CMAS Quo Vadis?

[explorer08]

This is not a question, but a case I want to bring to public attention and discussion.

Mainly I would like to address the instructors from the various CMAS member associations, because they all are probably affected by this case and should knock at the doors of their board members and ask for clarification.

Here the facts:
On 2nd of April 2017, Mr. XY came as a customer to our dive centre and presented us his CMAS 1Star Diver card, issued by FFESSM under no. FRA/F00/P1/007187/58/01/XXXXXXXXXXX.

The question, how many dives he has in total, he answered with "Zero". On inquiring and after explanation that his training dives for CMAS 1Star Diver level are counting too, he confirmed that he didn´t do any open water dives yet. He did the theory part and the confined water training only. After, his instructor issued his certification card and told him that the open water dives he may do now - after his certification - with any instructor from any agency. On inquiring of Mr. XY, his instructor told him, that in the French federation it is not necessary anymore, doing open water dives prior to certification.

I am a CMAS 2Star Instructor too and the last CMAS standard for 1Star Diver, binding for all national CMAS federations, I know, is Standard 2.A.5./BOD no. 193 (05-05-2016(, as by the CMAS website.
According to this Standard, no. 6.1.4, one certification requirement for CMAS 1Star Diver is: "Having successfully completed four dives (4) in open water at a depth between 5 and 20 meters and a minimum durtion of fifteen (15) minutes, as defined in paragraph 10.3 of the present standards."

FFESSM never reacted on my email from April 2nd and CMAS only send me a reply on 10th of April, referring me to FFESSM. On my further request of confirmation of the present CMAS standard for 1Star Diver, regarding open water dives, they never replied despite two reminders.

In my view there are 3 options in this case:
1. The instructor violated FFESSM standards, but obviously nobody takes care.
2. The instructor told his student the truth. In that case FFESSM would be violating CMAS standards, again obviously nobody takes care.
3. CMAS changed its standards for 1Star Diver training without publishing it and even without giving this information to CMAS instructors.

Option no. 1 would be a FFESSM internal problem only.

In options no. 2 and 3 EUF ad RSTC Europe are coming into the game.
No matter on which level it occurs (if it is FFESSM only, or CMAS in general), if there are no open water dives required anymore for CMAS 1Star Diver level, this level would not comply with EN14153-2/ISO 24801-1 Part 2: Autonomous Diver anymore and CMAS 1 Star Diver licenses would not be equivalent to PADI Open Water Diver et al. anymore.

For this reason, today I informed Mark Caney, in his capacity as President of EUF and Vice-President of RSTC Europe, as well as the Secretary of EUF and the RSTC Europe office, off this case.

My entire email traffic with CMAS and FFESSM is in the attached photo. I made the name of the person concerned and the last 11 digits of his certification number unrecognizable for reasons of data protection law. I am willing to provide the name of the concerned diver, his full certification number and contact email address to Scubaboard.com for verification, on request.

 

[Patoux01]

Hey there,

That's something "known" in France by the ones concerned, who then blame others when their divers are not "properly baby-sitted during their OW dives".

I don't have the link handy, but basically it goes like this:
- do some dives in a pool
- get certified
- do some dives in OW to "confirm" your cert', you have ~1 year to do those.

Reason for this is that the poor little boys in Paris (IIRC) did not have OW available, so they forced a change in the FFESSM standards to allow them to give certs anyway .

Don't expect FFESSM to respect CMAS standards. They never have, they never will. Their "niveau 3" is explicitly presented as "This cert allows you to guide dives as a 3* diver, as long as it is in other countries" and then they have a "niveau 4" which is a 3* diver. IOW, they give dive leader cards to folks that have never done that and are not allowed to.

However, CMAS is not linked to RSTC I believe.

Dans le cas d’une certification délivrée en milieu artificiel, le plongeur Niveau 1 (N1) doit réaliser, au plus tard, dans les douze mois suivants l’obtention de la certification au moins 4 plongées en milieu naturel attestées sur son carnet de plongée.

"If the certification is given after confined water dives only, the diver must, at latest within 12 months of having been certified, do 4 dives in OW."


Seeing the few certs this agency makes a year, you're not gonna have a big impact however. Even if it's one of the big members of CMAS.


P.S: Their "niveau 1" also aren't autonomous, they can only dive under supervision. I don't know exactly what kind of supervision, but it seems from what I read to be very much babysitting. I never dived in France because they would only let me dive under direct supervision, considering I have a few dives I found it rather insulting and instead just hopped in the water by myself .

 

[explorer08]

That would mean that option 2 is applicable.
And while CMAS obviously is tolerating it, EUF and RSTC are asked to react. CMAS is linked to RSTC at least through some of their member federations.
Anyway, in this case FFESSM 1Star Diver is not compatible with EN14153-2/ISO 24801-1 Part 2: Autonomous Diver anymore and it is not equivalent with PADI OWD et al. anymore. And that would affect all other CMAS 1Star Diver certifications from all CMAS member federations too, because it is not reasonable for any dive centre to be familiar with the standards of all national CMAS federations for classification of a diver. Either all or noone!!!

 

[Patoux01]

France has weird rules (for which ffessm is partly responsible), which go as follows:
- You can be autonomous (PA) or supervised (PE). Autonomous means you are allowed to plan and do your dive with a diver of same level. Supervised means you are required to dive with a dive leader. Do note that these only apply when diving with operators (clubs, shops, ...), not people diving by themselves.
- These levels are declined in various depths, PA12 (maybe 10), PA20, PA40, PA60. PE20, PE40, PE60 (I might have missed one, but I don't think there is such thing as PE12).
That's the French law.
It then recognizes:
- Niveau 1 as PE20 (no PA), they get 1* CMAS, they are not autonomous (1* CMAS is not autonomous unless further trained from what I understood)
- Niveau 2 as PA20 and PE40, they get 2* CMAS
- Niveau 3 as PA60, not allowed to be a dive leader. They get 3* CMAS
- Niveau 4 as PA60 as well, is a dive leader. They get 3* CMAS

I believe the certs from FFESSM do read as "Autonomous diver to xxm" and "Supervised diver to xxm" on the card.


There might be some mistakes, I am not 200% familiar with France, especially since the more complex it is, the more they like it.


Clusterduck you said?

 

[explorer08]

In this case it would be quite easy. CMAS standards are minimum standards, binding for all national CMAS federations. The national federations can exceed them, but they can´t go below.
The requirements for CMAS 1 Star Diver are clearly defined by CMAS:
One Star Diver Training Programme
There is nothing of what you mentioned in these standards. So obviously FFESSM is issuing CMAS 1Star Diver cards which don´t comply with CMAS standards. And within they are devaluating all CMAS 1Star Diver licenses.