Dive Master Requirements

[ChrisA]

My instructor is old school, you need to learn the skills , not know the book, and you need to be able to demonstrate your new skills, if you can't you don't pass. His OW is 2x a week for 5 weeks, then the dives.

Talk about "old school". I'm in a Los Angeles County program right now. They were the first trainning agency and still teach the old way. With much emphisis on swimming, skin diving and phyical condidtioning. The class is every Saturday and Sunday (with some exceptions) it startted after the 4th of July and continues into October I think it works out to 20 full days.

They still teach the old "bail out drill" where the student holds all the gear in his arms and then jumps in the water and on the way down has to turn on the air find the reg, breath, find mask, clear it then put on the BC, fins and weight belt the get trimmed up and nuetral -- scored for styles and not wasted motions -- old school if ever there was. Free diving to 30 or so feet is also taught

see www.lascuba.com

Notice the double hose reg still on the country logo. They started in 1954.

 

[JungleJoe]

Being asked a question is not "teaching", Letting someone breath on an octo in my own pool and swim around abit is not "teaching".

Sharing your knowledge based upon experience is what divers should do, Helping other divers is a good thing.

No one is "sue-proof" , but when you take the path of dm - instructor you do open yourself up to more exposure since you are I would assume actively training new divers.

But nuff said.....

Dive safe !

 

[RJP]

You may have picked up some experiance along the way but one can obtain a PADI master diver card with ANY five specialy cards. I think it is possable to get five cards and do ZERO dives.

Well, I guess you could but you can't get MD with ZERO dives, if that's what you're implying:

AOW
EFR
Rescue Diver
5 Specialty certs

Plus...

50 logged dives

So even if you assume 4 from OW, 5 from AOW and 5 from Rescue, and ZERO from five "no dive" certs, you still need 36 other logged dives.

 

[JungleJoe]

Chris, I remember doing that drill in my OW class, cept it was in a pool deep end with grear at bottom, swim down, put weight belt over leg to hold you down, get air, get mask on, etc..... and open water we did free ascents/share air drills, and we had to master trim/navigation etc. It's the quickie courses that'll spit out divers that are not ready for the real thing in my opinion. but, again, that is my opinion, I am sure there are ppl that get through a quickie and do ok, if they are lucky, and have good buddies or dm's around them to teach em the ropes.

RJP, good point !

dive safe

 

[Trixxie]

I am mid-way through my D/M Class - so far we have taken 6 exams. I have aced all but 1 which I have to re-take (D/M conducted programs - ratio remembering issues) - we have done the U/W equip exchange this past weekend - aced that. We did our rescue assessment - it was OK, but OK is not good enough for our instructor so we get to do it again next weekend. We also did our D/M conducted programs (skin diving, snorkel, scuba review) again OK but not good enough so we also get to do those again. I have completed most of my internship, all I have left to do is Continuing Education which will be in 2 weeks assisting an AOW class. Have done the tread water and tired diver tow. Have to do 800 Y swim this next weekend, 400 Y sometime in the next week or 2, plus the other mentioned stuff we have to do again. Also still have to do our mapping project which I think will be done the same weekend we assist with the AOW class. We began our class at the end of June 2006.

I have been busting arse between studying, practicing for the swim tests, walking on the treadmill building my stamina up, at least 1/2 hr on the total Gym after the treadmill 5 days/week. I have not sat and watched TV, played XBOX or done anything else non dive related since I began the class (except for housework uggh and occasional SB post). I just don't have the extra time to waste.

Our instructor is the best! He doesn't settle for "OK" or just getting by and that makes me not want to either. I know not every inst is like this nor does everyone take being a D/M that way as well. I have always wanted to be a D/M, to me it's not just getting another C-Card - maybe I am naive or just looking through my rose colored sunglasses.

I guess you get out of it what you put into it.

 

[jbichsel]

Realistically, this story is not about the DM's water skills. Taking the 5' vis into account, the instructor used poor judgement taking 12 students into the water. After all, the ratio is a maximum, not a minimum. As the DM, if in your judgement the dive was unsafe in those conditions, you should not have gone along with the dive.

Realistically, this story was about what happened to me. I was the DM and you're right, it's not about the water skills. It's about having enough experience with different situations in order to be able to cope with this or a similar scenario. Whether or not my water skills were good, bad, exemplary or horrible didn't matter. It was about how the situation was immediately resolved from the instant it began to approximately 30 seconds later when my buddy DM arrived to take over. It was about maintaining composure, staying calm and not allowing the student to become an orbiting satellite and possible statistic.

As to the ratio, at that time in my career, I felt comfortable with it since we had done it before, same location, same conditions (Texas lake, April, 1993-94), same class size. Using hind-sight, I would not do the same thing now and in truth, after that incident, the instructor chose to reduce class sizes for those conditions.

Maybe I'm missing something, but 75 degree water isn't too cold,

Maybe 75 degree water isn't cold to you or me (I like cold), but I know several people that think it is very cold, wear 7mm and hoods in that temp water. I know two people that dive dry suits as soon as the temp gets below 80.

and a 95 pound women is pretty small.

I agree, until you put that person into panic mode. Would you rather be attacked by a 100 lb dog or a 10 lb cat? Personally, I'll take the dog any day. Every seen a 20 lb badger take on a 400 lb or larger bear? A 20 lb badger is pretty small.