And of course , the very sad news that happened on Tuesday (sigh)....
Jean
Jean
Cavern Cert
- Thread starter a22shady
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<< Jumping on my Soapbox for this one >>
I see this alot while teaching. Students want to know why they should take Advanced Open Water. Isn't Scuba diving to 60' just the same as diving to 130'? Why are the agencies trying to rip us off for more money? It's the boat owners, they're in cahoots with the instructors.
Well, if you have seen the pathetic state of 90% of OW divers out there, you would want them to have AOW also! At a minimum, It shows that the diver has the will and the interest to learn beyond the basics and become better at this craft. Why are regular OW divers so bad? I blame alot of it on absolute CRAPPY, INEXPERIENCED AND FLAT OUT DANGEROUS INSTRUCTORS!!!!!
The current trend is to overweight the students, outfit them like christmas trees, and teach them to kneel in the sand and hop from reef to reef! If there's and agency conspiracy, it's the blind eye that they turn to LOUSY INSTRUCTORS!
My Major pet peeve is that the mediocre instructors pool out there CANNOT teach proper gas management. The reason is that they have NO CLUE how to properly plan for the depth that they are diving or teaching to. "Come back to the boat with 500PSI!" What the hell is that? What kind of gas plan is that? Who taught this friggin nitwit to teach this way? Oh wait... I know... Nevermind! Rock bottom? SAC rates? RMV? Huh??? 500 PSI is good enough!
An advanced SCUBA class should be just that.. ADVANCED!!! Not "Point to the yellow fish and get your C-Card!"
Here's how I run a typical advanced course:
First of all I require 12 dives minimum to be performed for AOW. Here's an example of what I expect and require during the deep dive.
1. Deep dive. This is a 100' dive in Hudson grotto in the dark and in trim. Once at depth, the divers have to do timed math problems on their slates and put together a simple kids cube puzzle. this is while holding a light, paying attention to your buddy, and staying in trim. Upon ascent the students perform 1/2 depth stops on the line, in trim, without hanging on. The stops are 50' (2 minutes) 25' (2 minutes) and 15' (3 minutes). At the 25' stop, the students deploy jon lines and attach them to the downline. This gives you a real good idea of who has proper trim. At this point I usually run an OOA drill. Moreover before the dive even begins, they have to know their NDL time, their Rock bottom turn pressure, MOD of breathing gas (if on Nitrox) and EAD of said gas for calculations on tables in water. They must also have worked out their SAC rate swimming at the surface, and at 30'.
S drills are performed before every dive, and all data is written down and logged.
Not in any perticular order, the other dives in the class are:
1 Night dive (including lights out drill)
2 Limited vis (either a beach dive off Venice Beach, or at the bottom of Hudson grotto after the other classes smoke the place out!)
3-4 Offshore Drift (in the ocean, usually off Palm beach)
5-6 Offshore wreck (in the Gulf, approx 30 miles off shore)
7-8-9 Search and Recovery (including lift bag use, proper deployment, lift points, lift buoyancy calculations etc...)
10 Deep dive (Hudson Grotto.. Covered above)
11 Navigation (including kick count, arm measurement and guideline use while performing 7 to 9 waypoint swims with a compass and locating a piece of 1/2" PVC stuck to the bottom in 6' of viz.)
12 Skills (Non silting kicks such as Frog, modified flutter, SMB deployment, proper air sharing, Helicopter kicks, no mask safety stops etc...)
There's alot more to the class, but you get the Idea. I doubt that most of the new divers have learned any of this in their current scuba classes! This is why a QUALITY advanced course is important. It should teach a diver how to SAFELY dive in diverse environments. Teaching someone in a pool or lake does NOT prepare them for a heavy current limited viz drift dive! There's alot more to it than a depth limit! If you don't think you're going to get a quality advanced class, then look for another instructor.
Now, cavern depth limit is 100'. Current Scuba Diver certification enables you to dive to 60'. Advanced Certifications enable you to dive to 130'. You guys can do the math right??
If you can do all the skills that I mentioned above perfectly right after your Scuba Diver cert, then you're fooling yourself. It's alot more than just a card.
About 18 months ago, I had a rather heated discussion with another diver on another board about mixed gas training. He thought Helitrox / heliair pre-req's were a waste of money and just an agency scam. he thought he should go right to Trimix because the only difference is breathing a different gas. He was an OW instructor, and thought he knew everything he needed to. He got Bent badly at Eagle's nest, then Died on a sneak cave dive a few weeks later at school sink!
When you think you know everything, you'll die not knowing how to save your life!
So, good luck with the Scuba diver to Cavern jump. As long as everything always goes well, you should be fine. When the S&*T hits the fan, you just might wish you had the experience to handle the problem, and maybe save your buddy's life!
<< Off my Soapbox >>
I see this alot while teaching. Students want to know why they should take Advanced Open Water. Isn't Scuba diving to 60' just the same as diving to 130'? Why are the agencies trying to rip us off for more money? It's the boat owners, they're in cahoots with the instructors.
Well, if you have seen the pathetic state of 90% of OW divers out there, you would want them to have AOW also! At a minimum, It shows that the diver has the will and the interest to learn beyond the basics and become better at this craft. Why are regular OW divers so bad? I blame alot of it on absolute CRAPPY, INEXPERIENCED AND FLAT OUT DANGEROUS INSTRUCTORS!!!!!
