Let The revolution Begin!

[rjens]

Nobody stops me from going down a black diamond ski hill. Even if doing so might be suicidal at my skiing skill level.

Question, who is stopping me from downloading VPlanner, sling mounting a couple of AL80s and diving to 200+ feet off Monastary Beach (depth 100yds off shore is over 2000fsw, on the west coast you don't need a boat to get really deep).

You guessed it -- I do. The same persion that keeps me from skiing black diamond runs (I am a horrible skier, I would have a better chance surviving a 200' dive then I would a black diamond run).

My point, and I believe we are in agreement on this, is that training is about passing skills and knowledge from one person to another. One of the most important pieces of knowledge that a scuba instructor "should" pass along to their student is a clear understanding that this sport has a level of danger involved and that their training had limits and that they need to practice within those limits until they receive more training (regardless of certification level).

As you have probably figured out, I believe that I had a good basic instructor (notwithstanding the 3 day wonder nature of my OW cert card -- feel free to shake your head in disgust if you want). One of the reasons I feel this way is because he was very clear with his students the limits of their training and that our C card was more comparible to a driving learners permit than a license (his position -- not PADIs). This was fine for me, what I wanted was an introduction to the sport -- I really didn't care about the C card at the time. That said, I am nowl looking for an instructor that will help me reach the next skill level. Until I find one I will keep practicing what I have learned.

So when you start teaching your advanced class that encompasses Excellent Survival, Navigation, Nitrox, Bouyancy & Trim, Theory, etc. Please PM me and if I still feel I need more training I may be one of your students -- at least if it is offered out my way.

 

[Genesis]

Question, who is stopping me from downloading VPlanner, sling mounting a couple of AL80s and diving to 200+ feet off Monastary Beach (depth 100yds off shore is over 2000fsw, on the west coast you don't need a boat to get really deep).

You guessed it -- I do. The same persion that keeps me from skiing black diamond runs (I am a horrible skier, I would have a better chance surviving a 200' dive then I would a black diamond run).

My point, and I believe we are in agreement on this, is that training is about passing skills and knowledge from one person to another. One of the most important pieces of knowledge that a scuba instructor "should" pass along to their student is a clear understanding that this sport has a level of danger involved and that their training had limits and that they need to practice within those limits until they receive more training (regardless of certification level).

There is more than one way to progress in any sport.

You can buy more training, yes. Or you can learn on your own.

The latter is often more rewarding, it is always more personal, and it usually leads to better comprehension of what works and what doesn't. It can also get you killed or hurt, of course - but then so can "instruction" where it doesn't "sink in" because of style differences or other issues.

It is entirely possible to teach yourself how to dive. People have done it for a LONG time. "Certification" is relatively new. As I've noted here, one of my regular spearfishing dive buddies is self-taught, and while he may be kinda ugly underwater, he sure as hell brings home the fish. He has no logbook - I suspect the reason being that he has no idea how many thousands of dives (literally) he has under his belt. He does deco too, sometimes, when the chase is worth it and the gas plentiful. I've yet to see him have a problem underwater.

Now would I grab some 'Mix and head to the Doria? No. I know that I'm not ready. I may never be ready. But should I be prevented from doing so, if I'm insane enough to want to?

No once again.

What worries me is people who take an AOW class and suddenly they're a "deep diver." Narcosis is real. Not being able to stop, think and then act underwater is real.

Not being able to deal with the FACT that underwater there is only one real emergency - being out of breathing gas - when the water turns brown will get you hurt or killed. The "big deal" about truly learning to dive is realizing that all other issues are not reasons to have a freak attack underwater; they are all issues to work, but are not emergencies. There is only one emergency - OOA. Everything else is a situation. Once you truly understand this and get past the "fight or flight" reflex, the rest is logic. The environment you intend to dive in defines the rest of the game - what you must take with you, how you must dive, when you must turn - all in pursuit of insuring that the one true emergency - an OOA - does not occur.

