Hours versus dives....

[wetb4igetinthewater]

So I'm curious, what are people's general take on hours versus dives being a way to gauge experience?

I think we can all agree that a 20 minute dive to 30 feet isn't the same this as a 20 minute dive to 100 feet. To me there is that third factor: depth. We like to keep things simple, but I don't really see a solution. For recreational deep divers, their time underwater is going to be short. Does that mean that their experience is less than those who dive for much longer at shallower depths?

 

[BoltSnap]

I think that it is a combination of all and including the type of dives and locations. It is very difficult to agree on a one version of the truth here

 

[RainPilot]

I guess I know where this came from...

We have the same problem in flying. A fast jet pilot with 2000 flights has maybe 2000 hours. The airline pilot with same is logging 16000 hours. Who has more valuable experience?

I believe that when it comes to diving there is a certain amount of experience you gain purely by spending time in the water. In that way hours are some indication. That benefits the guy doing 4 hour deco dives.

There's also a value to number of times you have kitted up, descended and ascended. In that scenario number of dives is important. This would benefit the guys doing shorter bounces on deeper sites.

Whatever your agency likes is I guess the answer. I log both.

 

[TMHeimer]

My average time on a dive is a little over 30 mins. I normally do two very shallow dives on one tank. I have done deep dives, but not very often. So, that means I'm great at very shallow dives and have to think about things more than others when taking a boat charter to 100' or more (or even less). Number of dives vs. hours doesn't matter as much as how much experience you have with a particular type(s) of diving. I've always felt that it may be overemphasized about getting all kinds of experience in all types of dives and locations--warm vs. cold, deep, shallow, whatever (my own experience is fairly varied). You can become expert at one type of diving and if that's all you do, fine. I'd rather take an OW course with an instructor who has 1,000 dives at the site(s) we'd use as opposed to one who has 200 dives world wide. Some disagree.

 

[MaxBottomtime]

I know a few divers with over 5,000 dives. Even if they had an average time of less than an hour per dive I still wouldn't trust my life with them underwater. I'd rather dive with someone with less experience but better skills.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

I guess I know where this came from....

This is something I've wondered for a while, as there are so many variables. Using my neck of the woods, an hour through the Tacoma Narrows (cold water, bad visibility, really fast current) is more of a challenge as the back wall of Molokini for the same time and depth.

So I've never been satisfied with dive numbers. Dive time can be a little better, but still not great.

I think training should have entry requirements, and if they don't make the cut, they get remedial training first

 

[Trace Malinowski]

The number of hours might be a way of gauging a newbie diver's experience because the TBT vs. number of dives in the logbook might clue you in to that diver's comfort based upon average dive times. Longer times may reflect better gas consumption and comfort. For newbie tech divers, the number of dives may tell you more because of the deco profiles. The more practice a diver has with deco stops, the more comfortable the diver might be performing a technical dive. When I used to skydive the pilots were interested in building up takeoffs and landings and CFI hours to prep for aviation careers. Lawrence Gonzales, in his book, "Deep Survival," defines experience as doing something wrong more times than someone else and getting away with it.

 

[RainPilot]

This is something I've wondered for a while, as there are so many variables. Using my neck of the woods, an hour through the Tacoma Narrows (cold water, bad visibility, really fast current) is more of a challenge as the back wall of Molokini for the same time and depth.

So I've never been satisfied with dive numbers. Dive time can be a little better, but still not great.

I think training should have entry requirements, and if they don't make the cut, they get remedial training first

I suspect that this thread came from a mention of the fact that RAID uses hours for pre-requisites not dives, in an earlier thread (correct me if I'm wrong, Kosta)

To try and determine someone's diving (or any) ability from a logbook can be challenging. For me the main purpose of logbook pre-requisites is to weed out those who are very unlikely to have the requisite skills due simply to lack of experience.

Once you have culled the herd, so to speak, then the process becomes one of individual assessment. Speaking only for my RAID experiences, every course with an OW component has a CW session dedicated to skills assessment. From there, remedial training can be suggested / carried out for those who have, for example, done 100 hours of 30' warm reef diving with few SMB deployments, for example, or those who haven't got their buoyancy dialed in yet.

