POLL: How many dives per year do you consider a minimum necessary for skills not to degrade?

How many dives per year do you consider a minimum necessary for skills not to degrade?


  • Total voters
    125
  • Poll closed .

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

So for this poll to work we would need to define some skills and markers of proficiency and then cross reference them against no of dives needed per year to keep that level of proficiency.

The problem is (as already pointed out) that my idea of skills needed might be different than the skills of an OW diver, and even within my own range the skills depend on the dives I want to do (rec diving vs technical diving).

For me personally I would borrow the skill set of GUE Fundamentals as my baseline, since it's been the baseline for my diving for 10+ years. This means:

- Buoyancy: Hover without movement in mid water without sinking or rising.
- Trim: Without moving can keep my trim in a more or less horizontal position
- Finning: Able to use all appropriate propulsion and positioning finning techniques (frog, flutter, helicopter, backkick)
- Taskloading: Able to deploy an SMB from midwater without any effort and without losing buoyancy or trim.
- S-drill and Valve drill: able to perform these basic drills (S-drill proficiency in the souplesse and speed of the drill for V-drill check being able to still reach valves... mainly left post (shoulder operation... starts to get stiffer without use)).

For tech diving I would add other stuff...

The above I'm quite sure I will be able to do with a 1 year no dive hiatus, because it has become ingrained and as long as I don't change my gear, the platform will still be there. Only valve drill (left post) might need a bit of stretching (depending also on undergear).

Of course the skill set for an OW diver might be different, although in an ideal world it should be the same :coffee::poke:

Of course, the OP is @diverintheflesh. I would imagine criteria are somewhat differert
 
I am a certified DM (but inactive since 2000) with ~1000 freshwater murk dives, and another ~1000 on various salt water vacay dives over the last 31 yrs. Since 2011 I’ve averaged around 24 dives/yr.



Call me crazy but I feel that scuba is so 2nd nature to me after this long and so many dives that if I skipped a year or two or 3 like during my divorced budget years I would not skip a beat. I don’t remember fumbling around in 2011 when I started back up anyways.
 
I am a certified DM (but inactive since 2000) with ~1000 freshwater murk dives, and another ~1000 on various salt water vacay dives over the last 31 yrs. Since 2011 I’ve averaged around 24 dives/yr.



Call me crazy but I feel that scuba is so 2nd nature to me after this long and so many dives that if I skipped a year or two or 3 like during my divorced budget years I would not skip a beat. I don’t remember fumbling around in 2011 when I started back up anyways.

I perceive myself the same way. IMO I could no more lose my scuba skill set than I could my mechanical fix and repair skill set. It's just part of who I am.
 
Heya altamira (very nice name btw)... i just answered the question for myself...i would never pressume this poll as anything more than a deeply personal question.

Everybody needs to answer that himself and all answers are good as long as you are comfortable in the water after your hiatus.

Cheers
 
While the numbers would probably vary between recreational and and technical divers, consider recreational for this survey.


Consider:

4 dives as 2 dives per day on a dive trip away from home over two days of diving;

8 dives as 2 dives on one day every 90 days;

12 dives as 2 dives on one day every other month;

24 dives as 2 dives on one day every month;

36 dives as 2 dives on one day per month and one "Liveaboard" trip per year;

48 dives as six weekends (4 dives per weekend) throughout the year and two "Liveaboard" trips per year or other combination like diving almost every other weekend throughout the year.


...the previous descriptions are to help one make it easier to conceptualize the regularity of available dive days with the schedule you currently have (i.e. work, vacation, family obligations, lifestyle, etc)


If you are not sure how to answer this and have ever had a hiatus between dives, consider how you felt when you returned to diving. How many dives would have rectified that feeling or did it take to get back to pre-hiatus comfort level...




Thank you.


#scuba
#scubadiving
#scubasurvey
#divesperyear
#skillretention


I would say you need to dive every six months at the minimum. no matter your experience. For newer divers I would say every three months is needed.
 
@beester. Thank you for clarifying your markers for proficiency. With the criteria for diving proficiency that you listed above, I suspect very few divers throughout the world have, or will ever achieve your markers for diving skills. Proficiency in the full range of kick styles alone would disqualify almost everyone (me included), I have seen on any dive boat. I wish there was a way to remove my vote because now I have no opinion as to the number of dives required to maintain your markers for proficiency. My vote was based on my perception of the average OW/AOW recreational diver's skill set.


Keep your vote, please. The question is for the individual, not to reform the industry.
 
Heya altamira (very nice name btw)... i just answered the question for myself...i would never pressume this poll as anything more than a deeply personal question.

Everybody needs to answer that himself and all answers are good as long as you are comfortable in the water after your hiatus.

Cheers


That's exactly what I just wrote! Thank you.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/peregrine/

Back
Top Bottom