Diving without Certification (A RANT)

[agilis]

"Mind you that non instructor rated person with exceptionl competence is very rarely seen..."

Instructor-rated persons of exceptional competence are also very rarely seen, but I know that they exist, though not to any extent more significant than among the population of highly experienced non-instructors. There may even be exceptionally competent divers among those instructors who breezed through several levels of certification, ultimately to instructor grade, after only a year or so and a couple of hundred dives, but I doubt it very much. I'm reasonably sure they don't exist. The whole concept is silly, except to those who profit financially from selling the myth.

 

[JTH2711]

Oh so you actually didn't have a question.

Again my question was, Am I off base with being irritated by this. It was not meant to devolve into this whirling dervish back and forth about instructors vs. techdivers.

 

[ktomlinson]

Again my question was, Am I off base with being irritated by this. It was not meant to devolve into this whirling dervish back and forth about instructors vs. techdivers.

Well it certainly did devolve into that You shouldn't lose any sleep over it though, unless you're also worried about folks that don't wear their seatbelt, fat folks at the buffet, or anything else that will only hurt the person doing it.

 

[tomfcrist]

I think you MAY be off base......do you know this "Tech Diver"? Do you know for sure that there was no plan? Sounds to me like you got 10% of the story and went high and right with it. I understand your concern, but this is really your friends ball game. If your friend makes an informed descision to dive without formal training, who are you to get all bent out of shape over it. If its such a huge deal to you, call the authorities and report this "Tech Diver " for attempted manslaughter(which is what others on this board seem to think it is.).

On the other hand the guy might bee a complete fool.....in which case your outrage is substantiated.

---------- Post added ----------

Instructor-rated persons of exceptional competence are also very rarely seen, but I know that they exist, though not to any extent more significant than among the population of highly experienced non-instructors.

You may be taking it a little too far IMO. Most Instructors I know are very competent, but of course there are quite a few that are fools.

 

[JTH2711]

No I do not know the Tech Diver. It may be my friends ball game. However he is also my Brother -in-law. So that adds an additional layer to the story. I may have gone high right. But... If something were to go wrong I'd have to hear about it every time I strapped on a tank. Man.. Everybody takes risks that's what this sport is ... a calculated risk. However you dont take a risk that's a bad idea. I've told him don't dive without some training. Then he did it. If he had died I never would've heard the end of it.

I think you MAY be off base......do you know this "Tech Diver"? Do you know for sure that there was no plan? Sounds to me like you got 10% of the story and went high and right with it. I understand your concern, but this is really your friends ball game. If your friend makes an informed descision to dive without formal training, who are you to get all bent out of shape over it. If its such a huge deal to you, call the authorities and report this "Tech Diver " for attempted manslaughter(which is what others on this board seem to think it is.).

On the other hand the guy might bee a complete fool.....in which case your outrage is substantiated.

 

[tomfcrist]

No I do not know the Tech Diver. It may be my friends ball game. However he is also my Brother -in-law. So that adds an additional layer to the story. I may have gone high right. But... If something were to go wrong I'd have to hear about it every time I strapped on a tank. Man.. Everybody takes risks that's what this sport is ... a calculated risk. However you dont take a risk that's a bad idea. I've told him don't dive without some training. Then he did it. If he had died I never would've heard the end of it.

Maybe that tells you how much your Brother-in-law respects your expertise on diving.

Correct, sometimes risks outweigh the benefits, but you are not the one to make that risk descision for your Brother-in-law. Let the man live his life. Would you also condemn him for freedive spearfishing? Alot of deaths in that realm too.

 

[flots am]

Alright, I have to get this off my chest!! I have a friend who decided to go diving without any certification. The guy that took him was a Tech Diver with over 250 dives. I told my friend that diving without a cert is a pretty big risk. He may try it and love but by never taking the class he doesn't know what he doesn't know. I'm pretty upset at the Tech diver, because a guy with his experience and training should have put the brakes on this.

Am I making a big deal for no reason or do ave a point. No one here seems to think it is a big deal.

It's kind of a crap-shoot. There's nothing magical about instructors, but there is something very valuable about pool time (especially the shallow end) and having a safe place to make mistakes.

