Disturbing trend in diving?

[TMHeimer]

Why?

You can rely on them for what route to take, what you'll see, etc. but you should be relying on yourself for safety issues.

 

[TMHeimer]

I’ve only read the abstracts so I know I’d need to scrutinise the methodologies to make them empirically comparable, but the following sources indicate that DSD fatalities are 0.87 per 100,000 participants, compared to 2 per 100,000 participants for recreational scuba diving more generally.

Mortality rate during professionally guided scuba diving experiences for uncertified divers, 1992-2019 - PubMed

PADI's contemporary Discover Scuba Diving introductory scuba experiences, at 0.87 fatalities per 100,000 participants, have a calculated mortality rate that is less than half that calculated for 1992-2008. The late period's rate improvement appears due either to significant under-registration in...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Diving Casualties - StatPearls - NCBI Bookshelf

Thanks. I guess my info. was either wrong or things have changed from like 10 years ago when I read that somewhere.

 

[John C. Ratliff]

Well it certainly isn’t as hard as this pic of PADI OW from back in the 80’s

View attachment 885135

This is not a PADI class, but rather probably a U.S. Navy class of some sort. They are in fatigues and combat boots, which is not the PADI way of dress.

 

[The Chairman]

This is not a PADI class, but rather probably a U.S. Navy class of some sort. They are in fatigues and combat boots, which is not the PADI way of dress.

He forgot to use the sarcasm font. It's probably a Navy Seal or Army Ranger class of some sort. That's my guess anyway.

 

[dmaziuk]

Could be a LARPer Diver PADI Specialty, you never know.

 

[MacDuyver]

Yah that’s a picture of some SEAL candidates learning to dive in Coronado.

The “last hard class” is a pretty common sentiment, especially among those guys. The further guys are from their initial training, the harder it was.

What that doesn’t change though is the difference between when someone is educated/trained and proficient.

Any and all education is simply familiarization. You come out of college, you are familiar with a lot of stuff. It does not make you proficient, it typically makes you “good enough to be dangerous.” That’s not a quality that gets solved with more education, it gets solved with experience/proficiency. That is where someone who is educated/familiarized builds repetition and context.

Even if you’re a scientist or engineer, you’re still just familiarized. Following med school, a new doctor has to do residency to build proficiency before they’re allowed to practice medicine as an actual doctor. You come out of boot camp and SOI, you’re familiar with Marine Infantry drills. You come out of BUDS, SFQC, RASP, you’re familiar, but you’re also a brand new SEAL/Green Beret/Ranger, and you are treated as such (especially Rangers) since you have no experience which is what builds proficiency. It will be several years in any of those places before you’re viewed as proficient enough to actually lead anything or make decisions of consequence.

OW (and any course really) is the same. It’s familiarization. OW is an autonomous diver cert, and the only way to advance past “familiarized diver” is to do it. A diver has to dive (a lot) to become proficient. If 80% of your customers are gonna take an OW class, do a handful of dives, and then not touch it again for a few years, if they ever do again, why would anyone insist they learn to a DM level?

 

[The Chairman]

OW (and any course really) is the same. It’s familiarization.

NAUI calls OW a license to learn. It's more like a learner's permit.

 

[MacDuyver]

NAUI calls OW a license to learn. It's more like a learner's permit.

I REALLY like that wording. Even as a new scuba diver, I kinda side-eyed the “autonomous diver” language, considering myself nowhere near experienced enough to head out alone and unafraid into the ocean. Yes I could do all the things I needed to do to descend and ascend more or less safely, but there’s a reason follow-on courses exist.

With any skill set, one thing that is supposed to happen is experienced practitioners are supposed to observe new practitioners to see what lessons *didnt* stick. Like the dive computer in OP. Then you retrain those and monitor until the new guy becomes proficient before progressing to more difficult things (sorry fam I can’t take you down past 60 quite yet, let’s work on skills at this cool reef at 30ft and then we’ll do more advanced stuff). Learning and improvement needs to be progressive and continuous. People who know what they’re doing are supposed to be the ones driving this process instead of telling everyone how much better they were when they finished their way harder course (you weren’t, you just weren’t experienced enough to know that you were all jacked up and nobody corrected you, it just eventually worked itself out).

I can straight up tell you that the reason I have good diving skills is because various experienced divers shouldered the continuing refinement process quite well.

 

[John C. Ratliff]

I have a place on my own version of a dive log for “Special Problems and Ideas,” which is a way of documenting what went wrong, or not quite right, in a dive, and/or any ideas I have for improvement.

SeaRat

 

[prusas]

Not only do I dive with a computer, but my colleagues also insist on having a timer or a second computer.Finally, there is a free app called DiveProMe+, and you can at least minimally plan your dive before diving.