Is guided diving bad for developing skills?

[victorzamora]

I don't think this is necessarily a cold vs warm water thing, and I don't think it's a matter of where you got certified. However, people that ONLY dive following guides have a different set of skills to be concerned about than people navigating for themselves. Let's take two rich couples that both retired 6 months ago and got certified at the same time by the same instructor in Cancun. They then moved, one couple moved to Bonaire, the other to Roatan. In Bonaire, they do 6 dives a week, they do all of their own navigation. In Roatan, they do 6 dives a week, but they follow the guide every time. Who will have better nav skills? Who will have better planning skills? It's likely that in 10 years they'll be equally competent, but I think that the learning curves vary.

As for cold vs warm water divers, I think there is some merit to diving in cold water as there is added complexity. If you get used to the increased complexity of the cold, the warm water will be simpler and safer. Another thing is that it takes more dedication to dive in cold water with low viz than it does to dive in perfect, tropical paradises. The kinds of divers that are most likely to work on perfecting their skills are the kind of people that would dive locally, despite bad conditions, to ensure their skills were perfected. I know that last sentence sounds circular, but it's really not.

 

[Diver0001]

(for tl/dr version skip to here)
Going from the specific to the general - and the questions I'm trying to ask: Is my experience typical for resort diving?

From my experience it is but it grows out of the expectations of dive guides based upon a LOT of exposure to divers who are asking them to take control.

I'm sure some dive guides are hopelessly stuck in the paradigm but not all are. A number of years ago I took a trip in Turkey were it is required to dive with a guide. I went on a boat with an instructor, a DM, and 4 or 5 OW divers. Due to logistics the choice of sites was pretty benign and I was paired up with the DM while the instructor took the rest. He asked me about my diving experience, which I told him and he literally said to me, "I'm not guiding anything. We'll plan these dives together" and we proceeded to plan and dive two excellent dives that day as buddies as opposed to customer/client.

I often have similar experiences when I dive with guides in Egypt. Some of those guys have WAY more dives under their belt than I do but I never feel like they're patronizing me or like I'm on a leash.

At other times I've dived in a group because it was convenient. In those cases I usually just do what everyone does and follow the leader. I'm happy some of the time, especially when I'm on vacation and I'm just there to look at the pretty fishes, that there is a guide out front leading the way through a site that I've never been on before so I can make the most of the limited time I have under water. Do I always stay at the same depth? No. Do I always follow like I'm attached with a rope? No. But I do appreciate the hard work DM's put in to take their clients out and show them the highlights day after day.

And don't forget, when you've made the same dive 700 times with tourists in tow... you're bound to get a little mechanical about it. DM's are human beings... believe it or not... and even the ones who live to dive will eventually get in a rut.

Is this kind of guided diving bad for the divers themselves? Should - in a nonexistent, idealized world - guides demand more from their customers, or is (figurative) hand-holding good enough?

Few certified divers are *really* divers... meaning that few have diving as the main or most important hobby. Most learn to dive because it's on their bucket list or they want to dive in God's aquarium when they're on vacation. These divers have neither the interest nor a particular need to become fully independent. The market isn't like this because of DM's expectations. The market is like this because of *customer* expectations, and I believe that DM's do what they believe is expected of them.

Are there niches that are not being filled? Absolutely. But if 80% of your clientele expect hand holding... then you hold hands.

Should resort/vacation divers - in a nonexistent, idealized world - work with themselves and/or the dive operators to develop independent skills, or is just following the guide's instructions good enough?

Good enough for the reasons I gave above. There is a caveat to this, however, that the diver must remain realistic with him/her self with respect to what this mode of diving means to, in particular, their ability to plan and navigate a dive without help. A muscle that is never used (and was probably not very strong coming out of OW training to begin with) will atrophy. As long as everyone is clear about this and the divers who decide to transition from under water tourists to pick up diving as their main hobby understand that while certain skills may be well developed that others are not, then it's all good.

I really don't know. I know that I wouldn't be comfortable doing only "trust me" dives with a guide taking the lead, but I get the impression that quite a few divers are. Am I right?

I don't see guided dives as trust me dives necessarily. Trust me dives has more of a connotation of a dive beyond familiar boundaries without prior training or being fully aware of the risks involved. Following a guide around doesn't strike me as being that.

R..

