Minimum proficiency

[GA Under Water]

agree to disagree. But instead of picking your post apart to try and prove my point I will say, that you learn your way, maybe slower than I, and I learn faster, which includes how to react. I learn this before I get into the situation. If you go to 20 feet and hold your breath because you lost your Reg and surface you don't get that Extra chance to learn that "wisdom" and "just diving experience" without knowledge will get you killed.

Case in point?
Paris Island South Carolina
U.S. Marine Corps Recruit Depot (for those that don't know)
Learning to fire a rifle. We were never given live rounds and told to go shoot at the target and you'll eventually hit it.
We were taught to Stand with our Rifle, Sit and lay prone. We wre corrected if we did it wrong and then we "snapped in" Pointed out rifles at a barrell that had dots on it shapped like targets. We Sat, stood, layed, and "Snapped in" for at least 4 hours a day for a week. Then, and only then after "learning and doing tasks (snapping in) were we allowed ammunition and the chance to show what we could do by hitting the target.

I don't know what kind of school you went to, but teachers teach you how to do the test before they give it to you. You must learn before you can master and maybe before you call anything flawed, you should understand it yourself.

 

[Xman]

I'm still trying to get at the question of what the competencies are that a diver is supposed to have gained from the experience we keep telling them they need before they go deeper.

Thal, you list the DIVES they need to do. But what skills or knowledge are they supposed to have gathered from those dives that will make them fit to go deeper?

I can do a dive to 30 feet in Cove 2. And I can do a dive to 40 feet in Cove 2. And the dives are identical in terms of my subjective experience. What have I learned by going deeper? What makes me more fit to go to 50 feet next time?

I'm not trying to quantitate(sic) anything. I'm trying to get at the root of the recommendation for "more experience" for deeper diving. More experience at what?

I don't think there is an answer to your question that you would be happy with. What is gained by experience is varied and hard to define. More little things may have gone wrong for you to have dealt with? Better dive skills through practice? At the end of the day, I think that any "number of dives" measure is just for ease of definition. There are plenty of (far too many infact) instructor candidates that "teabag" any number of dives to get their dive numbers up. I'm sure we can all agree that this is bogus. This is, however, just the most extreme case. A dive with a more experienced and well trained buddy, practicing skills, slowly diving in conditions slightly more trying than you have experienced before... Those are the dives that will give you that needed experience. 100 dives at the site with the same easy conditions, with your buddy who is the same or lesser experience? Well I hope we can agree that this provides far less in the way of "experience".

I agree with one of the earlier posters that to quantify this is simply impossible as there are far too many variables.

To me, adequate training, and an attitude to learn all you can, are extremely important. I will trust a "what if" mindset diver over an "it'll be alright" mindset diver every time.

 

[lazyturtle]

There are plenty of (far too many infact) instructor candidates that "teabag" any number of dives to get their dive numbers up. .

Ummm..Teabag? I'm sure (in fact I'm positive based on the context) that this word has a different meaning to you than me....

 

[Xman]

Ummm..Teabag? I'm sure (in fact I'm positive based on the context) that this word has a different meaning to you than me....

Well, given that we are not talking about beverages, or dodgy sexual practices...
In this context it refers to the drop down for 20 min, brief surface interval, drop back down for another 20 min "dive" type carry on. I didn't just make it up. That is what they are called around here.

 

[OHGoDive]

I'm still trying to get at the question of what the competencies are that a diver is supposed to have gained from the experience we keep telling them they need before they go deeper.

Thal, you list the DIVES they need to do. But what skills or knowledge are they supposed to have gathered from those dives that will make them fit to go deeper?

I can do a dive to 30 feet in Cove 2. And I can do a dive to 40 feet in Cove 2. And the dives are identical in terms of my subjective experience. What have I learned by going deeper? What makes me more fit to go to 50 feet next time?

I'm not trying to quantitate anything. I'm trying to get at the root of the recommendation for "more experience" for deeper diving. More experience at what?

Sorry for my mischaracterization of your OP. It seems here though, you are asking a much more specific question than in the OP.

I was confused by your use of words like codify, and minimum proficiencies. It seemed that you were trying to determine and layout those skills which could then be recommended to a novice (at any level) as a litmus test to determine whether or not they were minimally able to undertake a certain dive.

If you just restrict your question to depth, in the same location, and under the same conditions, it may be easier to answer. I'm not convinced though, that it will be widely applicable to any category of diver.

If you merely go deeper, say 10 more feet, and do nothing else but tourist around, and all goes well, you will gain only comfort, a bit of confidence, and reinforce some habits (good or bad).

As I now understand it, your question then is, what specifically would you have a novice learn, in order to better prepare them for that next 10 feet?

I still think the ultimate answer will be... "it depends"

 

[MikeFerrara]

When I was teaching I had a simple skill evaluation that I administered to divers that came to me for con-ed courses. They had to descend with a buddy stopping at a predetermined depth, hold depth there until signaled to continue, stop above the bottom, remove and replace a mask midwater, initiate air sharing midwater, swim around a little maintaining trim, non-silting propulsion, buddy contact ect and then perform an ascent together...stopping at a predetermined depth before continuing the ascent. If the divers couldn't get through that, I wouldn't take them on any dive, anyplace under any conditions. That skill set corresponds fairly well to what I required of OW students prior to moving from confined water to open water. I didn't use that evaluation from the begining but rather it came about as a solution to the problem of certified divers who didn't seem capable at any depth.

There are no doubt lots of other things we could look at or try to measure but that's what divers had to show me in the water under very controled conditions (essentially confined water) before we did any diving. Obviously, if I'm not the instructor and I'm not in a position of control, people can do what they want...but I might not want to be around when they do.

For deeper depths or otherwise more challenging conditions, the skills needed are really the same. The additional requirement is experience applying those skills to the conditions at hand. That, of course, isn't up to me.

 

[SparticleBrane]

Mike, you and Walter so far have the best answers, IMHO.

 

[TSandM]

Mike, that's EXACTLY the sort of answer I was trying to elicit.

 

[jeckyll]

agree to disagree. But instead of picking your post apart to try and prove my point I will say, that you learn your way, maybe slower than I, and I learn faster, which includes how to react. I learn this before I get into the situation. If you go to 20 feet and hold your breath because you lost your Reg and surface you don't get that Extra chance to learn that "wisdom" and "just diving experience" without knowledge will get you killed.

Case in point?
Paris Island South Carolina
U.S. Marine Corps Recruit Depot (for those that don't know)
Learning to fire a rifle. We were never given live rounds and told to go shoot at the target and you'll eventually hit it.
We were taught to Stand with our Rifle, Sit and lay prone. We wre corrected if we did it wrong and then we "snapped in" Pointed out rifles at a barrell that had dots on it shapped like targets. We Sat, stood, layed, and "Snapped in" for at least 4 hours a day for a week. Then, and only then after "learning and doing tasks (snapping in) were we allowed ammunition and the chance to show what we could do by hitting the target.

I don't know what kind of school you went to, but teachers teach you how to do the test before they give it to you. You must learn before you can master and maybe before you call anything flawed, you should understand it yourself.

You either purposely misunderstand, or ... well it wouldn't be polite.

Do your thing, but the simple fact that use use statements like "I learn faster", without having any idea of the person that you are discussion something with, is pretty telling.

 

[GA Under Water]

nah, take it in context, was an example, not a literal statement. I don't know you from adam, and would not venture to state who is "slow" Have a good day.