If you could change one thing about dive training...

[wetb4igetinthewater]

How do you convince people that more time on snorkeling is vital to scuba instruction? Well, it goes along with feeling at ease in the water. It is not up to the students to decide what the course should contain. That is the agency’s job.

SeaRat

Bingo. That's why I teach snorkeling prior to scuba. It eases the transition for students. It doesn't take a long time. Placing students on their knees blowing bubbles right away was a huge setback in training.

 

[John C. Ratliff]

Interestingly enough, we had a thread from a few years ago on this very topic. Someone produced the PADI standards from 30 years ago, and we compared them to today's standards. Here are the results.

1. The only standard gone from 30 years ago was one regulator buddy breathing. It had been replaced by alternate air donation. All other requirements and exercises from 30 years ago are still in the standards today, and they are still part of the RSTC standards as well, meaning that about 99% of the new OW students around the world are in classes with all those same requirements from 30 years ago.

2. As for the PADI standards, we were able to identify about 15 required skills that were not part of the class 30 years ago. Students are required to do more skills today than they were required to do 30 years ago.

3. Some individual instructors then and now add their own particular flourishes to classes that were not part of the standards and may or may not be done today. Some of those additions are rarely taught today because people either questioned their value over time or they were determined to be too dangerous. Ripping masks off of students is an example of a practice that has almost entirely disappeared. It used to be common, but it was never an agency-required practice.

John, you don’t go back far enough, and you are looking only at PADI. PADI decided to lower the standards more than 30 years ago. NAUI standards from 1979 for SCUBA and Skin Diving Courses are below for watermanship:

Scuba Course
Required swim skills to be covered during a basic scuba course.
1. Swim 220 yards, non-stop, any stroke.
2. Use survival techniques to stay afloat 20 minutes (include treading, bobbing, floating, drownproofing, etc.).
3. Swim 20 yards underwater.

Skin diving Course
A skin diving only course has the following swim skill requirements which must be completed during the course. In many cases in skin diving (or scuba courses) diving equipment may not be available for the first or second water sessions. In this case the instructor may find it useful to cover the following water skills which are performed without the aid of equipment.
1. Swim 220 yards, non-stop, any stroke.
2. Survival swim 10 minutes, treading, bobbing, floating
3. Swim 10 yards underwater with no push off
4. Swim underwater 20 yards taking 3 breaths during the swim
5. Recover a 5 pound object from 8’ to 12’ of water
6. Tow a person of equal size for 20 yards
7. Swim 40 yards using 2 different resting strokes
8. Learn the skin diving skills of water entries, surface dives and modified kicks without skin diving equipment
Ted Boehler, NAUI Professional Organizer, 1977 page III-7.

SeaRat

 

[SlugLife]

How do you convince people that more time on snorkeling is vital to scuba instruction? Well, it goes along with feeling at ease in the water. It is not up to the students to decide what the course should contain. That is the agency’s job.

SeaRat

I can't speak for anyone else & am not an instructor.

For students who are very uncomfortable at the start, I suppose I could see how it might help them get slightly used to breathing with their face underwater. If students are already comfortable in the water, what value does it provide?

We weren't really taught snorkeling, in the sense that I wasn't a better snorkeler after the class than before. I was just required to have one, told to use it in specific scenarios, and required to use it for a couple skill-demonstrations. We were not taught any sort of technique. Nor were we taught "normal" snorkeling, that is any snorkeling without being loaded with scuba-equipment. It wasn't used as a "get comfortable in the water" tool either. I mostly felt the snorkel was a waste of time and excess clutter for me, especially if it's on the mask during a dive.

 

[scubaozy]

Standards were lowered to lower entry barriers for average joe. Diving used to be a sport and divers were athletes. Today it is merely a recreational activity only. When I look at the profile of the average joe diver nowadays, I do not see athletes, picture is rather bleak.
Raise the standards, diving will be not accessible to many. This might even include many SB members.
Overall, dive training and certification only opens the path to learn and starts your learning journey. It does it already in a safe manner, even for the not so fit and talented. Rest is up to the individual.
When I did my entry level training, my instructor freaked out, because I was breathing much lighter than him. Explanation; I have been competitive swimming for a club at age 7-13 and free diving until university years until I got into the scuba. Yes, swimming, snorkeling, freediving, especially at early age will give you advantage. You are good at those, you will progress faster. Using a snorkel is not equal to snorkeling. Spend 14 days holidays 5 hours snorkeling daily, you will be quicker learner than other owd candidates.

