Diver lost in Cozumel today

[AggieDiver]

I'm sorry I just don't buy into any of that.

Which part of it do you not buy into Mike? Those are pretty much the conditions described by several divers who were diving Santa Rosa over the last few weeks. Are you using your own experiences with benign conditions on Santa Rosa to discount all other accounts of what has been experienced recently? If so, not much else to say...you appear to be living in your own world where only what you have experienced matters.

You are right about one thing though...it isn't rocket science...divers should be properly informed of the conditions and should be responsible for thumbing a dive they are not prepared for. By the same token, if dive ops are going to ask for C-cards and how many dives a diver has, then they have a responsibility to select dive locations and conditions that are appropriate for that level of experience and certification. If they have a bunch of divers whose only C-card is basic OW, then they have no business taking them on an 80' dive.

 

[jd950]

If they have a bunch of divers whose only C-card is basic OW, then they have no business taking them on an 80' dive.

I agree with your main point, but am not sure about your last sentence. I know a number of divers with a lot of experience and excellent skills who never bothered to get anything more than a basic card. I also know of people who got an advanced card by doing the 5 "adventure" dives right after getting their OW card and still have almost no experience. I know of one DM who became a dm after only about 70 dives and I would guess maybe 2-3 years of diving. An advanced card doesn't necessarily mean much.

I and a number of other divers I know obtained the "advanced" certification largely to satisfy the demands of some dive ops that divers have some sort of advanced level card to dive some locations.

 

[WSOPFAN]

I was curious about what policies Sand Dollar advertises and or follow so I was just reading on their site and found this:

Packages - Sand Dollar Sports

Divers must present a valid C-Card in order to participate and must have logged a dive within the last 3 years.

I think I am going to contact PADI and ask them, since they list Sand Dollar as a PADI dive shop, if they think that is a safe policy to let novice divers go to 80 ft or only have 1 dive in 3 years.

 

[boulderjohn]

I think I am going to contact PADI and ask them, since they list Sand Dollar as a PADI dive shop, if they think that is a safe policy to let novice divers go to 80 ft or only have 1 dive in 3 years.

PADI has no control over such shop policies. No agency does. You can go ahead and ask them, but I doubt that you will get a response that will be worth your effort.

 

[nimoh]

I agree with your main point, but am not sure about your last sentence. I know a number of divers with a lot of experience and excellent skills who never bothered to get anything more than a basic card. I also know of people who got an advanced card by doing the 5 "adventure" dives right after getting their OW card and still have almost no experience. I know of one DM who became a dm after only about 70 dives and I would guess maybe 2-3 years of diving. An advanced card doesn't necessarily mean much.

I and a number of other divers I know obtained the "advanced" certification largely to satisfy the demands of some dive ops that divers have some sort of advanced level card to dive some locations.

I don't put a lot of value in log books, I think they are more for personal use because if you want to go on a dive that requires 50 logged dives, what is stopping you from filling out some log book pages to get you up to 50?

C-cards, although not a perfect system, give a much better indication of your minimum diving experience, and are (imho) more difficult to fake.

I'm not trying to argue here that divers can't be trusted, just that as a DM leading a dive, I want to be sure that the divers can handle it.

---------- Post added April 18th, 2012 at 11:31 AM ----------

PADI has no control over such shop policies. No agency does. You can go ahead and ask them, but I doubt that you will get a response that will be worth your effort.

I also doubt you would get a response with regard to PADI's opinion on whether or not the shop should allow it, but you will get an opinion from PADI on whether or not OW divers should be going to 80 feet.

 

[AggieDiver]

I agree with your main point, but am not sure about your last sentence. I know a number of divers with a lot of experience and excellent skills who never bothered to get anything more than a basic card. I also know of people who got an advanced card by doing the 5 "adventure" dives right after getting their OW card and still have almost no experience. I know of one DM who became a dm after only about 70 dives and I would guess maybe 2-3 years of diving. An advanced card doesn't necessarily mean much.

I and a number of other divers I know obtained the "advanced" certification largely to satisfy the demands of some dive ops that divers have some sort of advanced level card to dive some locations.

Herein lies the problem with a voluntary certification compliance policy within an industry. Everybody agrees to require a basic OW certification in order to dive. The agencies who sell training to obtain that certification state clearly in training materials and hopefully in their instruction that the certification only clears the diver to dives of less than 60' depth. If you then go out and dive to 90', regardless of how good your skills are and how experienced you are, you have violated your training and the limits of your certification. If we acknowledge that it is ok for experienced divers to do that, what other parts of their training are they also allowed to ignore? Do they still have to have a buddy? Do they still need to do a gear check before every dive? Do they still need to have a spare 2nd stage or does their experience level allow them to ignore that part too? Where do we draw the line on what parts of our training that our experience allows us to ignore?

It is a very slippery slope to assume that some undefined level of experience allows a diver to ignore the limits of their training and certification. I agree with you that beyond a certain point, the 60' limit is less meaningful, but ignoring that it exists means ignoring the specific requirements of the training and certification process and builds in gray areas into the whole process. In the gray areas is where the accidents happen and people die.

 

[boulderjohn]

I also doubt you would get a response with regard to PADI's opinion on whether or not the shop should allow it, but you will get an opinion from PADI on whether or not OW divers should be going to 80 feet.

You don't need to contact the agency for a response--the answer is in the knowledge reviews for the OW course. The guidelines for an OW diver are to a 60 foot limit. That is, however, a guideline. It is not a rule, law, edict, etc. No agency has the power to enforce such a rule.

 

[AggieDiver]

PADI has no control over such shop policies. No agency does. You can go ahead and ask them, but I doubt that you will get a response that will be worth your effort.

If this is true, then PADI should stop certifying shops, giving shops 5* ratings, or otherwise referring divers to shops. They have the power of their name and the ability to tell a shop that if you don't adhere to a basic set of PADI guidelines, that they will be taken off of the PADI-approved list and put on the list of "non-compliant" shops. Every other dive shop at a given location could use that against the shop in question and make business very hard for them. The reality is that PADI DOES have the power to try, but they appear to lack the will. They have consistently dumbed down training standards and made the classes simpler and shorter...all aimed at getting more certification fees and more divers diving...at the cost of putting higher numbers of less-adequately trained divers in the water. It is not a surprise that they would hesitate to expect more from dive operators when they are continually expecting less of their certified divers.

 

[boulderjohn]

I have to admit that I don't know the policies of all the agencies in the world. Can you tell me which ones rigidly enforce such rules on their associated shops? Would that be NAUI? SSI? IDEA? PSAI? I honestly don't know, and I hope you will tell me which ones have those policies.

 

[boulderjohn]

I should have repeated above that the reason PADI does not have the will to enforce a 60 foot limit on OW trained divers is that the 60 foot limit is a guideline, not a rule. You don't enforce guidelines.