Should Cert Cards be for life? My cert cards seem to be worthless!

[redacted]

If a dive shop offers an inexpensive pool night and a free season opener lecture series that includes a slide show of last years dive trips and charters, and they include a safe diving review, I would definitely sit through that. Wouldn't this accomplish a lot of what the re-certification people are talking about? Hell, I would happily let them show me the new toys, also. Its called marketing, build your customer base. RJP is right, people will pay what it is worth. The businesses that build value gets customers.

I think the issue is whether such a session is voluntary or mandatory.

 

[Basking Ridge Diver]

Can't help but say this - What exactly are we trying to fix?

Certifications are useless? Attrition rates among divers? Yearly safety classes for the masses? Revenue streams for the agencies?

Back in the day we would use a fish bone diagram to solve for each issue... Root Cause needs to be explored if we want to fix anything.

I thought the articles assumed/stated (I did not see any quantitative analysis) that divers dropped out due to lack of confidence in their diving instruction / lack of confidence in their skills. Is this accurate? Is it anecdotal or is there research to back this up?

 

[rhwestfall]

around here, the shops do "skills clinics" when diving is seasonally ceased... you get out of it what you put into it...

 

[raftingtigger]

...OW was never ment to make a compitant diver only to teach the skills and let practice take its course. ...

WHAT?!!! Back when I took OW it sure was meant to make a competent diver - even at my tender age of 14. Later when I took an advanced class it was 100 hours of classroom and 12 dives. Compare that to my son's OW class and there is no comparison. Not to industry bash, but classes have been split apart so it takes OW plus AOW plus Rescue to even approach the old-time OW classes.

Current OW MAY(in some people's mind) no longer be meant to..., but at the beginning it sure was designed to make a competent diver who could safety dive without supervision by a professional.

 

[Searcaigh]

Cerification is what it says on the box, it's a certificate that proves you took and passed a course to learn to dive, no more no less. As mentioned earlier in the thread like your university or college degree.

Whether you practice what you learned or took advanced learning is important, and that usually depends on where you live and if you dive regularly.

I have never dived in the US or Carribean area but around UK, Spain, South Africa, Middle East, and SE Asia you can pitch up with an OW card and dive.

The more responsible operators may require some additional certification and dive insurance. Some may even ask to see a log book or proof of recent diving to evaluate whether you are suitable to dive without supervision etc. Other operators may decide that a check out dive is necessary if you have not dived for some time or wish to evaluate your diving before being let loose on some precious reefs and I don't blame any of them for imposing such rules.

With 400+ dives the OP and his wife are fairly experienced divers on paper, watching them gear up etc would confirm to the dive op how experienced they are too as well as a few minutes in the water to evaluate them.

The only place I ever had to have a dive licence was Saudi Arabia and that was issued by the Ministry of Fisheries (back in the 90s, not sure if it is still done today) and was valid for 3 years. It was a matter of filling up some paperwork, showing a dive certificate and then endorsed by the Coast Guard, provided hassle free diving when doing shore dives up and down the Saudi Red Sea coastline prior to when I only showed them a PADI card (in English), although many of them were unable to read even Arabic, but recognized the logo on the stamped card (a laminated piece of paper).

 

[boulderjohn]

Current OW may no longer be meant to..., but at the beginning it sure was designed to make a competent diver who could safety dive without supervision by a professional.

It is still intended to make you an independent diver. Following a DM is not even mentioned in the PADI class. On the final OW dive in the current program, the instructor is just supposed to watch the students perform an independent dive and only intervene in the case of problems.

IMO, the problem comes after that. New OW divers go to a resort area where everything is done for you. Your equipment is set up for you. A DM does all the dive planning for you. A DM does all the navigating for you. If that is the only kind of diving you ever do, then you will forget all the rest and become wholly dependent upon other people to do all that stuff for you. That is nothing new. I was certified back in the 1990s, and I did all my first few years of diving in Cozumel. By the time I went somewhere else, I had to remember how to set up my gear, etc.

If instead you leave your OW class and start dong independent dives right away, that learning will be ingrained in you.

 

[Mustard Dave]

An idea:

Create a progressive cert system that requires 100 logged (documented) dives, and:

1. A multi-faceted system where divers get ongoing training, or certified experience up to 100 dives. This multi faceted system will be flexible, so that divers who regularly dive with instructors or DMs, can get credit for non-instruction dives as long as the DM or instructor witnesses good technique and knowledge. OW divers with 100 logged dives who can't prove ongoing supervised dives will need to take the "full Master Scuba Cert Course."
2. Once the prerequisite experience is obtained and a true Master Cert earned, a diver will need to maintain that cert annually, which includes a refresher of the basics. If the diver has logged 15 or 20 open water dives, fully documented, during the previous year, then the recert requirement is very basic. Otherwise, the diver with no or very few truly documentable dives (receipts and signed log by DM, instructor, buddy, Captain, and/or Company stamp) will be required to take an extensive refresher course in order to maintain the "Master Scuba Cert level."
3. And for the DM or operator who ignores this cert: keel-haul-em!

