Have training standards "slipped"?

[Thalassamania]

Tell us what exactly you mean by the "entire scientific diving community". Without verifiable parameters, it's impossible to confirm or contradict a statement such as yours without more information.

As defined by 29 CFR - 1910 Subpart T:

The guidelines are as follows: 1. The Diving Control Board consists of a majority of active scientific divers and has autonomous and absolute authority over the scientific diving program's operations.
2. The purpose of the project using scientific diving is the advancement of science; therefore, information and data resulting from the project are non-proprietary.
3. The tasks of a scientific diver are those of an observer and data gatherer. Construction and trouble-shooting tasks traditionally associated with commercial diving are not included within scientific diving.
4. Scientific divers, based on the nature of their activities, must use scientific expertise in studying the underwater environment and, therefore, are scientists or scientists in training.

To which I would add, operating in compliance with the guidelines of the AAUS.

 

[Hemlon]

As defined by 29 CFR - 1910 Subpart T.

Care to put that into English? (for those of us who obviously aren't as educated as you are!)

 

[Thalassamania]

Care to put that into English? (for those of us who obviously aren't as educated as you are!)

Care to turn the sarcasm down a notch, I'm using a laptop with a bad keyboard that has a mind of its own.

 

[Hemlon]

I see that you added to a previous post, Thal.

 

[The Chairman]

I'm still confused on the whole buddy-breathing to the surface thing. Is that not common practice?

To the surface is against agency standards and for good reason. I have my students learn it and do it horizontally in the pool as a confidence exercise.

That was one of my least favorite exercises, but we did do it. That and the unconcious diver, but once I got the hang of the unconcious diver, I was OK with it. Never liked the buddy-breathing, though. Do most instructors not do this?

I teach both panicked diver on the surface and unconscience diver on the bottom. But then, I am NAUI.

 

[Hemlon]

And what makes you think that they have had no fatalities?

:rofl:

 

[The Chairman]

you can try and parse it till the cows come home but a zero fatality rate says it all.

Great, I boast a zero fatality, a zero accident AND a zero bends record for all of my students. If you pick a small enough sample and define it just right, you can claim just about anything. Teaching your students to dive to 200ft on air is in my mind absolutely assinine. I don't care what your protocol is, it is seriously flawed to descend much below 100 fsw on air.

But hey, divers from the seventies are all over the bottom. Today's divers are so much more careful than that sea hunt era. You can claim you are the super instructor all you want, but all I see is elitism.

 

[Hemlon]

Thal,

There was no need to PM me with your profile's info. Reading your profile did nothing to substantiate your claim of NO fatalities within the scientific diving community.

Why did you PM your profile to me?

Oh...is this where I am supposed to be impressed?

I'm with Netdoc. Any conclusion can be drawn from a small enough sample.

 

[Thalassamania]

Great, I boast a zero fatality, a zero accident AND a zero bends record for all of my students. If you pick a small enough sample and define it just right, you can claim just about anything. Teaching your students to dive to 200ft on air is in my mind absolutely assinine. I don't care what your protocol is, it is seriously flawed to descend much below 100 fsw on air.

But hey, divers from the seventies are all over the bottom. Today's divers are so much more careful than that sea hunt era. You can claim you are the super instructor all you want, but all I see is elitism.

We have quite literally millions of logged and audited dives going back to the early 1950s, hardly a small sample. I've never claimed that I'm a "super instructor," only that I've stood on the shoulders of some super instructors.

Try and get back in line with the TOS Pete.

 

[Queen]

...
My question for those certified in the dark ages (as one poster put it, no offense) is whether you feel you were an independent diver when you came out of your certification class? After my OW class, I definitely wasn't and didn't feel qualified to plan a dive for me and a buddy. For those that got certified 20 years before I did, coming out of that class, did you feel comfortable (and actually, do you think you were capable of) planning a dive for only you and your buddy? (That's what I'd call an independent diver.)

I felt comfortable planning a dive after I finished OW, it could have been the bravado of youth rather than actual skill though.