A deep systemic problem with diver ed?

[Popeye]

MikeFerrara once bubbled...


And I want Genesis and Popeye to become instructors so they can own part of it.

Just what do you guys have against insisting that instructors ensure student mastery of skills as the standards already require? If you tell me that the majority of instructors are doing that I for one won't believe it because I get students all the time for advanced classes, nitrox classes and advanced nitrox classes that I can't take away from the platform until I redo most of the OW course with them.

I'd be an instructor in a minute if it paid anything.

I dive with classes maybe fifty times a year, to keep my bill down at the shop.

I just don't see the damage you apparently do. Statistics don't come close to baring out your argument. I mentioned once before that maybe it's your area or something. I was on a boat last weekend, half the divers strangers, and they were all quite skilled. No need for assistance in gear assembly, no DMs holding any hands, no one flopping on the bottom, just a cattleboat full of divers.

In fact, most boats I dive, the DM stays topside.

3 of the divers from our shop were fresh OW studii on their first salt water dive, and seasick to boot, and did just fine.

Next day, I was out on a boat of total strangers, no problems at all. Just traveling in different circles, I guess. Maybe you run a lotta straight tourist boats.

I usually dive the local boat.

I think maybe your expectations may be high on what skills the infrequent diver retains.

Myself, if someone has been out of the water for 90 days, or is diving a radically different environment, I look for them to be a little sloppy, and I don't think it's a realistic expectation for them to be pinpoint.

And it doesn't mean they weren't, when they were in class.


On another point, I think you miss the nuance of my argument.

My point is that if standards were too low, people would be getting hurt in droves, and they're not.

However, if I had my own training agency, Popeye International, MY idea of an open water class would contain most or all of OW, AOW, Rescue, Nitrox, Blender, and Gear Tech.

You'd have to buy a BC as well.

But it would cost 12 or 1500 bucks, take six months, and no one would do it.

 

[Popeye]

Walter once bubbled...
I believe a majority of SCUBA deaths can be traced to low standards. Confidence building skills have be abandoned by most agencies. Confidence building skills help to prevent panic. Panic is the biggest killer of divers.

That's a stretch.

The death rate is lower now than when these confidence building skills were employed.

Thinking that you can teach someone not to panic in 8 (or whatever) pool and confined water sessions is also pretty nifty.

Statistics show that 65% of diver deaths occur -after- the first year of diving, and more than 50% of those occur after ten years of diving.

Ten years.

Ten years.

That's quite a burden to place on an OW instructor...

Then you take around 2.7 million active divers in the U.S. (out of 8 million certified), and divide that into the 100 that die,

Wait, let's just do the 200K that PADI certifies. That's what, .0005%. If all the dead guys were recent PADI OW grads, which they're not. Leaving out the rest of the already certifieds.

If standards are so low, how, exactly, are the other 99.9995% of these students scraping along, I wonder.

 

[Diver0001]

Popeye once bubbled...


That's a stretch.

If you look at the DAN report from this year you'll see that 60-odd% of fatal accidents involved buoyancy problems and a whopping 30% involved OOA. These are cross agency stats. It would be very interesting to know what the root causes of the buoyancy problems were but I wouldn't be surpised if Walter is right and much of it has to do with panic.

And his solution might not be so "left field" either.

Just looking at the statistics I'd say that the simple act teaching students to watch their pressure better would solve 30% of the problem. In a word "alertness".

The death rate is lower now than when these confidence building skills were employed.

I don't believe this. The WRSTC makes this claim based on per-captia ratio of deaths to the total number of certified divers. To have any meaning the claim would have to be supported by the total number of dives not the total number of divers.

It wouldn't surprise me if 80% of the dives are being made by 20% of certified divers. It also wouldn't surprise me if the majority of accidents are coming out of the 20% that don't dive much (also supported by DAN stats) and if you look at it that way, the picture is very different. The WRSTC could survey certified divers and within a very short time they'd have a good idea of the number of dives being made per year. It would be easy to do that. Why do you think they don't do it?

Thinking that you can teach someone not to panic in 8 (or whatever) pool and confined water sessions is also pretty nifty.

Walter never made this claim.

Statistics show that 65% of diver deaths occur -after- the first year of diving, and more than 50% of those occur after ten years of diving.

Another misconception, I think. The Dan report shows that the majority of accidents happen to infrequent and/or inexperienced divers. Diving once a year for 10 years makes you a diver for 10 years but you are by no means an experienced diver.