So far, other than my OW class, which actually taught me a few things, every other certification card I hold has been a joke. AOW and even Rescue. The only useful part of Rescue was the requirement to retake my CPR/EFR class, which has changed somewhat since the last time I had it (a long time ago!) - specifically, I got to play with an AED - not that I couldn't have figured it out (the silly thing TALKS to you!) without the class.

I don't claim to be an "uberdiver" or an "expert." I never will - I'm not the type of person that a Sheck Exley was, and never will be. I have no need to see "the end of the line", or to see how deep I can go and return still breathing.

I do know how to dive a drysuit, and do so. I taught myself; I know how to recover from a runaway ascent, a feet-up profile, and the emergency means of stopping both - hint: you'll get COLD! I do decompression diving - again, taught myself. I studied a lot, started with very, very light exposures, and still, by many people's standards, do "weenie" deco - so far, so good. I taught myself how to dive doubles, how to rig the hog harness, how to route and deploy a 7' hose and WHY you want one, how to rig my own bungied backup, neutral buoyancy, proper trim, and how to kick so as not to roil the water - including backing up, which I can kinda do. I learned along the way that there are places where you'd like to back up but can't due to limited leg room too! (guess how I found THAT out! )

I also taught myself how to spearfish, where to shoot, how to string 'em and what NOT to do in that sport. Some of those lessons were taught underwater by the fish.

I taught myself how to penetrate wrecks and get back out. I read much material on penetration diving, the cardinal rules, and why they're important. Did a lot of thinking about all that. Did a lot of "weenie" penetration dives where I still could see light, and knew where the exit was. Going 300' back into a cave - or ship - doesn't bother me now. I'm well aware that if I screw up I'm dead - so I endeavor not to screw up. So far, so good - but I've taken it SLOWLY rather than quickly, and don't break the rules. The rules are all designed to do one thing, really - insure that you don't have the dreaded OOA.

I've taught myself how to blend mixed gas, how to O2 clean my own gear, how to rebuild a regulator, and how to run my own fill station. I have neither blown myself up or had a failure (yet), so I must be doing SOMETHING right.

It isn't that hard, IF you pay attention, study the available material, do things gradually rather than tackling them head-on all at once and take your time.

After all, you DO like to dive a lot, right?

So what use are the cards?

None at all, really, other than "buying" admission to some places I'd like to go. Its a tax system, its corrupt, and it needs to go away.

 

[GDI]

So because the existing concerns may not be corrected do we start from the bottom up with a slow arduous task of building a new agency? Selling it on it's merits attempting to prove that it is the better way to learn. Giving it all the same tools and avenues as any existing agency to generate interest in diving and the pursuit of a higher standard and safer divers? We will not please all but can we improve the future majority?

Note that in the world of scuba diving there are few laws that say you need a certification to scuba dive. Try diving in a FL. state park carrying lights if you are not a certified cavern/cave diver - there is reason for these laws. For general scuba diving there are no scuba police out there. No certification required. I care about the sport and the people who enjoy it. I care about the water. If you wish to learn diving on your own go for it. If you decide not to use the experiences and lessons learned of others go for it again. After all there is only one true emergency -OOA. Like driving your car you only need to keep checking the fuel gauge and you should make it to your destination. I hope you have fun in your travels because that is what scuba diving is all about - fun and exploration.
We have talked about buoyancy and trim (I agree). The need for resort classes (again I agree they are important). The issues of 3 day wonder certs (quicker cheaper). Diver's attitudes (safety, improvement and awarness). I'll remember these things. It will matter not what certification a diver has or what level they are certified to. It will not matter what agency from whom they received their certification. It will not matter if they are certified. It will not matter the next time I am called to make a recovery. People will be people and these things will always happen, but at least I and a few others want to make a difference. I need not be rich to be successful I need only to do what I enjoy doing.

 

[Genesis]

Maybe.

Or maybe we put together an entirely different paradigm than the current one.

