Bad attitudes about solo diving are still prevalent

[Christopher Griffin]

I think the post above yours answers this very well:-



There is no need to train people to a high standard if their aspirations are simply to dive twice a year on holiday in warm clear water in a guided group at 12m.

Those are not my aspirations but they are for many. If you want more (and I think you should) then more options open up. If you want to be self reliant that training is available and will help achieve that goal. If you feel that you should be a competent person capable of helping another diver in distress (and you should) then the Rescue Diver course will help achieve that goal.

It is a well established principle to break things down into manageable segments. This is the core of most scuba training, take a skill and repeat it until competent. Mask clearing for example, start with a partially flooded mask and clear it then a fully flooded mask and clear it then remove and replace and clear. Rewarding this progress with an intermediate certificate or awarding a "level" seems a good idea to me. Is this not how it is done? Start with the basic skills, go and dive a bit to practice them in the real world, come back and move up a level. Who are we to criticise those that stop at the first level?

If there is a weakness it is - in my view - simply that new divers are not given enough encouragement to further their training. I am sure time and money and logistics play their part in that.

I agree to a point, if someone only wants to dive once or twice a year with a friend that's fine and dandy, and I in no way do I believe that all divers should have to be trained to dive solo, but in my opinion there is a lack of training in pre-dive planning from the outset. A dive plan doesn't need to be a 400 word essay on what your intending to do but a simple plan. fail too plan, plan to fail.

Being total reliant on a dive buddy is not good training, and certainly not safe, if they are just as inexperienced.

we as divers should be encouraging new divers to continue their education, but there are many ways to do this - internet , agencies, books, ect... And the next time a new diver asks a stupid question rather than slapping them down and calling them a muppet, and laughing in their faces, why not try to steer them back on track and pass on the experience you have gained (never gonna happen). ie I saw a question posed on a chat site a few years ago, where a new Trimix diver asked whether there were Trimix tables, or should he just use his EANX tables. some of the responses even by dive instructors were shocking to be nice about it.

 

[MaxBottomtime]

After reading the entire thread I conclude that quarry owners believe that someone who is not qualified to dive solo is safer diving with another who is not qualified to dive solo. Remind me to never dive in places like that.

 

[Jcp2]

It’s not the quarry owners, it’s their insurers, which without would mean no diving for anybody at all. And it’s not the insurers, it’s the lawyers who would sue if there was injury. And it’s not the lawyers, but the injured or worse, the next of kin of a deceased diver, who would retain the lawyer to sue the quarry owner. Even if a diver would indemnify the dive operator in the event of injury, they cannot speak for next of kin after a death. So look in the mirror at your family. That’s why a solo card is needed.

 

[TrimixToo]

Well, I have a brain, and some common sense. I don't need anything more to see the the risk of being alone in an environment hostile to life with no assistance, as opposed to being with a buddy ready to provide assistance.

Sheeesh . . . .

Common sense in another day would show you the Earth is flat. We have better data now.

But I think I've made my point, and I don't mean to troll, so I'll just shut up now.

 

[boulderjohn]

Lets not forget most of these agencies (Businesses) were started back in the late 60's by diving instructors, with no more reason but to make money, so if you break diving skills down as much as possible you end up with more courses to sell.

When you don't know much about a topic, it is usually advisable to avoid making strong declarative statements that reveal that lack of knowledge. You will fool the people who don't know any more than you do, but more knowledgeable people will cringe.

If you want to learn some of the actual history of scuba agencies, you can start with this history of NAUI. Here are a couple of tidbits you will learn from it.

• The first true scuba instruction was done by the Scripps Institute in California.
• The first US certification program was the Los Angeles County program, a non-profit part of the county government. Its original director, Al Tillman, went to the Scripps Institute to learn instructional technique, which be brought to the new Los Angeles County program.
• Probably most instruction nation-wide was being done by another non-profit organization, the YMCA. Their instructional program continued for decades before going out of operation not all that long ago.
• Al Tillman and others wanted to take the Los Angeles program nation-wide, and he convened independent and YMCA instructors to form NAUI. This was created as another non-profit organization, like the Los Angeles County program from which it sprang. Without the Los Angeles County taxes to fund it, though, it had to rely heavily upon donations for its survival. One way it stayed in the black was by offering its classes almost exclusively through Universities. That way the cost of scuba instruction could be paid through the tuition that students would have to pay for some class regardless.
• That concept wasn't working well, and they were always struggling for survival. One year Bill High loaned them pretty much their whole operating budget. Then, in an attempt to stay solvent, they decided to pull back from their nation-wide efforts and focus on California alone. When they did that, they canceled a major instructor development program in Chicago, which infuriated the director of the Chicago branch of NAUI. He dropped out of NAUI and formed PADI so they could continue operation with a different business model, one that might actually work.
• Noticing that many people were dropping out of scuba not long after beginning, the Los Angeles County program created the Advanced Open Water course to teach additional skills and introduce students to different modes of diving.
• NAUI followed suit and created their own advanced open water program for the same reason. As other agencies came into being, they followed suit.
• As scuba developed, needs arose to teach additional skills that had not been taught before. New classes were created to teach those new skills.

 

[TrimixToo]

I believe Mark Powell Provides plenty of data and it does not support guyharrisonphoto's opinion.