1. No thanks. I am an adult and a trained diver. In my part of the world, recreational diving has very little interference from certification agencies and the law. You can legally walk into a dive shop, come out with all the kit and then jump in the sea without breaking any laws. Most people are not that stupid though and I doubt there are many cases of this sort of thing happening.

I can go for several months without ever diving with an instructor or DM. Not all divers rock up at a resort and organise a dive with a dive shop - many of us go out with other like-minded divers and do our own thing. Most boats around my part of the world do not have any sort of pro on board whatsoever, and most do not even ask for proof of any sort of certification.

There is no way on earth I am going to pay for the privilege of some freshly minted instructor to rubber stamp my log book every year, or whatever frequency is proposed, and I'm certainly not paying for an MSD course every year (which I wouldn't waste my money on that certification to begin with.

There are all sorts of qualifications we only have to do once. An example is driving, which is responsible for more accidents and deaths than diving. I watched Mark Powell's talk at the last dive show. He showed us some statistics he had researched, that he summarised with 'you are statistically more likely to die driving to the dive site than you are in the water'. Despite this, we only have to pass our driving test once and my license is valid until I turn 70 (52 years after passing my test). My mum didn't drive for over 15 years and had to begin again to enable her look after my grandad. She could have legally got straight back behind the wheel, but she didn't. She got in touch with an instructor and had some refresher lessons. People are more sensible than some give them credit for.

PADI, who have the largest share of the market, have a log book system and a Scuba Review program. If a dive shop feels somebody hasn't done enough to do a particular dive, they can give them the option of doing the Scuba Review or being turned away.

2. Again, no thanks, for the same reasons.

3. I'm all for keel-hauling, but it should be reserved for more serious offences, such as the use of tank-bangers or scuba rattles. I'm also in favour of casual sword-wearing in public.

 

[Akimbo]

…1. No thanks. I am an adult and a trained diver...

I totally agree. Bret Gilliam’s suggestion for dive shops to offer essentially a marketing-oriented seminar for infrequent divers is as far I can go. Active divers known by their LDS will just be signed off anyway. Dive boats and liveaboards look at certs, logs, and how you conduct yourself on deck and in the water anyway. That “seminar” won’t change that but at least some of the marginally trained and experienced will divers will get a lot to think about.

 

[CT-Rich]

Only really 3 decision makers need be involved in whether a particular diver makes a dive. 1) The diver 2) The dive buddy (if there is one) 3) the charter captain (if there is one), it is his boat. As was pointed out, you can have a driver's license for years without using it and it is just as valid.

Most re-certifications would be built around the Agencies and shops making money. I doubt it would make better divers, but it would be a turn off to people that get a feeling that they are being milked. I think that is already a problem with some of the more aggressive shops trying to get newbies to invest thousands in a new sport.

I would be pretty turned off finding out that my $500 investment in training has an expiration date, especially if I was only planning on an trip to the tropics. Which to be fair, may be the goal for a fair percentage of divers. They may like the cattle boats for the type of diving they do.

 

[DaleC]

It is still intended to make you an independent diver. Following a DM is not even mentioned in the PADI class. On the final OW dive in the current program, the instructor is just supposed to watch the students perform an independent dive and only intervene in the case of problems.

IMO, the problem comes after that. New OW divers go to a resort area where everything is done for you. Your equipment is set up for you. A DM does all the dive planning for you. A DM does all the navigating for you. If that is the only kind of diving you ever do, then you will forget all the rest and become wholly dependent upon other people to do all that stuff for you. That is nothing new. I was certified back in the 1990s, and I did all my first few years of diving in Cozumel. By the time I went somewhere else, I had to remember how to set up my gear, etc.

If instead you leave your OW class and start dong independent dives right away, that learning will be ingrained in you.

Yes!
And my experience has been that, once the tropical bug catches hold, those divers will tend to not want to make the transition to local diving conditions. The water's colder, they don't have the right exposure protection, they feel the scenery is boring (in comparison). They begin to see diving as something to be done once in a while, on vacation, somewhere tropical. And the industry caters to that POV.
I suppose that POV is ok, to each their own, but it does come with it's own set of problems.