PADI Rocks!!!

[MikeFerrara]

All those PADI ads and sponsers entice people to dive and go places--and that makes more divers---and that lets us have a bigger voice in the political world----and that may help save a few reefs and sharks....in the long run.

Can you give some examples of this "bigger political voice" in action?

Are you saying that more divers = good for conservation? If you are I disagree. I don't get to spend much time on reefs or with sharks but I see divers do plenty of damage. An example would be all the divers I see sitting/kneeling right in spawning nests or tearing them up with their fins as they attempt to swim by trimmed head up and flutter kicking.

 

[zen_man]

How come all these posts bashing PADI have not beeen deleted by the board moderators?

Because it's not in the "Kudos" section.

Seriously, is NAUI or SSI that much different or superior? I asking this in all honesty.

I was certified through SSI for OW and it doesn't seem like it was that much different than a PADI OW. I do think that there should definitely be a higher standard regarding your abilities as an OW diver, but then, not everyone is addicted to diving as I, or most of the people on this board. A lot of divers just want to swim around and look at pretty things on a guided dive while they're on vacation.

I also think Advanced OW is labeled incorrectly. I think it should be termed something other than "advanced" because there is nothing really " advanced about it.

With that said, RussR, I am glad to hear you were happy with the instruction you got through PADI. My first time diving was with a PADI instructor in the Bahamas and I remembered things she taught that wasn't gone over in my OW class 7 years later. She had 5000+ dives under her belt and she was hawt! That might of help me remember!

 

[dave4868]

Sufficient for what? I lived through it and all I did was take some equipment and go diving...no class.

I don't know what you mean by "huge burden" but I don't think it would be such a big deal.

Need it? We don't need any of it but, IME, teaching diving "differently" makes the whole process easier on everyone involved.

IME, get them off the bottom and diving makes it more fun for everyone. The benefit seemed clear enough to me.

The sky isn't falling and any reputation that PADI has comes from their marketing department...certainly not from their performance in the water.

The short answer is "Yes", although I've written lots on the subject here on the board.

Absolutely not. Being handicaped by not having critical pieces of information and being taught so many skills "wrong" most divers seem to be able to dive for a very LONG time with little or no improvement. Practice doesn't make perfect...perfect practice makes perfect. Practice doing things poorly and you just get really good at doing things really bad. LOL

What additional training?

I know. I hate to see so many divers wallowing around and rototilling after having paid for instruction and thinking they got it. It's even more rankling when they try to defend that training without having ever seen anything else or even understanding the standards under which they were trained. Unfortunately, they are usually the ones who are the most rankled but they don't even understand what they are arguing...they're just rankled.

What are the specific constructive changes you would make?

Dave C

 

[vshearer]

I finally got my PADI cert a few years back after going for a long time diving and no card. I was on a layover for several months at Lucaya and had nothing better to do so why waste the opportunity. The experience was VERY educational and I learned an enormous amount. Watching my 5'3" instructor rescue panicking divers doing their OW cert dives was an eye opener. (Most were from snow states and this was the first time out of a pool). She was great, the course and instruction was great, and I still learned a lot even though I had already been diving for some time. And now, with that golden card, I no longer had to sneak around during the dead of night picking the lock on the back door of the LDS to fill my tanks by the light of the moon.

 

[Hank49]

Can you give some examples of this "bigger political voice" in action?

Are you saying that more divers = good for conservation? If you are I disagree. I don't get to spend much time on reefs or with sharks but I see divers do plenty of damage. An example would be all the divers I see sitting/kneeling right in spawning nests or tearing them up with their fins as they attempt to swim by trimmed head up and flutter kicking.

In some developing countries diving has helped areas of marine environments because the locals realize that tourist dollars bring in more local income than dynamiting, gill netting, cyaniding or just general overfishing of the reefs. I've never seen a heavily dived area look even close to as bad as an area that has recently been dynamited.
The influx of an international diving population helps educate isolated villages as to the benefits of conservation and to stimulate the development of protected marine parks to enhance local fishing.

 

[ReefGuy]

yes, PADI does sanction it's instructors, but it does not control them remotely. Does PADI even know about this? It's easy to do nothing but complain anonymously on the internet. It's just as easy to report what happened to PADI. PADI. The Way The World Learns to Dive. If they know about the incident, they will investigate it and take whatever actions they deem necessary.

But they can't do anything and shouldn't be expected to if they don't know about it.

PADI shares some responsibility. It sanctions its instructors.

 

[MikeFerrara]

What are the specific constructive changes you would make?

Dave C

The list is long and I've written many many pages on the topic. All that can be found with the search function of this board but I'll go into it a little here and try to keep it short.

