"Is someone doing all technical courses within 2 years after being certified as ow diver going too fast? In what perspective do you look?"
Courses teach skills, but those skills need to be applied repeatedly over time for them to become ingrained. I do look whether a diver has allowed for periods of skill reinforcement and refinement between acquiring new skills.
"Is it the 24 months to complete the ow, aow, nitrox, adv. nitrox, normoxic trimix, full trimix and full cave course too fast? And if you know the diver has done over 500 dives in 2 years? Does this change your opinion? 500 dives in 2 years or in 10 years, does it make sense?"
What matters is the
balance between training and experience. An imbalance between the two invariably indicates flaws.
Whilst divers
do vary in their individual capacity to learn and ingrain skills, for each diver there is probably some unique 'golden ratio' between skill
acquisition and skill
application dives.
The pace of development is less critical than getting the balance right. That, however, assumes that low frequency diving is offset by conducting the necessary practice to prevent skill-fade.
"who is more experienced?"
The concept of gaining "experience" is very vague.
Experience includes multiple facets of development:
1. In-water time allowing repeated application of core skills learnt in formal training (ingraining).
2. In-water time allowing repeated application of contingency skills learnt in formal training (refreshing).
3. In-water time allowing development of more intuitive/instinctive equipment and protocol familiarity.
4. In-water time allowing random exposure to situations that develop personal competencies (i.e. problem solving,stress management)
Any single given dive can contain greater, or lesser, elements of the above facets. To some extent, the individual diver can shape the experience benefit from their dives; but there is also a random element to other aspects (like problems/emergencies arising). This includes learning from mistakes.
We can say that experience acquisition is dependent on both the quality and number of dives conducted by an individual. That's impossible to gauge unless you have first-hand knowledge of the dives someone conducted.
- A diver who practices in the pool every week might develop well in #1-3, but have no development of #4.
- A diver who goes out and does infrequent challenging dives, but never does dedicated practice dives might develop #4, but have underlying weakness in #1-3.
- A diver who focuses on #1, but ignores #2 will look good on routine dives, but expose significant weakness when emergencies occur.
What's better?
Spending 6 hours in shallow water repeating skills?
Spending 120 minutes on a deep/hypoxic trimix dive?
Diving 2x a month on deep offshore wrecks?
Diving 8x a month in quarry?
Neither example is 'right' or a 'wrong'. Either develops 'experience'. What we see is a bias in the facet of experienced being developed.
The term we look for is a 'well-rounded' experienced diver. A diver who commits to developing all of the experience facets needed to improve themselves.
What you can gauge is a diver's performance under evaluation. This is why assessment check-out dives are critical. Those check-out dives must examine all aspects of experience (#1-4).
"And if people who say going too fast, what kind of dives have you done? Can you judge if you are only certified to 30m about a 100m dive?"
You can only assess someone based on your own personal perspectives. Those perspectives are shaped by your individual experience, your learning capability, your diving history...
This is where the value of
experienced instructors becomes realized. Instructors are in a position to observe student divers and learn more about the spectrum of competencies and capabilities. With experience, they can develop certain baselines and evaluations that can be extrapolated from one diver to another. This, of course, assumes that the instructor concerned also has personal expertise in the level of diving considered.
"Another thing: a diver who did all tech courses with 1 instructor, is this done because of this instructor was easy and just paying to get a cert? Or was it a good instructor? If the diver did his courses with different instructors, was this because the first instructors where bad? or because the diver wanted to learn from more than 1 instructor? Or the first instructors refused to teach the diver further, so the diver needed to find another instructor for the next step?"
In essence, this refers simply to 'quality of training'. I've found that assessing a diver's mindset will often answer any questions about the 'strategy' they employed when sourcing instruction.
One thing is for sure... quality of (tech) training is no longer a given. Possession of X, Y or Z certification cards means little-to-nothing nowadays.
Again, this only serves to highlight the need for assessment check-out dives.
"Every diver, how experienced he is, can get in trouble or panic. But the more real experience the more ways to solve potential problems."
Stress presents when a diver cannot see a resolution to a harmful situation.
Panic presents when a diver accepts they are 'powerless' to save themselves.
This is true from an open water student to an elite cave explorer. What differs is the individual capacity to identify resolutions and/or the timescale before an individual accepts they are 'powerless' in a given situation.
There are 3 primary factors which influence this:
1. Psychological Robustness. How quickly an individual 'gives up the fight'. A very complex component which involves both nature and nurture factors.
2. Experiential Reassurance. Have they solved the problem before, or can extrapolate a solution from past experience.
3. Training Reaction. Will/can they apply a corrective solution based upon the correct ingrained responses to given stimuli.
In short,
complacency.
Accident statistics show a trend for the highest accident rates amongst (1) novice divers and (2) very experienced divers.
I do wonder if the fact that qualifications are more frequently handed out like toffee will lead to a new statistic... a high accident rate in very
qualified, but relatively
novice divers.
"Then there are and will always be thrillseekers".
To be honest, I just don't see many 'thrillseekers' doing advanced diving.
It's just not that 'thrilling', in the adrenaline sense, as an extreme sport.
What I DO see often is
prestige seekers.
This encapsulates a specific diver motivation - that being, to appear as elite or superior amongst the diving community.
Dr Garman sought prestige, not thrill.
Many DIR Acolytes seek prestige, not skill.
Most Card-Collectors seek prestige, not capability.
- If a qualification level or diving achievement is perceived to be prestigious, then there are always those who will seek it.
- If an agency is deemed prestigious, there will always be those who want association with it.
- If following a specific approach, or displaying a given image might garner prestige, there will always be those who strive for that.
Be under no illusions that technical and cave diving is often seen as
prestigious.
Even within that tech community, there are sub-groups deemed as
more prestigious when viewed from below. Full Trimix qualification... sidemount CCR... certain 'elite' agencies... shipwrecks that are described as the 'Mt Everest of scuba diving'.... you get the idea...
When divers seek prestige, there's always something bigger and better to pursue. There's no end to it..... unless;
1) The money runs out (
common)
2) Someone with ethics and responsibility is successful in counselling the diver (
rare)
3) The
consequences eventually bite a diver in the ass (
tragic).
There are different motivations for doing training, choosing an agency or conducting challenging dives. Some indicate a positive mindset towards development for the right reasons. Others are quite superficial. If they are superficial, there are often flaws in the diver themselves.
.....all I've learned is that you cannot
predict an individual diver's competency until you understand their motivations and mindset; and have seen them display the sum product of their skill and experience development in-water.