 

[samsp]

I took one of the cheap resort courses, and loved it. It was a good introduction to scuba diving, the key word there is introduction. At the end of that course I think customers are in one of several mindsets:
* They don't like diving, didn't enjoy it - dweeb should be safe, they'll stick to swimming and snokeling.
* They now think that they know everything - hopefully Darwin's law will take care of them in the long run, and pray you don't have him/her as a buddy in the mean time.
* Those that were awe struck by the potentail of diving, know that they have had an introduction, realize that there is much more to this sport and want to learn more. Its this category that I think the courses / instruction needs to be improved more. They want to learn more, they want to become good safe divers, they just need more help doing it.

I don't think that the open water courses are going to change. They are going to be a basic introduction. In hindsight, I would have liked a more thourough, longer, better OW course, but without having ever tried diving, its a big commitment. People need something approachable so that they can get a taste and get hooked. Hopefully as part of that course, the customers learn about both the dangers and potential of diving.

The way to make this profitable is to use the OW as a loss leader, kind of like razor blades. If the course/instructor is good, then the students will come back for more. They'll be hooked and they will want to learn more. They will realize that by having better bouyancy they'll have more fun, breath less air and have better visibility. They'll learn that to be warmer, you need to wear a drysuit, but there are procedures that you need to learn. They'll know about deco problems, and that you need to learn more than the basic tables.

Crack dealers know how to get their customers addicted, the key is to get customers comming back for more. If the initial diving instruction is done right, the students will be comming back for more, and will be prepared to pay for the time/effort/cost that is needed to become good divers. The expectations in the OW just need to be set right.

I think the solution is not a new agency, but some tweaking of the existing OW course, and better intermediary instruction.

 

[truva]

The only reason I have a C-card is to get air and get on other peoples boats. I learned nothing in the OW class I had that I hadn’t already known from learning how to do it as a kid of 14 with a magazine, a library book or two and some junk. I watched quite a few people get convinced that they would die if they did <insert bad thing here>, this made for a few very stressed out students. The only ones that were not scared to death were tuned out and just wanted their cards. With the current system we have now (Instructors work for or own dive shops) everyone gets certified…

Any class should cover the basic physics involved, for the obvious reasons, and then should concentrate on making people feel at ease in the water. Stress is the major contributing factor of accidents in basic open water diving. While it would be nice to teach buoyancy control and some other skills, you cannot do this in a class of the cost and length that would be acceptable to people that have lives and want to learn to day for their next vacation.

Teach a student to be comfortable and that whenever they feel stressed to remember to “stop, breath and think” and that what they now have is a license to learn.

Truva

 

[NAM001]

for what it is worth, i think that the training curriculum that ihas been talked about is great, how ever who has the time to do it. in the military , it is your job and you train 8 hours a day for the duration of the course. i haveing been an instructor (not scuba but the principles are the same) am reminded of someting called primacy. those instructors now what that is. taking someone from ow through nitrox and beyond, is too much. unless you can get an environment that you can dedicate 8 hours per day for for several days close enough together so you will not suffer with the forgetting stuff syndrone. you can take the test but will you answer from deap seated experience or accepted theory? with that comes the other problem. train experience learn train experience learn train experience learn. when you do non stop pipeline training, you train , get exposure, learn short term. with the exiting systems (whose quality i am not qualified to debate), alows one to over a period of time to experience the the result of attended training. remember drivers ed the road rash movies? the best part of the class. not till you see it for real and up close that the learning actually takes place. you come across an accident and you leave the area driving the speed limit instead of over. those who are truck drivers can develope a driving course to take you from skateboard to tandom in just 6 weeks. the trouble is there is no time to really apply and learn through time and experience from it. take any truck driver and put them through the training and they will so fine. some one who has never drove before will be pushed too fast to get full benifit from the training. if i only had a way to be part of the real world when i was 16 i would have had a greater understanding of the value of high school english history ect. AT LEAST I COME OUT OK IN THE GRAMMER AND SPELLIN AND PUNTUATING AREAS.

