How is the Wreck Diving Cert?

[Hostage]

I am an AOW Padi diver w/ 27 logged dives w/ a little over a year of diving. I just got done w/ a St. Lawerence trip w/ a scuba club I am apart of and we dove on 6 or 7 wrecks. My dive buddy on the trip also happend to be a DM and I spoke to him about the cert and he said he thought rescue is much more valuable than wreck. He said you will see very few people puling out a reel and mesuring the wreck, etc. When we dove we did go under the Daryaw, which has a very large open area between the bow and the bridge. We also checked out the aft cabin of the Lilly Parson. He said he would normally not take someone with these few dives into those areas, though he said I was doing very well for the amount of dives i had logged.

I am planning on taking the rescue course within a month or two, though I am curious if there is much to the wreck cert. Does it cover pentiation dives, if so how far etc? My cautiousness will be greater than my curiosity when it comes to pentrating a wreck. I have heard to many stories of people getting lost in silt out conditions, and entangled, etc.

Also the DM i was diving with was a buddy, who is in the club. He was diving for person not business.

Thanks in advance,

Hostage

 

[drrich2]

Value depends to some extent of what kind of diving you'll be doing. Since you're evidently doing penetrations, I think you ought to get wreck certified, and if nothing else reading the manual may have a 'thinking it through' benefit. Course utility will depend on instructor; it can be bare bones or fleshed out. Be mindful people use reels to give themselves a life line into a penetration to follow back out, more so than measuring a wreck.

Rescue is valuable for different reasons; hard to compare them since it's apples & oranges at best.

Richard.

 

[Aqua-Andy]

I would say it all depends on the cert. If it is like the SSI wreck class it would say it is all but useless, but on the other hand the TDI adv. wreck course should provide some valuable info on penetration with many real world skills. Penetration of any kind should not be taking lightly, all it may take is one errant fin kick to totally destroy the viz and stop you from finding your way out. The wrecks you penetrated may have been wide open but what i'm saying is just be careful, the only real scuba police are the ones inside your head(most of the time they have good advice, sometimes not).

 

[ermaclob]

Ive seen people doing those SSI and Padi wreck courses and I dont like them. Generally speaking, i feel that these classes give the student a false scene of security in going into wrecks. when realistically they weren't taught the necessary skills to do safe penetration.

i do believe that you might benefit from the class if you want to do some wreck swim thoughts and have limited experience doing so. But any diver setting a line up to go into a ship and is not at the very least certified in a cavern or cave course is asking for trouble.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

I don't have cavern or cave certs and I run lines for wreck penetration.

 

[exposure]

I did the wreck cert. just after my rescue course. That being said you can't compare both because they are totally different (as said, apples and oranges). Personnaly I really wanted to have a minimum of knowledge about wreck diving because I am a huge fan of wreck diving. So I choose a place where you really have wrecks and good instructors that also teach advance wreck courses. In my view, it is a critical point, otherwise you'll only turn around a small fisherman boat and nothing else. In my view, this course doesn't give a false sense of securiy while penetrating a wre.ck but more the real issue you can face. For me it was like a wreck discovery with a limited penetration with the reel. Then you can decide to continue with an advance course or not. But in any case that was a really great introductory course for me.

 

[TMHeimer]

IMO you don't need a Wreck cert. to dive outside a wreck. It's just logic--be carefull what you touch (sharp, rust), wear gloves, lookout for unstable structures. The PADI course was interesting, but as stated, when are you going to map a wreck (maybe if you're really into that)? I believe penetration in the PADI course is optional according the the instructor. I did that, but have heard from SB members that it is very basic and you really need a more advanced course to do any real penetration.

 

[ermaclob]

I don't have cavern or cave certs and I run lines for wreck penetration.

yea but from what i can tell you have lots of experience in tech diving and seem to be a tdi instructor , you practice good techniques that can help keep you safe even if your not trained to specifically do presentations . the students in these wreck courses had like 30 dives, where being taught to run lines into a wreck with no training in proper fin kicks, no redundant equipment, and on top of that the dive sight was at ~ 120 ft diving air. That seems very risky to me. They seemed some what unaware of some of the dangers that they could face when i was talking to them.

 

[emoreira]

I did the SSI wreck course, and though I need it for my instructor career, it's almost useless. SSI points out very strongly that this is an Open Water skill, so, no overhead enviroment and so no penetration.
As you know there are natural and artificial wrecks. Those artificial wrecks are, in the majority of the cases, wide open to make penetration easy or directly closed, so as no one can enter. Wide open wrecks has been worked out to remove any sharp edge to try to avoid divers entangled inside.
Natural wrecks are something quite different. Every thing is there (or at least what is being left dive after dive). If it's penetrable, you will find a lot of dangers and entanglements, broken glases, wires, metal, and so on.
Any dive under overhead environments should be done with the requiered qualifications and training, as this is not an Open Water dive where the diver can go to the surface just when he wants.

 

[ktomlinson]

I checked the PADI website and the requirements for the wreck certification only list basic scuba equipment. The description does list "consideration for entering intact wrecks" as part of the course. Is it really customary to teach wreck penetration using a single tank??