Poll: Were you OW trained to standards?

[mikeylee]

This is a very interesting thread. I am not yet certified but have made arrangements and reservations to become PADI OW certified next April. I am going to a dive shop I did my Discover Scuba with in the Caribbean for certification because I don’t want to learn in the cold, low-viz local lakes. Would I be a better diver if I did my open water dives locally? Probably. But, even though some posts above have really dissed the idea, I only intend to dive in warm, hi-viz waters…probably with a guide to show me the fishies . Why, you may ask? Because I am not a risk taking adventurer, rather I found the DSD to be wonderfully peaceful, serene, other-worldly, and relaxing. Besides, I always use a tour guide whenever I want to see the good sites on a trip.

 

[undrwater]

This is a very interesting thread. I am not yet certified but have made arrangements and reservations to become PADI OW certified next April. I am going to a dive shop I did my Discover Scuba with in the Caribbean for certification because I don’t want to learn in the cold, low-viz local lakes. Would I be a better diver if I did my open water dives locally? Probably. But, even though some post above have really dissed the idea, I only intend to dive in warm, hi-viz waters…probably with a guide to show me the fishies . Why, you may ask? Because I am not a risk taking adventurer, rather I found the DSD to be wonderfully peaceful, serene, other-worldly, and relaxing. Besides, I always use a tour guide whenever I want to see the good sites on a trip.

It's a good thing you saw the thread before you started. You have a better idea now what you should be learning.

 

[Belzelbub]

This is a very interesting thread. I am not yet certified but have made arrangements and reservations to become PADI OW certified next April. I am going to a dive shop I did my Discover Scuba with in the Caribbean for certification because I don’t want to learn in the cold, low-viz local lakes. Would I be a better diver if I did my open water dives locally? Probably. But, even though some posts above have really dissed the idea, I only intend to dive in warm, hi-viz waters…probably with a guide to show me the fishies .

It's not impossible to get good instruction from a resort course. It's also no guarantee that doing the course closer to home will result in better training.

I've never done a resort course. That didn't stop my initial OW course from being well below standards.

I'm sure you'll be fine for your stated diving plans. You've already done a Discover course, so I'm assuming you learned at least a bit. So, you'll learn more on this course. Don't hesitate to ask questions or otherwise alert the instructor if you hare having difficulty. Plus you stated you intend to likely dive with a guide, at least for a bit. That's good, as you'll have an experienced diver along. That said, don't rely on them. Dive to your ability and your comfort level. Don't just blindly follow the guide.

 

[Oldmanmatt]

I was trained by a cave instructor who was regularly called to retrieve bodies. To say he went beyond standards understates the class. One of the first lessons involved him attaching our tanks and hoses to our deflated bc, with the weight belt as a wrapper. He threw them in the pool, let them sink, then told us to go down and put them on correctly and not surface until we did. By the time I got my first card, I was nearly qualified for rescue.

Similar. Royal Navy 1989. Except the “pool” was the old torpedo test tank on Horsea Island. I wanted to dive on holiday, so I did a PADI OW (then military quals didn’t cross over to civvi street) down at Swanpool, Falmouth on leave, because the BSAC Novice diver I was doing with the RN dive club at HMS Dolphin was going to take too long.
All of them were thorough, but none as “good” as the original RN course and I didn’t find that level of training again until I did Fundies (GUE) a couple of years after my TDI Adv Trimix.
My daughter did her OW three weeks ago, here in Dubai, with Al Boom Diving. She’d actually been diving for about five years, with me or (several) Discover Scuba at a few different PADI centres around the Med. Both her course here and the other guided dives were well done and thorough.
One of my sons did a two dive “Try Dive” with Pura Vida (SSI) in Lanzarote over the summer and I tagged along for the second dive. Like his sister he’d already racked up a few dives. Again, good training, not just shunting tourists through.

All four kids went out with Dive Buddies Escalador, Mallorca (PADI) summer of ‘22. Good operation, fun but no messing. Binebeca Diving, Menorca, took all four and a very nervous wife out in 2019, again really good centre.
Maybe I’ve been lucky, but I’ve not had a bad experience yet.
I could get prissy about PADI, as many Techies seem to, but it does what it says on the tin. People mistake inexperienced, recently qualified, divers for badly trained divers and quite a few new OW divers mistake four OW checkouts for experience…

 

[Divemasterdave123]

Read the standards - 100% on the dot!!

 

[Seaweed Doc]

I'm not a good respondent: I was YMCA certified in 1985. The standards were far more involved than what we see now.

To illustrate: They gave us US Navy Decompression tables to use for when we wanted to dives requiring deco....

