Is certification necessary for shallow water diving?

[thbcthomas]

I am not here to say it is not necessary to get certified, but I would like to have a discussion and hear other people’s opinions. Do you believe that from a safety stand point, it is necessary to get certified if you plan to stay in the 40 foot range? I know, “No shop will rent or sell you gear!”

My oldest son was certified at age 14, and the shop allowed me to be in the pool with him to observe. Needless to say I not was super thrilled at the extent of his training. No real work on buoyancy, just kneel on the bottom and clear your mask, remove your primary and grab your octo, take your buddies octo for out of air practice, etc… At that point I knew I was not comfortable with him doing deepish dives. I did take him to a pool we had access to, and we worked on his buoyancy, and after a minute his buoyancy was better than mine. Because I was not comfortable with his training, we have stuck to Blue Heron bridge and Lauderdale by the sea. In those very easy dives, he did great. Also the book work was not very through, mostly at home computer stuff. Dive tables were briefly looked over, and as we were looking over them with the instructor, I realized how little I remembered about them after my certification 20 years prior. The instructor did say something along the line of “Just get a computer and you won’t need to know the tables.” This shop is no longer open today. I feel as if I wasted money on his certification.

Part of the reason I ask is because I have friends that have shown interest in diving. I have allowed them to use my back up gear and we swam around in a pool. They did great, no problems at all. One friend and I went to a small private lake and swam around. He asked me, “Why should I spend $1,000 on certification when you have all the gear I need? Plus the computer tells me everything I need to know.”

Sorry for the late night ramblings, I am on some pain medications.

 

[tursiops]

A 10 foot dive will kill you if you hold your breath and ascend . Training -- thus certification-- helps prevent that.

 

[thbcthomas]

@tursiops Yes I totally get that, but does someone need to go through training and pay someone to tell them, “Don’t hold your breath.”?

 

[thbcthomas]

Also curious, how many divers posting on the board do not have a certification?

 

[iointerrupt]

Just imagine yourself on the witness stand of the wrongful death trial. "Yes I provided them with the SCUBA gear. No I did not provide them with three days of industry standard instruction. I told them to not hold their breath."

Certification isn't so much about teaching, as it is pushing liability around, ideally to someone with insurance.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

I am not here to say it is not necessary to get certified, but I would like to have a discussion and hear other people’s opinions. Do you believe that from a safety stand point, it is necessary to get certified if you plan to stay in the 40 foot range? I know, “No shop will rent or sell you gear!”

My oldest son was certified at age 14, and the shop allowed me to be in the pool with him to observe. Needless to say I not was super thrilled at the extent of his training. No real work on buoyancy, just kneel on the bottom and clear your mask, remove your primary and grab your octo, take your buddies octo for out of air practice, etc… At that point I knew I was not comfortable with him doing deepish dives. I did take him to a pool we had access to, and we worked on his buoyancy, and after a minute his buoyancy was better than mine. Because I was not comfortable with his training, we have stuck to Blue Heron bridge and Lauderdale by the sea. In those very easy dives, he did great. Also the book work was not very through, mostly at home computer stuff. Dive tables were briefly looked over, and as we were looking over them with the instructor, I realized how little I remembered about them after my certification 20 years prior. The instructor did say something along the line of “Just get a computer and you won’t need to know the tables.” This shop is no longer open today. I feel as if I wasted money on his certification.

Part of the reason I ask is because I have friends that have shown interest in diving. I have allowed them to use my back up gear and we swam around in a pool. They did great, no problems at all. One friend and I went to a small private lake and swam around. He asked me, “Why should I spend $1,000 on certification when you have all the gear I need? Plus the computer tells me everything I need to know.”

Sorry for the late night ramblings, I am on some pain medications.

So you are ok with losing your house and possibly going to jail when one of your friends has an embolism and dies in your pool?
That's one possible scenario of what happens when untrained people use your gear.
Yes, decades ago this is how people learned to dive. But many of them had backgrounds that aided in them understanding the risks or they were just very lucky. And they did it all on their own.
They weren't aided in their efforts by someone who obviously did know better but chose to put them in danger. And the first 30 feet is the most dangerous part of the water column because that's where the greatest pressure change ratio occurs.
People have embolized in less than 6ft.

