I wonder how old that copy on the website is? That was the attitude of many dive ops back around the turn of the century in regards to online training.
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I think you’re not getting the point that a dive captain is a lot more than just a taxi driver.Sounds like captains I'd like to avoid.
Get me - safely - to the site, brief me about the site, don't run me over, provide assistance if I'm in a bind, make sure I'm on the boat when you turn ashore (or else, call 911/112 or send out a pan-pan) and otherwise be a nice guy, and I'll eagerly patronize your business. I don't ask for more, and seriously, I don't think that's too much to ask for.
EDIT: Dang, most of the stuff I'm asking for is firmly in the "goes without saying" category...
That's one possibility. The other is that agencies would get on top of their representatives lickedy split. You can bet PADI as a 700M dollar company would quickly form a large organization to police their agents (dm's instructors etc).If the certifying agency were always considered to be liable for the screwups of DMs and instructors, all agencies would be out of business in no time.
I wonder how old that copy on the website is? That was the attitude of many dive ops back around the turn of the century in regards to online training.
Their mention of SDI (although why not PADI) and the requirements (X number of classroom hours, etc) begins to make a bit more sense when I looked at Viking's training page on their website.
Dive Training
They tout the original YMCA diving program (now SEI).
"
So, if you train at DRIS and get an SDI cert - leading to dives in Lake Michigan's bathtub like conditions - Viking won't honor the cert.
Really - DRIS training in cold and dark quarries, earning and SDI cert, followed by a few Lake Michigan trips and its not good enough for Viking?
SDI seems to like DRIS.
A couple of years ago I took my tanks into a shop in Florida I had not used before. They looked at my sticker and asked who inspected it because they did not recognize it. they would have accepted any of the local shop's stickers with no problem, but this strange one...they didn't know. "WHo inspected this?" they asked, suspiciously.
""I did," I answered. I then explained that the sticker was from PSI/PCI, and the certifying inspector's number on it was mine. I then had to explain what PSI/PCI was.