DM or Master Diver????

[Diver Dennis]

Frankly, to be called a Master Diver, I think anyone should be able to plan their dive in a few different ways, including using SAC. It might not be a requirement but I think it should be.

 

[Thalassamania]

Hey Choppersrule,

Ni disrespect intended by the question, just to provide another perspective:

Do you know what a SAC rate is and how to calculate one?

Do you think that's a reasonable thing to expect a Master Diver to be able to do?

 

[spankey]

Hello all,

I need help!! I'm one specialty away from Master Diver. Is DM worth the money and comitment? I have a wife ( with C card but will not dive any more) and 2 kids (5 and 3) who dont dive obviously. I want to dive more and use DM as an excuse but DM sounds like too much workand money for my current situation. Plus, do I wanna work or play when I dive?????

Brett

I feel very sorry for the new guy after 8 posts he asks a "simple" and gets 10,000 opinions.

wonder if he will every post again

 

[Cacia]

oh...he'll be back. we are all here for the abuse.

 

[Diver Dennis]

Me? I would go for DM but not be a working one unless you want to buy insurance.

 

[Cacia]

Frankly, to be called a Master Diver,

okay then, just master.

 

[TSandM]

A recreational diver can end a dive at any time . . . But it can be a little awkward (or worse) to do it from 100 feet down. Calculating whether you have enough gas to do the dive you contemplate can let you know whether you are going to have to abort from someplace you'd rather not. We see this locally with a dive that goes from one cove to another at our Alki site. The boundary line runs deep, around 100 feet. NW Grateful Diver has had at least one person come up to him almost OOA when she attempted to do this circuit on an AL80. We recently had a fatality on this boundary line, when a diver went OOA at 100 feet.

In addition, knowing your SAC rate helps you calculate "rock bottom", or the reserves you need to get you and your buddy back up from wherever you've gotten yourself to, and I personally think that is such an important concept that I can't believe it was never addressed through OW, AOW, my Deep specialty, or even Rescue.

I did five specialties. I decided that the Master Diver card had no conceivable value to me that was worth $30.

I've been musing about whether to do a DM course, and if so, whose, and where. Part of me would like further training in helping novice divers, because mentoring is something I'm enjoying a great deal. But I think I would be very particular about where, and with whom I would enter into such a program. For right now, Rec Triox sounds like more bang for the continuing education buck

 

[MikeFerrara]

No I don't. IMHO SAC rate calulations are important to divers who need to know such information. That list is restricted to those who need to know that they can man a certain dive on a certain amount of air.

That need is technical. I.E. not recreational. By my definition a recreational diver should be able to end a dive at any time. Since MD is a recreational certificate, an MD does not need a finite time for the dive.

As an instructor I make many such decisions. Is XXX pressure enough to get me through this training dive? I don't go calculate my SAC against the depth each time, I base it on my experience. I know that XXX pressure is enough to do the dive with time for problems built in or not. Can I calculate my SAC, you bet. Is it a required skill? No way.

James

James, Are you a PADI instructor? As I recall (I'd need to walk out to the garage to look it up), SAC is covered in the deep diving chapter of the AOW text. Obviously even PADI doesn't think that it's a "tecnical only" piece of knowledge. PADI just stops short of applying it to nay real gas management calculations. they also stop short of making the students demonstrate that they can apply that knowledge to a real dive.

Can a recreational diver always surface immediately? I know that's the definition commonly applied but is it really true? I might agree if we were talking about nothing more than 20 or 30 ft dives because the ascent takes such a short period of time and almost no gas but...Do recreational divers dive to depths where an ESA would be difficult or worse? Would a recreational diver prefer to finish that dive by doing a slow ascent with a safety stop? How much gas does that take? It's number significantly greather than zero. Might a recreational diver have the need to donate air during an ascent from such depths? Do they want to rocket up or go nice and slow? How much air is needed so the result isn't 2, OOA divers? Might a recreational diver do a dive where getting back to the entry point is highly desireable if not almost a requirement...say a 100 ft wreck dive with some current?

James, I just think you're flat out wrong and it's the mishaps that I've seen that convinced me of it.

 

[Trixxie]

I feel very sorry for the new guy after 8 posts he asks a "simple" and gets 10,000 opinions.

wonder if he will every post again

You got that right - if they were 10,000 different reasons why he should do D/M vs MD (time spent in class & preparing for class - required dives - $$ etc). but not all this - you don't know what you're talking about and you suck, no I don't you do and you're ego is too big, not it's not yours is...... :shakehead wah wah wah - it's a bunch of 5 year olds with expensive toys is what it is.

 

[HowardE]

You got that right - if they were 10,000 different reasons why he should do D/M vs MD (time spent in class & preparing for class - required dives - $$ etc). but not all this - you don't know what you're talking about and you suck, no I don't you do and you're ego is too big, not it's not yours is...... :shakehead wah wah wah - it's a bunch of 5 year olds with expensive toys is what it is.

That's because there are more reasons NOT to do it. "Master Scuba Diver" is a certification driven by ego, and the sense of accomplishment. "I'm a Master Scuba Diver". It's the ultimate card collectors card. It proves your loyalty to your certification agency, and your devotion to taking classes and "learning specialties"

I went diving with someone in FL a few months ago. This person had a book full of cards, including MSD. This person had a collection of about 10 specialty cards, including "Shark Diver" and a few others I'd never heard of... AOW is my highest certification level... I showed this person the reef on this particular dive, since I was one of the more experienced people on the boat, and knew the reef. I gave this person a briefing on the reef, etc... We did the dive... Let me say that while this person looked pretty good in the water, that for someone with an underwater naturalist specialty, and a photography specialty, that their treatment of the reef was not superior in any way to someone without the naturalist specialty. Their finning technique on the bottom was awful, sand stirring viz ruining flutter kicks only inches from the bottom... they kicked sponges, and coral several times on the dive, used their hands to stabilize their trim, didn't really stay in a trimmed position much at all during the dive, and they had buoyancy control issues as well. Is this appropriate for someone who has "mastered the art of SCUBA diving"???

How meaningful is something when really anyone can get a card that calls them master, when their mastery is far from masterful.