The 65% that happen after the first year is interesting but not surprising. Someone gets a resort cert. They make 2 or 3 dives and then they are dry for a year. Next year they go diving again. They've been certified for over a year but they have basically *zero* experience and their cert took a few hours a year ago. How much of what they should know is still fresh in their mind, I wonder?

 

[MikeFerrara]

Genesis once bubbled...



For PRIVATE universities? Nope. But if their internal standards suck, your degree is worthless. Or if they are just too radical in some way, their degree may be worthless to some employers irrespective of the purported "quality" of education.

In fact, there was a list of so-called "good" universities that I would not hire graduates from. One of those schools threatened to sue me once over my policy on this matter. I laughed. Their attorneys apparently did too, 'cause I never heard anything more on the matter after I laughed at them.

What keeps private universities in line? Their degrees need to be worth something, or there will be no people taking classes there.

This won't work with scuba. Most students that walk in the shop don't know one agency from another or one instructor from another or one school from another. The walk in because of an add in a magazine, the sign on the street or the yellow page add. Also such a small percentage of people are divers and with all the once a year divers who don't dive or associate with other divers locally, my reputation has nothing to do with it. I could mess up every student I had. I could kill half of them. You know what? The next one walking through the door wouldn't have a clue! There needs to be standards someplace, set by somebody.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Popeye once bubbled...


I'd be an instructor in a minute if it paid anything.

Well, it won't pay unless you're really fast and do lots at a time. You'll also have to get them to sign up for that deep dive right away to make up for what you lost teaching the OW class. If you are teaching for a shop (worse yet if you own it) you'll need to sell them a reg that the manufacturers rep is harping on you most to push. When they ask if the reg you sold is good for that Gilboa deep dive you'll of course say yes.

The rest is history.

It doesn't pay.

 

[Walter]

Popeye,

"The death rate is lower now than when these confidence building skills were employed."

Do you mean training is better without confidence building skills?

You reasoning is flawed. First, your stats are numbers pulled from the air. No one knows what the death rate was 30 years ago and no one knows what the death rate is today. This is because there are no accurate numbers on number of divers or on number of dives. I agree with Rotuner that number of dives is necessary for realk stats, but we don't even know how many divers are out there.

Confidence building skills are still employed by some of the agencies.

EMS now has better response times and better equi[pment and training than 30 years ago.

Most DM's have become baby sitters, watching their charges extremely carefully because they know the divers are incompetent.

Death is not the only indicator of incompetence.

"more than 50% of those occur after ten years of diving.

Ten years.

Ten years."

I'm impressed. Most divers never learn basic skills. They never pick them up in later courses (assuming they actually take later courses). They go from dive boat to dive boat 2 or 3 times each year, perhaps skipping a year or two. On each of these trips, they have good conditions and a DM that holds their hand. After 10 - 15 years, they mistakemly believe they are skilled and experienced. In reality, they are neither. They never learned basic skills in their OW class, they never learned them later and when things go wrong they have no idea how to solve their problem. When that realization strikes home, they are scared and rightly so. When thery get scared, they start to hypoventilate. Unless they break that cycle quickly, they will panic. Unless someone saves their bacon, there's an excellent chance they'll kill themselves. Ten years. What possible difference does ten years have except they now have an inflated belief in their own abilites, a belief that disappears immediately when things go south.

"Thinking that you can teach someone not to panic in 8 (or whatever) pool and confined water sessions is also pretty nifty."

You can either lay the basics or ignore it completely. I prefer not to ignore the problem.

You don't seem to see that many OW students and certified divers are incompetent. I do. You are certainly entitled to your opinion.

 

[kevink]

I think to look at the death rate in SCUBA you need to look beyond these broad categories. Blaming standards and instruction is an easy way out.

I could quite simply state that 100% of UW SCUBA deaths occur because people fail to breath the compressed air in their tank. From an objective & physiological standpoint this could be the medical cause of death. Am I to fault every instructor because this is the 1st skill that is to be taught before they even hit a pool? You can make stats say anything you want.

I still hold my ground on this. People die predominantly because they are PHYSICALLY UNFIT (fat, heart problems, medical issues) or STUPID (diving beyond their ability in gross violation of training).

Pick up this month Rodales (July pg. 67). Did this diver perish because of a Bouyancy problem? Or did the great Darwin magnet in the bottom of the ocean pull him in as he tried to do a 200' wreck dive right out of OW training?

Read ALL of the installments of 'Why Divers Die' on Undercurrent. There was one where an individual thought he would try his first Dry Suit dive as a deep wreck penetration without any supervision. Does this get chaulked up as a bouyancy problem. Not in my book, the Darwin magnet in the front of the ship had good hold on him.

