Is dive certification really necessary?

[wetb4igetinthewater]

the average recreational diver (what agencies are catering to) does not dive enough to develop, much less maintain proficiency. Within a year of completing their OW class, they’ve brain dumped the majority of what they’ve been taught.

I agree with that, and that's what refreshers are for. Not everyone lives where there's a body of water appealing enough for them to dive.

Every agency has similar systems to support divers who hardly ever dive to those who dive prolifically.

 

[Barnaby'sDad]

I agree with that, and that's what refreshers are for. Not everyone lives where there's a body of water appealing enough for them to dive.

That’s why instilling that mindset is important. If you don’t do that, people don’t process that they need a refresher if it’s been a long time since they dived. They just think “I’m certified, so I’m good.”

I’m not saying that everyone in that boat does that, but that I’ve run into a few.

 

[Celt]

I built a hookah and used it until I got certified. Read, study and learn. Dove as an OW diver until the NASDS card was in tatters. Somebody gave me an AOW for $75. Learned to drysuit dive, current dive, boat dive, how to run a compressor, how to mix nitrox and how to use nitrox on my own. Then took a nitrox course to get the card. One think I know, if you are on your first dive with a dive shop in Mexico they don't care how many cards you have or what the cards allow you to do. They watch you until they decide you know how to dive.

I’m not telling people what they should or shouldn’t do, what I’m saying is a person could do all that and more and not take a single course.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

That’s why instilling that mindset is important. If you don’t do that, people don’t process that they need a refresher if it’s been a long time since they dived. They just think “I’m certified, so I’m good.”

I’m not saying that everyone in that boat does that, but that I’ve run into a few.

hey, I'm focused on the Sisyphean task of getting instructors to stop placing their open water on their knees.

I don't need another Sisyphean task right now, thank you very much!

 

[Bert van den Berg]

What problem will an instructor see that the person who is training themselves won’t experience themselves and fix themselves

I'm not an instructor so can't come up with all the possibilities but one I can come up with is the angle of your body when swimming (trim).

 

[Celt]

I'm not an instructor so can't come up with all the possibilities but one I can come up with is the angle of your body when swimming (trim).

When you first learn to swim your in perfect trim, and that’s the first thing you learn if you wish to teach yourself to dive.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

When you first learn to swim your in perfect trim, and that’s the first thing you learn if you wish to teach yourself to dive.

Skin diving also teaches you how to properly move through the water. You make your body straight and you fin yourself forward. Skin diving doesn’t work if you’re trying to go forward at a 45 degree angle.
Just remember the feeling of being straight and apply it to your scuba diving.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

Skin diving also teaches you how to properly move through the water. You make your body straight and you fin yourself forward. Skin diving doesn’t work if you’re trying to go forward at a 45 degree angle.
Just remember the feeling of being straight and apply it to your scuba diving.

Eric, thank you. That just turned a light on in my head. I'm actually working on a blog series on how to actually teach neutrally buoyant and trim. Part of the way I teach is first a set of breathing exercises that is described in the notes section of my Thavmas Scuba notes page. Then I move onto finning and skin diving skills.

Once students can comfortably fin, equalize, breath, clear, etc., then I move to putting them in their scuba kits.

If you don't mind, I'm going to steal your quote.

 

[James79]

Just my observations (worth what you paid for them),

I am an instructor in a very high risk profession, and with the training we conduct we always try to have an outside evaluator do the final check. We use an hierarchy of choices, starting from highest up and furthest from our organization and ending at individual instructors swapping students as a worst case.... critical point being that you don't get your eval from the one who did the instructing.

I like Eric's idea of isolating the instruction from the evaluation in scuba, largely due to the human tendency to not see their own faults (if I suck at teaching buoyancy, per se, and am checking my own students.... how good does their buoyancy have to be for me to pass them?). This would also give the instructors better feedback (Joe Snuffy failed his check dive due to _____. This is the third student from that instructor with that failure, is it the student or a weakness in the instruction?). It doesn't have to be a "higher governing body," it could be as simple as an agreement between 2 shops (If I can, I'll check your students, and you check mine), and swapping students within the shop if an outside instructor isn't available.

Secondarily to this, by separating the check dives from the instruction the source of instruction ceases to matter. Pay for the check dive separately, and it's up to instructors (and/or shops) to determine price of the instruction piece. If Joe Snuffy comes in cold and says " I want to take my check dives," and is apprised of the fact that he CAN fail them and have to pay to try again, then it doesn't matter if he was taught by your shop, a different shop, or the school of YouTube. Either they pass and get their card, fail with a detailed explanation of which standard(s) they failed, or fail with a major safety violation and an explanation of why the Eval was cut short (for their safety).
I do think this would open the door to more budget limited divers, and not prevent those who can afford more of the shops time from using it as well. It would also most likely result in an improvement of the instructional community (I know that those who evaluate my students in my profession always give me feedback, good or bad, on how they did and we share teaching techniques more because of it).

Respectfully,

James

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Eric, thank you. That just turned a light on in my head. I'm actually working on a blog series on how to actually teach neutrally buoyant and trim. Part of the way I teach is first a set of breathing exercises that is described in the notes section of my Thavmas Scuba notes page. Then I move onto finning and skin diving skills.

Once students can comfortably fin, equalize, breath, clear, etc., then I move to putting them in their scuba kits.

If you don't mind, I'm going to steal your quote.

Steal away.

A few of us around here were free divers before we became scuba divers. Skin diving gives you many natural skills that can be directly applied to scuba diving. I can’t imagine going straight to scuba diving from the start and having to get used to the gear and everything else all at the same time.
It used to be that in many locations students were taught to skin dive and learn watermanship skills, ocean acclimation with basic skin diving gear, mask clearing, equalizing, weighting, etc. way before they were allowed to put a SCUBA on.
They still do it this way in many university diving programs.
When I certified with PADI 22 years ago we were required to do a skin dive to 25’ without a weightbelt and had to grab a handful of sand off the bottom. I got smart and pulled myself hand over hand down a stalk of bull kelp! This was on the first day before we did any scuba skills.