Redundancy Required for Decompression Diving?

[Storker]

i require my students, at whatever level (especially instructors), to provide the gas calculations for the dive we're going to do. I do get some interesting responses, and head scratching.

Interesting. I started messing with gas planning already when I was reading up on my PADI OW curriculum. Probably because I'm an incurable science geek and knew PV=nRT long before I seriously considered taking a dive cert.

 

[Bennno]

Bennno, I don't have any particular body of experience with the club-approach to instruction. So, I am curious, what would be examples of some of these additional requirements?

The test for instructors is more difficult and you have to study more. The SSI manual is less comprehensive and the test is only multiple choice. The VDST/CMAS test requires you to write the answers down and explain stuff.

 

[DevonDiver]

i require my students, at whatever level (especially instructors), to provide the gas calculations for the dive we're going to do..

On that note, I'd suggest that one big problem facing many divers is that continuation training given beyond entry-level is very weak in syllabus and substance.

For many agencies, the curriculum fails to tangibly raise diver expertise, knowledge, competency and ability as further qualifications are undertaken to increase the range of diving.

A particular culprit is 'Deep Diver' training. For the most part, this training is insubstantial, vapid and illusory.

More comprehensive curriculum and standards for recreational diver training in deep no-stop diving would go a long way to resolving many of the issues debated here on Scubaboard.

Effective gas planning and management, use of redundancy, higher standard fundamental skills, refined ascent protocols and theory knowledge of basic decompression science should be synonymous with deeper no-stop diving.

Doing so would reduce the issue of 'experienced' divers who still don't know what they don't know. It'd increase the diver's 'toolbox' for maintaining safety when dive parameters are extended... and it'd provide a definitive 'step' between basic recreational diving and technical diving.

Of course there are (a tiny minority) of instructors who achieve good Deep Diver training by supplementing the standard syllabus with additional components.... but this is the rare exception, not the norm.

As some have noted... I'm a firm believer in the value of training.

However, I also believe strongly that training must have that tangible value.

Training must coherently and radically improve diver competency; delivering real capacity development in-line with the level of diving undertaken.

I do feel that many divers have become cynical about the necessity for training.

Not because they don't inherently value or appreciate training... but because they're disillusioned with having undertaken training that didn't provide tangible, real-world, benefits to their diving capability.

I can sympathise with that cynicism.

It's hard to appreciate the value of training if you've never experienced effective, high-quality training.

That said, I also believe that a significant share of the blame lies with divers who don't source good quality training.

Especially when those divers have a mindset to shop around only for the cheapest, quickest or most convenient training providers; sometimes in the delusion that they're simply buying a 'license'... and not paying for expert tuition.

If you resign yourself to the expectation that training has little value, then you're likely to create a self-fulfilling prophesy.... and you'll experience only what you expect to find.

If you appreciate and understand the value of good training, then you'll commit time and money to sourcing it.

Training only has the value that the individual puts on it. If you don't value training, then you'll probably reap what you sew... and waste money on valueless c-cards instead of developing tangible competencies.

 

[MichigandiverJon]

For what it's worth, I just recently took TDI's Intro to Tech (Which many on here will say isn't really a class) But even before the class I was feeling that some redundancy would be nice even though I haven't yet ventured beyond 130 ffw here in the Great Lakes. But even recreationally, I now dive an AL30 back mounted next to my main, along with dual computers as well as dual buoyancy. I have had just a couple failures at depth, two computers(not at the same time) and one spool oring. For me, instead of being worried or my heart rate even raising, the events were more like: "Oh well, I guess this dive's done." And made a normal ascent almost like any other. As other folks have stated it's what you are comfortable with. But for me, I feel much more relaxed and safer while diving. Just my perspective.

 

[boulderjohn]

Doing so would reduce the issue of 'experienced' divers who still don't know what they don't know. It'd increase the diver's 'toolbox' for maintaining safety when dive parameters are extended... and it'd provide a definitive 'step' between basic recreational diving and technical diving.

I do feel that many divers have become cynical about the necessity for training.

On several occasions while teaching the dive planning that is part of the OW class, I have had students tell me that their experienced friends told them that dive planning was something you only did in the OW class--once you are in "the real world," none of that is necessary. You just go where the DM leads you and come up when the the DM comes up. I suspect that for an overwhelming percentage of divers, that is indeed exactly what happens "in the real world."

