Is dive certification really necessary?

[Eric Sedletzky]

So, basically you give no trust whatsoever to the instructors? What's the point in having a trained instructor then? Just let the DMs teach the classes or the guy off the street with 40 dives.
And who is going to pay for the independent certifier? How would you schedule it for far flung areas? Oh I'm sorry Customer, though you completed the OW class, you have to wait until the 5th of next month because the certifier can only come once a quarter. Customer: But, my dive trip is in 2 weeks.

I have great trust in good instructors.
You hire an independent instructor with a good reputation and he will make sure you are well prepared to take your independent test. If he doesn’t do a good job preparing you he goes out of business in short order. Bad yelp reviews.

Plan ahead.
You pay a separate fee to the certification agency. You go online and set up your time slot and go do it.

 

[johndiver999]

Eric's perspective which (as he describes) is formulated from a history of freediving etc. is biased and inapplicable to a vast majority of people. It is only a very small minority who have all that in-water experience and comfort in the ocean.

Scuba diving training (and a good bit of the marketing) is intended for the 30 to 45 yr old who is average: fat, out of shape and not comfortable with water, let alone the ocean and all the waves, currents and animals. The training is formulated to accommodate people who have the most minimal of watermanship skills.

So it is not surprising that with a course that only takes a few days of "practice", the end result is often a certified diver who has a very superficial mastery of themselves in this foreign environment. It is unfair to directly compare some 45 yr old cube dweller from Chicago to a young, fit freediver who has been (free)diving hundreds of times and has acquired a depth of understanding and competence that can be earned only by having their azz handed to them several times by mother nature.

The training needs to be good enough to entice people to buy gear, trips and keep the government out of the regulatory environment as much as is possible. I think they are pretty much doing that now.

 

[BlueTrin]

Even if the certifications could be improved, maybe this allows various professionals to defer the responsibility in case of incidents and to be able to have insurances without the need to have additional regulations from the government ?

Without this, it would be harder for the professionals to operate ?

Maybe someone who is in the industry could give his opinion ?

 

[shoredivr]

I told my girlfriend that she should get her AOW when she needs to. So far nobody has told her she can't do a dive because she is only OW.

Here in Ontario in the cold Great Lakes you need at least AOW to do the wrecks deeper than 60 ft, most charter operators have this requirement.

 

[Jcp2]

Eric's perspective which (as he describes) is formulated from a history of freediving etc. is biased and inapplicable to a vast majority of people. It is only a very small minority who have all that in-water experience and comfort in the ocean.

Scuba diving training (and a good bit of the marketing) is intended for the 30 to 45 yr old who is average: fat, out of shape and not comfortable with water, let alone the ocean and all the waves, currents and animals. The training is formulated to accommodate people who have the most minimal of watermanship skills.

So it is not surprising that with a course that only takes a few days of "practice", the end result is often a certified diver who has a very superficial mastery of themselves in this foreign environment. It is unfair to directly compare some 45 yr old cube dweller from Chicago to a young, fit freediver who has been (free)diving hundreds of times and has acquired a depth of understanding and competence that can be earned only by having their azz handed to them several times by mother nature.

The training needs to be good enough to entice people to buy gear, trips and keep the government out of the regulatory environment as much as is possible. I think they are pretty much doing that now.

Hey, I’m older than 45! I resemble that remark very much!

 

[BlueTrin]

Hey, I’m older than 45! I resemble that remark very much!

You look in good shape in your profile picture

 

[Jcp2]

Angelina and I are working through some differences now.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Eric's perspective which (as he describes) is formulated from a history of freediving etc. is biased and inapplicable to a vast majority of people. It is only a very small minority who have all that in-water experience and comfort in the ocean.

Scuba diving training (and a good bit of the marketing) is intended for the 30 to 45 yr old who is average: fat, out of shape and not comfortable with water, let alone the ocean and all the waves, currents and animals. The training is formulated to accommodate people who have the most minimal of watermanship skills.

So it is not surprising that with a course that only takes a few days of "practice", the end result is often a certified diver who has a very superficial mastery of themselves in this foreign environment. It is unfair to directly compare some 45 yr old cube dweller from Chicago to a young, fit freediver who has been (free)diving hundreds of times and has acquired a depth of understanding and competence that can be earned only by having their azz handed to them several times by mother nature.

The training needs to be good enough to entice people to buy gear, trips and keep the government out of the regulatory environment as much as is possible. I think they are pretty much doing that now.

Sigh, yeah I guess so.
It’s ok then if rules get bent and standards get violated occasionally as long as everyone gets to have a good time and the revenue continues to come in.

Look on the bright side, at least there still is no scuba police.

 

[CycleCat]

On the bright side, at least there is still no scuba police.

Umm...

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

An OW certification is nothing more than a license to learn.

I'm not picking a fight with NAUI as I've heard this from instructors/divers from multiple agencies. The above statement sounds like a driver's permit to me. You can't actually drive, but you can learn to drive.

As I understand the WRSTC requirements, open water courses are supposed to create autonomous divers, one who can plan a dive in similar conditions to which they were trained. They are to be competent in planning dives, buoyancy (depth control), basic navigation, deploying a DSBM while neutrally buoyant without a significant depth change (couple feet at most), and can handle the basic emergencies for which they were taught to handle.

If they so wished, they could remain within the constraints of their open water certification and enjoy a lifetime of diving. At that level, there are enough dive sites throughout the world that even if they are teenagers, they will never run out of dive sites.

They will garner experience and create more muscle memory and develop situational awareness, but they won't learn much. And there is nothing wrong with that.

Some instructors/divers may take exception to the above, but that is exactly what I fundamentally strive for with my open water students (though my program is geared to those who wish to be cold water divers). To some degree I am frustrated by those who disagree, because it truly isn't hard.