Attitudes Toward DIR Divers

[boulderjohn]

It seems that if the shop is not affiliated with PADI, there is no relationship between the shop and PADI. Right?

Correct. PADI may not even know the shop exists. The aforementioned Fiji shop had a huge PADI logo on their storefront, but they were not PADI affiliated. That was illegal, but PADI did not know they were doing it.

Many shops offer instruction in a number of different agencies. Many instructors offer instruction for different agencies. I was simultaneously a TDI instructor and a PADI instructor. Sometimes they will give the instructor certification from two different agencies when the student is done with the class.

Interestingly enough, every DIR instructor I have ever known personally was also at the same time a PADI instructor. You have to wonder how during instruction they are able to remember to be outstanding or incompetent.

 

[ginti]

@crofrog thanks for your reply, insightful, really!

This is the argument that every company that has a quality problem argues. Quality has a cost but poor quality cost more, not sure exactly where I heard that from, probably in some six sigma training from back in the day.

Agree with that. The problem here is how you define quality. From PADI's perspective, being a company owned by a PE fund, quality from a management perspective is not necessarily equivalent to quality of training.

Their business model is to give the minimum standard to be safe to as many divers as possible. It is the same business model of low-cost airliners, fast fashion firms, fast food, etc. Quality from the perspective of their average customer is a mix of "good enough" (in the specific case of PADI, safe enough), "quick" and "easy to get". Honestly, they are doing a great job.

Note: you may argue about safety; actually, scuba diving had, in 2011, between 14 and 16 deaths per 100,000 persons per year, comparable to jogging (13) and motor vehicle accidents (16). A pretty good score, although, surely, improvable. Please see here: Wayback Machine

Yes I believe any organization who's responsible for teaching people how to engage in inherently risky activities should be heavily focused on the quality of the instruction, and the quality of the student.

See above, the score is pretty good, although improvable. The point is that a quick change in the culture is just not feasible due to resistance to change. Impossible. Not doable, Full stop. PADI would collapse by losing so many "old-school" instructors. So a dramatic increase in the quality of courses would likely bring all these people to build their own organization with poor standards, and here we are again.

The mechanisms required to create culture of quality and safety inside PADI are not expensive. It just requires more fortitude and a less resigned attitude. The cost of poor quality (COPQ) should be defined inside these organizations as well.

Again, you are mixing the management concept of quality with the quality of training. I am honestly unsure if this is the case - if I had to bet, I would go in the opposite direction. Although improvements are possible (and PADI is taking these steps already)

I agree that GUE and the other DIR agencies have had a massive positive influence on the overall diving industry by challenging the status quo of what is possible in diver training and creating a clear standard.

Sure but let's do a full analysis of the downsides as well. There is significant impact to the marine ecosystem by divers with poor buoyancy and positioning control.

The fact that marine park rules have to specifically call out you can not stand on the coral, disturb the marine organisms, wear gloves (all from Cozumel) and that there are regulations in place in Belize for instance to "identify the environmental impact caused by clients inappropriate diving behavior" are two examples of places that have seen impacts from divers.


"Divers could cause harm to corals via direct physical contact by touching or walking on them, kneeling, standing or dragging and snagging of equipments and some of diver may even accidentally kick corals with their fin when they lose their buoyancy (58%) or deliberately holding onto corals (32%) [30]. One research reported that around 90% of divers had one or more physical interactions with reef benthos. Studies agreed that fins cause most damage to the corals followed by hands, knees and equipment [18, 30]. In this research, he found that 46% of the drivers admitted holding on to the corals during dives in strong currents. Also, 67% of the drivers admitted damaging corals in their earlier dives."
https://www.shs-conferences.org/articles/shsconf/pdf/2014/09/shsconf_4ictr2014_01093.pdf

I tend to avoid linking to wikipedia but, this is a well referenced article. Environmental impact of recreational diving - Wikipedia

I totally agree with you. There are downsides. These were once irrelevant from a business perspective, which is why PADI once cared less. But now they are not irrelevant because, luckily, society is evolving and there are people like you (and me) fighting for the environment.

I think this is one of the main reasons why PADI started promoting instructional videos with skills on neutral buoyancy and other good stuff, together with the pressure coming from the tech world. But this is just a guess.

