If you were to redo the scuba industry how would you do it?

[drrich2]

I think we disagree somewhat. I believe buddy diving should be taught as sticking together within a diver-length or so of each other, reasonably vigilant and ready to assist. If two people want to dive "in the vicinity" of each other--maybe their goal is to be photographers--then I believe they should be taught that those dives are to be planned and executed as solo dives.

One or the other--solo diving or team diving--not a muddling of the two.

My issue with that is that it doesn't not reflect the reality of how many people dive. You've probably seen this scenario in Caribbean dive boat trips - the group plunges in, some people follow the group but aren't diving in close tandem with a single individual, and yet they're not carrying a redundant gas supply, etc...

On the other hand, they are with a group, it's likely they could reach someone in an out-of-gas situation, and they're not having to plan and navigate the dive independently. It's not solo diving.

I suspect there are 2 'chicken-and-egg' competing visions for what models ought to be taught in courses. One is what you describe - a theoretical ideal of how some think dives ought to be conducted (e.g.: strict buddy or solo, no in-between), the other what I've got in mind...looking at what mainstream divers commonly do, and crafting a model around that - 'normalizing the normal.' What I'd like to see isn't getting rid of the 2 models you mention, but covering a 3rd.

I have in mind a thread or two from the past where fairly new divers got on dive boats and were perplexed others weren't doing what they'd been taught in class to be normal - such as BWRAF. When what people are taught and what they see conflict, it can cause problems.

 

[scrane]

I don't see a big problem with the way things are now.
More rules and scuba police to enforce them? That system doesn't seem to work so great here.

"Do you know why I pulled you over?"
"Uhh...no."
"Diving without trim! Let me see your Shearwater."

 

[SlugLife]

Agreed. I'm not out to encourage people to head off solo diving right out of basic OW, but I'd like the buddy system seen as one of the risk mitigation strategies in the diver's tool box, not unlike carrying cutting tools, a redundant gas supply, a backup dive computer, respecting a 'hard' depth limit and avoiding overhead environments in light of your present training and experience level, etc...

So someone who wants to dive, oh, say, the house reef from the pier at Buddy Dive Resort is different from someone who wants to jump off a liveaboard and head off alone, away from the group. You assess the conditions, need for navigation vs. following a guide, etc... I expect buddy diving would still be strongly encouraged, but solo diving would be viewed as a logical, reasonable path for those who want to pursue it over time in suitable conditions.

---

I'd also like to see more formal recognition of the way buddy diving, and particularly group diving, happen in the real world. This vision of buddy diving as staying within 10 feet (or maybe arm's length) with tight coordination and frequent communication is not what consistently happens from what I've seen. I have no problem with people who want to dive that way with their likeminded buddies; I don't want the mindset imposed on everyone.

How many times when someone dies or disappears do we see 'Where was the buddy?' Then there are the anxiety provoking court cases where a buddy gets prosecuted because someone died.

I'd like to see a vision where the buddy is not your baby sitter or life guard, but someone diving in your vicinity with the same overall dive plan, willing to render aid if evident to him/her it's needed, and yet we live in an imperfect world - people get separated, one gets in the trouble and the other doesn't notice, etc..., and that's not negligent homicide.

100% Agreed. Specifically, I think 1) open-water courses tend to oversell the buddy system 2) fail to point out buddies may not be available for dozens of reasons and 3) that there are options for more redundancy and self-rescue that may be worth looking into.

So you think dive shops and agencies should offer courses for local conditions. They could call those courses "specialty courses." I am sure everyone would see those as good additions to training.

I'll speak for myself and not the other guy: There certainly is an issue in the dive-industry where agencies try to sell the need to get a certification for everything, including peeing in your wetsuit. (To apply some nuance to the discussion, some bad specialty courses don't make all specialty courses bad, nor do some good specialty courses alleviate criticism of other coures).

IMO, the "limited visibility" course I took was mislabeled, and should have instead been called something like "night/dark diving" because it didn't address murky water at all, which is a very, very, very common issue when diving locally or possibly many other places. Such a course could be valuable to divers, though I'd never suggest it should be required for local diving because most divers "just go up" if the visibility is too bad.

Some things I think may not even need to be an official course at all. I didn't really expand much on my idea earlier, but I think an "open source scuba training platform" could handle the basics of introducing people to the dangers and considerations of murky waters, currents, cold water, etc. Part of that may be introducing people to "why you probably need to take a class if you intend to do XYZ"

 

[lowwall]

When your skills are good are you are ready, you go to a separate certification agency that is for certification only and you go for your test. There is a pool portion, a written portion, and an open water portion. You book your appointment.
The testing is on a pass or fail basis and there is no cheating. Either you can do the skills and pass the exam or you don’t. And of course there is a fee for the cert test.
The employees of the cert agency are not affiliated with any if the scuba schools, the cert agency is completely independent.

FWIW, this is exactly how it is done for the certificates and ratings in aviation. Flight training is private, but the test is given either by an FAA employee or an FAA designated examiner.

One positive side effect of this is the feedback it provides of and to the instructors. If a student fails the exam due to poor performance of a particular skill, then the instructor knows he or she has to do a better job of imparting that skill. Also prospective students and employers can find out the failure rate of an instructor, which generally results in the poor ones either working to improve their skills or moving on to a different career.

