Just like the tittle asks, is it?
I’m really starting to wonder.
Case and point.
I went diving with a guy several years ago that supposedly was certified and I ended up rescuing the him because of his gross incompetence. He was allegedly OW certified by his brother in law with a private class. Upon questioning him after the incident it was apparent the he knew next to nothing about basic scuba.
More recently, I met up with another friend of mine down in Monterey on a Sunday to do a congratulatory fun dive with him on the last day of his ocean dive portion of his OW class.
There were several things that either he forgot or never learned on his SSI class, like 15’ safety stop, water pressure and expanding gas laws, and a few other things.
This got me thinking, there really is no law that says you must be certified to go scuba diving. There are no scuba police, there are on scubaboard, but not out in the real world. It’s not like driving cars, flying planes, or cutting hair professionally.
The only thing that a person wouldn’t be able to do is get on a charter boat or dive at a resort, or some other commercial venue that requires proof of certification.
An individual could buy a full set of gear and in most cases get air fills, or buy their own compressor and be free to do as much private boat diving and or shore diving as they desire.
It is possible to read enough information in books like The New Science of Skin and Scuba Diving, plus other printed material and video’s online to glean all the information necessary to understand all the critical protocols to dive safely.
What is the difference between taking the course online and reading the info in a book?
The pool portion, what if a person was to do all the exercises and drills as outlined in the book as opposed to a class setting? The discipline needed to do the drills and not lying to yourself would be the thing. What if someone was exceptionally motivated and had the highest personal integrity to do it correctly, would it be as good or better than a class?
What about mentors? Not instructors, but mentors - peers that buddy with you and take you out to learn the ropes of real dives.
How many people have I seen that barely get by doing skills and this is in a class setting?
How many people have I seen getting answers wrong on the test but the instructor talks them past it and it gets marked as reviewed and they move on?
How many people have I seen pass a basic OW class that shouldn’t have?
Plenty in my opinion, too many.
Some were clearly not mentally and physically competent enough to be set free into the wild and expected to survive a basic OW dive on their own with a buddy, maybe on vacation with a divemaster holding their hand the whole time, but is this really the definition of an OW diver? I have a different description of what a “diver” is. To answer the question, no I have never seen anyone NOT pass.
So what is the point?
It seems to me that anyone determined enough to learn how to dive on their own, and is informed enough to know how to educate themselves enough to be able to do this activity safely would almost be in a better position.
What is lacking is an independent certifying agency that does tests only upon successful completion of the skills. They would not be affiliated with any dive shop or dive school. You learn how to dive either through a school or you can home school yourself. When you feel you can pass you go to the certifying agency and take both the written and in-water skills test for a fee. Upon successful completion they issue you a certification independent of any dive center or dive business/brand etc.
Think in terms of contractors licenses, drivers licenses, or a test only smog shop. These are “test only” type agencies.
In this case a “certification” would only be needed in cases for commercial passage.
I want to discuss this as a thought experiment.
I'm going to take this thread back to the beginning, and answer your question with my own experience. As a 13 year-old, my father took me to the Elsonor Theator, Salem, Oregon to see Cousteau's "
The Silent World." (They had a helmet diver manikan on a trailer outside the theator.) I then bought the book of the same name, and the next summer (1959) worked my tail off in the strawberry and bean fields to get the money to buy a scuba unit. I bought a 38 cubic foot tank, and tested several regulators before selecting the Healthways Scuba double hose regulator.
Now, I had been on the YMCA swim team in Salem, Oregon for several years, in age group swimming. I had gone through the YMCA lifeguard program there, and was becoming a WSI (Water Safety Instructor). I had spent hours in the water, and had been snorkeling with an oval mask, blue AMF Voit fins (modeled off the Churchill fins, but with an adjustable strap) and a snorkel. The snorkel had started out as a "C"-shaped snorkel, with the ping-pong ball in the top to stop it off when underwater. But at the YMCA Camp Silver Creek, where I actually used it in the water of Silver Creek's pond, I found that the ping-pong ball inhibited breathing, and so I cut the tube off to make it a J-shaped snorkel that I could easily clear. So I had several years of snorkeling before getting into SCUBA.
There were several of us interested is SCUBA, and so we formed a diving club, the Salem Junior Aqua Club, associated closely with the Salem Aqua Club, the only scuba club available at the time in the early 1960s. It was associated with Bob LaBarr's Salem Sporting Goods shop, where he had an air compressor and diving gear for sale along with the other hunting, fishing and camping gear. But, there was no instruction available.
So after our high school diving club had been diving for several years, we imported a diving instructor to teach us and certify us in diving. The instructor was Roy France, an LA County instructor who drove up to teach us from LA County. In April of 1963, he pool tested us. Our final exam for the pool test was to get out from under a gill net that he placed over me and my diving buddy, my girl friend at the time, Elaine McGinnis. After the net was over us, we as a buddy team had to untangle ourselves and get out from under the net. Our open water test occurred on the north side of Yaquina Bay, where we had to demonstrate to him our competence in the water, and also we had to do a free swimming ascent from about 30 feet of water.
The point I want to make is that we had three years of recreational diving before becoming certified. But also we were extremely competent in the water, on swim teams, and had lifeguard training as we undertook learning scuba diving. I read Cousteau's
The Silent World three times to understand the problems the Cousteau team had gone through, and had picked up a copy of
The New Science of Skin and Scuba Diving, which had the tables and the discussions of the physics and physiology of diving that we needed.
So I started scuba in 1958, in a pool, got into scuba in 1959, and was finally certified as a LA County diver under Roy France in 1963. Yes, properly motivated and water experienced people can become safe divers without being certified (just as J.Y. Cousteau, Frédérick Dumas, and the rest of his team did). But it takes work, it takes desire to learn (I'm still learning), it takes water experience, and snorkeling experience.
I went on to graduate from the U.S. Navy School for Underwater Swimmers and USAF Pararescue Transition School in 1967, and then in 1973 became a NAUI Instructor (#2710).
SeaRat
New Science003 by
John Ratliff, on Flickr
Willamette River Float 1-1-1962 by
John Ratliff, on Flickr
The Salem Aqua Club's & Salem Junior Aqua Club's New Year's float from Eola Bend to the bridge over the Willamette River at Salem, Oregon.
John on Willamette River New Year Float 1962 by
John Ratliff, on Flickr
Me and one of the Salem Aqua Club divers coming ashore in 1962, Salem, Oregon at New Year's Day. Note that this was before we were certified, and coming in, we were pretty cold too.
