Minimum proficiency

[TSandM]

This thread came out of reading the bashing Matt S. was taking in another thread over his questions about diving to 80 feet in Mexico as a new diver. People were saying over and over again that he "shouldn't go that deep until he has more experience." And I actually agree with them . . . But nobody was telling him what the experience was supposed to teach him that he would need to know to do an 80 foot dive.

As my instructor this last weekend said a couple of times, practice does not make perfect; perfect practice makes perfect. Doing a lot of diving with the same habits or the same deficiencies in your skills doesn't necessarily make you any better. And if you're going to tell somebody they shouldn't do the dives they are contemplating, shouldn't you tell them what they need in terms of skills or knowledge to be ABLE to do those dives?

 

[jeckyll]

...

Perhaps I'm just too new and inexperienced to understand things like this.

Perhaps.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Ok, wait. With all due respect, I have some questions.

If this is, in fact, exactly what this thread was trying to ascertain, then I am confused. Are you saying that if a diver successfully demonstrates these skills, that you are comfortable in answering "yes" to them if they ask if they are "minimally proficient" to perform some dive X?

Not really. What I described is just a skill evaluation I administered to certified divers prior to conducting any further training. It's just a test of some prerequisit basic in-water skills.

I don't get it. You've merely added a few subjective criteria to most OW requirements. How does that tell you that a diver is minimally proficient to perform a dive? All it reliably tells you is that they are minimally proficient in performing those particular skills, to your satisfaction under the conditions that you watched them perform them. From that, you subjectively decided that they were good enough to continue training with you.

All it tells me is that they can control their position in the water while maintaining buddy awareness and contact while performing some basic diving tasks. I don't know why you keep refering to it as subjective. They can hold their depth or they can't. They stay with their buddy or they don't. They stay in trim or they don't. They use good propulsion technique or they don't. It's all pretty objective.

Not that there is anything wrong with that, but I don't see how that addresses the original question.

I don't know, maybe it doesn't but it's the best answer I had at the time.

Oh, and Mike, I hope I misunderstood your comment here:



They came to you, an instructor, for instruction, and if they did not demonstrate these skills to your satisfaction, you sent them away? Forever? Did they know coming in to your course that they would need to demonstrate these skills? You wouldn't refer them to a more basic course? You didn't try and teach them to perform these skills to your satisfaction?

Perhaps I'm just too new and inexperienced to understand things like this.

As I tried to explain, these would be prerequisit skills I would expect any certified diver to be able to demonstrate. I wouldn't advise any diver who couldn't perform those skills to dive in OW without remediation in confined water. To answer your question, no I wouldn't send them away. I would require that remediation before I dived with them in OW though.

 

[OHGoDive]

This thread came out of reading the bashing Matt S. was taking in another thread over his questions about diving to 80 feet in Mexico as a new diver. People were saying over and over again that he "shouldn't go that deep until he has more experience." And I actually agree with them . . . But nobody was telling him what the experience was supposed to teach him that he would need to know to do an 80 foot dive.

As my instructor this last weekend said a couple of times, practice does not make perfect; perfect practice makes perfect. Doing a lot of diving with the same habits or the same deficiencies in your skills doesn't necessarily make you any better. And if you're going to tell somebody they should do the dives they are contemplating, shouldn't you tell them what they need in terms of skills or knowledge to be ABLE to do those dives?

Yes, that makes sense to me. If you're going to tell someone that they are not ready to do a dive, you should be able to explain to them why not, and to tell them what they need to be able to do in order to do the dive. That makes sense to me.

But, your post did not seem to ask that question. That is, you weren't asking what minimum proficiencies someone needed to be able to demonstrate in order to be able to safely complete a dive to 80 feet in Mexico. You seemed to be asking in the general case.

What do you think are the mimum proficiencies a diver should have to dive above 60 feet? 60 to 100 feet? Deeper than 100 feet?

Those are two very different questions. Mike's answer seemed to be just the criteria that he thinks an open water diver needs to have in order to become an open water diver. It doesn't seem to address the general case at all, nor does it answer whether or not a diver could safely dive to 80' in Mexico. Yet, you said it was exactly the type of answer you were asking for. Hence my confusion.

Developing your skills with a good instructor, learning and reinforcing good habits in a variety of environments, receiving and applying critiques of your efforts, continually assessing your skills and looking for ways to improve them can only make you a better diver. Actually, that applies to learning just about anything.

But, I still don't see how that applies to the question of minimum proficiency in diving.

 

[OHGoDive]

All it tells me is that they can control their position in the water while maintaining buddy awareness and contact while performing some basic diving tasks. I don't know why you keep refering to it as subjective. They can hold their depth or they can't. They stay with their buddy or they don't. They stay in trim or they don't. They use good propulsion technique or they don't. It's all pretty objective.

If the question is, "are you a minimally proficient diver?", then your criteria is completely subjective. Your criteria, your definition, your assessment. That's subjective. Unless everyone who assessed any particular diver would come to the same conclusions you do.