Anyway, interesting discussion, but I have the feeling we will have to agree to disagree at the end

 

[ginti]

You made me curious. How often have people complained about you or tried to embarrass you because of your background, or because of a Halcyon (or a Santi maybe?) piece of equipment?

@Zach The Diver I don't mean to provoke you, I am seriously interested in your answer

@Zach The Diver I know you are trying to get out of this thread, so feel free to answer me privately if you prefer; but please, answer me I am seriously interested in your experience

 

[tursiops]

Interestingly enough, every DIR instructor I have ever known personally was also at the same time a PADI instructor. You have to wonder how during instruction they are able to remember to be outstanding or incompetent.

LOL. Good one!

 

[The Chairman]

I think a lot of people have a dive where they were pretty uncomfortable and maybe a little scared and then they don't want to dive again. I know I have.

I've seen the deer in the headlight look quite often in the Keys. Glad I don't live there anymore. They probably are too!

Heck, I vividly recall on the last dive of the OW course not being sure about which button was to add gas, which button was to release gas, and whether you add or you dump when you descend or when you ascend

You weren't alone. GUE is a big proponent of balanced rigs, as am I. Students should be able to breathe themselves up from the bottom in a controlled manner without having to resort to their elevator. They should be able to do the opposite as well and descend gently. There's little need to eff with the valve if your rig is balanced.

and I don't think I could have assembled the gear myself the next day

So many instructors fault GUE for being overpriced. Guess what? They don't have to rush through their classes. They can take fewer students and spend more time. Good on them.

It is still the affiliated shop in the middle, and PADI comes down on them.

It takes an egregious flaunting of the standards for this to happen with either the shop or the instructor. Students don't know when standards are being violated unless someone dies. Should I see violation and report it, it simply goes into the circular file. They simply won't listen to anyone, or even research an incident without the student or instructor initiating it. That's true of most agencies. Was the instructor kicked out of one agency? There is no reciprocity among agencies, so they can continue teaching for the next agency. And the next, ad nauseum. There are a bunch of agencies out there.

 

[Kendall Raine]

Interestingly enough, every DIR instructor I have ever known personally was also at the same time a PADI instructor. You have to wonder how during instruction they are able to remember to be outstanding or incompetent.

Ha. An example of "situational awareness," to be sure.

I recall that to become a GUE instructor (GUE is the agency, DIR the "doxology") one must first be a recreational instructor (PADI, NAUI, whatever). Don't know if that's changed. I only know of one (claimed) exception and that was for the guy who (claimed) to have bankrolled the original Fundamental's book. That was ~20+ years ago.

 

[crofrog]

Note: you may argue about safety; actually, scuba diving had, in 2011, between 14 and 16 deaths per 100,000 persons per year, comparable to jogging (13) and motor vehicle accidents (16). A pretty good score, although, surely, improvable. Please see here: Wayback Machine

Fatalities are a poor measure of safety.

Again, you are mixing the management concept of quality with the quality of training. I am honestly unsure if this is the case - if I had to bet, I would go in the opposite direction. Although improvements are possible (and PADI is taking these steps already)

I'm not following you. I'm talking about quality globally. Both specifically quality management, in the context of consistency and adherence to their standards, and their standards themselves.

Ha. An example of "situational awareness," to be sure.

I recall that to become a GUE instructor (GUE is the agency, DIR the "doxology") one must first be a recreational instructor (PADI, NAUI, whatever). Don't know if that's changed. I only know of one (claimed) exception and that was for the guy who (claimed) to have bankrolled the original Fundamental's book. That was ~20+ years ago.

That is not the case; the standards are published.

https://www.gue.com/files/Standards_and_Procedures/GUE-Standards-v9.2.pdf

 

[boulderjohn]

I think this is one of the main reasons why PADI started promoting instructional videos with skills on neutral buoyancy and other good stuff, together with the pressure coming from the tech world. But this is just a guess.

Want something more than a guess?

