commercial diver training

[Hank49]

What does one have to do to qualify as a commercial diver? I'm asking because a friend of mine was a diver on oil rigs in the North Sea and I've dived with him and our two sons a couple times. And on these fun dives he seemed almost oblivious to the presence of his son. I had to grab him as he was not deflating his BCD and was popping to the surface from about 35 feet. Yesterday he went diving with our sons and another friend of theirs without my knowledge or permission. The other kid was a beginner I guess and ran out of air at 65 feet. My son had 1200 psi left and shared air to the surface. But the other kid was the buddy of the commercial diver who was nowhere to be seen until they surfaced.
I aways thought very highly of commercial divers though I don't know much about it. I'm an instructor but I view myself more like the guy who taught me how to drive a car vs a commercial diver who is more like a Formula 1 car driver. Apparently they're lone wolf divers who go down to do a job and that's it. No group management training. Well, if i'm not there, my son will not dive with that man again. Scary. Two dives of over 120 feet and then he puts my son on a plane home an hour later. My son, 15, knew the pilot and asked him to stay below 3 thousand feet. I was kind of shocked. Thank God now one was hurt. Hank

 

[Seabear70]

Well, here's the problem...

Commercial divers normally dive alone, with no BCD, with 60-100 lbs of lead, without fins, on surface support, doing deco, and generally are so far removed from scuba divers as to be an almost completely seperate breed.

A lot of commercial divers never scuba dive after their basic scuba course, so they are used to doing things in a completely different manner.

I do dive scuba, but I am a certified Commercial diver. My brother thought that some of the stuff I did was crazy, pulling off the BCD to fit into an area where I couldn't fit with it on, then pulling the unit through and putting it on underwater, until he went through instructor training and met other commercial divers and dive instructors, and instructor candidates.

He realized that a lot of what I was doing, though dangerous, was no big deal if you have the training for it, and are comfortable in the water.

But, I would decline to dive with your buddy if he cannot learn to follow some basic safety rules. Such as, be aware that there are other people in the water with you who may need your help.

 

[hammerhead45]

Have to agree, But there are bad comm. divers just as there are bad Rec. divers.The hardest thing for me is to leave my bad habits behind when im with a group of sport divers.When I trained for Instructor,the hardest part was to remember Im training citizens how to safely enjoy this sport! Im still active in the Commercial industry (gettin old) but I love teaching,watch out for for some of these guys. A professional diver (a real one) is safety conscience! Sadly there are A-holes everywhere.