mentally.

 

[Bob DBF]

We do have some agencies like RAID or GUE that have a higher level of certification

RAID is a member of WRSTC and adheres to the same standards as PADI, SSI, and others.

GUE is different. Their recreational diver 3 is equivalent to OW, as far as depth is concerned. 1&2 are depth restricted, not a recommendation at 70’&100’ . Between 1&2 there is a dive requirement, but doesn’t say if it must be done with another GUE diver. There system has it’s place, but as it is configured it is more for technical diving, rather than recreational.

And, from the sounds, for Recreational Diver 3, one will be learning mixed gas and doubles to get the depth limit of 130’.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

@Rickk

My only complaint with these short courses is that there are often no improvement in skills.

Honestly, I'd like to see more video being used. Instructors would submit these which could be spot checked for proper instruction. Not logistically simple however.

 

[Steve_C]

the scooter;

I took DPV. Was an enjoyable and informative course. We got to operate a number of scooters ranging from a simple rec one up to a big long cave DPV. There was also lots of discussion from an experienced cave diver including using them in the open ocean.

 

[Rickk]

.... St. John's Ambulance here in Canada was much more thorough, but still had me raising questions about how it was run (took that 2 times as well)......

I have taken both the full and the refresher St John course a few times.

Back when I was a scout leader, we had another leader who was a medic in the military, he had a buddy that was the St John instructor and we ran the full course for the troop every other year and the refresher on the off years. ( Yes we gave 11 and 12 year olds the full St John package, they got the Gold level First Aid Badge. When we took the troop to events the other leaders could not believe that all of them were Gold level trained. We had them show their ST John cards.)

I made the comment that they should always put a non responsive person in the rescue position and pointed out that they would most likely come across someone in a few years who had partied too much and passed out. A few years later one of my scouts called me and told me that he had been at a party and his friend had passed out on his back, the remembered what I told them and put the guy in the rescue position, when they returned the guy had vomited all over himself but because he was in the rescue positron was still breathing.


In Afghanistan our medic ( civilian employed on USAID projects) ran all of us through a combat first aid course. We actually practiced on each other to start IV's etc. My arms were black and blue for a couple weeks after that.


After all that training plus a couple real world events where I had to splint and patch up some bleeding, I consider myself more than capable in first aid. However my PADI first aid was a 30 minute talk about bandaging, I taught the instructor more than she taught me. There was some CPR work, again only about 30 minutes then a briefing on O2 provision. Their O2 tanks were empty, not that they were using empty tanks for training, they were empty and had never been refilled after a lot of training. In an emergency they would not have had any O2 available. All in all what should have been a one day course was over in about 2 hours plus time to read the book. ( Yes i did the post course critique, never heard anything back from anyone.)


I took the O2 specialty afterwards just to make sure that I could actually provide O2 in an emergency.


Sometimes a trainer is good sometimes not so good, I think it has absolutely nothing to do with what agency they represent. We hear more about bad PADI instructors but that is because there are just more PADI instructors out there.

I believe that the agencies should do some quality control, actually send a person to a dive operation , take a course and if it was as bad as my rescue course, pull that instructor's rating right there. They won't do that because it will impact their revenue stream but I'd love to have them sued for not exercising due diligence and ensuring that the people signing off on certs were following the course guidelines, and not taking OW students to a 60' wreck. (How's that for getting back to the OP?)