Have training standards "slipped"?

[Walter]

Mike, I agree there have been lots of little changes over the last 23 years, but the standards were already useless with regard to actually teaching folks to dive before these small changes took place. I don't know when PADI tossed them out, but in 1977 PADI's standards were pretty good (I have a copy). By the time I started diving (1983) they were already the joke of the industry.

 

[rigdiver]

Mike, we both know that you don't need a dive computer or tables to do a simple recreational dive. There are many divers here that don't. I'm talking about random divers on dive boats. If they run into a situation that is outside of their tables, they will just shuck them and follow the DM, 100% of the time. That has been my experience wandering around the Caribbean diving with strangers. Hell, I've witnessed only a couple of divers ever talk planning, and many of them very experienced divers. It's very discouraging.

With minimum deco, you don't need either, but only GUE teaches that.

Get on one of the boats going to the Flower Gardens without a computer or dive tables and you will not dive. The DM's do not get in the water for the passengers to follow.

 

[chickdiver]

Dive computers are nothing more than a cartoon form of a dive table. What does it matter if someone learns to decipher the 20 odd datum displayed on a computer or to move from collumn to row to table to table? It's the same damn thing. The critical question with respect to teaching diving is, "was adequate background provided, and mastered, so that the student actually understands how to use the table or computer." If that was, in fact, done, then a student should be able to use either without a whole lot of trouble.

Ahh, Thal... Always the voice of reason!'

I don't teach OW often anymore, but when I do, my students learn tables and whatever computer they happen to be using. I personally believe that you can't safely dive without a clear understanding of the basics of decompression theory. How you apply that is up to you. It scares me to get on boats and hear people say "I just do what the computer tells me." My students may not need as much deco theory as put into basic courses, but at least I know they understand what the model is telling them and the differences in various models out there (I also believe you should understand the differences between the various models in use before buying a computer, such as to make in INFORMED choice). Besides, if they ever come back to take tech classes, it's that much less remediation I have to do!

 

[Mako Mark]

When I did my deep dive for AOW in NZ we hit 30m (100 ft) for a few minutes while we completed a minor task. The rest of he dive was a tour of a wreck while we moved slowly up to about 20m. When we calculated our pressure group at the end of the dive we found out that we were all dead . The instructor recalculated the ending pressure group using the wheel and that is what appears in my log book . That was when I started to seriously consider computers. I have just bought 2 Aeris Elite T3's from Scubatoys today .

This is one of my pet peeves, in addition to what Mike pointed out that you should have known BEFORE the dive.

WHen teaching the AOW deep dive, treat it like a deep dive, not like the multilevel dive that should be taught on the Multilevel optional dive. I find it is the less aware or less experienced instructors that do this. They just do the skills and then want to go look at fish.

If you teach the deep dive first, then the ML dive, the student learns both the serious nature of deeper diving, and the advatage of multilevel diving.

Stargazer, if you didnt know your ending pressure group before the dive, I believe your instructor was negligent (probably through laziness) as it is a requirement of this dive for the divers to adequately plan the dive using the RDP.

Just off the top of my head here are some of the changes of recent years.

The one minute confined water hover was reduced to 30 seconds...the one minute hover in OW now has NO time requirement.
.

Mike, in the big scheme of things is the difference of 30 seconds in the pool going to have a huge impact?? It takes a lifetime of diving to truly master bouyancy control, I know I am still learning and am sure you are too.

As for open water, no time limit could mean that you make them do it for five minutes, such as during a safety stop right?

The biggest was probably the roll out of the "dive today" philosophy.

These standards make it very easy to get people into the water. They just don't do much to insure that they will actally learn to dive.
.

Heaven forbid that we make it convienient, easy and fun to learn to dive. What next?? Should we allow gurlymen to dive??

Personally, I have found an integrated aproach to learning to dive far more beneficial to the student than the old approach that mandated classroom first, then pool, then finally, almost as a reward for being a captive audience, real diving..

 

[SNorman]

Here you go Nichole:

http://www.scubaboard.com/showthread.php?p=2599913

Just remember Walter isn't always right.

 

[Walter]

Just remember Walter isn't always right.

Of course I'm not always right. I've never claimed to be. Do you have a point other than the obvious?

 

[stargazer61]

What were your thoughts when you found out you were dead? Did you realize your mistake at that point? Shouldn't you have know what that pressure group was going to be fefore you did the dive? Were you paying any attention at all to your dive profile? You knew you were going to 100 ft, right? You knew that you had been to 100 ft right? Did you have some plan in mind when you were swimming around at 60 ft? Did your instructor explain what his plan was. Were the results of your table calculations a surprise to the instructor.

I'd strongly suggest that you make a call to the agency and ask them what the training standards say about the way your instructor conducted that dive.

Use a dive computer if you want to but I think that a good class would serve you well at this point.

As best as I can recall:

We knew our allowable time @ 30m was short and that the dive plan was to stay at 30m for the minimum time required to do the task. The task involved was simple enough for each diver to complete in turn within about five seconds - no obvious signs of narcosis. So our time at 30m was well within table limits. We then had a look around the nearby wreck at about 20m until the dive was called by the instructor.

I was a not particularly surprised to find that we were over our NDL based on a square profile. I have dived with a rental computer before and then subsequently done table calculations "for practice", with the same result. I was happy enough to accept the ending pressure group calculated by the instructor as being correct for the actual dive profile. Having said that, no one in the class had a clue how to use the wheel and we did not do a multilevel specialty dive. We had no basis on which to calculate our allowable time at 20m and therefore were effectively following the instructor's lead.

 

[TheRedHead]

Get on one of the boats going to the Flower Gardens without a computer or dive tables and you will not dive. The DM's do not get in the water for the passengers to follow.

I've never seen DMs in the water anywhere in the US. I've not seen them check for tables either.

 

[TheRedHead]

I believe your instructor was negligent (probably through laziness) as it is a requirement of this dive for the divers to adequately plan the dive using the RDP.

I got my PADI AOW card without ever seeing the RDP.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Heaven forbid that we make it convienient, easy and fun to learn to dive. What next?? Should we allow gurlymen to dive??

Personally, I have found an integrated aproach to learning to dive far more beneficial to the student than the old approach that mandated classroom first, then pool, then finally, almost as a reward for being a captive audience, real diving..

My objection to it isn't that it's easy. On the conreary I think it can be a great deal harder. Doing OW dive 1 immediately after CW 1 can be pretty hard without the CW3 skills (all the buoyancy control stuff). From my own experience, I'd say it can even be dangerous and I won't take students to open water until all the confined water work is done...that's so they can dive some. I found that thorough CW training and practice time makes the OW dives orders of magnitude more fun and less...well, scary.

Then there's the issue of giving credit. If a student comes in having done a resort dive, I couldn't give them OW dive1 credit because I know they did that dive without having any buoyancy control...and now I only have 3 dives to get them some experience? No. They'd still have to do another dive 1 with me where they are really diving. I just don't see what training value an OW dive 1 done immediately after CW dive 1 could possibly have. Sales value maybe, but not training value.