There have been quit a few threads on the board lately discussing entry level training and this kind of fits in.
My new copy of Scuba Diving Magazine tells the story of Sandra who is a new diver, goes on a 80+ ft dive in a popular Caribbean location, feels air starved and bolts from her max depth. Meanwhile hubby Bill ignores her attempts to signal and is, in general, clueless about everything.
The article states that she almost completely came out of the water when she surfaced which I say is complete BS but on to the important stuff.
The analysis...
I agree with part of it. She did allow peer pressure to sway her into diving in the first place and peer pressure sure helped get her to do that dive. The article places a lot of weight on her all around anxiety in the water and I'm sure that's part of it. I doubt it's all of it though. I've seen new divers become convinced they aren't getting enough air at depth (especially on deep dives) and it's often associated with overwork due to poor trim and buoyancy control. The result is dispnea and, of course the whole thing can be an anxiety causing experience with the correct action being to be still and get your breathing under control. It can cause anxiety, anxiety can cause it and they can cause eachother at the same time.
Sandra had to do two extra dives to get through her certification class. The Auther finds it hard to believe that her instructor missed her anxiety and claims that Sandra was a victim of poor instructional evaluation. Was she? Remember we have to relate her performance and the instructors decisions to what training standards require. To say that the instructor should have seen it or willingly ignored it and shouldn't have certified her is to say thet the instructor vilolated training standards or that he should have made up his own. I don't see where the author has enough to go on to justify such an accusation.
I think this is a big deal so I'll quote
An instructor is responsible for evaluating performance against the performance requirements outlined in the training standards. So now we're going to use the fact that the instructor did two extra dives with a student as evidence that he/she shouldn't have certified the student? It's nice when an instructor can learn mind reading but it's not an agency requirement for instructors. If they perform the skills well enough, they get certified. The author, of all people, should know how that works.
But, what about those standards that the instructor uses to evaluate the student? If we examine the letter of the training standards we may very well see exactly how a less than comfortable diver can meet performance requirements and be certified. The entry level training standards that I'm familiar with don't require the student to do anything that really requires comfort...in other words with such minimal performance requirements, I can see how a student can easily fake their way through. Kneeling isn't hard even for some one who isn't comfortable. If she made it through all the confined water work and 6 open water dives, based on my own teaching experience I just don't believe that she is all that terrified just being under water. She also made it through the previous days resort dives. Clearly though, her skills and experience were NOT up to the deep dive. Niether the magazine nor the author would DARE point a finger at the agency standards or other common industry practices though would they?
So...did the instructor really mis-apply standards or did correctly applied standards fail to prepare the diver?
Now, what about that "popular tourist spot in the Caribbean"? The reason that I bring that up is that we have also had a couple threads here lately concerning new divers and 90 ft dives. When discussing the subject we see that it is common practice, especially in certain areas. Per the reports here on the board and elswhere, the DM's do as much to assure a new diver that the dive is perfectly appropriate as Sandra's husband did in this case. Maybe we can't blame the resorts for an individuals decision but we can sure point to what is standard practice as apposed to best practice.
What are these certification cards anyway. You show your new open water card to me and I assume that you need a lot of work before I care to do much of a dive with you. I'm pretty sure that I know what you weren't taught and there's no way we're going to do a deep dive. You show it to a DM in Cozumel and they take you straight to 100 ft. Are these DM's certified through one of the agencies? Are they expected to exhibit role model behavior and set a good example including in their judgement? Are they expected to encourage others to make sound decisions? DM training materials would suggest so. I know this isn't a training situation but since DM's often act as guides for certified divers, maybe the agencies should have standards concerning DM conduct while guiding certified divers? An instructor tells a student not to do that dumb stuff and 10 minutes into the divers first trip some DM tells them to ignore what the instructor taught! This is a common and every day thing which was a constant and severe frustration through my entire teaching career.
The fact is that, every single day there are a ton of divers in exactly the same situation...barely trained, barely able to dive, barely comfortable...the DM says, it'll be fine and off they go to 100 ft. Training standards permit a person to be certified at one level of performance and the DM...possibly a pro member of the same agency... can be party to the diver attempting to dive at a much higher level, dispite the agencies recommendations not to, with no accountability that I can see.
It's not so much that I disagree with what the author says, it's that he puts the instructor in the hot seat that I think the agency should be in and he barely scratches the surface of the rest of the issue. It goes something like this...the shop (who may be a retail association member of the agency) gets to certify lots of divers because you can teach classes that meet standards FAST. The resort (who may be a resort member of the agency) gets lots of business. The DM (who may be a pro member of the agency) can do whatever it takes to entertain, often throwing all the agency recommendations out the window. When push comes to shove, the guy at the end of the line is in the hot seat because the agency is smart enough to put an obscure line in the standards someplace that places the responsibility there.
If this were an isolated incident that would be one thing but it's not. It's an every day thing, though it doesn't always result in injury. You can get on a dive boat, go to a quarry, or just read this board and you see it everywhere. It happens so often because the industry model is so seriously flawed. The problem is systemic. Oh we can argue that it's the individual diver who is responsible and they are but when you have that much oporator error, there is something wrong with the process in which the oporator is functioning. The instructor was only one link in a long chain but all the other industry links have been granted immunity!