But let's take people who do not dive with DMs, as is done in places like South Florida. They get their tanks filled, drop into, say, 70-80 feet of water, swim around looking at old wrecks, reefs, and fish. check their SPGs and computers occasionally, and then head for the surface when they have enough gas and NDL time left. The full extent of their planning is knowing how deep things are there and making sure their tanks are full when they start.

I suspect that those two scenarios fully describe the lifetime experiences of many thousands who have logged hundreds of dives over a long diving career.

these people would be critical of taking further training because they see it as a waste of time and money learning concepts and skills they don't need "in the real world" of diving.

 

[KeithG]

Training is training.

Whether financially compensated or not, whether run to an agency syllabus or not. Training is training.

Training involves instruction in proper techniques, procedures, equipment selection and usage, assessment and feedback on performance.

Self-learning isn't training. YouTube videos and internet articles don't provide assessment and corrective measures. They may demonstrate a skill, but don't help a student properly achieve that skill for themselves.

In some cases, a diver might be equipped with sufficient baseline knowledge, ability and understanding of performance standards to learn from external media, but it's all to easy to get it wrong, miss critical elements, fail to identify dangerous errors or deficits... or to over-assess your own performance.

There doesn't need to be a card issued as 'proof of training', unless the diver requires one.

However, many qualified instructors will prefer to teach under the liability protection of a formal agency syllabus.

But there are instructors who routinely teach via personal mentoring and/or non-certification clinic formats (I am one who does this regularly).

And, of course, non-instructors who might mentor and assist fellow divers.

Therein lies the difference between an individual who effectively trains divers and one who merely delivers a training product...a pre-determined 'package' of skills and knowledge.

The ability to instruct a given activity is not determined by a plastic instructor card... but rather by true expertise in that activity, coupled with prudent risk management and an inherent ability to teach - to convey information and demonstrate skills accurately, to breakdown skills into sub-skills, to identify and remedy incorrect performance, to accurately assess strengths and weaknesses, to determine reasonable and achievable goals and guide the student in setting appropriate limits in tune with their performance and goals, to foster a suitable mindset and attitude in the student...and all the while ensure student safety.

That said, the difficulty faced by many divers is in ascertaining who is actually competent to safely and efficiently teach and who possesses true expertise in the field they will instruct.

An instructor qualification should illustrate such competency and expertise... but as most of us know, that's increasingly not true.

I am not sure if this a semantic issue, but you seem to be implying that the only way to advance oneself is to be instructed.

There are lots of people that can learn without instruction or a formal syllabus (there are also lots of people that struggle to learn even with proper instruction).

In my view formal training courses (in any industry) are designed for the lowest common denominator. They do not foster discovery and true learning. They often are limited to teaching "what" and not "why". They limit the scope to the syllabus. Anything beyond that becomes "there be dragons".

Consider any new scientific advancement. None of these came from training, they came from learning.

 

[DevonDiver]

I am not sure if this a semantic issue, but you seem to be implying that the only way to advance oneself is to be instructed.

Rewind 1 page, to this post:

Redundancy Required for Decompression Diving?

 

[DevonDiver]

I suspect that those two scenarios fully describe the lifetime experiences of many thousands who have logged hundreds of dives over a long diving career.

these people would be critical of taking further training because they see it as a waste of time and money learning concepts and skills they don't need "in the real world" of diving.

Why would they be a waste of money and time, if they delivered tangible benefit?

Again, the pessamistic assumption is that training won't deliver.

The scenarios given are fine providing the example groups don't wish to increase the scope of their diving. But wait... look at the thread title... there's folks who DO want to increase scope... in a myriad of ways.

 

[KeithG]

Rewind 1 page, to this post:

Redundancy Required for Decompression Diving?

That is the post i quoted. That post is what sparked my comment.

I am firmly in the school of people that believe lots of us can learn without formal training. We also can learn faster and more completely that most training courses. This belief does not just apply to scuba. It also applies to real world industry training (including university level study).

There is more than 1 way to skin a cat.

 

[DevonDiver]

That's exactly what I said in the post. There's more than 1 way to train.

Self-teaching is prone to pitfalls though. Lack of assessment and timely correction. It'd be easy to believe your self-tuiton was effective, but how would you actually know?

"Faster than most training courses". . . another pessimistic depreciation of the value of effective training.

As I've said. . . I see a trend where people are cynical of diving training. . . conditioned by bad experiences from cheap instructors selling bargain-bucket junk.

Finding a truly capable and expert instructor is likely to remedy that cynicism.