If the paradigm is to restrict entry based on skills, and those skills are mostly related to neutral buoyancy, hovering and such, then IMNERHO using hours of in-water time makes sense. If I was doing a course on, say, boat diving then I'd be more interested in variety of boat entries and total number of splash/check/descend cycles the candidate had done. That becomes super tricky to put in a 2-line Standards Manual entry though, hence the CW session to allow the instructor to catch the outliers.

 

[Frontpointer1000]

What a great topic.
I've been contemplating something similar, which I'll share momentarily. I'm curious though, I'd your concern about determining experience do one can "prove" they are ready for the next level of training?
I'm fascinated by our (and by this I mean the SCUBA diving us) focus on certifications. I certainly understand that we
are grappling with the balancing act between a dangerous sport and training. I get that. I find it interesting that rock climbing has no true certifying agencies for recreational climbing (there are agencies for certifying professional guides). Anecdotally, I believe there are far more deaths and accidents associated with climbing than diving, but that's for another discussion.

It's intriguing considering number of dives only. A friend of mine with about 100 dives--all off one live aboard over 3-4 years in warm Bahamas waters, knows nothing else. Likely doesn't even know how to set up her own kit bc she has the boat crew do it. I literally think of her as a novice. On the other hand, my son with maybe 60 dives (shore, boat, night, fresh, spring, various iceauns, cold, warm, etc) has never had someone set up his gear (maybe mean old dad has set it up a few times). I tend to think of him as more experienced and capable. I read Scuba literature voraciously (there's three scuba books on my nightstand as I write this) and want to talk about it with other divers on the boat, in the shop, whatever, but again, I tend to think they will think it's corny or dumb. Maybe my son just listens quietly and hours his dad will shut up soon.


What I've recently been contemplating is the depth, breadth and scope of one's dive experience and how it can be extrapolated to another dive environment. Additionally, I've been thinking about how/what I learn from each dive. I'm very comfortable performing an honest assessment and dive debrief with my son, but I feel corny doing it with others. We feel pretty driven to get better, and one thing I love about diving is the constant learning it provides. My log book has become increasingly complex, as I write notes about what I saw, but also average depth, amount of gas used, kind of cylinders, average depth, time, weight, notes about water, protection, kit, things learned, boat parameters (if used), SAC rate/RMV. Solo/dive partners. I'm learning, however, that I can find plenty of opportunities/questions to investigate when I get home. ? Does lightning stay on surface of waste like afaraday cage? Do fish get killed when lightning strikes? What's the name of that wreck? That organism? How do these two algorithms actually differ in application?

After a dive, I want to compare notes- not just, "did you see that turtle? But, what algorithms were you diving, what's your calculated average depth, how close to your NDL did you come, did you plan your air consumption or just turn at xyz pressure? Why?

Maybe I'm just a nerd. I'd love to look at everyone's dive profile after a dive. Those numbers fascinated me.

Last week in St Croix I meet up with a guy from here on SB, we did a couple of dives together. It sounds funny but he was a beautiful, calm, smooth diver. I really felt blessed to get to dive with him.
We did a night dive under the pier, finished at 102 minutes. Longest dive I've ever done. What I learned and saw and gene in that dive was worth five dives. I'm going to make up a new metric that looks at average depth and time together. Mostly just for fun, but it does tell another story. What things do you guys record in your log books?

 

[clownfishsydney]

Also as alluded to above, dives in one location are not the equal of dives in another location, even if the depth and times are the same. For example, dives conducted in Thailand or Indonesia are not the equivalent of dives in United Kingdom (or Sydney for that matter). The fact that the dives at the first location are done in calm, warm, clean waters compared to the cold, dirty and often rough waters of the UK or Sydney mean that the latter divers will generally be far better divers.

From my experience, (generally) divers who dive in UK, Sweden, USA colder waters are far better divers than those who only ever dive in tropical waters, no matter the number of dives they have done.