A good class gives him time to learn things like "the proper response to a flooded mask is clearing it, not bolting for the surface"

flots.

 

[Thalassamania]

Bob, I agree with you. It is not OK to endanger anyones life, and that applies to us instructors as well.

Humor me here.....

My ITC was very comprhensive as im sure yours was as well. However, the only thing i "Learned" from my ITC was paperwork and liability. The skills I posessed were already demonstration quality, and the other portions of the course were a breeze for me. Does that mean that if prior to completing my ITC i performed a DSD with a friend that I would have been putting that person in any more danger than i would be today? Heck no. What it would have done is put everything I own on the line if an incident occured, and I got sued. Not worth the risk to me. But to some others, it very well may be.

All im trying to say is that a non instructor rated individual CAN be capable of providing adequate instruction.

I agree completely.

I had about 900 dives when I became an instructor ... and had spent nearly a year and a half as a DM working with multiple instructors prior to that. I also had, by then, taken AN/DP ... so that would also qualify me as a "tech diver". And although I had all that background, I almost failed my IE ... because one of my evaluators felt I was not positioning myself properly during the demonstrations to be in control of my students. She then demonstrated that point by simulating a panic and getting away from me quicker than I thought was possible.

I had a similar incident at my ITC. There was a staff member at my who came out from NAUI HQ. He was very full of himself but rather inexperienced. In fact the HQ Guy had far less diving and teaching experience than I did. I drew him for a problem solving dive.

We were at Salsbury Quarry (sp), Ohio. I was to set the scene, and then take eight simulated students, including the chap from HQ, out to the raft to simulate teaching a rear entry from a boat. Part of the rules of the game was that no staff member could do something that had not actually happened to them.

I'd set the scene as Dive 5, the final OW dive in a 42 hour course (standard at the time). We got out to the raft, I positioned all the students, having given them strict and clear instructions about how they were to enter the water with an inflated BC in turn. Just as the last student got into position the HQ chap backrolled into the water and disappeared under the surface. I secured my group and went and got him, following his bubbles down. When we got to the surface he announced that I had failed the exercise because I had lost control of my group.

Well ... we got into a nasty exchange of words, his point being that he'd managed to get away and mine being that if by Dive 5 you hadn't sorted the squirrels out, well ... you weren't much of an instructor.

Fortunately Lee Somers, the CD, agreed with my analysis and I was able to repeat the dive with a different evaluator, (Peter Carrol of Temple University).

My point in relating the story now is to point out that knowing the "solution" to the problem, while important, pales in comparison to knowing how to avoid this issue in the first place. I've taught about a thousand students over the years, only a hundred or so of whom have I trained in leashing the squirrel, but all of whom, I believe, would know how to teach mask and regulator clearing if they needed to do so.

Nothing in a "tech diver's" training will teach them how to position themself to intervene in this situation.

So the tech diver ... even the well-trained, very experienced one ... takes a complete newb on a 30-foot tour at an easy dive site. Simplicity itself, right? But somewhere along the way, the diver accidentally floods his mask ... or aspirates a bit of water ... or suddenly gets that familiar "I can't get enough air" that comes from exertion and CO2 buildup ... and succumbs to an overpowering urge to head for the safety of the surface ... leaving his very experienced dive buddy suddenly looking up and well past the point of being physically able to do anything to prevent it.

They talked about "never hold your breath" prior to the dive ... but in a moment of near panic, said newb doesn't remember that part ... does what instinct tells him to do ... and blows his lungs out on the way to the surface.

If you think this doesn't happen, you haven't spent enough time reading the Incidents and Accidents forum. It happens ... even to instructors, if they're not careful.

We don't train for when dives go right ... we train for when they go wrong. And if your training doesn't include student management, you're trusting that nothing will ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

I think it can happen, it happens with certified instructors on a regular basis.

... I haven't yet met one of those that I would trust training someone I loved ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

I have, I've met more than a few. Two such conducted the water portion of my wife's training and another two that of my sister.

