Should I dive in shallow waters without a certification?

[CaveSloth]

Just make a kickstarter or something to raise funds for certification. I am sure people on this board (including me) would help you pay for your certification. If we can find a reputable teacher in your area, verify everything is legit and that you took the course and passed, I am sure we can get the money together.

 

[Rose Robinson]

Hello folks, I have a passion but don’t have the money to pay for PADI or ssi. I have scuba dived twice and the second time a PADI instructor showed me just about everything in a try scuba class, equalizing hand singles, pretty much a lot of things and even gave me a handbook. And it’s my second time diving and I have looked at online classes for scuba diving and spend almost till 3 am studying scuba and practiced it in my pool and to be honest I do not want to dive down 100 feet i feel comfortable doing it but I like staying in 10 feet water looking for treasure. I am thinking about picking up a used Zeagle ranger bcd. Love those things. But anyways I have been in my pool 2-4 times a day practicing these techniques that they show on the two hour video like clearing water out of the mask. Honestly I’d love to do it but don’t have the money for the class. I’m not sure it’s the best idea but im slowly saving money up for a PADI certification class. Let me know what your guys thoughts are!

Tyler,

I am a funeral director, and would be happy to recommend a Funeral Service Provider in your local area.

If you let yourself be led down a garden path you may be disappointed to find a cemetery at the end.

There is no ''treasure'' worth your life.

For God sake, get the thought of diving without certification completely out of your mind.

Rose.

 

[lowwall]

Tyler,

I am a funeral director, and would be happy to recommend a Funeral Service Provider in your local area.

Just when you thought we'd run out of ways to say, "You gonna' die!"

Seriously, to anyone contemplating DIY scuba instruction... Please don't do it. Scuba is certainly easy when things are going right. But things don't always go right. And when they go wrong, you are in an environment that will kill you within a couple of minutes if you don't make the right decisions.

Many of those decisions had to have been made before you even entered the water. I can picture every diver reading this thread shuddering when they came across this, "Yesterday i went [solo diving] to the lake at a spot called muddy flats..... where 2 big rivers drain into the lake so the visibility was only 2-3".

 

[tursiops]

Good morning (here anyway).

If you do a good search you can find most PADI manuels in PDF in the depths of the internet .
I did this for my refresher a while ago!

Old ones, maybe. Current ones, not likely. I guess you are comfortable with violating copyright?

 

[lowwall]

Old ones, maybe. Current ones, not likely. I guess you are comfortable with violating copyright?

The person posting (publishing) the manual would be violating copyright, not the reader.

Even for the publisher, this might fall under fair use depending on the exact circumstances.

 

[tursiops]

The person posting (publishing) the manual would be violating copyright, not the reader.

Even for the publisher, this might fall under fair use depending on the exact circumstances.

You are right; the person reading it is just stealing.
I don't think PADI allows such use, in any circumstance, since we are talking about PADI manuals, not generalities.

 

[Colliam7]

I had this kind of conversation before..
Someone fresh out of owd did only solo dives to 20m+ without any redundancy and multiple dives without surface intervals.
His argument was, that he had done it before and nothing happens. So its safe and he can do it again. I dont know why some people just know everything better. Without any education

It is both sad, and funny, that this very kind of process / behavior has (unfortunately) become SO common across many fields of endeavor that it has been the subject of scholarly investigation in both the sociology and psychology literature. What is even more impressive (sic) - it has also been identified and written up in that universally accepted authority on everything - Wikipedia (Normalization of deviance - Wikipedia)!!! Commonly referred to as normalization of deviance, the behavior has led to so many unfavorable outcomes that it defies belief that people still engage in such behaviors. But, it also provides anecdotal humor (the well-known redneck epitaph: 'Hey, y'all, watch this!'), AND write-ups in the annual Darwin Awards. As Ron White is fond of saying, 'You can't fix stupid.' And, as others have added, 'even with duct tape'.

Now, having written all that, it is also entirely possible that the OP is just a complete troll, and has prompted us to have a serious discussion about complete rubbish, for his / her own entertainment. Time will tell which is the case.

 

[Raphus]

True!

Even if he trolls.. There are so many people with the same thoughts, which are not trolling

 

[wildcat99s]

@wildcat99s you really don't know how easy it is to kill yourself with a compressor do you? How do you know your compressor is safe and providing breathable air? Do you know how to check it and test it? Even a small amount of impurities can kill you without you even knowing about it ( CO poisoning is just one way and has killed hundreds of people who never knew they were dying).

Yes, i'm aware of the hazards revolving around air compressors. I have an older, but new hamworthy electric scuba compressor and filter... which the filter is about to get an upgrade. But i know my compressor and filter inside and out. I was advised that an lab done air purity test is usually unneeded as long as i keep the filters changed. I fill outside in the country with fresh air and no fumes around so i'm only filtering out moisture, and what little oil that's produced by the compressor itself.. But it gets a smell test before each bottle fill and i'm keep track of the litmus strip inside to see when it needs to be changed.

But when i started getting into scuba earlier this year, that's when all of the covid bs started, and the certification classes was moved to mainly online, with a couple onsite and lake wet classes. and my schedule wouldn't work with that right now. So i went online and found the scuba courses from SSI and that's what got me started, and then i weighted myself and practiced all of the procedures in the pool, until i eventually grew out of the pool. So it's not like i just threw on a tank and went diving. I studied and practiced from multiple sources for 2 months before going deeper and will eventually get certified when the time is right.

I double check all of my gear before i get in the water. and i've learned to rebuild and service every piece of equipment i have and know what's going on with every piece.

But i don't believe that the OP is a troll. I imagine there is a lot of people who want to learn scuba but don't like the idea of being forced to jump through hoops and pay lots of money to get permission to scuba dive. I know scuba attracts a lot of impulse users, and know there are places a person can get certified in under 8 hours of training including water time. They buy equipment, take a few hour class, get certified, do a dive or two, and then put the equipment away to rot until they sell it 15 years later. But scuba is a big money business because it has a high turnover of divers. Yes, some continue to dive and enjoy it, but a majority of them are just impulse hobbiest. So there's usually a price tag on everything involved and think there's some animosity towards people who don't have to rely on someone else before you can go diving, besides a dive buddy. I get safety is a big issue and sure your Passings forum has a lot of great people. but i didn't see very many that died while out diving. I'm sure they're there and sorry to hear about them. But most were divers that died out of water and i won't be there anytime soon.

 

[lowwall]

Accidents and Incidents

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