AOW right after OWD

[supergaijin]

Right now I'm out of the resorts. For our first season we had a surprisingly good bunch of divers. Some were beginners of course but that aint a bad thing- I enjoy seeing divers improve during the week. We had control over who got to dive where and luckily there were no major conflicts with experienced vs. beginner divers- lucky as we were are only operating a single boat.

While I 'know' you from the forums, I have never seen you dive. I have seen experienced divers needing an extra kilo during the first dive- no shame in that whatsoever.

 

[Abdullah]

When you know your client has logged thousands of dives, has years of technical diving experience, and is a scuba instructor, asking them if they're properly weighted is a foolish question. You can believe that if I needed more weight, I'd ask for more weight.

Perhaps if the guide didn't treat me like a beginner diver, I wouldn't imply he was a fool.

I understand that the majority of your clients can barely survive underwater ... I saw plenty of evidence of that when I was there. But the "one size fits all" approach strikes me as distasteful ... and a disservice to your more experienced clients. Most folks who know what they're doing don't like to be nannied.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

How did your guide know any of that experience to be true? People misrepresent their experience all the time. He's only got your word for it, and you were inverted all the time. I might have asked if you had a medical problem that caused you to remain inverted. It's fun for you, but weird to most everyone else.

If you're insulted that your gobzillions of dives doesn't earn you automatic respect and deference from every other diver on the planet, that's your thing. But I don't see the value in disparaging a guide for thinking an inverted diver was strange and thinking he maybe needed some advice. Maybe if you hadn't acted like a fool, he wouldn't have treated you like a beginner?

 

[uncfnp]

I find that people, including divers, that are comfortable with themselves and confident in their skills are less "threatened" when questioned by others...

 

[Centrals]

Any experienced dive guide should be able to tell if the diver is underweight or not by watching his/her buoyancy. If the diver is underweight, he/she will keep kicking and rolling around to keep neutral ie. constantly moving around.
You can readily tell the difference between a relax diver and someone who might have an issue ie underweight.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

How did your guide know any of that experience to be true? People misrepresent their experience all the time. He's only got your word for it, and you were inverted all the time. I might have asked if you had a medical problem that caused you to remain inverted. It's fun for you, but weird to most everyone else.

If you're insulted that your gobzillions of dives doesn't earn you automatic respect and deference from every other diver on the planet, that's your thing. But I don't see the value in disparaging a guide for thinking an inverted diver was strange and thinking he maybe needed some advice. Maybe if you hadn't acted like a fool, he wouldn't have treated you like a beginner?

Anybody who does scuba for a living should be able to tell by looking at a diver whether they're having buoyancy issues. If I'm hanging in the water column, not moving, and not touching anything, perfectly relaxed, then I'm weighted properly. It doesn't matter what my orientation happens to be. PADI likes using that buddha position to demonstrate that point. On the other hand, if I'm constantly kicking or sculling ... which I wasn't ... then he's got something to ask about.

I don't mind answering questions ... but they should at least make sense. Had he simply asked why I was doing that I'd have told him and not given it another thought. But I expect, from dive professionals, some semblance of knowledge that precludes the necessity to treat everyone like they don't know how to dive ... and there was a lot more going on than that one question.

But a lot of people who work in these places are so used to dealing with incompetence that it becomes their defacto standard ... like the DM in Roatan who insisted that I perform my checkout "skills" while kneeling ... so he could determine that I was weighted properly. The guy didn't seem to grasp the concept that if someone can do a mask removal/replacement while hovering six inches off the bottom in three feet of water, they don't need any more weight. No, it's not "showing off" ... it's demonstrating reasonable scuba diving skills. By the time you've managed a few dives you should be able to do those skills without having to kneel ... many people learn how to do that by the time they've completed OW.

I find that people, including divers, that are comfortable with themselves and confident in their skills are less "threatened" when questioned by others...

Who said anything about "threatened"? I found it silly, and I only have so much patience for that sort of behavior when I'm paying thou$and$ for a diving vacation. If a so-called dive professional doesn't have the chops to discern the difference between playing and incompetence, then they deserve to be ridiculed.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[dbulmer]

Bob,

I'm not an instructor. WELCOME TO MY WORLD

I can determine how good someone is in about 2 mins. I know instructors who can do it in about 30 seconds so I have every sympathy for Bob. It's good for a dive pro to keep a watchful eye but at times the pro needs to back off and let people just dive.

 

[drbill]

Back in the days when certification classes were real, my three week class covered essentially the same material as OW, AOW and Rescue in a single course. Given today's shortened courses, I don't see a problem with taking all three in succession over a short period of time.

 

[Abdullah]

Anybody who does scuba for a living should be able to tell by looking at a diver whether they're having buoyancy issues. If I'm hanging in the water column, not moving, and not touching anything, perfectly relaxed, then I'm weighted properly. It doesn't matter what my orientation happens to be. PADI likes using that buddha position to demonstrate that point. On the other hand, if I'm constantly kicking or sculling ... which I wasn't ... then he's got something to ask about.