The current trend is to overweight the students, outfit them like christmas trees, and teach them to kneel in the sand and hop from reef to reef! If there's and agency conspiracy, it's the blind eye that they turn to LOUSY INSTRUCTORS!
My Major pet peeve is that the mediocre instructors pool out there CANNOT teach proper gas management. The reason is that they have NO CLUE how to properly plan for the depth that they are diving or teaching to. "Come back to the boat with 500PSI!" What the hell is that? What kind of gas plan is that? Who taught this friggin nitwit to teach this way? Oh wait... I know... Nevermind! Rock bottom? SAC rates? RMV? Huh??? 500 PSI is good enough!
An advanced SCUBA class should be just that.. ADVANCED!!! Not "Point to the yellow fish and get your C-Card!"
Here's how I run a typical advanced course:
First of all I require 12 dives minimum to be performed for AOW. Here's an example of what I expect and require during the deep dive.
1. Deep dive. This is a 100' dive in Hudson grotto in the dark and in trim. Once at depth, the divers have to do timed math problems on their slates and put together a simple kids cube puzzle. this is while holding a light, paying attention to your buddy, and staying in trim. Upon ascent the students perform 1/2 depth stops on the line, in trim, without hanging on. The stops are 50' (2 minutes) 25' (2 minutes) and 15' (3 minutes). At the 25' stop, the students deploy jon lines and attach them to the downline. This gives you a real good idea of who has proper trim. At this point I usually run an OOA drill. Moreover before the dive even begins, they have to know their NDL time, their Rock bottom turn pressure, MOD of breathing gas (if on Nitrox) and EAD of said gas for calculations on tables in water. They must also have worked out their SAC rate swimming at the surface, and at 30'.
S drills are performed before every dive, and all data is written down and logged.
Not in any perticular order, the other dives in the class are:
1 Night dive (including lights out drill)
2 Limited vis (either a beach dive off Venice Beach, or at the bottom of Hudson grotto after the other classes smoke the place out!)
3-4 Offshore Drift (in the ocean, usually off Palm beach)
5-6 Offshore wreck (in the Gulf, approx 30 miles off shore)
7-8-9 Search and Recovery (including lift bag use, proper deployment, lift points, lift buoyancy calculations etc...)
10 Deep dive (Hudson Grotto.. Covered above)
11 Navigation (including kick count, arm measurement and guideline use while performing 7 to 9 waypoint swims with a compass and locating a piece of 1/2" PVC stuck to the bottom in 6' of viz.)
12 Skills (Non silting kicks such as Frog, modified flutter, SMB deployment, proper air sharing, Helicopter kicks, no mask safety stops etc...)
There's alot more to the class, but you get the Idea. I doubt that most of the new divers have learned any of this in their current scuba classes! This is why a QUALITY advanced course is important. It should teach a diver how to SAFELY dive in diverse environments. Teaching someone in a pool or lake does NOT prepare them for a heavy current limited viz drift dive! There's alot more to it than a depth limit! If you don't think you're going to get a quality advanced class, then look for another instructor.
Now, cavern depth limit is 100'. Current Scuba Diver certification enables you to dive to 60'. Advanced Certifications enable you to dive to 130'. You guys can do the math right??
If you can do all the skills that I mentioned above perfectly right after your Scuba Diver cert, then you're fooling yourself. It's alot more than just a card.
About 18 months ago, I had a rather heated discussion with another diver on another board about mixed gas training. He thought Helitrox / heliair pre-req's were a waste of money and just an agency scam. he thought he should go right to Trimix because the only difference is breathing a different gas. He was an OW instructor, and thought he knew everything he needed to. He got Bent badly at Eagle's nest, then Died on a sneak cave dive a few weeks later at school sink!
When you think you know everything, you'll die not knowing how to save your life!
So, good luck with the Scuba diver to Cavern jump. As long as everything always goes well, you should be fine. When the S&*T hits the fan, you just might wish you had the experience to handle the problem, and maybe save your buddy's life!
<< Off my Soapbox >>
Shady,
Every course that exists in diving has merit in the hands of the right instructor. An agency could create Underwater Basket Weaving 101 as a specialty. One instructor could just have a student weave a poor basket underwater and had out a C-card, while another could make it a failures based course and demand that students weave baskets while maintaining perfect horizontal trim, performing valve shutdown and gas sharing exercises and while maintaining excellent team and environmental awareness.
A cavern course would help you pass my AOW course, or my AOW course would help you pass my cavern or another instructor's cavern course. The certification level is just the tool that I would use to coach you to your next goal or level. If you came into my AOW course after a cavern course, we would work on refining your trim, buoyancy, propulsion, communication, awareness and team skills. If these were pretty solid, we would spend more time on a weaker point. Perhaps navigation or no-mask problem-solving? If they were weak, we'd strengthen them before moving on to navigation and no-mask skills.
A good instructor is a good coach. The good ones will always demand more from you and help you become the best diver you can be. The higher degrees of knowledge and skill that you develop in training, the greater your comfort, performance and safety will be on real dives.
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