Cave Training and Etiquette Real or Imaginary?

[Omisson]

Those were made available there, yes. However, I was making a general statement regarding cave training agencies.

NACD is out there as is CMAS, NAUI and TDIs. The NSS doesn't publish theirs.

So What are you talking about? One agency of the big 4 hasn't published them online and that's "a general statement"?

Seems like this is just another "rumor of perception".

 

[Redshift]

IANTD and PSAI also don't have them. I don't know how it is in the USA, but in Europe IANTD is much larger than NAUI.
PADI also doesn't state the standards for Cavern (which may be relevant for someone with that cert wishing to progress with another agency).

 

[victorzamora]

NACD is out there as is CMAS, NAUI and TDIs. The NSS doesn't publish theirs.

So What are you talking about? One agency of the big 4 hasn't published them online and that's "a general statement"?

Seems like this is just another "rumor of perception".

NACD's isn't "out there"....it's on this thread. Great step forward, but it needs to be put on their website. CMAS has theirs published, and very clear. NAUI's is impossible to find, if it's up there at all. TDI's is limited at best....5 of 206 pages. However, the list of skills is up there. Still, that's 3 agencies...and one is irrelevant in the US. CDS, PSAI, IANTD, and PADI are all QUICKLY noticeable excluded from the list of agencies with published standards. NAUI seems to be as well.

 

[Omisson]

NACD's isn't "out there"....it's on this thread. Great step forward, but it needs to be put on their website. CMAS has theirs published, and very clear. NAUI's is impossible to find, if it's up there at all. TDI's is limited at best....5 of 206 pages. However, the list of skills is up there. Still, that's 3 agencies...and one is irrelevant in the US. CDS, PSAI, IANTD, and PADI are all QUICKLY noticeable excluded from the list of agencies with published standards. NAUI seems to be as well.

PADI doesn't have a standard cave course- distinctive specialties are individually authored and thus not agency wide.

 

[GDI]

NACD is out there as is CMAS, NAUI and TDIs. The NSS doesn't publish theirs.

So What are you talking about? One agency of the big 4 hasn't published them online and that's "a general statement"?

Seems like this is just another "rumor of perception".

CMAS http://www.ruf.ru/assets/files/doc_CMAS/Cave_Diving_Standards_5.0_Eng.pdf

 

[karstdvr]

Question, do most people feel if all the agencies published their standards would the problems brought up by the OP, and other people on this thread go away? Would we see an improvement in the quality of the diver, and instruction? A search of other forums will show this discussion comes up frequently, and we see more organizations publish their standards, but the threads regarding substandard instruction and diver quality are more prevalent now.

 

[PfcAJ]

Agencies don't hold their own instructors to the standards. Internal pressure is the only thing that can make an impact.

Its nice to be able to see and compare standards, but if the instructors don't give a damn then why bother at all?

 

[victorzamora]

Question, do most people feel if all the agencies published their standards would the problems brought up by the OP, and other people on this thread go away? Would we see an improvement in the quality of the diver, and instruction? A search of other forums will show this discussion comes up frequently, and we see more organizations publish their standards, but the threads regarding substandard instruction and diver quality are more prevalent now.

No, but I think it would help. I know that, had I known the standards for PADI Tec40, I would've wasted a lot less time and money with a horrible instructor. It'd be much easier to report standards violations. It'd be much easier to know whether or not your instructor is worth recommending.

One idea I loved earlier was a QA-type survey. I think, however, that just "Did you like the class?" is fairly useless. Questions like "Were you allowed to kneel on the bottom?" and "Were you taught that carving your name in clay is bad?" and "How much time did your instructor spend discussing etiquette (or conservation)?", or "How many dives did you do?" and "What was your bottom time?", etc. That way, you could keep up on instructors actually maintaining standards. You could get students "reporting" instructors instantaneously....with zero repercussions. It wouldn't be perfect (nothing ever will) but it's the best idea I've heard so far. Make it open only a few days AFTER the course, though. Wouldn't want the instructor to coach the student.

 

[Capt Jim Wyatt]

Question, do most people feel if all the agencies published their standards would the problems brought up by the OP, and other people on this thread go away?

No

The skills required are listed in the standards; for example I am pasting the in-water skills from the NSS-CDS cavern diver course below:

2.1.7 Cavern Dives and Skills
Minimum total bottom time in the overhead required to complete this level of training is 85 minutes. The following skills will be performed and developed on each dive:
A. Safety drill (equipment check, “bubble check” and gas share prior to each dive).
B. Calculating turn around pressures and no-decompression limits.
C. Satisfactory performance of specialized propulsion techniques, demonstrating efficiency and minimum cave impact.
D. Satisfactory trim technique and buoyancy control through proper weight adjustment and distribution and buoyancy compensator operation.
E. Use of reels and guidelines in caverns.
F. Management of valves and regulators.

The instructor reviews these standards before the start of the class. The instructor then decides during the class if the student has "mastered" each set of skills. It is a judgment call and is in some degree subjective. For instance "when is the use of reels and guidelines mastered?"
Some instructors give a "PASS" when the student does it pretty good one time, not practicing until the skill is "mastered".

The definition of mastery is: the diver must be able to do skills in a reasonably comfortable, fluid, and repeatable manner.

This is the problem we have now. Not all Instructors require mastery learning, as is evidenced whenever we go cave diving these days. Another problem is divers being lazy after they have mastered the skill.

 

[boulderjohn]

PADI doesn't have a standard cave course- distinctive specialties are individually authored and thus not agency wide.

Does PADI have more than one cave diving distinctive specialty?

I teach three distinctive specialties. With two of them, I had a lot of give and take with PADI in order to get the courses approved. I could not just submit them and get a card. We argued over quite a few points, and I can tell they were paying attention with the ones on which they finally relented. For example, in my advanced dive planning course, we argued about whether some of the gas management portions of the class were suitable for recreational diving or were more for the realm of technical diving. A couple of the specific issues that they argued were technical only, like the rule of thirds, are now taught to students in the new OW course. They evidently changed their minds.

In the third course, all I had to do was submit the outline that someone else had created with a note saying that the course already existed. No further discussion was needed because they had already done all that with the original creator of the course, the instructor who sent me the outline so I could submit it. Similarly, other people have requested the outlines for the two I created and submitted them.

With those courses, I must follow the approved standards, just as I would with any other course. If I decided that one of the courses I created needed to be updated, I would have to get those updates approved.

So what if I wrote an outline for a cave diving distinctive specialty? I'm not sure, but I would bet I would that I would be told such a course already exists. I find it hard to believe they would have a bunch of different courses with different standards having the same name.