 

[LowVizWiz]

I learned on my knees, in warm water and it's been a long time since I purposely touched the bottom to do anything underwater. But my own inquisitive nature and observation lead me to improve my skills very much like the op is trying to do.

In every activity there are those who are passionate, who go all in and like to excel at it. While there are others who are fine with "checking it off" the list and say, "I did it." Unfortunately, most divers IMO are in the second group and as long as they can splash in the ocean every now and then, they are happy where they are because it serves them just fine to do what they are doing. To me it only becomes an issue when they are trampling over and destroying the environment or ruining my dive or my group's dive.

To the op, as far as guided dives go, this mentality is what gets people in trouble...

If you're following a guide, you don't need to worry about planning, navigation...

Going on a guided dive does not mean you get to turn off your common sense filter! I go on plenty of guided dives and you better believe I'm planning my own dive and my plan will take over the moment the guide's plan considerable deviates from his briefing.

You can improve your skills from a guided dive. How much so however, depends on the guide skills and how far along your skills are.
To me it's fun to befriend them and pick their brains before and after the dives about the particular site and or guiding in general. You can usually try to emulate what they do and see how you do. Or try to make your dive last longer than theirs, they love THAT!

 

[The Chairman]

Going on a guided dive does not mean you get to turn off your common sense filter! I go on plenty of guided dives and you better believe I'm planning my own dive and my plan will take over the moment the guide's plan considerable deviates from his briefing.

I loved your entire post, but this bears repeating, bears repeating. Remember Giligan? We had a safe dive in spite of that DM. http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/ba...your-charter-gilligan.html?highlight=gilligan

 

[TSandM]

Just to comment on the topic that was brought up a ways back . . . I don't at all mind doing a guided dive, so long as the guide leads a dive I want to do. In other words, if the guide is content to let us move slowly and take pictures, and spends time finding interesting stuff that we might have missed on our own, I'm quite happy to paddle along behind him. If, on the other hand, the guide is moving at warp speed and I have to spend the whole dive watching him for fear he'll disappear, it's not quite as pleasant an experience.

Having good skills doesn't ruin the fun of a guided dive. It enhances it. And guides can sometimes make a HUGE difference in how much you get to see.

 

[SanDiegoSidemount]

I think the broader question is: how does any diver go about improving their skills and self sufficiency in a safe manner? And as a guide, divemaster or instructor, how do you encourage this in the people you guide and/or teach? (@Diver0001 cites some good examples above.)

This comes up for me a lot, because I have decades more diving experience than my wife and son do. I am pretty much the only buddy that either of them dive with, and I have no doubt that if they had their way, neither of them would ever improve at dive planning, or navigation, or gas management, or ever practice any safety drills.

In essence, every dive they do is a guided dive, so it annoys them to no end that I don't let them off the hook. I signal "out of air" at least once every dive so we can do a safety drill. I shrug my shoulders as to which direction the boat might be. I lie about my gas pressure to see if they get concerned. I hang back and have them lead the team. I stop swimming and see how long it takes for them to notice. I do stop short of doing anything nasty: they're not taking a class from me, so I'm not going to close a tank valve or rip off a mask.

And yes, sometimes I just do all the planning and guiding. But I realize that when I do this, I'm not serving them in the long run.

Admittedly, I'm a hardass. The stuff I do wouldn't be acceptable for a DM or guide to do in a professional setting, with a group of divers they just met. However, I'm curious what other experienced divers do to help others advance their knowledge and skills outside of a class setting. In short, what sorts of things should any experienced diver be doing to mentor other divers?

As others have mentioned, just because a dive is guided doesn't prevent you from improving your knowledge and skills, but it's up to your guide to make it so.

 

[Mike]

. And so I asked the question. I honestly hope that if I become a super-ninja diver I am still able to enjoy being led around by a divemaster over a tropical reef. One thing that gives me hope is something I recall TS&M having mentioned about being a skilled diver: it actually makes diving more fun by letting you focus on the objective of your dive.

The answer if of course no, unless you take a proactive approach by actively seeking the better dive operators in a location that cater to more experienced divers. These dive operators can recognize better divers and don't have a one size fits all approach of dumbing everything down to the weakest link in the chain.