I agree that good instructors train for Murphy (can I license that phrase from someon (NEIL)?). The sad fact is that Stupidity is the dominant gene.

The sport is Safe. The majority of professionals beleive this, as well as the majority of customers. Perception is reality. I believe OW students should be more proficient, but the sale cannot be made from a safety standpoint. If the diving world is being polluted with Turkey Divers, what other negative impact are they having that could be sold to? (I say 'sold to' not in a money connotation, but you need to make prospective students understand that they NEED, WANT and DESIRE better training, you CANNOT force it upon them, short of a government mandate ).

As an experienced diver, how would you make a prospective student understand that they need a better level of training? What is the benefit to them? (And don't start with the safety factor because its not a sale in my book)

 

[MASS-Diver]

Popeye once bubbled...


That's a stretch.

The death rate is lower now than when these confidence building skills were employed.

Thinking that you can teach someone not to panic in 8 (or whatever) pool and confined water sessions is also pretty nifty.

Statistics show that 65% of diver deaths occur -after- the first year of diving, and more than 50% of those occur after ten years of diving.

Ten years.

Ten years.

That's quite a burden to place on an OW instructor...

Then you take around 2.7 million active divers in the U.S. (out of 8 million certified), and divide that into the 100 that die,

Wait, let's just do the 200K that PADI certifies. That's what, .0005%. If all the dead guys were recent PADI OW grads, which they're not. Leaving out the rest of the already certifieds.

If standards are so low, how, exactly, are the other 99.9995% of these students scraping along, I wonder.

Over 200,000 certified each year by PADI alone, but, the number of active divers remains the same. You don't see a problem with this? People drop out because their skills are so poor they don't hacve fun in the water.

BTW, you can have horrible skills and you can still dodge the bullet for a while espically if you dive 3 times a year in 80deg. water. We lost 4 divers last season here in MA, poor skills/training is suspected as being a factor in atleast 2 of these deaths. Look at what's going in Ohio right now. The standards are so watered down thye are only suitable for ideal condition diving.

 

[MikeFerrara]

kevink once bubbled...

The sport is Safe. The majority of professionals beleive this, as well as the majority of customers. Perception is reality. I believe OW students should be more proficient, but the sale cannot be made from a safety standpoint. If the diving world is being polluted with Turkey Divers, what other negative impact are they having that could be sold to? (I say 'sold to' not in a money connotation, but you need to make prospective students understand that they NEED, WANT and DESIRE better training, you CANNOT force it upon them, short of a government mandate ).

As an experienced diver, how would you make a prospective student understand that they need a better level of training? What is the benefit to them? (And don't start with the safety factor because its not a sale in my book)

Good point. I for one haven't been able to make the sale. The sport is safe enough to make most confident that it won't happen to them and that there isn't any need to spend extra time or effort to make it better for themselves. They are convinced that only the stupid die and since they aren't stupid they're safe.

Stupidity may kill or injure some but I'm more inclined to refer to them as ignorant than stupid. There are many ignorant divers. They're not stupid but some will be hurt anyway.

The best way to sell the value of better skilld is more enjoyment. However that's something that has to be seen to be believed. One of the guys I dive with who is also one of our divemasters makes it a point to thank me again after each trip to the quarry. He has does so because he is glad his diving took a different turn. In reality he had as much or more to do with it than I did of course as I can only make suggestions. The point is being more proficient drastically increases enjoyment but you don't have a clue how much until you get there and many never get there. Many never have a clue what's possible so they can't even seek it.

I show each OW student videos of recreational divers on a reef. I also show them video of highly skilled divers. They know the difference from day one. They still don't know how different it feels but at least they know what it looks like. I also can't get away with telling them that it's ok to swim at a 45 deg angle working your butt off because they know better.

But when divers see a DIRF class they sure are amazed just by seeing divers who can do a decent job in the water. That's funny as hell.

Looking at it from a consumer standpoint they don't even have a choice. It's the luck of the draw. If they call one number to arrange a class they can be in reallygreat shape. But if they call another, things can be very different. Both avenues result in the exact same card so who is to know the difference. A consumer looking at it pre-purchase or even post-purchase with nothing to campare it to will never know.

 

[MikeFerrara]

MASS-Diver once bubbled...



Look at what's going in Ohio right now. The standards are so watered down thye are only suitable for ideal condition diving.

Ideal conditions while doing a canned dive that sombody else planned at a site that somebody else picked.

If they were all diving Ohio the stats would look much different, I think.