Does this course breakdown make sense to wreck divers?

[DevonDiver]

so in summary id say find an experienced diver and learn with them..

I know plenty of very 'experienced' divers who are woefully lacking in skills, knowledge and/or are ridden with complacency and over-ambitious self-appraisal of their actual ability.

'Experience ' is just one of many facets that make up ABILITY.

How is an inexperienced diver meant to ascertain WHO is a suitable mentor or teacher?

The wreck diving world is full of wannabes and 'Walter Mittys'...and people who've been card collecting for just that little bit longer than you...

If I had a dime for every utterly inept 'experienced wreck diver' that I met.....

Even when someone's amassed a vast amount of wreck experience, who's to know that they're using a full spectrum of appropriate techniques and protocols?

Most don't...

Wreck penetration is amongst the highest risk sports diving activities you can do. It's arguably more dangerous than cave diving.

As with cave diving, once involved in the community at a respectable level, you'll soon know people who perish...

Technical Wreck is undeniably an ELITE LEVEL of diving. And you're saying that you can prepare for that from 'some guy you bump into that impresses you with his stories and claims'.

Its easy to be impressed when you don't know any better... but getting your training wrong for advanced wreck penetration has a significantly high likelihood of fatal consequences.

The commitment required to develop true teaching expertise in high-level wreck diving is immense. THOUSANDS of hours. There's so much to learn, so much to routinely practice, ingrain and maintain....

Money and time always conflict. There's very few people around who have BOTH the money to invest in elite level training AND the time necessary to ingrain and develop exceptional competency, especially to instructor level.

So, if you have a full-time job, or other life commitments, your opportunity to accrue those thousands of hours, on a sufficiently routine basis to prevent skill fade, is highly limited.

Occasional tech weekends and a few wreck trips a year is barely enough to SUSTAIN basic competency in high-level diving. It's woefully insufficient to provide what's needed to acquire teaching expertise.

Honestly, I don't know of many elite level wreck divers who'd give up their time coaching novices for free.

Most true experts, because of their opportunity to wreck dive very routinely, are instructors.... professionals who don't give away their expertise because it's their means to put food on the family table.

In their 'free time', they want to dive for THEMSELVES...the high level stuff...with peers of an equal ability.

Also, their true friends don't ask for, or expect free training.... because true friends understand that you have bills to pay.

So who exactly are these 'wreck gods' handing out free tuition like candy....and giving up their own developmental dive opportunities to babysit novices?

... when feel your ready get there cheapest card than allows you to do the dive you want

Because courses are just about buying a plastic license that entitles you to do something?

This is a consumer attitude that cripples the dive industry. Demand nothing, get nothing.

The fact is...... and you'll learn this IF you get to a high level in diving... a cheap c-card and some inconsistent ad-hoc training isn't worth squat when the time comes to be accepted onto and integrate within a well-trained and high standard technical wreck team.

You'll have to prove your worth to those people.... and if you've inherited flaws in your game because you choose a self-professed 'expert' who talked-the-talk, but couldn't actually walk-the-walk, then you'll find the embarrassment of rejection quite excruciating.

 

[DevonDiver]

.. trying to make it closer to a cave course)
- tech wreck (stages, deco, advanced navigation including traverses, circuits and siphons - I'm fairly certain the navigation stuff is cave related and not applicable in wrecks).

I'm more than a little dubious about whether some agencies/instructors deem themselves experts on wreck diving because of a history in caving.

Despite the similarities in protocols and equipment, no cave diver, agency or organisation would accept wreck experience towards teaching cave. The same must be considered true in reverse.

Sometimes, scratching the surface, you find that there's actually a relatively small experience-base in demanding wreck environments.

I'm talking about BOTH instructor AND agency experience.

As is often advised on Scubaboard.... be diligent in your research of potential wreck instructors.

Identify what their RELEVANT diving experience is... how many hours they've accrued in... and what proportion (%) of their total diving is focused upon... that SPECIFIC (wreck penetration) environment at, or ideally beyond, the level of training sought.

There's too much time commitment needed to acquire real expertise in technical wreck penetration instruction to permit a 'jack-of-all-trades' approach to your diving.

 

[DevonDiver]

BTW, here's a couple of articles that may be informative in relation to the OP's questions....

The Anatomy of an Effective Wreck Diving Course

Explaining the Technical Wreck Course - Approaches To Advanced Wreck Diving

 

[Jack Hammer]

The base skills are similar in cave and wreck, however how they are applied and the specific hazards of each can be very different.

 

[Jared0425]

I will be self humiliated a bit. I have close to 500 dives most of them here in the Great Lakes. I do easy technical to novice dives on all sorts of wrecks. Some wrecks that I have dove dozens of times have gotten me into trouble. I was (and still am in ways) self confident and arrogant of my dive skills especially penetration. As I dove with people who's skills were equal or worse than mine I figured I must be one of the best. But on one dive we took out divers who had thousands of dives in various environments and saw that my skills were amateur compared to them. As we entered the wreck, the only thing disturbed by them was rust on the ceiling. I thought I had mastered the frog kick and peak buoyancy but I noticed that my technique left some clouding behind me. Some was due to the kick, but I noticed that my bouyancy changed a bit with every kick and that the kick would cause the water to reverberate off the haul. It was no silt out or dangerous situation at all, but I realized that I was far from being an expert and had many areas to work on and still do. The problem with being praised on your skill all the time is that no one will criticize you when you need them to.