 

[geoff w]

I originally got certified in southern California before going on a warm tropical vacation, which included some diving. For much of my early dive career, I was a vacation diver who happily followed dive guides. Through a combination of good training and interest, I became a decent diver and was usually put into the advanced group on guided vacation dives. I only occasionally did local diving and couldn't really navigate to save myself. For the most part, the guided vacation dives I was on were pretty good, although a few stand out as having horribly incompetent and/or dangerous guides. I was never particularly confident in my ability to go out on my own for local fun dives, and didn't really start building reliable local dive buddies until I took the rescue diver class a few years ago. After a particularly bad guided dive experience in Fiji after taking the rescue diver class, I decided to take the DM class. Now I dive locally all the time, lead people on dives, but will still go on guided dives when on vacation with my wife.

Here's what I found over the years - vacation spots tend to attract vacation divers, so you get a lot of divers who only dive occasionally and don't have the sharpest skills; holiday seasons in popular, easily accessible tropical locations tend to accentuate the number of vacation divers with poor skills. Diving regularly, whether in warm or cold water, improves skills and comfort level, and diving with good divers who set an example of what to do definitely helps improve skills. I've been with dive guides who are great divers and have helped me improve my skills, but have seen others who are terrible. If you're a good diver, most guided dives will cut you more slack than divers who need remedial help and constant supervision. If you get a sketchy dive briefing that doesn't talk about navigation, gas management, etc, it's up to you to ask the dive guide specifics, both for your own self preservation and to show you realize you need to manage your own dive first and foremost

I've got dive buddies I lead around all the time on fun dives, some are more experienced than others, but over time I see everyone improving in their dive skills. Some are swift enough to observe and try to do things better, others need a bit more nudging to improve skills like time and buoyancy. A lot of it boils down to the individual diver and how self motivated they are to improve, as compared to reaching a basic skill level and being happy with that. The one skill that doesn't seem to improve as much on guided dives is navigation - unless you actively pay attention to your compass and underwater topology and natural navigation

When I lead guided dives, I generally don't have very expectations for the divers in the group. I don't think you can generalize that cold or warm water divers are better than others. It boils down to individual experience and skills. There's absolutely nothing wrong with being a diver who is happy just going on guided dives - the whole idea is for diving to be an enjoyable sport, and there are plenty of people out there who can be moderately competent divers just following someone else around. As you noted yourself, other divers want to get more out of the sport than that

 

[scubastevecolorado]

Is my experience typical for resort diving? Is this kind of guided diving bad for the divers themselves? Should - in a nonexistent, idealized world - guides demand more from their customers, or is (figurative) hand-holding good enough? Should resort/vacation divers - in a nonexistent, idealized world - work with themselves and/or the dive operators to develop independent skills, or is just following the guide's instructions good enough?

I really don't know. I know that I wouldn't be comfortable doing only "trust me" dives with a guide taking the lead, but I get the impression that quite a few divers are. Am I right?

It's probably a bit of an over-generalization to say ALL resort diving is like what you experienced. My own experiences; however, reflect yours. Consequently I look for operators that cater to more advanced divers.

SCUBA is like any other recreational activity and I think it's important to recognize and accept that some divers will only get in the water once every few years when they can travel somewhere sunny & warm. I have a couple that does exactly that but they come in like clockwork for SCUBA Skills Updates before they go. I wish they'd dive more but kudos to them for doing the SSU!

Individuals will make their own choices about what kind of divers they want to be. As dive professionals I think we need to provide them a solid rationale and be the best examples we can to show the benefits of staying engaged with the sport on a more regular basis.

Do guided dives enable infrequent divers to rely too heavily on the guides? I think so. Is that bad? It isn't my preference. Consequently I enjoy locations like Bonaire where you just go. Does it mean I don't like guided dives? No! I was in Turks last year and went with a group on a few boat dives. I just set my expectations on 'sit back and enjoy the ride' and had a absolute blast! Every dive I've ever been on has had moments where I could have stayed longer, gone deeper, had a different light, brought a camera... more importantly though, every dive is a fantastic experience in its own right. I try to enjoy any time I get in the water rather than regret and resent what could have been.

 

[iluvtheocean]

a resort dive guide and a private dive guide hired thru a charter, shop, or off SB are not necessarily all the same too. Ask the guide how they are going to be doing the dive and where... for example a few of the guides around here prefer to go slow -- you see more and they can point out a lot of stuff that you'd miss otherwise - the little stuff, not all the fish which you can see anyways. A resort guided dive - still should ask questions so you know what to expect.