I think Mark Powell questions the conclusions reached by some from the available data because (as I do) he does not see hard data to suggest that solo diving is any more hazardous than buddy diving. (Edit) Or, the other way around, either.

 

[Rred]

I never dive solo. I always dive with my buddy Harvey. And even though people sometimes try to stick a third with us, pretending they don't see Harvey standing there, I only dive with Harvey. He's a six foot tall snow-white Puka rabbit, got sort of famous for a while back when he did a movie with Jimmy Stewart, but he doesn't get recognized much these days, and even when he's standing there all geared up, people just don't seem to SEE him. (But if you check out the movie, Harvey really looks the same, he hasn't aged a day. Puka rabbits are like that. Heck, all the Pukas are like that.)

So I just say I'm diving with Harvey, and wave them off. Much simpler than arguing about it.

 

[Christopher Griffin]

When you don't know much about a topic, it is usually advisable to avoid making strong declarative statements that reveal that lack of knowledge. You will fool the people who don't know any more than you do, but more knowledgeable people will cringe.

If you want to learn some of the actual history of scuba agencies, you can start with this history of NAUI. Here are a couple of tidbits you will learn from it.

• The first true scuba instruction was done by the Scripps Institute in California.
• The first US certification program was the Los Angeles County program, a non-profit part of the county government. Its original director, Al Tillman, went to the Scripps Institute to learn instructional technique, which be brought to the new Los Angeles County program.
• Probably most instruction nation-wide was being done by another non-profit organization, the YMCA. Their instructional program continued for decades before going out of operation not all that long ago.
• Al Tillman and others wanted to take the Los Angeles program nation-wide, and he convened independent and YMCA instructors to form NAUI. This was created as another non-profit organization, like the Los Angeles County program from which it sprang. Without the Los Angeles County taxes to fund it, though, it had to rely heavily upon donations for its survival. One way it stayed in the black was by offering its classes almost exclusively through Universities. That way the cost of scuba instruction could be paid through the tuition that students would have to pay for some class regardless.
• That concept wasn't working well, and they were always struggling for survival. One year Bill High loaned them pretty much their whole operating budget. Then, in an attempt to stay solvent, they decided to pull back from their nation-wide efforts and focus on California alone. When they did that, they canceled a major instructor development program in Chicago, which infuriated the director of the Chicago branch of NAUI. He dropped out of NAUI and formed PADI so they could continue operation with a different business model, one that might actually work.
• Noticing that many people were dropping out of scuba not long after beginning, the Los Angeles County program created the Advanced Open Water course to teach additional skills and introduce students to different modes of diving.
• NAUI followed suit and created their own advanced open water program for the same reason. As other agencies came into being, they followed suit.
• As scuba developed, needs arose to teach additional skills that had not been taught before. New classes were created to teach those new skills.

I suggest you look a little further back than NAUI

An early underwater breathing regulator, known as the régulateur, was invented in France in 1860 by Benoît Rouquayrol. He first conceived it as a device to help assist in escaping from flooded mines. The Rouquayrol regulator was adapted to diving in 1864, when Rouquayrol met the lieutenant de vaisseau The Rouquayrol-Denayrouze apparatus went into mass production and commercialization on 28 August 1865, when the French Navy Minister ordered the first apparatuses.

Gagnan's boss, Henri Melchior, knew that his son-in-law Jacques-Yves Cousteau was looking for an automatic demand regulator to increase the useful period of the underwater breathing apparatus invented by Commander Yves le Prieur, so he introduced Cousteau to Gagnan in December 1942. On Cousteau's initiative, the Gagnan's regulator was adapted to diving, and the new Cousteau-Gagnan patent was registered some weeks later in 1943. After the war, in 1946, both men founded La Spirotechnique (as a division of Air Liquide) in order to mass-produce and sell their invention, this time under a new 1945 patent, and known as CG45 ("C" for Cousteau, "G" for Gagnan and "45" for 1945).

The Aqua-Lung was not the first breathing apparatus, but it was the most popular. In 1934, René Commeinhes developed a firefighters breathing apparatus which was adapted for diving by his son Georges in 1937. It was used by the French Navy during the first few years of World War II.

As for PADI it was started by two former NAUI instructors, and to be honest without doing a web search I couldn't tell you their names.

but lets not go into a history lesson, this chat is about solo diving and peoples attitude to it

 

[boulderjohn]

but lets not go into a history lesson, this chat is about solo diving and peoples attitude to it

Unfortunately, you completely missed the fact that my response was a refutation of the absurdly inaccurate statement you have made earlier about scuba instruction history, and nothing in your response had anything to do with the topic to which I responded.

It does, however, show that you know how to copy and paste from Wikipedia. When you did, did you actually read what you were pasting? If so, did you realize how off topic it all was?

 

[Bob DBF]

@boulderjohn, you beat me to it and more succinctly.

I would add that before 1966 and PADI, the training agencies of the time were non profit. It is interesting that after that the Agency that succeeded in the long run was PADI's business model, as their training was chosen over others by consumers. Other agencies have since followed.

A note to @Christopher Griffin, it is polite to point out quotes from other sources, rather than write in such a manner that leads others to assume you are the author.


Bob