PADI Deep Diver Standards

[Lucy's Diver]

Doing and getting away with, even repeatly doesn't make it a good idea.

The problem isn't in doing them. Anyone can do a 300' trimix dive. Most of the time, everybody comes back. The problem is when things start going wrong. Then, you find out how much you'd like to have good quality training and expierence. The upside for most is things almost always work perfectly.

The deep dives under supervision are training and experience, that's his point. People will dive deep at resorts and such no matter what, they might as well have done some stuff deep with an instructor before doing that.

 

[Steve_Dives]

Out of curiousity, how many deep classes taught the calculations for SAC rate and calculated the gas requirement for the planned profile?

 

[TSandM]

Out of curiousity, how many deep classes taught the calculations for SAC rate and calculated the gas requirement for the planned profile?

Oh, that makes me chuckle. On my deep AOW dive, I didn't know such things existed. On the dives for my Deep specialty, I listened to the instructor ask us what the NDL for 120 feet was. I answered him, and then piped up with what the "rock bottom" for 120 feet was. He looked at me as though I was spouting gibberish, ignored me and went on. There was no discussion of gas management anywhere in the Deep course, but we did hang on a deco tank for eight minutes.

My husband asked an instructor on our Indonesia trip, at what point gas management was taught in the class sequence. The answer was that it is not, and is considered to be overkill for recreational divers.

 

[ppo2_diver]

Out of curiousity, how many deep classes taught the calculations for SAC rate and calculated the gas requirement for the planned profile?

I teach it in my OW, AOW, wreck, deep, and ice courses.

 

[in_cavediver]

The deep dives under supervision are training and experience, that's his point. People will dive deep at resorts and such no matter what, they might as well have done some stuff deep with an instructor before doing that.

If your point is that people are doing deep dives without good training and without this and that, I'd agree. If you say its good enough, the statistics might agree as well. Its all about risk management and risk tolerance. The idea that 99%+ of the time, nothing bad happens. Even if I am that 1% where something bad happens, what's my chances to handle it correctly. The facts are that its a relatively rare encounter where it happens and the diver mishandles it so bad they get hurt or killed.

Now, in my neck of the woods where deep water is cold water, these incidents happen more often as free flows and stuck inflators are more common in cold water. I can tell you be the number of ambulances I have seen personally that its does happen with some frequency.

The question at hand is should an instructor, who plans to competently teach a deep diving course at the rec level, take a diver with limited expierence (<20 dives) to 120'? I still stand by the answer is no. If that diver, on his own, feels he has suitable expierence to do it himself, then I would say his OW instructor failed him.

 

[GA Under Water]

The question at hand is should an instructor, who plans to competently teach a deep diving course at the rec level, take a diver with limited expierence (<20 dives) to 120'? I still stand by the answer is no. If that diver, on his own, feels he has suitable expierence to do it himself, then I would say is OW instructor failed him.

DEWD!!! WHAT did you JUST Say????

 

[Steve_Dives]

Oh, that makes me chuckle. On my deep AOW dive, I didn't know such things existed. On the dives for my Deep specialty, I listened to the instructor ask us what the NDL for 120 feet was. I answered him, and then piped up with what the "rock bottom" for 120 feet was. He looked at me as though I was spouting gibberish, ignored me and went on. There was no discussion of gas management anywhere in the Deep course, but we did hang on a deco tank for eight minutes.

My husband asked an instructor on our Indonesia trip, at what point gas management was taught in the class sequence. The answer was that it is not, and is considered to be overkill for recreational divers.

That's sorta what I thought I'd hear. Personally, I thought it was a good idea (as it appears you did) to have enough gas to get back from the deep dive. The NDL for my deep dive was 20 or 25 minutes, but the tank only holds 17 minutes of air for me at that depth. Round trip or one way, book the flight of your choice...

 

[Blox]

So what I get from this is that a 12 dive diver shouldn't be taking a course that offers them more experience at a greater depth under Inst. supervision.

I guess they should wait till after their first vacation trip after OW where the DM says "Ok folks here we are at the abc site, the reef starts at 40 ft bottom is 125 ft the boat leaves in 1 hour 30 min be back if you want a ride to the dock".
Then when they get home take the class after they have more experience.

I know these dives and divers happen I did it everyday.

My thoughts exactly.

I have a very hard time understanding, how some people in here can advocate mandadory deep dive experience PRIOR to taking a Deep Dive Speciality. That makes absolutely no sense at all to me, because essentially it says "Do something that you're not extensively trained for, before we're taking you through a course that teaches you how to do it (properly)".

I do realize that PADI bashing is a popular pasttime, but for once it should take the back seat.

 

[pickens_46929]

So I'll add my $0.02 here...

For my one required deep dive for AOW, my instructor used the local quarry which reached a depth of 56' or something like that... now the secret in making it deeper than 60' or more to be counted as a deep dive was the fact it was cold water and so you had to add 10' to the depth for calculating NDL and RNT.

For my deep PADI course I was lucky enough to take it from someone who also teaches technical courses, so we went from 80' on first dive to 130' on our last dive and hit various depths in beween... he included a solid bit of gas management and made us calculate our SAC rate at both the surface and at depth (33')... we had to plan and execute the last dive ourselves, showing NDL, turn around and so on...

Know others that haven't broken 90' in PADI Deep nor done any gas management of any kind...

 

[in_cavediver]

My thoughts exactly.

I have a very hard time understanding, how some people in here can advocate mandadory deep dive experience PRIOR to taking a Deep Dive Speciality. That makes absolutely no sense at all to me, because essentially it says "Do something that you're not extensively trained for, before we're taking you through a course that teaches you how to do it (properly)".

I do realize that PADI bashing is a popular pasttime, but for once it should take the back seat.

No one has said anything about deep expierence. Only expierence which can be gained at any depth.

The problem is depth compounds problems. You add a larger air consumption, narcosis, time constraints and at some locations, reduced ambient light. What might have been simple problem at 30ft now is more complex at 120ft.