certification limits and how they are considered now days....

[scubadada]

@drrich2

I do nearly all of my back gas light deco in Florida. One operator out of Boynton Beach did not have a dive time restriction within practical limits, that was easy. That operator is gone. Now, my dives must stay within the dive time limits of the operators, generally around a loose hour, 65 min. On deeper dives, I can do short deco and still make the dive time limit. I've been doing this for at least a dozen years, I don't think I would consider taking a rec deco course. Nobody has ever asked to see my computers, it's not like diving solo, for all to see. I have occasionally been asked by other divers how I get an hour out of the Castor on an AL80.

 

[boulderjohn]

How many OW certs does PADI issue a year? Versus how many tech certs?

And what the Hell difference does this make? You seem so throughly dedicated to disparaging PADI that you will grasp at anything, no matter how nonsensical.

How many OW certs does SSI make a year versus technical certs? How about SDI/TDI? NAUI?

Technical diving is a tiny, tiny percentage of all divers, so for all agencies that teach both recreational and technical diving, the ratio will be overwhelming in favor of recreational totals. What can that ratio possibly tell you about the quality of either program?

 

[drrich2]

I do nearly all of my back gas light deco in Florida. One operator out of Boynton Beach did not have a dive time restriction within practical limits, that was easy. That operator is gone.

Was that operator one who didn't put a guide in the water? I ask because I doubt many recreational day boat operators would have guides leading divers and deliberately doing deco., and while many boats let buddy pairs go do their own thing from what I understand, I imagine they'd want them back in a set time (like you describe).

If you're doing unguided dives within that time frame, then who's going to know you stayed deep a little long and had 5 minutes of deco.?

On their other hand, unless the op. allows solo diving or you bring a buddy with you, odds of finding a buddy willing to go into planned deco. with you might be low.

 

[scubadada]

Hi @drrich2

You got it. None of the operators in Boynton Beach put a guide in the water. I do 95% of my dives solo. I can remember doing about 5 min of deco once with a very experienced woman that I dive with when she is on the boat. She loves not having to take a flag so that she can concentrate on spearing Lionfish.

 

[dmaziuk]

You know exactly what I meant.

No I don't. Not being an instructor for any agency, I am neither required to drink that agency's Kool-Aid, nor know what their Humpty-Dumpty in charge chooses words to mean. I only need to follow the operator's rules and if I don't like them I can take my money to another op.

 

[Blackcrusader]

PADI is great for what it is, the world’s largest trainer of recreational divers, especially in resort locations. Most people started their dive training with PADI.
It is a much smaller technical diving agency and the majority of PADI outfits do not teach technical diving nor support technical divers.
Which part of that is PADI bashing?

I started with PADI, then did BSAC, took a long break from diving. Later on I took more PADI courses as no BSAC club or instructors where I was diving. This year I will do TDI ANDP but still will not consider myself to be a regular "tec" diver. No need to bring that cert to places where I dive in PADI dive centers. All I do is present a PADI Cert. Sometimes when you make a statement that is factual some people take the time to be offended by that.

What is good nowadays is that more and more "PADI" dive ops actually offer tec diving and training from other agencies.

 

[Blackcrusader]

I understand your point. I would counter with this: If one is teaching deco procedures for divers to do actual deco dives, it no longer falls into the realm of recreational. Recreational diving is diving when a direct ascent to the surface can be made at any time. The minute you introduce a ceiling, you have fallen out of that definition, regardless of what any agency would state to the contrary.

Just my two bar.

Well how to explain BSAC sports diving then which has deco training. Yes I did my BSAC courses in 1986 - 88 and I never thought of that as "technical" diving and others on SB have also said I am not a technical diver. Same for CMAS divers with deco training. So for myself I also consider deco diving as recreational diving. Or recreational sports diving, but not "tec" diving.

Now when I did deco there was no nitrox. Have I done deco dives using nitrox without having had further training? yes. Should I do that extra training? Yes, and that is why I want to do the TDI ANDP as it fits quite nicely into the diving I do. Do I want to do trimix or ccr? No.

There is much discussion on other threads about where the rec to tec converges.

 

[Germie]

I believe cmas is also one of the first. But that is not important anymore. If you want to learn diving, you choose 1 of the many agencies, you get one of the many instructors in the world.

You see agencies now growing more and more together, they all start to teach the same. Even gue. 12 years ago, there was with gue no sidemount, no ccr, no dpv cave, no computers but now it all has.
Also cmas. Cmas is teached in clubs, so from 12 required dives for 1*/ow, it is now here only 5. For 2*/aow you need to do 14 modules, but if you do a lot in a dive, you can get that into 5 dives (so do deep, do an reel, shoot an smb and do a rescue descent or share gas). So cmas also reaches more and more the same system as others do. The reason? Cmas and clubs loose members due to the faster way that divecenters offer.
ssi/head/mares (1 company) missed the tech part which padi already had with dsat, and started xr. Why? they also wanted to earn money.
Agencies added specialties like zombi diver, cave diving techniques in open water (really), river diving, etc. Why? To earn money.

The chimney must smoke for every agency.

And what you see with a lot of things is that the quality of every course is not always the best. Ok, for ow and aow, and nitrox, and deep, this is most times ok. But if you want to do a photography specialty. Do you believe all that instrutors who teaches this are real photographers? Do take really good pictures on a level higher than 'holiday image quality'? Most don't do.
It really happens that is you did a 4 dive sidemountcourse and pay 75 bucks or so, that you can teach sidemount directly. But do you teach sidemount or do you teach diving with sidemountequipment? Probably the last (and ok, this is not dangerous, but it is no sidemount).

I see the diving within ndl to 40m as sportsdiving, that is how it is called here. Recreational diving. The rest is called techdiving or technical diving here. But this is also recreational. So you can state that every dive you do which is not your official job is recreational diving.

 

[Belzelbub]

Yes, it was considered "devil's gas" for some agencies (ahem, PADI early on before 1996-7).

True. I didn’t learn much from my first instructor (PADI, 1990), but do recall two things. He was not a fan of Nitrox. He mentioned it, but dismissed it as being for tech divers. He had a similar attitude towards dive computers as well. Interesting how attitudes toward both have shifted.

I simply can't understand why this topic is so difficult. Diving limits are for certification, not outside certification.

For a new diver it can be confusing. A read of the course descriptions on several agency websites can lead you to think that OW has a 60’ limit. PADI lists it as maximum depth In the “With your Instructor” section. A careful read offers enough clues to indicate that this is referring to what you should expect during the course, but if reading comprehension isn’t strong, it could be interpreted as a limit on the cert. SSI is a little clearer with calling it a training depth, but that could be misinterpreted as well.

Add the charter operator rules, and I can see how it could be confusing.

 

[tursiops]

It really happens that is you did a 4 dive sidemountcourse and pay 75 bucks or so, that you can teach sidemount directly.

What agency allows this?