Advanced Open Water Disappointment

[Eric Sedletzky]

What’s wrong with paddling with your hands? Where did the BS that you shouldn’t paddle with your hands come from? I use every means available to me to negotiate my way through a wreck or through a gap as smoothly as I can and if that means paddling with my hands then that’s the way it should be. Maybe some are so fixed in their ways they think everything else is wrong.

Oh boy, you’re going to open a whole can of worms with crazy talk about hand swimming!
I know it’s a natural human or mammalian instinct to hand swim. Whales do it, pinnipeds guide their way with front flippers, porpoises guide their way with pectoral fins which would be the same thing as our arms. People use hands to make slight corrections in trim and positioning all the time, and not just newbies. But be warned, around here any mention of hand use at all will get you flogged by the hand use nazis.
Just a friendly warning ️

 

[johndiver999]

I probably use my hands to turn and spin more than some people, but the people who are heavy and sinking and are doing a dog paddle to maintain position are the ones that make me nervous.

 

[Nemrod]

"Advanced" SCUBA courses are really contrived. In older times there was no such thing. Then shops and a certain ABC for profit training agency decided to start splitting everything up to make a profit stream for dive retail businesses.

There is nothing advanced about a diver who with 12 dives in a quarry and then completes an Advanced course and now has 16 dives. It is a joke. A 100 dives in varied environments, not 100 quarry/pool dives, should be the minimum entrance to an Advanced diver course. On the trip I just returned from, there was a couple on our live aboard who held an Advanced card who did not know they held Advanced cards, could not asemble their gear, plan a dive or get to the bottom without running out of air. I do not mind dealing with such things when it is a dive I have done before or easy enough to get back to, but I might never get back to the Red Sea and dealing with non-Advanced, Advanced certified divers is a non-starter for me on such a trip. I wish dive certs meant what they say, but my best example, it is like Scouting sort of, but Scouts earn their Merit Badges and divers buy theirs (tech certs largely not included in this generalization).

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

I probably use my hands to turn and spin more than some people, but the people who are heavy and sinking and are doing a dog paddle to maintain position are the ones that make me nervous.

Well yeah, the bird flappers are one thing and the rookie hand sculling for no reason.
I’m talking about slight positioning adjustments with a little hand sculling. I see some hand use as the same thing as thrusters on the bow of a boat. Sometimes moving the front end around is easiest with front propulsion.

 

[boulderjohn]

"Advanced" SCUBA courses are really contrived. In older times there was no such thing. Then shops and a certain ABC for profit training agency decided to start splitting everything up to make a profit stream for dive retail businesses.

This is a common myth. I believed it myself once. AOW is not a division from a supposed earlier, fuller class.

The AOW class was created by the Los Angeles County program in the mid 1960s. They were concerned that too many people were completing the beginning program and then dropping out of scuba. They thought an advanced class that amplified key skills and introduced divers to a variety of dive experiences that might pique their interest would help.

After they did that, NAUI added AOW to their program for the same reason. (NAUI's leadership came from LA County.)

Other agencies eventually followed suit.

 

[Nemrod]

This is a common myth. I believed it myself once. AOW is not a division from a supposed earlier, fuller class.

The AOW class was created by the Los Angeles County program in the mid 1960s. They were concerned that too many people were completing the beginning program and then dropping out of scuba. They thought an advanced class that amplified key skills and introduced divers to a variety of dive experience that might pique their interest would help.

After they did that, NAUI added AOW to their program for the same reason. (NAUI's leadership came from LA County.)

That may have been how it started, I trust your historical knowledge, but in practical terms that is not how it has been executed. If it were we would not have commonly such divers with Advanced cards who routinely cannot assemble their gear without help.

 

[boulderjohn]

That may have been how it started, I trust your historical knowledge, but in practical terms that is not how it has been executed.

I don't see how that is possible. LA County took its program from Scripps Institute, which invented scuba instruction in the USA. The man who went to Scripps for them to learn it (Al Tillman) then led the creation of NAUI, with its instructional program modified slightly. Then LA County and NAUI made a totally different program called AOW. When NAUI got into financial trouble, its Chicago branch formed PADI, using the same instructional processes. They were two courses then; they are two courses now. Nothing in the AOW course was ever in the introductory course.

