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MHK

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I was glancing through the NY Daily News and came across the following article:

Caymans earn rep as snorkeler heaven

Essentially it is an article about how easy and fun it is to learn scuba diving, and it follows the journey of a 13 year old and a 15 year old doing the class work on line prior to heading down to Cayman. Once they arrive they do a 1/2 day in the pool, 1 dive in the afternoon to 25'. Day 2 is two dives in the 50' - 60' range and then day 3 the first dive of the "safari dive" is a 96' wall dive.

Putting aside my issues respecting on-line academics, from a pure risk management and pure saftey perspective, why in the world would any sensible instructor take a 13 year old child to 96' (presumably on air) on a wall that drops to thousands of feet, after a mere 3 dives under his belt? Perhaps the sadder part from my perspective is the fact that the author of this article not only doesn't see how dangerous this idea is, he glorifies the idea by memorializing it.

This article truly saddened me.

Regards,
 
I know of no agency that allows less than three OW certification dives and I know the majors wouldn't consider 96' suitable for training.

Rachel
 
Where does it say the wall drops thousands of feet? Not that it makes it much better, but the article gives me the impression that the wall bottoms out there.
 
It would be a violation of standards of every agency. OTOH, after reading the article, it's not clear that only one dive was made the first day. If two dives were made that first day (pretty likely), the students were probably certified after the second day and before the 96 ft dive. A first dive of an AOW class to 96 ft is not uncommon and having that first dive immediately following the 4th dive of the OW cert is very common. Seems to me, this article is an accurate (but not terribly detailed) description of what has become common practice in the industry.

Gombessa:
Where does it say the wall drops thousands of feet? Not that it makes it much better, but the article gives me the impression that the wall bottoms out there.

The walls at Cayman do drop thousands of feet.
 
The walls at Cayman do drop thousands of feet.

No doubt, but it still seems unwarranted to declare it as fact in this case without an iota of supporting backup. Again, not that it makes it much better, but there's unquestionably a difference between taking students down to a 96 foot floor and taking them down to 96ft with a 2000ft floor beneath.
 
Pulling from the hip, I believe depth restrictions like that hit at 10 & 11, once you're 12 you're good to go (so to speak).

I hope this is not a complete story. I wouldn't mind diving in the Caymans though :)
 
What's the issue with online academics?

The academic material covered in most OW courses is not very complicated, and you still have to pass a test. Most universities offer classes that are a hell of a lot harder than OW diving online.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/teric/

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