Is dive certification really necessary?

[Celt]

Have you worked in heavy industry at all?

I’ve worked and played underwater for 50 years and I know a diver when I see you long before he opens his mouth or shows me a card. The man or woman that has put in the effort and served their time to their sport or profession are the ones who excel at it.

 

[Celt]

I would do the same. You're not a typical scuba student. I'm not a typical scuba student.

Why would we expect scuba courses to be designed for the 1% of divers who think the way people on SB think?

But is Eric right and the system is excluding a lot of people and an independent test would allow them to holiday at dive resorts

 

[AfterDark]

"Is dive certification really necessary?"

Legally necessary? No, not in the vast majority of political subdivisions around the world.

Do smart people get trained? Yes. Emphatically yes.

Do smart people need certification even though they have been trained by a competent individual? No. Depending on the diving a person does, certification is not necessary at all.

If @Akimbo trained me to dive, I wouldn't give a crap about having a c-card.

Except, for my type of diving, there is a strong agency bias against non-conformity. A diver who deviates in attitude, gear, and gear set-up is given the stink eye. I must have certification that exceeds the planned diving that we are accomplishing in order to avoid negative attitudes from my juniors.

cheers,
m

Really? You really dive with people that give you that kind of grief? What a great reason to solo dive! I'd tell'em to kiss my a$$ and bug off!

 

[Antonios (Holy Diver)]

I guess it's time to dust off this classic.

Man, this was epic...Thank God my coffee cup was on the table and not on my lips...

 

[TuckerIdaho]

I have told this story before, about an uncertified diver in 1967. I heard it from the diver himself a few years ago.

He was on a dive boat preparing for a week of exciting diving in Australia in 1967 when the captain asked everyone for their certification cards. He did not have one. He explained to the captain that his father had taught him to dive when he was 7 years old, and he had completed thousands of dives since then. The captain was adamant. It was a matter of his liability. No C-card--no diving. Period.

Crew members talked to the captain, begging him to make an exception in this one case, and the captain finally relented. As soon as he was back in the USA, the diver went to a nearby PADI office and got OW certified. He has carried that C-card in his wallet ever since, just to make sure he doesn't have to go through that again.

His name is Jean-Michel Cousteau, who at age 7 became the second human being to dive with a Cousteau-Gagnon regulator.

And now he has a PADI op in Fiji....

 

[boulderjohn]

And now he has a PADI op in Fiji....

He's had it for quite a while. It was the beginning of his falling out with his father.

 

[kelemvor]

Well my opinion is surely to be unpopular here, as scubaboard seems to have an abundance of people who make their money on diving related stuff (usually selling certification cards, and sometimes training associated with that sale).

I think the current system is broken. So badly that it's comical. Just like Gusteau says, anyone can dive. It's unfortunate that instructors spread the misinformation that a certification is required to go scuba diving. Still, government issued licensing would be even worse.

The only area I strongly believe some sort of regulation would be beneficial is the Agency -> Rep (aka instructor) relationship. Agencies should be held 100% responsible for the actions of their reps. Putting that in place would cause the agencies to police their own reps, and at least you'd have greater consistency.

I think that's more of a business thing than a scuba specific one. If a tire kingdom mechanic puts tires on my car incorrectly causing injury I'm going after tire kingdom rather than billy mechanic. The ability to do that is part of the reason you choose to do business with big companies in the first place.

 

[boulderjohn]

The only area I strongly believe some sort of regulation would be beneficial is the Agency -> Rep (aka instructor) relationship. Agencies should be held 100% responsible for the actions of their reps. Putting that in place would cause the agencies to police their own reps, and at least you'd have greater consistency.

That raises an interesting question about how that could be handled. After the much-maligned Dan Carlock decision, agencies have been scrambling to make sure people know that they are not "agencies" in the legal sense of the term, and their instructors are not their agents, and they have no control over their daily work. In that case, two people who had PADI DM certification but were not working as DMs failed to notice a diver was missing when they called the roll for their dive club, and PADI was successfully included in the lawsuit because they had PADI certifications.

The agency is something like a college, but with an important difference. If someone graduates from college and then goes out and commits some offense while working for a company, the college is not blamed for it. The difference is that with an agency, there is a continuing relationship in that the instructor must pay dues, is supposed to follow specific guidelines for instruction, and can be punished if those guidelines are not followed. The agency does not, however, control the daily conditions of the instructor's employment. If a dive operation tells an instructor to violate certain standards as a condition of employment, the agency would not even know that is happening.

As was stated earlier, fully monitoring individual instructor behavior would be incredibly expensive and would probably not be effective. In the world of education, teachers are monitored by administrators in the same building with them, and those administrators have complex requirements to monitor and evaluate those teachers. Despite this, pretty much every school in the nation has some terrible teachers.

Finally, I would like to return to the Dan Carlock case. The agency that had certified them was determined to be 100% responsible for the behavior of two people who were not working for them. They were not officially working at all. IN that case, PADI was the only certifying agency. I have certifications from 6 agencies. Which one would be 100% responsible for my conduct when I am not working for any of them?

 

[kelemvor]

As was stated earlier, fully monitoring individual instructor behavior would be incredibly expensive and would probably not be effective.

I'm sure there would be many tall hurdles to overcome. Such a thing would cost money, the more agents an agency has then the more it will probably cost. That of course would have the likely consequence of the agency getting a handle on the meat and the fat so to speak. They will trim the fat both to protect themselves and to limit cost. It will never happen unless the agencies are forced to do it. If a law were put in place, the agency would find a way to make it work.

Such a thing would eventually benefit the larger agencies like PADI and NAUI. It would mean higher operating costs which limits who can afford to start/own a certification agency.

One problem I have in equating agencies to schools is that most access points are also controlled by the agencies. Access points being shops that sell scuba stuff/air fills. Boating operations that will sell a diver a ride to a dive site (and maybe provide a guide in the water depending on local custom). Not so with schools. When you get a masters degree from Harvard, you're done with Harvard. When you get a C-card from PADI, you're still having to go through padi (more or less) to buy air or buy a seat on a boat. Boat going to an AOW site but you're not AOW? No problem! We also sell these handy dandy AOW cards/training.

Another problem I have in equating agencies to schools are the requirements. To become a scuba instructor you need 6 months or so in training. If the stories I read on SB are true, a lot of that training is focused on being a salesman. Compare that to the requirements of becoming a teacher where the bare minimum is 6 years in college with many completing the full 8 year program.

I think I could feel a lot better about the current situation if charter boats (and dive shops and other types of agents) were prevented from being in cahoots with an agency. Unless that agency also regulated the charter boat in the same manner I'm suggesting they regulate other agents of the agency.

 

[captain]

With an insatiable apatite for diving and the sea from a young age I read every book I could find about diving. At age 13 I got a two hose regulator and tank, already had mask, fins and snorkel. My older brother was married and had a pool and I practiced everything I read in the books. I began going to a local lake diving alone.
Later in my twenties I got a boat which expanded my access to other areas. I dove this way for 13 years. I dove solo most of my life simply because when I started there were no other divers around. By then it was becoming apparent that I would eventually have to get certified to be able to dive places outside of my local area. I got YMCA certified in 1970, only card I have.
I bought a compressor and always owned a boat. I have had very little need for dive shops or instruction.
Now at 76 I no longer have a boat, too much work and up keep but still have a compressor.