Dumbing down of scuba certification courses (PADI) - what have we missed?

[Thalassamania]

Thal, Not too spacey.....

You will be happy to know that teaching the "incident pit" is alive and well and is currently part of the GUE Fundamentals curriculum. Very useful tool and one I introduce in the end of OW classes.

That's not a term I'm used to. Could you expand on it please?

 

[Bismark]

I believe that most of the deco accidents are due to deco on the fly, which is strictly a GUE issue. NAUI uses RGBM and everyone else uses V-Planner (by and large).

Once again your lack of actual knowledge is glaringly obvious. If you would actually take a GUE Tech course you would know that Deco on the Fly is referenced in the current technical classes for contingency planning purposes only. Moreover, the primary planning tool used is Deco-planner.

 

[Blackwood]

I had read other posts suggesting the two were comparable. The training program here in town that I skipped because it seemed much too short (even shorter than the PADI course) was an SSI affiliated shop. Perhaps the SSI course makes up for shorter "group" time by requiring more individual reading and study ahead of time

IMO, there is no substitute for diving. More individual reading or classroom sessions may produce sharper theoretical divers (or e-divers if we're talking about online reading), but you can't learn to dive without getting in the water, and the more you are in the water the better you will learn to dive.

 

[Thalassamania]

IMO, there is no substitute for diving. More individual reading or classroom sessions may produce sharper theoretical divers (or e-divers if we're talking about online reading), but you can't learn to dive without getting in the water, and the more you are in the water the better you will learn to dive.

Just making the same dive, in the same puddle, over and over again does very little to stretch your skills, you need dives that expand your scope.

 

[Bismark]

That's not a term I'm used to. Could you expand on it please?

I believe that we are talking about the same thing here. Picture a "funnel" that curves more steeply towards the bottom. Divers regularly operate in the top part of the funnel where minor problems are encountered and resolved easily. As you descend into the "pit" problems become more serious and become more complex to resolve and as a result you experience increasing stress levels and require the ability to think clearly. If you descend further into the incident pit, you reach the stage where your problem now becomes an emergency and requires rapid and correct responses. Here there is a very real danger of panic and automatic responses as per your training are required to survive. Finally, at the bottom of the pit, your problem becomes un-resolvable and un-survivable. In general, divers constantly come across minor problems but if we fail to resolve them then we slide further into the incident pit. The further into the pit we slide, the steeper the sides of the pit become, making recovery more difficult and survivability less likely.

Picture the new diver who is set free upon the world with 4 dives. They will have a great deal of difficulty just dealing with minor problems and it is far more likely that they will more easily slide further into the pit due to a situation that would be an easily resolvable issue for someone with your or my experience.

Does that make sense to you?

BTW, you had an AC Cobra in College? Lucky bugger......

 

[Bismark]

Just making the same dive, in the same puddle, over and over again does very little to stretch your skills, you need dives that expand your scope.

Ain't that the truth.......

 

[Thalassamania]

I believe that we are talking about the same thing here. Picture a "funnel" that curves more steeply towards the bottom. Divers regularly operate in the top part of the funnel where minor problems are encountered and resolved easily. As you descend into the "pit" problems become more serious and become more complex to resolve and as a result you experience increasing stress levels and require the ability to think clearly. If you descend further into the incident pit, you reach the stage where your problem now becomes an emergency and requires rapid and correct responses. Here there is a very real danger of panic and automatic responses as per your training are required to survive. Finally, at the bottom of the pit, your problem becomes un-resolvable and un-survivable. In general, divers constantly come across minor problems but if we fail to resolve them then we slide further into the incident pit. The further into the pit we slide, the steeper the sides of the pit become, making recovery more difficult and survivability less likely.

Picture the new diver who is set free upon the world with 4 dives. They will have a great deal of difficulty just dealing with minor problems and it is far more likely that they will more easily slide further into the pit due to a situation that would be an easily resolvable issue for someone with your or my experience.

Does that make sense to you?

It does, that is somewhat different from my model but is valid.

BTW, you had an AC Cobra in College? Lucky bugger......

Got it with a blown engine, dropped in a ported and relieved block with four dual throat side draft Webbers on Potvin crossover manifolds and a mild cam. It was a lot of fun. I had a girlfriend down in LA and I used to make the run down I-5 faster than most small planes.

 

[boulderjohn]

String-Bean, those are internal PADI stats. They feel to encourage their OWSIs to impress upon their students quickly to enroll in the AOW-Adventures course to get over this 10-dive window of theirs.

It must be pretty internal, because I have never heard of it. How close to the management level do you have to be to get access to that information, and how did you get there?

Your second sentence must contain a typo, since it makes no sense to me at all. Are you saying that PADI instructors are told to tell students that they have a good chance of dying in their first ten dives so that they will take the next course right away? If that is what you meant, you are far from reality. PADI instructors are indeed taught to impress upon students the value of further training, but scare tactics like that are not to be used for this purpose.

 

[Bismark]

It does, that is somewhat different from my model but is valid.

Got it with a blown engine, dropped in a ported and relieved block with four dual throat side draft Webbers on Potvin crossover manifolds and a mild cam. It was a lot of fun. I had a girlfriend down in LA and I used to make the run down I-5 faster than most small planes.

I am hugely jealous. My college car was a 72' 240 Z that had a little work done on the engine also. Used to love that thing but it wasn't even in the same league as a Cobra. 427?

 

[Blackwood]

Just making the same dive, in the same puddle, over and over again does very little to stretch your skills, you need dives that expand your scope.

While I agree, that's a side point.