personally i think that there shold be a division between intro and advanced. ow and aow in one course. all nitrox , perhaps tri , decon, rescue, and stuff that is not overly unique to require a separate course in another. there is probably not anything more dangerous than a new grad at any level trying to prove that limits dont apply to him. if that were not true then why do most of the highway deaths involve such a large percentage of youth. could it be they lack experience and are testing limits.
there are not too many real dangers in the ow waters. caves and 150' wrecks are something else. the aow limits and below are new worlds and the game changes. mr newby nitrox armed with a calculator, attempting to self learn doubles with a split manafold of using 36 and 21 air going to 150' to see what he can see is going to get himself hurt so i agree that teaching groups of courses together is very valuable. you only retain 10-15% of what is presented. 90% of what you experience. part of the problem is folks are saturated with info and can not attach relevance to it. time between courses allows one to gain appreciation for the for the do's and dont's that the course taught. not till you get tangled in a line or loose a tank from the bc can you really understand the need for a buddy. that can not be learned over a lunch period and a couple of dives in a pool.

iam not a dive nstructor or will i probably ever be. my only qualification in this is being on the student end too many times with an instructor who is overly familiar with his subject area that he transfers his understanding to the student and teached acordingly. boy is it fast. as an instructor i know how easy it is to loose someone in a heart beat r become the afore mentioned instructor. those with experience (earned their prereq's over time) did not have this problem. the pipeliners did. worse yet were those pipeliners that did keep up at the expence of purging what they learned in the prior sessions. there are all combinations of instructors and students. too often when all is said and done, you have to retrain the the basics because time was not beed afforded to reinforce those skills through repitition and real world experience before piling on more. the instructor at my lds is always training. just be there when a rescue class is in the water and you are part of the class learning a new skill with them or getting the opportunity to check your profiency.

for what it is worth.

KWS

 

[RiverRat]

personally i think that there shold be a division between intro and advanced. ow and aow in one course. all nitrox , perhaps tri , decon, rescue, and stuff that is not overly unique to require a separate course in another.
KWS

Some more good points. I too am looking at this from "the student perspective" but even my instructor stated that AOW should be OW2, a continuation. Don't get me wrong. Deep dive to 60' feet in the quarry was great. It turned pitch black, was barely 50 degrees and taught me a new "skillset" of sorts. Same with the nav, night and wreck dive. I mean they were really just intro dives, or teaser dives to get you on another track for training but I came away with more confidence and that helped big time. The problem, and my instructor agreed, is calling it an advanced course. As I stated before the Peak Performance Buoyancy dive was not that great as I was just not trim and overweighted. I was hooving up air bigtime (good thing it was shallow dives) and struggling to stay at one spot in the water column.
If I took that buoyancy class now with what I've managed to learn on my own dives and with the help of SB, I would have gotten more out of it. That too would depend on how many other students were trim and neutral. If the instructor is bogged down keeping divers "diving", then it's hard to really teach effectively. Had there been a post OW course offered on gearing up to dive neutral and trim I would have dropped some $'s no problem! Because that's where I wanted to be, a good, safe diver. I could see that type of course tied in with the Peak Performance Buoyancy course. THEN after someone goes through that course offer the advanced, or "continuation" courses. Right now it looks like the AOW is just a marketing teaser course to get you on all the other tracks. Luckily for me I had a decent instructor so it was well worth the money for me (hard to put a value on skills that could save your ass) to take AOW.

What about offering an intense post OW class to help students get to where they need to be? The problem is PADI has the market. How do you compete with that or offer "embellishment" type courses? Once the dive shop has them on the PADI track it would be hard to jump in between to offer this.

 

[NAM001]

Some more good points. I too am looking at this from "the student perspective" but even my instructor stated that AOW should be OW2, a continuation. Don't get me wrong. Deep dive to 60' feet in the quarry was great. It turned pitch black, was barely 50 degrees and taught me a new "skillset" of sorts. Same with the nav, night and wreck dive. I mean they were really just intro dives, or teaser dives to get you on another track for training but I came away with more confidence and that helped big time. The problem, and my instructor agreed, is calling it an advanced course. As I stated before the Peak Performance Buoyancy dive was not that great as I was just not trim and overweighted. I was hooving up air bigtime (good thing it was shallow dives) and struggling to stay at one spot in the water column.
If I took that buoyancy class now with what I've managed to learn on my own dives and with the help of SB, I would have gotten more out of it. That too would depend on how many other students were trim and neutral. If the instructor is bogged down keeping divers "diving", then it's hard to really teach effectively. Had there been a post OW course offered on gearing up to dive neutral and trim I would have dropped some $'s no problem! Because that's where I wanted to be, a good, safe diver. I could see that type of course tied in with the Peak Performance Buoyancy course. THEN after someone goes through that course offer the advanced, or "continuation" courses. Right now it looks like the AOW is just a marketing teaser course to get you on all the other tracks. Luckily for me I had a decent instructor so it was well worth the money for me (hard to put a value on skills that could save your ass) to take AOW.

