Discover Scuba Diving aka DSD aka "Resort Course" question?

[ditch-diver]

Hey paowdan,

Welcome to the board. I'm not going to wade in here as I have no idea about Padi discovery stuff. Don't be too put off of people questioning your time in, as it is quite unusual to accumulate bottom time in minutes. Most convert to hours/minutes. (I actually did the math to figure out how long 2000 minutes is)

Plus as an added bonus.., times like 100 or 168 o/w hours were cause for a little party when someone reached those times in our club.

Again.., welcome and I hope you find the answer you are looking for

 

[MauiScubaSteve]

Wow, so the boat left the divers in water to go drop off DSD students, THEN left the DSD students to go get the divers, THEN returned for the DSD students..! OUCH. I have never been on a boat that left divers in the water and would never dive with a boat that did. Eventually the law of averages will catch up to them.

I could see leaving the DSD's, as they are starting in confined open water very near shore, and the dive was very shallow and still very close to shore. Very similar to parking the van and walking down to the beach to do it.

As far as leaving the certified divers, I have to agree that sounds strange. In Maui waters, 6-pack operations can get permission to NOT have a bubble watcher to track the divers, the captain can be the only crew watching the bubbles. That is the key, the captain is always shadowing the group in the water, ready to help during the entire dive.

Larger boats are required to have a bubble watcher in addition to the captain, as more than 7 divers (guides included) is considered too many for the captain to watch and pilot. There is a cavern dive where the boat drops divers at the outside tip of a reef finger, then swings around to the shallow caverns near shore to pick up the group. The boat is never out of visual sight if anybody surfaces early.

The first certified dive in this thread would have been illegal here, IMHO.

 

[scubapatton]

Halemano, I understand your point. My concern though is that with DSD, the point is to get them excited about diving and want to get certified. How excited is one person, much less a group, going to be if they are dropped off by a boat, but then the boat is not at their beck and call for the duration of the dive? If someone comes up inexplicably/emergency-based and sees no boat, visions of Open Water will dance through their heads. You can forget about signing them up for OW, and probably the whole group will re-think their aspirations.

And if a DSD diver is dropped from a boat, but then told, hey no worries, we can surface swim to shore if need be... Then why didn't we just surface swim out, and what's the rush for the boat would be two of my immediate questions....

I LOVE drift diving with little panggas - the skipper can follow your bubble stream through so much.. Then when you pop up, it's right in the boat for you.. LOTS of fun... The cavern dive sounds sweet... What part of Maui? Kihei area?

 

[shurite7]

After surfacing from the first "dive" and realizing that it was NOT just the skills training but actually the "first" dive, everyone was confused as to why the dive had been cut off short (everyone still had between 1700-2000 PSI remaining). The explanation given was that "After the skills portion they did a tour for pleasure, and that constitutes a dive for the Discover Scuba Diving Experience, you can again check with other dive operations."

Were the skills conducted in a pool or were you in a very shallow area? I somewhat get the impression the DSD group went for a short dive after learning their skills which were done in a shallow area with 'pool like conditions'.

Log book; minutes vs hours. In my written log book (which I no longer use) I used minutes. If someone wanted hours all they had to do was the math; I have no need to. My computer downloads are in hours. I know of several other people who do the same thing.

 

[scubadiver888]

Hi everyone,

I'm new here to this forum but have been an active diver for the past year having logged over 2,000 minutes of bottom time and have been trying to get as many of my non-diver friends involved!

So I stumbled upon this vast online community while trying to find some information and am hoping to tap your collective wealth of knowledge as I try to better understand what a Discover Scuba Dive / DSD / "Resort Course" is supposed to consist of. (In order to make sure my friends get the best possible experiences!)

The PADI DSD page does not provide much detail as to what to expect but some other references I've found online about DSDs (which may offer one or two open water dives) mention the following:

• "includes a pool session and 2 full length dives on the ocean at two different dive sites"
• "Includes basic knowledge, pool session with gear and (1) open water water dive."
• "participants get brief instruction then on to an actual Open Water dive"
• "You will spend around 30 minutes learning the basics of how to dive and how dive equipment works, then up to 60 minutes in-water experiencing your new adventure in safety."
• "After a short session covering the basic theory of scuba, you get the opportunity to try out the equipment in shallow water whilst learning some basic scuba skills. The course concludes with a shallow dive on one of our beautiful reefs guided by one of our instructors."
• "you will be taken on our custom made platform that recreate shallow pool like conditions for your first taste of this wonderful sport... but this is just the beginning! Following this brief skills learning session, you will be taken on your first real dive at our training dive site."

My understanding (from previous experiences) is that a DSD includes:
(a) Basic theoretical skills/training
(b) Safety/basic skills/training in a shallow confined water environment
(c) 1 or more open water dive(s)

My confusion arises from an experience during which my friends signed up for a "two-tank DSD" expecting to do two full open water dives after the confined water skills training (as in the description noted on the other website quoted above) but ended up doing two "dives" which consisted of (1) a combination of the basic skills exercises (approx. 10 minutes) in a confined harbor environment and the "first" open water dive in the same vicinity (approx. 18 minutes) and (2) a full length open water dive.

After surfacing from the first "dive" and realizing that it was NOT just the skills training but actually the "first" dive, everyone was confused as to why the dive had been cut off short (everyone still had between 1700-2000 PSI remaining). The explanation given was that "After the skills portion they did a tour for pleasure, and that constitutes a dive for the Discover Scuba Diving Experience, you can again check with other dive operations."