 

[SlugLife]

@SlugLife several of the training agencies are already non-profit like gue/naui/cmas/bsac etc. being non profit doesn't exempt them from the same insurance and liability issues (although the EU/UK agencies have it a bit easier because its harder to sue there). and if you want scuba instruction to be a career or even at least a job rather than a weekend volunteer gig, club based diving isn't going to help.

open source would be even trickier than the current regime. how would you get ISO or similar certification to validate your training program and ensure instructors are following any standards when its a thousand headless chickens doing their own thing?

Using the word "non profit" in my post was a mistake. The idea of something being "non profit" is like saying something is "blue," it says almost nothing about what the thing actually is. The use of "open source" was an analogy. So, I wasn't being super-precise with my language.

The specific problem I'm looking at, is when looking at the price of most dive-classes locally, the training materials are about 40% of the price of the course itself. I'm not trying to fix every problem with the dive-industry.

The general idea is to have a "free collaborative training platform" where training materials are contributed to by the community, and may be freely used by all. The general goal being (1) a collaborative platform where the scuba-community builds a knowledge base and (b) cutting out the middle-men taking 40-50% of the price of certain classes.

As far as lawsuits, insurance, certifications, etc .... this idea isn't intended to replace everything that dive-agencies currently do. That's perhaps where "non-profit like gue/naui/cmas/bsac etc." come into play. (Perhaps some of those agencies do offer free training materials, and perhaps a better solution is for trainers to abandon PADI/SSI/etc)

 

[lowwall]

The specific problem I'm looking at, is when looking at the price of most dive-classes locally, the training materials are about 40% of the price of the course itself. I'm not trying to fix every problem with the dive-industry.

The general idea is to have a "free collaborative training platform" where training materials are contributed to by the community, and may be freely used by all. The general goal being (1) a collaborative platform where the scuba-community builds a knowledge base and (b) cutting out the middle-men taking 40-50% of the price of certain classes.

As far as lawsuits, insurance, certifications, etc .... this idea isn't intended to replace everything that dive-agencies currently do. That's perhaps where "non-profit like gue/naui/cmas/bsac etc." come into play. (Perhaps some of those agencies do offer free training materials, and perhaps a better solution is for trainers to abandon PADI/SSI/etc)

IFDI : Learn scuba diving

Learn scuba diving, easily and safely with IFDI: International Fun Diving Instructors. IFDI is a neutral and international diving organization, based on the international ISO standards which guarantee you high quality courses and a worldwide recognition.

www.ifdi.info

Their course materials do a surprisingly good job of paring the needed info down to the essentials. I'd suggest the Nitrox Diver if you want a quick example.

 

[boulderjohn]

I'll speak for myself and not the other guy: There certainly is an issue in the dive-industry where agencies try to sell the need to get a certification for everything, including peeing in your wetsuit.

This is one of the most misunderstood aspects of scuba training.

A dive shop/instructor sees a need or even a market for a course in their area. They create a course that covers it. They advertise it. They teach it. It is local.

What is the agency role in it? The agency reviews the course ahead of time to make sure every part of it is within the accepted guidelines of scuba instruction--nothing for which the shop/instructor could be held liable in case of an incident. Once they give it that endorsement, the shop/instructor can advertise that it is agency approved. The agency does not advertise it, and it receives no money other than the initial payment for the review and the cost of a certification card if the students chooses to get one. If the student does not choose to get a card, then the agency gets nothing out of it.

 

[Rick Brant]

So, maybe if more shops offered a "local orientation dive" program where you get an hour in the shop talking about local sites, conditions and area specific hazards, and then maybe a dive or two to get used to those conditions, it would help with getting in the water in new places and probably also generate some rental income for the shops.

This is a bread-and-butter offering from PADI already and is called Discover Local Diving. Basically certified divers that want to dive with a local Divemaster. In fact it is one of very few programs a DM can run. The "hour in the shop" generally takes place at the dive site and during the surface interval. It's a great option if you are new to an area or are a relatively new diver, or both.

 

[Bigbella]

Well, in terms of the shops themselves, and just for spitballing sake -- a total divorce from them being ersatz travel agencies, which of course, is not realistic, these days, with online, out of state or even country purchases having become so facile; and with profit margins on gear nowadays, anorexically thin.

I fully believe that service and instruction tended to suffer as a direct result of many shops being spread far too thinly.

When I first began, most dive shops had only offered simple classes, none of which offered patches for, say, garbage collection; just cheap-o rag-tag day excursions, in some psycho-killer panel van -- everyone pitching in for gas -- within a few hours or their place of business and certainly not multi-week, multi-thousand dollar trips to Cebu . . .

 

[lexvil]

Interest

Choosing skiing is a good analogy. I would point out that virtually every day at every resort, there are paid professionals employed by the resort who haul skiers down the mountain due to injury.

Backcountry skiing is a different story. The people who do rescue are more likely to be volunteers who mainly do corpse recovery rather than extricating injured people from the backcountry.

Climbing, both rock and ice, would be an even better analogy. Buy or rent gear. Go into the mountains with one or more people who don't mind a novice around and try your best. Hope you don't injure yourself before you realize how little you know. People do very unsafe stuff while climbing all the time. Some get away with it. Others don't and you end up reading about those folks in the annual "Accidents in North American Mountaineering" publication.

And what bureaucracy/agency did those victims have to engage before buying a lift ticket, rope etc. do ski resorts ask for certification?