Disturbing trend in diving?

[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.

 

[JMarc]

I believe "discovery dives" divers and experienced (including pro) divers have the worst records of fatalities.

Do you have a source for the discovery dives divers? I think that's the first time I see them mentioned as high risk.

 

[Leatherboot69]

Do you have a source for the discovery dives divers? I think that's the first time I see them mentioned as high risk.

It would be a bit counterintuitive if they are limited to 12 metres, have to be directly supervised by a Divemaster or instructor with a maximum ratio of 1:2 and only dive in the easiest of conditions.

 

[OMyMyOHellYes]

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.

Comparing DSD mortality rates with that of recreational divers in general is not a valid analysis and would not support a conclusion that "relying on an instructor or DM to keep one out of trouble is cool."

Conditions for diving under the DSD program are vastly different from those that an OW diver would see and accomplish. In the DSD program, a diver-a scuba diver-is under the direct supervision of a dive professional at all times, with a very low diver-to-professional ratio, in very close contact distances. The professional is assumed to have total responsibility and control of the dive parameters. The OW recreational diver is understood to understand and have demonstrated sufficient level of skill to function independently and autonomously, ie - the ability to be responsible for their own safety (although, I doubt some could count the number of tanks on their back and get the same number twice-in-a-row). The dataset, if one includes all "recreational divers" includes folks with varying levels of supervision from loosely following a dive guide to zero professional supervision. The times I've been with groups as described in the OP's first observation, those included 6-10 folks following a DM, at distances from contact to 100+ ft laterally at depths ranging probably +/- 20 ft from the DM (sometimes I've been known to be 40 ft below as I was logging deep experience required towards future, higher-level tech cert at depths I cannot reach in local lakes).

Also, the time of exposure varies from DSD program divers - limited to only a few hours of very closely supervised dive activity under likely pretty good conditions to a lifetime of diving experience (days, weeks, months, maybe years underwater) in all sorts of conditions - temperature, visibility, currents, depths, overhead environments, night, varying equipment, etc.

Kinda like comparing driving a governed go-cart around a bumpered track at the local putt-putt golf-and-go-cart entertainment center to throwing somebody into day-to-day Houston traffic and comparing fatal accidents over time.