 

[TMHeimer]

I can't speak for anyone else & am not an instructor.

For students who are very uncomfortable at the start, I suppose I could see how it might help them get slightly used to breathing with their face underwater. If students are already comfortable in the water, what value does it provide?

We weren't really taught snorkeling, in the sense that I wasn't a better snorkeler after the class than before. I was just required to have one, told to use it in specific scenarios, and required to use it for a couple skill-demonstrations. We were not taught any sort of technique. Nor were we taught "normal" snorkeling, that is any snorkeling without being loaded with scuba-equipment. It wasn't used as a "get comfortable in the water" tool either. I mostly felt the snorkel was a waste of time and excess clutter for me, especially if it's on the mask during a dive.

My old pet peeves--
--Students should be comfortable in the water prior to taking a scuba course. IMHO if you take OW and aren't comfortable in water ... well I really can't think of the words for it.
--Snorkeling before learning scuba makes all the airway skills super easy, to the point of some not even being worthy of being called a skill.
--I rarely take my foldable snorkel in my pocket anymore, but that debate is endless. Has nothing to do with why you should know how to snorkel first (and by "snorkel" I mean have a snorkel in your mouth and free dive down to say, 15'). Same idea as why you should know how to swim properly. Neither that nor snorkeling technique has anything much to do with scuba, but they are two things you should know how to do first.

 

[Jcp2]

Being comfortable with a snorkel is a step to being comfortable to breath on a regulator as the nose is not used. Clearing a flooded mask while snorkeling without raising head out of water is a step to mask clearing underwater. You can don and doff fins in the water easier with a snorkel. A good flutter kick with fins can be developed while snorkeling. Using a mini flood to defog a mask can be learned while snorkeling.

 

[John C. Ratliff]

I mostly river dive, and have for decades. There are fascinating things happening in Oregon rivers, and I like the biology of these rivers. (I have one of my degrees in zoology.). Because I dive rivers, I use my snorkel while scuba diving almost every dive. I use scuba until I surface, then switch to my snorkel. I also use my snorkel as a mouth/teeth guard when exiting with heavy scuba gear so that as I’m crawling out on slippery algae and mud laden rocks, I don’t slip and fall flat on my face; the snorkel would help protect teeth and nose in this case.

Now, about the lowering of standards; this coincidentally happened as the dive tourist industry started being established. People were no longer diving locally, but were flying to exotic, remote areas to dive on live-aboards. As this happened, in my estimation, students stopped being “students” and became “customers” and “clientele.” As such, they demanded things, like less strenuous standards, not using snorkels (why use a snorkel with a dive boat right next to you and a Divemaster making sure you were happy?). @boulderjohn even forgot how to put together his scuba gear while headed for a dive, as the Divemaster would always before do that for him. PADI and many other dive agencies responded with simpler courses for these divers who were going to do dive travel. Manufacturers lightened their gear; regulators were made lighter for the first stage, and the second stage went to plastic from metal. (The use of plastics had several other desirable effects, in that better molding could be done for air flow, and plastic did not have the corrosive potential that even chrome-plated brass had.)

The easier courses also opened another opportunity for dive agencies—more advanced/specialized courses. Dive agencies began to see their courses as commodities, things that could be divided up and sold piece by piece. After reassembly, you had a complete diver. But the basic scuba course only took you so far in this business plan, and you needed “advanced open water” instruction too, plus other types of speciality courses. This sold more courses, more shorter, easier to take courses. So dive instruction became a “business plan” for those agencies, instead of a set of instructional foundations. And, divers became ever increasingly dependent upon dive tourism to fulfill their diving dreams.