Or are you simply hearkening back to the idea that all instruction was perfect 60 years ago, and it has gone downhill ever since?

In that case, you should read The History of NAUI, linked here. In it you will not only find the history cited above, you will find an interesting observation from the authors, who include Al Tillman. They wrote that at the time of the writing of that history, the average student completing the beginning certification was a better diver than the average instructor in NAUI's early days.

 

[Nemrod]

John,

I am not going to have an internet melt down with you. I acknowledged you are correct and trust your historical knowledge. The courses taught in the past were significantly longer and more complete IMO and I was there then and observed the results now. You do not see how it possible that Advanced certified divers cannot assemble their own gear! Where have you been. Rhetorical, I do not need an answer, the answer is in the observation of such divers produced by such courses. The OP would not have made post number 1, there it is.

Maybe this concept of instruction as well intended as it was when originated, needs to go away. Have instead OW1 (basic skills, buoyancy control, equipment set up, planning) followed by OW2 (refinement and expansion of knowledge based skills, setting personal limits, diver rescue) and then after 100 dives an Advanced course that actually would mean something and could be counted upon that a diver holding the card would in fact be advanced enough to assemble their gear, plan and execute a dive without supervision in any open water environment to recreational limits.

Edit, maybe 100 is too many, perhaps 50 is a better number if they are quality dives, not pool and rock quarry 100%. Then 100 for Master and Solo. And maybe make Rescue mandatory for Advanced. Something needs to change. And truthfully, I have seen much improvement in Basic OW divers skills over the last few years. More seem able to stay up in the water column and are showing awareness of where their fins are, both very good things so somebody is doing a much better job at basic instruction.

 

[boulderjohn]

John,

I am not going to have an internet melt down with you. I acknowledged you are correct and trust your historical knowledge. The courses taught in the past were significantly longer and more complete IMO and I was there then and observed the results now. You do not see how it possible that Advanced certified divers cannot assemble their own gear! Where have you been. Rhetorical, I do not need an answer, the answer is in the observation of such divers produced by such courses. The OP would not have made post number 1, there it is.

Maybe this concept of instruction as well intended as it was when originated, needs to go away. Have instead OW1 (basic skills, buoyancy control, equipment set up, planning) followed by OW2 (refinement and expansion of knowledge based skills, setting personal limits, diver rescue) and then after 100 dives an Advanced course that actually would mean something and could be counted upon that a diver holding the card would in fact be advanced enough to assemble their gear, plan and execute a dive without supervision in any open water environment to recreational limits.

In that same history, you will that even in the 1960s, NAUI had a problem with instructional quality. Instructors wanted to hand out C-cards after class, so NAUI shipped the cards when the students enrolled. They knew that many students got cards without actually completing the program or, in some cases, even beginning it. They didn't know what to do about it.

One reason classes were longer in the past is that students learned the academic material through lecture, which takes much more time and is much less effective than modern methods.

People who write about the past golden age of instruction act as if all classes were the same then. NAUI allowed a wide range of practices then, so classes could be very different from one instructor to another. The reality is that then, as now, your class quality very much depended upon the instructor.

 

[Outbound]

"Advanced" SCUBA courses are really contrived. In older times there was no such thing. Then shops and a certain ABC for profit training agency decided to start splitting everything up to make a profit stream for dive retail businesses.

There is nothing advanced about a diver who with 12 dives in a quarry and then completes an Advanced course and now has 16 dives. It is a joke. A 100 dives in varied environments, not 100 quarry/pool dives, should be the minimum entrance to an Advanced diver course. On the trip I just returned from, there was a couple on our live aboard who held an Advanced card who did not know they held Advanced cards, could not asemble their gear, plan a dive or get to the bottom without running out of air. I do not mind dealing with such things when it is a dive I have done before or easy enough to get back to, but I might never get back to the Red Sea and dealing with non-Advanced, Advanced certified divers is a non-starter for me on such a trip. I wish dive certs meant what they say, but my best example, it is like Scouting sort of, but Scouts earn their Merit Badges and divers buy theirs (tech certs largely not included in this generalization).

You really need to read up on the history of how AOW started and what it really means.