 

[AJ]

@tursiops Yes I totally get that, but does someone need to go through training and pay someone to tell them, “Don’t hold your breath.”?

What you're actually saying imo is: the training is not worth the money because the instructor does'nt do his job right.

I would agree with that. The majority of dive instructors should do a better job. It's hard to find a really good instructor not knowing anything about diving.

 

[tursiops]

@tursiops Yes I totally get that, but does someone need to go through training and pay someone to tell them, “Don’t hold your breath.”?

Since people die without training ing, I'd say yes.

 

[CuzzA]

So you are ok with losing your house and possibly going to jail when one of your friends has an embolism and dies in your pool?
That's one possible scenario of what happens when untrained people use your gear.
Yes, decades ago this is how people learned to dive. But many of them had backgrounds that aided in them understanding the risks or they were just very lucky. And they did it all on their own.
They were aided in their efforts by someone who obviously did know better but chose to put them in danger. And the first 30 feet is the most dangerous part of the water column because that's where the greatest pressure change ratio occurs.
People have embolized in less than 6ft.

FWIW, your home in Florida is exempt from legal process, among other assets.

But I agree that it would be silly to take that risk for anyone. Go spend the money and get certified. If your friend can't afford it, then this activity certainly isn't for your friend.

 

[rfwoodvt]

Frustrated hearing the responses, "Liability! Liability! Liability!" If that is what we focus on then we will have a industry standard quality of training that is no different than the quality of "defensive medicine"; costs driven up, quality forced down, availability inhibited, and expenditure of most of the time/resources on the "just in case" crap at the expense of the critical stuff.

I have been a Safety and Technical trainer for over 40 years (12 in the fire service and over 30 in an industry in the top 3 most deadly). As such I have been forced to worry about "Billy-Bob got chopped up in the wood chipper because 'you' didn't tell him to not sit on the log as it went through. So you are responsible."

Consequently a lot of "training" is "do this, don't do that, and here's what's going to be on the test." All of that is probably good stuff to know. But none of it will be of any help when the shite splatters on the fan.

Sure we need to teach the fundamentals, the tasks, and the techniques. In fact we must hammer the fundamentals so that they become second nature. I always taught my lessons much like Lombardi did. He started each season by saying, "gentlemen, this is a football..."

But those fundamentals must also be learned within the context of critical thinking. Critical Thinking will help prevent most emergency situations, and allow the student to work through to a sane conclusion most emergency situations. Those fundies are the letter blocks we used to play with as a kid. if we collect enough of them we can "spell" any word we need at any given moment to address the immediate situation.

This is why in addition to the fundies we need to ensure the students learn the why and wherefore of what they are doing; this is content which is severely lacking in any training program. Far too many training programs will answer the why question with no answer other than, "because we/the book/the agency/the association said so." That right there is a greater liability to the student safety than anything else.

I do appreciate the standardized training offered in the underwater world, but I by no means equate it to qualification for anything. I think that the best it provides is helping students discover what they don't know so they can then further research and find the answers. Remember, a wise person knows what they don't know. Ergo, a thinking and seeking student will always be the safer practitioner of their craft.

So, back to the OP's question. would I "train" another diver to dive with me? Absolutely! But there is additional responsibility I must assume when I do so.

First, I must recognize that I don't know it all, despite my "certifications" and only train to that level for which I am competent in.

Second, the student's success, or demise, is squarely in my hands. If anything goes wrong, then I must be present and able to mitigate the situation and resolve it safely and successfully.

Third, I must impress upon them, and myself, that I have not qualified them for anything other than to dive with me under conditions similar to which we have trained (sound familiar!!) I must also hammer into them that I am in no way giving them a license to go off on their own without further training.

I can hear the protests now! But consider this, how many of us either started driving motor vehicles with a non-instructor, or have introduced someone to driving motor vehicles? Most of us wouldn't think twice about doing so, have done it multiple times, and would do it again. In fact, how many of us are self-taught in the art of not killing someone with a motor vehicle?

Have any of us taught a youngster how to use a knife? Axe? Cook stove? Firearm? Crossing a busy street? Of course! But we have also looked a potential student in such areas of study and said, "Oh hell, no."

Why should teaching someone to dive with you be so different?

Just my two pennies worth.