My question is basically, was my friends' experience something that is considered standard practice for a DSD? I am hoping that those with more experience can chime in and help me understand whether our expectations were incorrect or whether we were shortchanged.

Many thanks in advance for any clarification that anyone can contribute!

Dan

Sounds like the dive shop might have been trying to make your friend believe they were getting more than they really were getting. This is bad advertising but ot much else. I'm guessing they hope you see they are offering a 'two tank' dive, call other shops in the area and they claim a one tank dive so you end up booking with this operation.

Was it really a rip off? Maybe, maybe not. How much did it cost? What are other shops in the area offering for that price? Maybe you go to the other guy and find he does the check out dive in a pool and you get one tank dive in open water. This is what I normally see. In places were a swimming pool is less convenient they might do a check out dive near the shore then take you out on the boat. But the check out dive might be just that and no 18 minutes of swimming around.

 

[MauiScubaSteve]

If someone comes up inexplicably/emergency-based and sees no boat, visions of Open Water will dance through their heads. You can forget about signing them up for OW, and probably the whole group will re-think their aspirations.

We have way more shore DSD's here than boat. The most popular one on the South Shore is Ulua Reef. With good skills training, first timers can fairly easily get all the way out to the turtle cleaning station at the end of the reef; 200+ yds from the beach and 40' depth (100's for the hoovers). The only boats around if you have to come up are the ones flying back to the boat ramp, that's why you should not tie off your flag with sketchy newb's.

The first DSD in this thread sounds half as shallow and not even close to half as far out. If they couldn't handle that the instructor should have never took them deeper than 10'. Not many people really watched that movie. I didn't, and the people I take diving hardly ever mention it..

The cavern dive sounds sweet... What part of Maui? Kihei area?

The cavern dive has five names (sort of); Turtle Town / 5 Caves is what some might call the one I described. 5 Graves / 5 Caves is what you would call it if you walked past the old cemetery on the North to do the same area. Makena Landing / 5 Caves is what you might call it coming from Makena Landing State Park to the South. Some might also call it Nahuna Point. I call it Makena Caverns, because I hate speaking in hyphens and hardly anybody knows Nahuna Point.

This thread needs a photo break!

halemano : photos : Makena Caverns- powered by SmugMug

halemano : photos : 5 Graves (Makena Landing)- powered by SmugMug

halemano : photos : Turtle Town- powered by SmugMug

 

[scubadiver888]

Perhaps this video will convince you that I am who I say I am (my Suunto D6 logged 130 feet the last time I dove it... a bit deep for a non-diver, no?)? =)
Scuba Diving in the Caribbean: St. George Wreck

It's a recent video I posted while diving in the DR. And if you so feel inclined, you can even e-mail John @ Scuba Fun (I think it's info@scubafun.info - btw, I highly recommend them!) and ask him if I'm actually an AOW diver? =)

Dan,

Really nice video. Makes me almost want to go back to the DR.

 

[bfw]

If you want to get dropped off and then let the drift hopefully return you to shore while the boat goes about some other business, then go ahead and dive with that boat.

Lots of places do that - on the way back to the dock, they do a drop off dive - the boat drops you off and you exit on the beach.

 

[lazyturtle]

After surfacing from the first "dive" and realizing that it was NOT just the skills training but actually the "first" dive, everyone was confused as to why the dive had been cut off short (everyone still had between 1700-2000 PSI remaining).

I'll start with the fact that I have not read all the posts in this thread, I'm just replying to the OP. If I repeat what others have already said it's because I'm lazy and busy.

Ok a 'dive' does not specially mean you're going to empty a tank. I frequently lead dive trips where an average person can return to the boat with 1000-1500 psi left in the tank. The time is determined by the company AND (in the case of DSD) the person who was lowest on air. So if I've got a 40 minute dive time (which is the average IMO for DSD tours) with 4 divers I've got to end it early if 1 person is 'low' (again determined by the company and the instructor but generally 500-700 psi in the tank) on air. Even though I say the average is 40 minutes I know plenty of shops and instructors that do a 30 minute dive in total (skills included).
My point: don't focus on how much air you had left (because it varies wildly from person to person and dive to dive) in the tank, focus on what you were told (sold) versus what you got.

My question is basically, was my friends' experience something that is considered standard practice for a DSD? I am hoping that those with more experience can chime in and help me understand whether our expectations were incorrect or whether we were shortchanged.
Dan

Here we do our confined training in a pool and our 2 dive trip from a boat with both dives lasting between 30 and 40 minutes (air supply permitting) at around 40 feet of depth. I've worked at 10 dive shops that did DSDs and it was pretty much the same at all of them. So most of the time the skills are not included in the dive time.
At places that I've done DSDs from shore or had to use the 'boat option' the skill session has been included in the dive time, however it usually doesn't take too much time (lets say less than 10 minutes on average). The total dive time for the first dive would still have been around 40 minutes (including skills) and the second dive would have been 40 minutes, without any skills involved.
Now if you're involved with a cruiseship the equation changes drastically. When I worked at a shop that did a shore-dsd for cruise ship passengers the total time (including skills) was 30 mins. Because the instructors got paid by the head and groups were assigned based on when you returned to shore, no one was EVER late. Companies that deal with cruise ships rely on the volume of customers (as the cruise-ships negotiate pretty hard, the shop generally get less than 30% of what the ship charges) and thus are doing everything as quickly as possible.

So in the end it sounds like you're friend did a 28 minute dive and a 'full length (how long?)' dive. That's not out of the realm of normal in my opinion.