 

[-hh]

Lots of good comments in the last nine pages...a quick gloss-through

No offense taken- but as an instructor, I am trained to take beginners. Tech divers are not.

True on its face, but we really don't know enough about the "Non-Instructor" to really say for sure that they have zero transferrable skills.

But as a 'general practice' I would suggest that laymen are not the best diving instructors.

Fair enough...but if we look pedantically at the Agency standards for dive instructors, there's not even a requirement for a High School diploma. As such, we can be assured that the minimally compliant Instructor may very well be a God of Rote and not anything more.

Questions about risk assessment, risk mitigation, liability tolerance etc. should not be confused with the ability/capability to teach.

And this is IMO the bigger reason for why I'd make a particular recommendation: no matter how good the parties involved may very well be, there is undoubtedly very clear lines of legal liability from the Duty of Care situation that probably don't make it worth it.

The real problem with formal instruction these days is the notion that Instructors are EXPERTS or OFFICIALS in the industry. Based on my experiance, some of the best divers I have ever met are uncertified divers that have a few thousand dives more than the local instructor.

Yes, as instructors we should hold ourselves to a high standard, however if you read some of the threads on this board you will see that there are plenty of "Experts" and instructors that arent worth thier weight in salt. Do you believe that it is better for a diver to get thier training from these instructors, or to learn from a very experianced diver who may or may not be an official instructor?

Ultimately, the question is going to come down to the suitability and temperment of the individual(s) in question ... and thus, the old mantra of "Pick the Instructor, Not the Agency" advice for potential students, because there's been simply far too many examples of where the Agency label alone wasn't a sufficiently reliable assurance of the quality of an Instructor.

I do not think that anyone is implying that you are not a good instructor, but there is an unexpressed undercurrent here that argues that simple possession of a diving instructor card is no longer prima facia evidence of competence as a diving instructor or even as a diver. There are even those who would suggest that, perhaps, it never was, and that mistrust goes to the root of this discussion.

Good observation. As a simple example, I pointed out above that a High School Diploma isn't even a requirement ... even for an IDC Director.

There's been a related debate that's been bubbling quietly in traditional education over the past 25 years: the contemporary curriculuum has increasedly stressed "knowledge" of various subject areas (eg, Math, Science) for the candidate educator, but its addition has resulted in cuts to other parts of the curriculuum - - and the areas that have been cut have been in Teaching Methods. The result is that you end up with a smart person who doesn't know how to give their knowledge to others. The problem with Dive Instruction is that it has traditionally been heavy on Methods, but has been focused on the pragmatic front line, so that it is lacking in the science of learning. Thus, you have a person who knows how to share their limited set with another - - but this has also ended up with an Industry that has permitted things like "Quickie" training classes .. which are known to fail to apply known reliable memory imprinting methods of learning. That pendulum has swung far too far the other way.

While it is obvious that some instructors suck, i would say that the root of this discussion is that people dont seem to think that a non instructor could possibly provide adequate instruction....

Back before the days of revenue from specialty classes, the rule used to be Mentoring. To become more contemporary, how about we simply look back at just how many times have we heard reports from 'non-instructors' about dives where they've had to extensively hand-hold a "bad" dive buddy?

I...
---------- Post added ----------

... I haven't yet met one of those that I would trust training someone I loved ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

I've met exactly one. They happen to have since become inactive, but I don't consider that to be a particularly critical impediment: the "Loved One" standard trumps paperwork minutia.


-hh

 

[fnfalman]

Alright, I have to get this off my chest!! I have a friend who decided to go diving without any certification. The guy that took him was a Tech Diver with over 250 dives. I told my friend that diving without a cert is a pretty big risk. He may try it and love but by never taking the class he doesn't know what he doesn't know. I'm pretty upset at the Tech diver, because a guy with his experience and training should have put the brakes on this.

Am I making a big deal for no reason or do ave a point. No one here seems to think it is a big deal.

Yes, you're making a big deal out of it.

PADI has a thing called Discovery SCUBA where an instructor or dive master (somebody highly experienced) takes a non-diver down. That's diving without certification.

Maybe this Tech diver just know a thing or two about diving and about guiding non-divers. I'm just sayin'...