I don't mind answering questions ... but they should at least make sense. Had he simply asked why I was doing that I'd have told him and not given it another thought. But I expect, from dive professionals, some semblance of knowledge that precludes the necessity to treat everyone like they don't know how to dive ... and there was a lot more going on than that one question.

But a lot of people who work in these places are so used to dealing with incompetence that it becomes their defacto standard ... like the DM in Roatan who insisted that I perform my checkout "skills" while kneeling ... so he could determine that I was weighted properly. The guy didn't seem to grasp the concept that if someone can do a mask removal/replacement while hovering six inches off the bottom in three feet of water, they don't need any more weight. No, it's not "showing off" ... it's demonstrating reasonable scuba diving skills. By the time you've managed a few dives you should be able to do those skills without having to kneel ... many people learn how to do that by the time they've completed OW.



Who said anything about "threatened"? I found it silly, and I only have so much patience for that sort of behavior when I'm paying thou$and$ for a diving vacation. If a so-called dive professional doesn't have the chops to discern the difference between playing and incompetence, then they deserve to be ridiculed.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

I get all that, and I feel your pain. But it's the product of the nanny world we live in that the dive operation will want to verify your skills, and some will want to babysit you no matter how experienced you are. And I agree that a decent pro should be able to see you're capable within a few minutes of your splash. Just like they should be able to figure out that I'm not panicking just because I put my mask on my forehead for 10 seconds to rub salt out of my eyes. Now, whether they can tell right away that you're playing, drunk, drug addled, mentally disturbed, or incompetent will vary from culture to culture and person to person based on their experience. If you're the very first diver they encounter who does an ENTIRE dive inverted, you can expect some feedback, it's simple human nature to question the unusual.

Where I disagree is the ridicule part. No one deserves to be ridiculed for doing what their boss tells them - no one. These guides are all constrained by the rules of their ownership. Rather than call this kid a fool, call his boss out for establishing the conditions that caused this to occur. Tell us the name of the dive op, where they're located, and whether their inexperienced pro staff would deter you from diving with them.

 

[NAM001]

Bobs process certainly produces a much better product. Too many times classes like AOW has to be tempered or throttled back for those that are ow to aow in the same week. If i was to start over i would prefer his pipeline/timeline. I cant imagie what all could be done in an aow class when all students went into aow as competant experienced ow's. The amount of new info that could be LEARNED and UNDERSTOOD when you are not still strugling with the basics.

Pro's and con's ... if your time is limited and you're only planning to dive under supervision, nine dives worth of training is better than four dives worth. On the other hand, if you're struggling with basic comfort, awareness, and buoyancy control, you're not likely going to get anything out of AOW ... and you certainly won't come out of it even remotely qualified to plan and execute a deep dive without supervision. Sadly, having access to deep dives is exactly why most folks take AOW.

I personally won't allow my students to go directly from OW to AOW ... not if they want the latter class from me. I want them to gain some experience, get comfortable with OW-level skills, and develop a little bit of confidence in their underwater ability first. That way they can focus on learning new things, rather than using the class to simply reinforce what they were supposed to have already learned. Then again, I don't train divers to follow dive guides and rely on someone else to make all their decisions for them. I won't take a diver deep until I'm confident that their buoyancy control won't result in an accidental ascent, and their awareness level is at least adequate to keep track of their depth, time, NDL and remaining gas ... and that's the bare-bones minimum starting point. I won't train complex navigation until they can look at their compass without losing buoyancy control, or need to settle on their knees first.

To be fair, there's only so much the typical student can learn in four or five OW dives (depending on agency) ... after that, they should get out and practice. My rule of thumb is get completely comfortable with what you learned in the last class before considering signing up for the next one. That way you can concentrate on the new stuff, rather than the things you should already have "mastered" ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[DevonDiver]

Too many times classes like AOW has to be tempered or throttled back for those that are ow to aow in the same week.

The benefit of AOW is entirely determined by the quality of the OW course. Time-scale between courses is irrelevant.

If a diver is well trained on OW, they are ready for AOW and will gain new skills.

If a diver is poorly trained on OW, they are not ready for AOW - if their intention is to gain new skills. Lengthening the time scale between courses has little/no benefit because the badly trained diver is unlikely to resolve the issues arising from their poor training in the interim.

One thing I've noticed in 22 years diving/10 years as a pro, is that badly trained divers have a tendency not to self-correct deficits that they are unaware of and/or have no comprehension of how to fix for themselves.

Good training doesn't require remedial instruction. If an AOW course has to be 'throttled back' to provide remedial correction, rather than providing progressive improvement, then the OW course is too blame.... not the lack of post-course experience.

Bad is bad. Good is good.

Entering AOW with bad OW skills means the course has to focus on remedial treatment for bad skills.

Entering AOW with good OW skills means the course can focus on attaining new skills.

Either outcome is beneficial for the diver.

The only 'negative' AOW course is one that neither provides new skills, nor remediate skill deficits.... i.e. the 'glorified fun diving' BS.