Diving is mostly moving around the water column but dive training is mostly kneeling. The standards don't require the kneeling but, they only require a few minutes off the bottom total in the whole class. Standards don't require any skills be demonstrated mid-water yet when we dive and things happen, that's where they happen. In other words, we need to perform those skills while we dive. Standards permit practice while not diving (kneeling). Further, the mechanics of trim aren't required to be taught. Gas management isn't taught ("watch your guage" doesn't count) and the "buddy system" is given lip service.

On OW dives students aren't required to function with a buddy durring a dive (most classes are a heard of students following the instructor). To continue with the lack of requirements to be off the bottom, there are NO performance requirements during the tour portion of the dives (the real diving part). Standards literally permit the student to crawl and bounce through the tours and pass. No diving required in this class.

All the student materials are centered around doing things on the bottom so even the methods given for individual task related skills are all messed up. We could go into some of these but I'm trying to keep this short and I need to leave for work.

I would change all the above points in the standards and materials.

When I was teaching I did change all those things in my class. Students never saw myself or staff on the bottom. All skills were demonstrated midwater and horizontal. This was probably the most important change because students tend to copy the staff. If they see it done well, they often do it well with very little practice...it isn't that hard.

Since, diving is mostly just moving yourself around the water column I taught the mechanics of trim and a large part of the class was practicing buoyancy control, trim, propulsion techniques and midwater skills. By the time we went to open water students could dive. By the time the course was completed they had demonstrated that they could plan and conduct an actual open water dive with a buddy.

 

[MikeFerrara]

The experience was VERY educational and I learned an enormous amount. Watching my 5'3" instructor rescue panicking divers doing their OW cert dives was an eye opener. (Most were from snow states and this was the first time out of a pool).

Your post brings back memories. My first few rescues were as a DM candidate. The situations that resulted in the need for the rescues were, of course, directly related to the training that was going on or had just been completed. It got pretty hairy a few times.

 

[MikeFerrara]

In some developing countries diving has helped areas of marine environments because the locals realize that tourist dollars bring in more local income than dynamiting, gill netting, cyaniding or just general overfishing of the reefs. I've never seen a heavily dived area look even close to as bad as an area that has recently been dynamited.
The influx of an international diving population helps educate isolated villages as to the benefits of conservation and to stimulate the development of protected marine parks to enhance local fishing.

Hi Hank,

I still wish they'd quit killing my local fish. I do realize that in some places tourism dollars can sometimes encourage local changes in resource management. Of course, the tourism industry does some damage of it's own. Aside from the diving pressure itself, there is the issue of shorline development.

I know that the dive industry continually denies much responsibility in reef damage but I have seen different with my own eyes and have plenty of it on video. LOL

 

[MikeFerrara]

yes, PADI does sanction it's instructors, but it does not control them remotely. Does PADI even know about this? It's easy to do nothing but complain anonymously on the internet. It's just as easy to report what happened to PADI. PADI. The Way The World Learns to Dive. If they know about the incident, they will investigate it and take whatever actions they deem necessary.

But they can't do anything and shouldn't be expected to if they don't know about it.

When I was a PADI instructor I spent plenty of time and effort on discussing all these issues with PADI. They aren't interested in hearing about anything that isn't a direct violation of the standards.

An example, a certain shop who certifies MANY students per year does 20 minute OW dives and the only "tour" students get is when being shuttled to and from the entry to the platform (just a few feet). PADI does NOT have a problem with this because it does meet standards. This is as minimal as minimal can get but the standards were written to allow it. Do you think PADI doesn't know that?

I remember when the "Dive Today Philosophy" was being rolled out. I saw a whole room full of instructors protest to the presenting regional manager from PADI. PADI was NOT interested. I was a pretty new instructor at the time and I thought all those complaining instructors were a bunch of cranky old malcontents. Of course, as I gained teaching experience I came to agree with them and the "Dive Today Philosophy" is number one on my top ten list of things in dive training that are completely crazy.

Now, if you know something about the "Dive Today Philosophy" and read the standards and my complaints of the standards you'll see how it all ties together. For example, I complained above that there are no performance requirements for "tours". There can't be. You see, OW dive one can be conducted immediately after CW dive one and buoyancy control isn't introduced until CW dive three. So, it stands to reason that you can't be doing dives before that and require the student to control buoyancy because they haven't learned it yet. Hell, ascents and descents aren't even taught until CW dive TWO. LOL how are you supposed to go diving and learn anything when you haven't learned anything about the most basic mechanics of diving yet?

This isn't ever going to change because it's more than just a scheduling option in how the class can be conducted. The idea is to be able to give training credit to a sttudent who comes to you after having done a "Discover Scuba Diving" program at a resort someplace. I don't believe, at all, that it's valid training but it is a great sales technique. He, you want to try diving in the pool. A video and a little briefing and they're playing in the pool. Hey you want to see what it's like in the ocean?...touch on a few kneeling skills, go through a flip chart and the students can be dragged over the reef. Hey, you should just get certified, you're already part way there. LOL