As for the classes, yea that's a scheme.

 

[KevinNM]

If you don't dive with people who are really, really good you don't understand what really good is. Seeing a tech instructor motionless like they were suspended by wires and yet always manage to be in exactly the right spot to see my next screw up was a humbling experience.

 

[RainPilot]

UTD Course Structure:

Overhead Protocols: One day course. Lays foundation for cave / wreck skills e.g. line use etc
Wreck 1: 5 days. No stages, 400' penetration on main guideline only. max depth 100'
Wreck 2: 5 days. Allows use of two bottles additional to backgas (stage and/or deco). All dives are deco dives, max penetration is 660'. Max depth 200'/60m
Wreck 3: 7 days. Allows max 4 stage/deco bottles. Penetration distance unlimited. Max depth 250'/75m
Wreck Gold: 3 days. Removes all restrictions on staging / depth (depth limits as per other tech certs)

Im not an OH diver so this is purely for info purposes, I cant judge the merits of the structure. On face value it seems reasonable but I have no idea of the other agencies / industry standards.

 

[lermontov]

Because courses are just about buying a plastic license that entitles you to do something?

well within the current diving culture and with the majority of Dive shops actually yes they are. Its patently obvious, you only need to go through the hundreds of post on this forum to hear the frustration of the dive instructors that see poor skills going through the processess of gathering more certs to 'prove' theyve made it, but this is what the industry has promulgated
The fact is you can do anything you want if youve got you own gear and boat equipment etc whose going to stop you? courses (hopefully) make you self aware of your shortcomings and the need for further practice and dive time. what i see has happened is that the culture off anxiety ( OMG you cant do that your not trained) fosters self doubt and the need to do another course -a course should make one self aware of where they are at.

-perhaps I've made a faulty assumption that after 100+ dives the OP has never dived with someone with more dive craft than himself and he doesnt know a good skill level when he sees it, or that he hasn't done his research to know how things should be done, or that he cant adjust his technique as his experience/knowledge grows but he doesn't need another course to get better, just get in the water and get on and practice it. i learnt how to do a helicopter turn off U tube - didn't cost me a cent

But I'm not talking about average beginner divers I'm addressing the OP who is looking at doing a wreck course and is reeling at a $6000 course fee which is in my mind a ripoff -i dont care how good you think your instruction is you cant replace information with experience and that only come with time in the water, you can't tell me that if i did your 2 or 5 day course it will make me safe or make me an expert its only as you say dong thousands of hours of practice and training and self assessment that will get me there- but yes I agree with- you get initial instruction from this who are experts ( but dont become a course junky)

 

[RainPilot]

well within the current diving culture and with the majority of Dive shops actually yes they are. Its patently obvious, you only need to go through the hundreds of post on this forum to hear the frustration of the dive instructors that see poor skills going through the processess of gathering more certs to 'prove' theyve made it, but this is what the industry has promulgated
The fact is you can do anything you want if youve got you own gear and boat equipment etc whose going to stop you? courses (hopefully) make you self aware of your shortcomings and the need for further practice and dive time. what i see has happened is that the culture off anxiety ( OMG you cant do that your not trained) fosters self doubt and the need to do another course -a course should make one self aware of where they are at.

-perhaps I've made a faulty assumption that after 100+ dives the OP has never dived with someone with more dive craft than himself and he doesnt know a good skill level when he sees it, or that he hasn't done his research to know how things should be done, or that he cant adjust his technique as his experience/knowledge grows but he doesn't need another course to get better, just get in the water and get on and practice it. i learnt how to do a helicopter turn off U tube - didn't cost me a cent

But I'm not talking about average beginner divers I'm addressing the OP who is looking at doing a wreck course and is reeling at a $6000 course fee which is in my mind a ripoff -i dont care how good you think your instruction is you cant replace information with experience and that only come with time in the water, you can't tell me that if i did your 2 or 5 day course it will make me safe or make me an expert its only as you say dong thousands of hours of practice and training and self assessment that will get me there- but yes I agree with- you get initial instruction from this who are experts ( but dont become a course junky)

As far as experience goes, these are the prerequisites for each course wrt experience dives:

Wreck 1: 100 dives after OW cert. Rec 2 with doubles or equivalent (Rec 2 is Kinda sorta AOW)
Wreck 2: 125 dives after OW, 50 of which must be non-course dives. Tech 2 or equivalent.
Wreck 3: 200 post OW, 75 non-course, 25 deeper than 120'/40m on Helitrox/trimix/deco, 25 wreck penetration
Wreck Gold: 25 dives in Wreck 3 and Tech 3 ranges

 

[lowviz]

...//... But I'm not talking about average beginner divers I'm addressing the OP who is looking at doing a wreck course and is reeling at a $6000 course fee which is in my mind a ripoff -i dont care how good you think your instruction is you cant replace information with experience and that only come with time in the water, ...//...

I've recently purchased some really nice kit (in person) from the third world that doesn't ever post here. Swallow your hubris.

There are three worlds. Elite high dollar instructors, divers, and those who just figured it out for themselves over the years and are still alive and kicking...