It felt like the class lasted 10 weeks, with weekly academic and pool sessions. I know that it was weekly, but it might have been less than 10 weeks. But it wasn't compressed into a few days for sure!

 

[TrimixToo]

I'm not a good respondent: I was YMCA certified in 1985. The standards were far more involved than what we see now.

To illustrate: They gave us US Navy Decompression tables to use for when we wanted to dives requiring deco....

It felt like the class lasted 10 weeks, with weekly academic and pool sessions. I know that it was weekly, but it might have been less than 10 weeks. But it wasn't compressed into a few days for sure!

Likewise (but some years before that). We were taught to a much different standard. "Keeping current" meant making sure you had the latest tables.

It took several contemporary courses to "catch up" to what they taught us then. Another example is doff and don, which I didn't have to demonstrate again until normoxic Trimix. However, as someone pointed out a year or three back, we didn't do practice deco or mixed-gas dives even though that was part of the written material and you were expected to know about both.

In my opinion, there are now too many increments designed mostly to extract revenue now rather than teaching meaningful chunks. Guess they have to make a living, though.

All that aside, teaching to standards or beyond is important. The cards should mean what they're supposed to mean. Boat captains and buddies should be able to trust that (though the smart ones don't).

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Likewise (but some years before that). We were taught to a much different standard. "Keeping current" meant making sure you had the latest tables.

It took several contemporary courses to "catch up" to what they taught us then. Another example is doff and don, which I didn't have to demonstrate again until normoxic Trimix. However, as someone pointed out a year or three back, we didn't do practice deco or mixed-gas dives even though that was part of the written material and you were expected to know about both.

In my opinion, there are now too many increments designed mostly to extract revenue now rather than teaching meaningful chunks. Guess they have to make a living, though.

All that aside, teaching to standards or beyond is important. The cards should mean what they're supposed to mean. Boat captains and buddies should be able to trust that (though the smart ones don't).

I agree there are too many increments. They’re letting students out to do dives they are not properly prepared for. There should be some rescue skills and more confidence building skills included in open water for their own safety. The problem is they are scared to include more at once because it would take more time and cost more. They are afraid they will lose people because many think it’s too expensive now as it is. It’s a fine line.
But they can shake their fingers all they want at a new undertrained OW diver and tell them they should only dive with a guide in warm benign conditions, but we get those same people coming here thinking all diving is the same and wanting to dive our local waters with what they got at their quickie resort course. How do you explain to someone eager to dive that they are probably not prepared for local cold water diving? Some adapt no problem and some don’t.

 

[Seaweed Doc]

I agree there are too many increments. They’re letting students out to do dives they are not properly prepared for. There should be some rescue skills and more confidence building skills included in open water for their own safety. The problem is they are scared to include more at once because it would take more time and cost more. They are afraid they will lose people because many think it’s too expensive now as it is. It’s a fine line.
But they can shake their fingers all they want at a new undertrained OW diver and tell them they should only dive with a guide in warm benign conditions, but we get those same people coming here thinking all diving is the same and wanting to dive our local waters with what they got at their quickie resort course. How do you explain to someone eager to dive that they are probably not prepared for local cold water diving? Some adapt no problem and some don’t.

Right there with you on tropical-only divers moving to cold water. I used to help a local marine lab's DSO on checkout dives with folks who had never been in cold water before. (These were certified divers, but first time in cold water). The number that bolted to the surface as soon as they flooded their masks was not low....

But I also tell my dive students that if they want to dive off southern California beaches, they should get local advice/training on surf entries. We don't deal with that much around here....

 

[MrChen]

I had a good instructor who did the best with what was expected from the dive shop. We spent forever in the pool. I'm not sure if it's because people were struggling or whether he had us perfecting expected skills. I got sunburned really bad that day.

The problem with the class was the size, it was a Groupon deal. He had 2 DMs there at all times and in our open water, also had his very qualified instructor wife because vis was less than 10ft.

He was very patient with those struggling with the skills and made sure they were all accomplished properly.

My next issue was that we did all our open water dives in max of 20ft at Blue heron bridge. Most dive shops in the area do the first 2 open water dives here and then do the next 2 from a boat.

A decade later and this dive shop still does this. We are in SE Florida and there's little reason not to do some boat diving besides cost. My complaint here is that the training doesn't reflect the type of diving that's normally done in the area.

My instructor did say to let him know when I booked my first charter. He showed up to dive with me that day post certification. Seeing how other dive shops include a boat trip as part of the ow cert training, I felt that I wasn't trained as well as I could have been. My instructor was great though and went the extra mile.

Is diving all the open water dives to a max of 20ft up to standards?