In 2010, I put together a group to discuss neutral buoyancy instruction. We discussed it in the I2I section of the web forum Dive Matrix to avoid opposition we expected on ScubaBoard. When we were done, I wrote a draft of an article and got everyone to agree to it. Marcia Fisk Ong (Quero on ScubaBoard) helped me tremendously with the wording. I submitted it to PADI, and that was the start to months of discussion. At one point, Peter Rothschild (Peter Guy on ScubaBoard) told me that there was not a single picture or video in the OW course of divers swimming in horizontal trim while neutrally buoyant. I pointed that out in our discussions, and the PADI training director gave (literally) an OMG! response and promised they would start working on that immediately. Karl Shreeves, the technical director of PADI, was assigned to work with me on the article.

After not all that long, there was a sudden and dramatic change in the tone of the discussions. We went from a promise that the final draft would be published sometime in the vague future to it would be published in a few months. It was obvious to me what had happened. They were mildly intrigued with the idea at first, but then they went out and tried it themselves, with their instructors learning it as they did it, and they had a "Holy Sh!t! This really works!" experience. The article (greatly shortened) was published in 2011.

The next year I attended the annual regional meeting, and the agenda included the regional director telling the instructors there how well that neutrally buoyant approach to instruction worked and urging them all to try it.

When the new standards were written two years later with a significant increase in neutral buoyancy instruction, I was contacted and told I would be very happy with many of the changes. I was indeed happy with some of it, but I was disappointed not to see a push for neutral buoyancy instruction. I am still disappointed that more has not been done over the years.

One sign of progress was a few years ago, when a huge IDC center in Utila replaced all of its training videos on the knees with videos neutrally buoyant. It's been painfully slow, but it's happening.

I think a good reason for this delay can be illustrated in the response it all got on ScubaBoard. There was horrendous pushback against it from several people, including especially Andy Davis (DevonDiver on ScubaBoard and Scuba Tech Philippines). Andy's crusade against neutral buoyancy instruction was simply Herculean. He wrote over and over and over again that using this approach was a violation of PADI standards, and anyone doing it would be expelled. When we quoted PADI leaders, including the CEO and President, to refute him, he said those people only spoke their own opinions, and they were all wrong. (Seriously--he specifically said that any instructor who did what the PADI CEO and President said to do would be expelled.) I believe Andy's fervid opposition represents opposition from others around the world who have fought tooth and nail to impede progress.

 

[boulderjohn]

Agree with that. The problem here is how you define quality. From PADI's perspective, being a company owned by a PE fund, quality from a management perspective is not necessarily equivalent to quality of training.

The PADI PE Fund is not just an investment company. It has an company agenda related to ocean conservation.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

To no surprise, statements, as they always do, when discussing the opposite ends of the agency quality spectrum go to the absurd. And of course the ridiculous statement of instructors who teach for GUE and PADI both decide to be incompetent when teaching under the PADI system. I wish the idea that all PADI instructors are crap would just die. No one, and I mean no one is saying that. But I know that statement WILL be repeated.

The issue is the bar for becoming an instructor is abysmally low. Do some instructors have good IDCs? Yes, certainly. I know 2 quality PADI CDs that teach their candidates to teach properly. They are just the minority.

The reality is, GUE fundies should never have been created if there wasn't a problem in instruction by mainstream agencies. The shift to putting students on their knees in 1980 is likely the biggest factor.

We are all familiar with John's effort with the neutral buoyancy article published in early 2011. And what improvements has PADI done since? Just a few years ago, two skills had to be performed neutrally buoyant to get a score better than 3.

That's not a lot of progress.

The most progress is RAID coming in, taking marketshare, and requiring skills be performed neutrally buoyant within a certain depth window and trimmed (15 degrees). While I wish RAID would ban placing students on their knees, this is a huge step forward. I hope they continue to grab marketshare from all the other agencies who don't have objective performance requirements in terms of depth and trim.

Let's not forget that in their 2016 annual report, DAN listed a top 10 list of changes they'd like to see. The top 2 were buoyancy control and proper weighting (which are tightly coupled). And the agencies have paid lip service to that.

What agencies mandate proper weighting? The 3-letter ones do. Though I haven't heard anything from ISE in a long time, but that is due to Mike retiring from diving and me blocking their FB page and many instructors as some of those guys are far bigger ****s than GI3 was after stepping on a rusty nail while simultaneously hitting his thumb with a hammer.

Don't worry everyone. We get to repeat this discuss in 6 months time or so, and basically the same comments in this thread will appear in that one.