Faking Logbook Entries Fact or Fiction?

[wb416]

This may be possible after the first few confined water sessions. Initially however, a student will have a hard time venting air from their wing or bcd when horizontal in 4 feet of water. They won't be able to maintain neutral buoancy at all. This is why it's more practical to sink to the bottom, over weighted, and just breath through a reg the first time. Do a mask clearing and reg recovery...while on their knees. THEN, teach them the right way.

Here's an example of a student I'm watching in his 3rd confined pool session. I'm on the left. This same student did a mask removal & replacement at 8ft horizontally and didn't change depth more than a foot or so during the exercise. Not everyone did that well, but none were bad.

You can see another student in the background (blue fins) that is doing well also.

It's surprising to see how well students can do when you set and demonstrate a higher bar for them.

 

[daniel f aleman]

That's POOL water?!? Cave profile for newbies? Geez, Bob.

You're going to hear it when they come back from Coz.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Good pic. Who was running that class? BCS?

 

[MoonWrasse]

That's POOL water?!? Cave profile for newbies? Geez, Bob.

You're going to hear it when they come back from Coz.

LOL,

It might just be a warm pool - i.e. not for lap swimming but for splish-splashing.
I used to visit one, years back, much warmer than a normal lap pool. Much murkier despite the increased dosage of chlorine.
Hang out in one long enough, everyone becomes blonde

 

[Hoyden]

I can't imagine any one with only 11 dives doing the skills required in an entry level tec class well enough in the pool to make it to the open water dives - or well enough in the first few open water dives to make it to the really deep dives later in the class. I have spent 8 plus hours over two weekends this month doing confined water training for an entry level tec class - Our first day in the pool (all in doubles with an AL 40 deco bottle) we did a 100 m swim with gear, a long hover, valve shutdown drills, S drills, 3 SAC swims (one normal load, one heavy exertion and one deco), stage bottle on, off, and on again - with and without mask amd while swimming, gas switches, lift bag deployment and I am sure that I am leaving out stuff - the second day (two weekends and some class time later) we did similar stuff while losing our masks alot and enjoying general, random equipment failure and harassment by the instructor and assistant instructor. If any one can do that after just 11 dives... more power to them. I'd say that there was something fishier (more fishy?) than the student's qualifications in the circumstances that you guys have described.

Jackie

 

[MikeFerrara]

I can't imagine any one with only 11 dives doing the skills required in an entry level tec class well enough in the pool to make it to the open water dives - or well enough in the first few open water dives to make it to the really deep dives later in the class. I have spent 8 plus hours over two weekends this month doing confined water training for an entry level tec class - Our first day in the pool (all in doubles with an AL 40 deco bottle) we did a 100 m swim with gear, a long hover, valve shutdown drills, S drills, 3 SAC swims (one normal load, one heavy exertion and one deco), stage bottle on, off, and on again - with and without mask amd while swimming, gas switches, lift bag deployment and I am sure that I am leaving out stuff - the second day (two weekends and some class time later) we did similar stuff while losing our masks alot and enjoying general, random equipment failure and harassment by the instructor and assistant instructor. If any one can do that after just 11 dives... more power to them. I'd say that there was something fishier (more fishy?) than the student's qualifications in the circumstances that you guys have described.

Jackie

Which was my original point...that I may have done a poor job of making, but you'll have that.

I fear (I'm not really all that scared myself) that much of the (dare I say it?) recreational diving mentality is creeping it's way into technical diving as it, also, becomes big business. Not that I want it to be exclusive because that's not the way I mean it. I don't want it to be advertised as being as safe as bowling and not requiring that you can even swim. It's not a matter of who can...it's a matter of if you can.

I can't say whether my instructors were tough enough on me or not. I will say that I've backed off in the last year or so in regards to depth, time and distance.. I'm no kid any more and I may be a little scardier than I used to be...if that makes any sense. Leaving recreational diving out of it, I don't think a technical diving instructor can be too hard on you. All it takes is one little problem back in a cave or in OW when you owe 2 hours of decompression and you'll know what I mean. I don't mean to be all grim about it but it can happen and when it does you either do or you don't. Most people are never in that situation and they certianly don't get into it for fun. The time to get your butt kickid is in training, before you start and before it's real. Tech training should hurt and it should teach some humility, IMO. Just as in recreational diving usually nothing goes wrong but if it does, you either will or you won't. the best time to find out is in training when you have LOTS of bail outs. that way you live to profit from the lesson.

The same arguement can be made for recreational training but in most cases the surface is an option...though sometimes that's just the start of your problems too.

 

[diptera]

Why in the world would you do that?? I suppose I understand that he wanted to take the class... but you totally miss out on sense of accomplishment.

Sense of accomplishment? What's that? Hey, it's 2005, we don't do actual accomplishment anymore. It's all about punching tickets and piling up credentials with minimal effort. Sense of accomplishment is one of those discredited, hierarchical, dead white male things, like barriers to entry.

Anytime logged dives are a class prerequisite, there will be some faked entries.

Exactly. People are sneaky, conniving, and greedy. If you use a criterion that can be faked, it will. If you degrade hard work by setting up a system of training and certification to be quick and easy, in the name of profit and growth, you devalue meaningful measures of skill. No one should be surprised at this - it's the logical result of
industry trends for the past two decades.

 

[joe rock]

Let me give another perspective here.

It's also an easier position to maintain when you're close to neutral (a little floaty). Sometimes divers who are near neutral have trouble kneeling (which really is good) but are penalized by the instructor who adds more weight to teach them to kneel well.

There where some skills we did kneeling at the bottom and I was one of those that Mike is refering to. I just couldn't keep both knees down. Trying to do skills this way created stress for me, not performing the skill, trying to kneel! :11doh:

On one OW dive when we were going to about 60 ft. I has a problem with my mask and it continually flooded so I got LOTS of practice clearing in a real life situation.

 

[wb416]

That's POOL water?!? Cave profile for newbies? Geez, Bob.

You're going to hear it when they come back from Coz.

The shop they used in Hawaii to do their OW cert dives sent back favourable responses.

 

[wb416]

Good pic. Who was running that class? BCS?

Yes.... BCS and SW were primary... they took turns doing video and stills for the students to review later... I was assisting...