Someone else might look at the same diver you said shouldn't be in the water and say they do just fine. They might be totally wrong, but, you'd be no more objective than they are. Sorry.

That's why I keep saying that it is subjective. If the question was "can they hold their depth", or, "can we set a minimum proficiency for holding depth", then yes, you're right, your test is pretty objective. Hold a depth for 3 minutes within +/- 1 foot. Very objective. But, those weren't, and haven't been the questions.

As I tried to explain, these would be prerequisit skills I would expect any certified diver to be able to demonstrate. I wouldn't advise any diver who couldn't perform those skills to dive in OW without remediation in confined water. To answer your question, no I wouldn't send them away. I would require that remediation before I dived with them in OW though.

No, you said that if someone came to you for a class, and they couldn't do those skills that you (subjectively) think that any certified diver should be able to demonstrate (to your satisfaction), you'd turn them away and would never dive with them. Under any circumstances.

I was just trying to clarify that position. You'd require remediation, but wouldn't teach it?

 

[OHGoDive]

Perhaps.

But, I wouldn't wager on it

 

[jeckyll]

But, I wouldn't wager on it

I would. Odds are in my favour

 

[OHGoDive]

I would. Odds are in my favour

Yea... you're probably right. But, don't forget, the question isn't whether or not I'm experienced enough... just whether or not I'm experienced enough to understand where people here are coming from.

I think I'm plenty minimally proficient for that, even if the emphasis is on minimally

 

[TSandM]

I don't think Mike said he wouldn't teach such a person. He said he wouldn't go on a dive with them. The two are different.

For some reason, this question seems to have hit quite a nerve for you, OhGoDive. You're quite right that the original question I asked wasn't what Mike needed to know to dive to 80 feet. I was trying to generalize. I just think that, with all of us jumping on new divers and telling them they can't do deep dives, there ought to be some sense of what somebody should be looking for as far as what they need to DO deeper dives.

My personal feeling is that, to go deeper than about 60 feet, you should be able to put your mask on and clear it without losing significant position in the water column. You should be able to execute a competent air-share, and an air-sharing ascent with control of your buoyancy and appropriate stops. You should be able to execute a mask-off ascent with buddy support. You should understand some gas management and the concept of rock bottom, and be able to do the calculations to know if the tank you're using will suffice to do the dive you contemplate.

And preferably, you should have done enough diving to have had one or two things go wrong, so you know how you react and how calm you can remain in the face of a problem.

How's that for a set of criteria?

 

[OHGoDive]

I don't think Mike said he wouldn't teach such a person. He said he wouldn't go on a dive with them. The two are different.

For some reason, this question seems to have hit quite a nerve for you, OhGoDive. You're quite right that the original question I asked wasn't what Mike needed to know to dive to 80 feet. I was trying to generalize. I just think that, with all of us jumping on new divers and telling them they can't do deep dives, there ought to be some sense of what somebody should be looking for as far as what they need to DO deeper dives.

My personal feeling is that, to go deeper than about 60 feet, you should be able to put your mask on and clear it without losing significant position in the water column. You should be able to execute a competent air-share, and an air-sharing ascent with control of your buoyancy and appropriate stops. You should be able to execute a mask-off ascent with buddy support. You should understand some gas management and the concept of rock bottom, and be able to do the calculations to know if the tank you're using will suffice to do the dive you contemplate.

And preferably, you should have done enough diving to have had one or two things go wrong, so you know how you react and how calm you can remain in the face of a problem.

How's that for a set of criteria?

It's a great set of criteria.

But... (you just knew a but was coming, didn't you?)

But, what exactly does it prove that you're capable of? Dive safely to 61 feet? 80 feet? 100+? I'm not sure. Add more variables and it gets even fuzzier. Those are great skills to have, and I would never argue that someone would not be a better diver with those skills than without.

But, are those the required skills in order to do a dive to 90 feet in a strong Cozumel current? Is there a correlation between having those skills and successfully completing a dive? Are the odds higher? Probably, but I'm not sure.

And, I guess that is the nerve that got hit. It just seems that many people are of the opinion that if you don't [insert some set of criteria here] that you shouldn't be diving, or at least diving certain dives. Not technical dives, but recreational dives. I don't think that you can do that, and that's exactly why you get so many posts criticizing people, but no one really being able to explain what you should do. It's just so much "come back when you know what you're doing", by which people simply mean, come back when you can do what I think you should do.

And if the goal is to try and set a bar that says you must be this tall to ride this ride, then I don't think that's right. Not in recreational diving. Once certified, it should be up to the individual to decide their own risks within the limits of their training and their own judgment. Most people get that. Not 100%, but plenty.

I don't think there is any set of criteria that you can impose that says that you're minimally competent to perform a dive. I suspect that most agencies think this too, which is exactly why the bar is set so low. It just doesn't take much to be a "minimally" competent diver.

There are many, many criteria that you can come up with that says that you are more than minimally competent, and I think those are the responses that you have been getting.

This thread just seems a bit too much like, "what's wrong with dive certifications", just in a different wrapper.