I have never been on a live-aboard dive boat, nor have I taken a dive travel boat to a reef for scuba diving. I dive locally, and that includes the Oregon coast, Puget Sound in Washington State, and Oregon rivers. I started out snorkeling, and used to snorkel to spear fish in the Pacific Ocean (when I was much, much younger). So I know the value of snorkeling, and like I said above, use a snorkel on nearly every dive.

I have seen a lot of changes in the dive industry, but I must say that not all of them have benefited the divers themselves. Some were to benefit the agencies (keep them afloat), some to benefit the manufacturers (BCDs now cost more than a regulator).

SeaRat

 

[TMHeimer]

I mostly river dive, and have for decades. There are fascinating things happening in Oregon rivers, and I like the biology of these rivers. (I have one of my degrees in zoology.). Because I dive rivers, I use my snorkel while scuba diving almost every dive. I use scuba until I surface, then switch to my snorkel. I also use my snorkel as a mouth/teeth guard when exiting with heavy scuba gear so that as I’m crawling out on slippery algae and mud laden rocks, I don’t slip and fall flat on my face; the snorkel would help protect teeth and nose in this case.

Now, about the lowering of standards; this coincidentally happened as the dive tourist industry started being established. People were no longer diving locally, but were flying to exotic, remote areas to dive on live-aboards. As this happened, in my estimation, students stopped being “students” and became “customers” and “clientele.” As such, they demanded things, like less strenuous standards, not using snorkels (why use a snorkel with a dive boat right next to you and a Divemaster making sure you were happy?). @boulderjohn even forgot how to put together his scuba gear while headed for a dive, as the Divemaster would always before do that for him. PADI and many other dive agencies responded with simpler courses for these divers who were going to do dive travel. Manufacturers lightened their gear; regulators were made lighter for the first stage, and the second stage went to plastic from metal. (The use of plastics had several other desirable effects, in that better molding could be done for air flow, and plastic did not have the corrosive potential that even chrome-plated brass had.)

The easier courses also opened another opportunity for dive agencies—more advanced/specialized courses. Dive agencies began to see their courses as commodities, things that could be divided up and sold piece by piece. After reassembly, you had a complete diver. But the basic scuba course only took you so far in this business plan, and you needed “advanced open water” instruction too, plus other types of speciality courses. This sold more courses, more shorter, easier to take courses. So dive instruction became a “business plan” for those agencies, instead of a set of instructional foundations. And, divers became ever increasingly dependent upon dive tourism to fulfill their diving dreams.

I have never been on a live-aboard dive boat, nor have I taken a dive travel boat to a reef for scuba diving. I dive locally, and that includes the Oregon coast, Puget Sound in Washington State, and Oregon rivers. I started out snorkeling, and used to snorkel to spear fish in the Pacific Ocean (when I was much, much younger). So I know the value of snorkeling, and like I said above, use a snorkel on nearly every dive.

I have seen a lot of changes in the dive industry, but I must say that not all of them have benefited the divers themselves. Some were to benefit the agencies (keep them afloat), some to benefit the manufacturers (BCDs now cost more than a regulator).

SeaRat

You make some very good points, though I was not a diver prior to 2005 at age 51, so not a first hand observer of the changes that you've seen. Many from back then hold your same views.
I know that I did turn down doing a Discover Diving pool session when on a cruise boat in 1999, feeling it was nowhere near what I wanted to know to do scuba. And as stated, I was very comfortable in water since childhood.
I could not imagine diving once or twice yearly on a tropical trip, and have only done one week-long trip to Panama.
Most of my diving is local or day charters in the S. US, and aside from the Panama trip, no DM lead dives.
Constantly diving locally vs. being a "vacation" diver and thus a customer are two very different things as you point out.
What can you do, that's the way it is. There are many local divers here who do the stuff you talk of decades ago.

 

[John C. Ratliff]

I have a question for you instructors. Are the ditch and don techniques still being taught? I’ll explain my question a bit later, but I simply want to know whether this set of skills is still in the instructional toolbox. If not, why?

SeaRat

 

[TMHeimer]

As of 2015 (PADI) they were (on surface and at depth). I doubt it's been dropped.
I'm just referring to doff & don of the BC.