What about offering an intense post OW class to help students get to where they need to be? The problem is PADI has the market. How do you compete with that or offer "embellishment" type courses? Once the dive shop has them on the PADI track it would be hard to jump in between to offer this.

the teaser comment of aow coures i agree with. it also provides a means to check the skills mastered in the non ow training environment. bouyancy should be a biggy in aow. lots of pro's and con's my point was the two currses are very similar and could be one combined training item. in aow totake a picture you have to control the ballast factor. so i see the aow as a bunch of teaser intros that rely on the competancy's of the ow course. it took e a while to get my ballasting close. now i get a n hour on a tank at 60' and coming back with 8-900#. (faber lp 95). i dnt knwo how i could devise a course to cover the bases. i know every time i go down something new happens that reinforces prior training or generates intrest to get more n a specific area. for example i went out this fall off fla and surfaced with the group a long way from the boat. for me its 800lbs or anchor in sight, no negotiating. also need to work on compass skills. one dive one lesson one scenerio. there are hundreds of scenerios out there. and hundreds of lessons to RELEARN the hard way. you cant teach them all, nor should we. teach me how to use a hammer without hitting my finger and i can drive any nail with any hammer. may need a bigger hammer sometimes but the principle is the same. that is why i dont like pipeline training.... it denies the chance to define your limits by making and recovering from small misstakes. most major problems are the result of being bombarded by small ones. wdho ever said id on the money the cert is a lermit to learn or refine classroom skills.

regrads \\

KWS

 

[pt40fathoms]

There is more than one way to progress in any sport.

You can buy more training, yes. Or you can learn on your own.

*big snip here*

So what use are the cards?

None at all, really, other than "buying" admission to some places I'd like to go. Its a tax system, its corrupt, and it needs to go away.

Ok, I snipped the bulk of your post only because it was just you telling everyone how you trained yourself, how good you are at doing it and so on.

Now for the record, please understand that I do not disrespect you or your accomplishments. However I do completely disagree in the most strenuous way possible, with the premise that self-taught is better than being trained. Being trained, and learning from an instructor is nothing more than learning from the past mistakes of others, without the inherent danger of exposing yourself to unknown risk.

That is not to say that every instructor will teach you everything you need to know, or that you will even absorb all of what is being taught. There are bad instructors out there, and there are also bad students. But, your chances of not hurting yourself in a new environment in diving is decreases 10 fold or more, by merely taking the appropriate course and spending the time needed to learn. Not just spending enough time to make a passing mark, and feel that once you have a card, you are the expert. Far too many divers who are marginal in the skills required to complete a dive, blame the instructor. When in fact it is they themselves who put in minimal effort. All they want is the card so the dive operator will let them go to the wreck or cave or deep. When something goes wrong, its always the instructor, or as is the fashion today, the certifying agency who is too blame. Training is not training unless the student is willing to learn, and far too many are just trying to pass the course and move on. Who’s fault is that, PADI, NAUI, ACUC, SSI or the dozen or so other agencies out there? Meet the basic requirements and nothing more, and you have cheated yourself. Complaining that you did not learn enough after not applying yourself, and you are simply lying about who is at fault.

Discounting training is foolhardy and dangerous. The pioneers of diving, both past and present, who explore areas that would kill most people who try to venture into, will stress training and learning. I choose to learn from the mistakes and successes of others, and I strongly recommend everyone do the same.