My new copy of Scuba Diving Magazine tells the story of Sandra who is a new diver, goes on a 80+ ft dive in a popular Caribbean location, feels air starved and bolts from her max depth. Meanwhile hubby Bill ignores her attempts to signal and is, in general, clueless about everything.
The article states that she almost completely came out of the water when she surfaced which I say is complete BS but on to the important stuff.
The analysis...
I agree with part of it. She did allow peer pressure to sway her into diving in the first place and peer pressure sure helped get her to do that dive. The article places a lot of weight on her all around anxiety in the water and I'm sure that's part of it. I doubt it's all of it though. I've seen new divers become convinced they aren't getting enough air at depth (especially on deep dives) and it's often associated with overwork due to poor trim and buoyancy control. The result is dispnea and, of course the whole thing can be an anxiety causing experience with the correct action being to be still and get your breathing under control. It can cause anxiety, anxiety can cause it and they can cause eachother at the same time.
Sandra had to do two extra dives to get through her certification class. The Auther finds it hard to believe that her instructor missed her anxiety and claims that Sandra was a victim of poor instructional evaluation. Was she? Remember we have to relate her performance and the instructors decisions to what training standards require. To say that the instructor should have seen it or willingly ignored it and shouldn't have certified her is to say thet the instructor vilolated training standards or that he should have made up his own. I don't see where the author has enough to go on to justify such an accusation.
I think this is a big deal so I'll quote
An instructor is responsible for evaluating performance against the performance requirements outlined in the training standards. So now we're going to use the fact that the instructor did two extra dives with a student as evidence that he/she shouldn't have certified the student? It's nice when an instructor can learn mind reading but it's not an agency requirement for instructors. If they perform the skills well enough, they get certified. The author, of all people, should know how that works.
But, what about those standards that the instructor uses to evaluate the student? If we examine the letter of the training standards we may very well see exactly how a less than comfortable diver can meet performance requirements and be certified. The entry level training standards that I'm familiar with don't require the student to do anything that really requires comfort...in other words with such minimal performance requirements, I can see how a student can easily fake their way through. Kneeling isn't hard even for some one who isn't comfortable. If she made it through all the confined water work and 6 open water dives, based on my own teaching experience I just don't believe that she is all that terrified just being under water. She also made it through the previous days resort dives. Clearly though, her skills and experience were NOT up to the deep dive. Niether the magazine nor the author would DARE point a finger at the agency standards or other common industry practices though would they?
So...did the instructor really mis-apply standards or did correctly applied standards fail to prepare the diver?
Now, what about that "popular tourist spot in the Caribbean"? The reason that I bring that up is that we have also had a couple threads here lately concerning new divers and 90 ft dives. When discussing the subject we see that it is common practice, especially in certain areas. Per the reports here on the board and elswhere, the DM's do as much to assure a new diver that the dive is perfectly appropriate as Sandra's husband did in this case. Maybe we can't blame the resorts for an individuals decision but we can sure point to what is standard practice as apposed to best practice.
What are these certification cards anyway. You show your new open water card to me and I assume that you need a lot of work before I care to do much of a dive with you. I'm pretty sure that I know what you weren't taught and there's no way we're going to do a deep dive. You show it to a DM in Cozumel and they take you straight to 100 ft. Are these DM's certified through one of the agencies? Are they expected to exhibit role model behavior and set a good example including in their judgement? Are they expected to encourage others to make sound decisions? DM training materials would suggest so. I know this isn't a training situation but since DM's often act as guides for certified divers, maybe the agencies should have standards concerning DM conduct while guiding certified divers? An instructor tells a student not to do that dumb stuff and 10 minutes into the divers first trip some DM tells them to ignore what the instructor taught! This is a common and every day thing which was a constant and severe frustration through my entire teaching career.
The fact is that, every single day there are a ton of divers in exactly the same situation...barely trained, barely able to dive, barely comfortable...the DM says, it'll be fine and off they go to 100 ft. Training standards permit a person to be certified at one level of performance and the DM...possibly a pro member of the same agency... can be party to the diver attempting to dive at a much higher level, dispite the agencies recommendations not to, with no accountability that I can see.
It's not so much that I disagree with what the author says, it's that he puts the instructor in the hot seat that I think the agency should be in and he barely scratches the surface of the rest of the issue. It goes something like this...the shop (who may be a retail association member of the agency) gets to certify lots of divers because you can teach classes that meet standards FAST. The resort (who may be a resort member of the agency) gets lots of business. The DM (who may be a pro member of the agency) can do whatever it takes to entertain, often throwing all the agency recommendations out the window. When push comes to shove, the guy at the end of the line is in the hot seat because the agency is smart enough to put an obscure line in the standards someplace that places the responsibility there.
If this were an isolated incident that would be one thing but it's not. It's an every day thing, though it doesn't always result in injury. You can get on a dive boat, go to a quarry, or just read this board and you see it everywhere. It happens so often because the industry model is so seriously flawed. The problem is systemic. Oh we can argue that it's the individual diver who is responsible and they are but when you have that much oporator error, there is something wrong with the process in which the oporator is functioning. The instructor was only one link in a long chain but all the other industry links have been granted immunity!
