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Pretty much everyone has days when one thing or another happens during the gearing up process that slows us down. We may get behind our buddies or a scheduled dive time. We will then feel pressure to speed up the gearing process as much as possible. That is when we make mistakes. I told my...

I heard someone say that years ago, but when I checked, I found that they were not originally into scuba. It was a while before they went in that direction. (I am writing this from memory.)

I have long had the feeling that a lot of the first decades of instruction involved a wide variety of instructional programs and techniques, and I feel it is very likely that individual instructors probably fought hard against any kind of standardization. I believe that in part because for a...

I don't get a commission. I have nothing to do with the shop. I met an instructor one day while diving at a place called Rock Lake in New Mexico, and he told me about it. I don't think you need the class. Just read the materials and send me a DM if you need any help.

I found this portion of the article most interesting. I have been on ScubaBoard for more than 20 years, and I recall many discussions on the this topic. As I recall, people who pointed out that NAUI was not a member of the RSTC said that it was because they fundamentally disagreed with the...

It has very little information about diving at altitude.

I was recently told by a dive shop in Colorado Springs that they use my article on at altitude diving as their sole text for their altitude specialty. It was reproduced in the ScubaBoard Knowledge Base. https://scubaboard.com/community/threads/diving-at-altitude.562791/

Please identify the specific standards that have been removed since the RSTC was established. If no standards have been removed, please tell how the courses have otherwise been abbreviated.

I am sorry that this is so hard for you to understand. I will try to explain it in the simplest possible terms. Members of the RSTC agree to follow at least a certain set of standards. They may add to that list of standards. If you use an agency that is part of the RSTC, then you know that the...

Here is an example of one agency that is NOT in the RSTC: http://www.divesda.com/index.html This is a scam organization that has been going on for many, many years. Its owner was kicked out of NAUI years ago. I have not checked for a long time, but the last time I did, the official address for...

Except it makes no sense in this context. NAUI and the RSTC are two entirely different organizations doing very different things.

Some of the people in this thread seem to think the RSTC is an agency, like NAUI. It is not an agency. It does not train instructors. It does not issue certifications. As some people have finally noticed, NAUI only joined a few years ago.

I mentioned earlier that when my dive shop adopted the marketing policy recommended by the head of the agency to which they switched, dive instructors were required to all wear the specific gear selected by the shop in order to maximize profit margins. If I had not quit, I would have been...

I am not sure I understand all the warnings to stop posting and try to delete the thread (which isn't going to happen). I am not an attorney, but I don't see the risk. In the Linnea Mills case, the instructor made the mistake of writing about the incident on social media, but that is completely...

In my experience, a newer diver's dream gear often contains future regrets. I once had a student come to me for advanced training, and he had all his own gear, most of which was not appropriate for the classes he wanted to take. He knew that before he came to me, and he was angry about all the...

As you pursue this case, you should be aware that there is a complication in terms of authorities dealing with this sort of thing. The agency (PADI in this case) has no real legal authority to act--the most they can do is expel the instructor and/or dive operation from the agency. It would be up...

Yes, the instructor or a certified assistant must be in the water and directly supervising the student. There is no question about that. There have been plenty of precedents on that issue. Do you have information that your brother was in the water unsupervised when he had his accident?

There was no problem with open circuit bubbles. First of all, most people on the team were on rebreathers, including all the people doing the deepest work. Next, the problem was that the army corps of engineers had tried to fill the cave opening with tons of loose rock, and the path through all...

This may be hard to believe, but what most people call an overhead is actually possible during an OW class. It is also possible for routine OW dives. This all came out to me when I was in a discussion on the topic of overheads with PADI headquarters. During that discussion, I learned the...

You seem to believe that heart attacks only happen during strenuous activity. The primary cause for a heart attack is the condition of the heart. The most common occasion for a heart attack is sitting around in the morning, about breakfast time. The second most common time that heart attacks...