Thank heavens for PADI

[Walter]

Diversauras & diverbrian,

I have to agree with Mike. Most divers are about ½ breath away from full panic. They haven't been given the foundation they need for confidence.

Whirling Girl,

Trying to find facts in the PADI v Diverlink forum is a chore. It's mostly opinion and misinformation. DivePartner1 started a thread to specifically avoid most of that. You can find that thread here. If you have additional questions, I'll be happy to answer you.

I thought Stephen's last post & my last post cleared the air to greatly reduce the tension.

 

[Diversauras]

Walter once bubbled...

I have to agree with Mike. Most divers are about ½ breath away from full panic. They haven't been given the foundation they need for confidence.

Most divers? I can't agree with that. There would be dead and dying bodies everywhere if that were the case.

 

[diverbrian]

Walter,

I am saying that I don't agree with the way that was worded. Diversaurus was right to say that if taken literally, that would indicate that a PADI shop can not stay in business and train safe divers. That is simply untrue. There are many dive instructors out there that that DO train good divers. Let's give them credit instead of making it appear that the bulk of the divers coming out of training are accidents waiting to happen.

Yes, I have seen screw-ups and serious mistakes. But the remainder of their training (or admittedly dive buddies in a couple cases) pulled those divers through them. They did some emergency procedure to get air or get to the surface and learned from their mistakes. I still have yet to see where this comprises that list of MOST DIVERS.

Yes, there are places like the quarry or certain shipwrecks up here that attract divers into areas where they don't have the skills yet. But open water divers fresh out of class shouldn't be diving 120 ft. in 40 degree water. No amount of training will fix the divers that insist on that.

You seem to feel that the water skills taught are inadequate. That is an opinion that is probably true of some instructors. Other instructors teach excellent courses. Let us not try to make out EVERY instructor that makes a profit and keeps a shop open as incompetent or cutting corners.

We have disagreements. By and large, the industry can't afford to turn out a huge number of "waiting accidents", now can it? If they did this, they would lose much of the customer base that feels that diving is a relatively safe activity. There are improvements that could be made. I agree with that. But, I don't care how far we progress, there will always be improvement possible. That is the nature of things being created by humans in this case.

I say the above and my prior post with all due respect. So, I would appreciate any replies that anyone chooses to make to CONTINUE TO be respectful to all involved, especially the people that are in disagreement here, because it is simply an entertaining debate. I have a feeling that neither side will change their opinion here and that is fine.

 

[Walter]

Diversauras & diverbrian,

I believe you are mistaken.

These divers are fine as long as nothing goes wrong. Fortunately, things rarely go wrong. When problems arise, they quickly panic. I've witnessed it many many times. I've rescued many of them.

I do agree there are some instructors who do an excellent job. I wish the % were higher.

 

[Whirling Girl]

MikeFerrara once bubbled...
I think you pretty much answered your own question. You have to pump the OW students through. Since it costs a lot to teach and you can't charge very much for it you must do it efficiently (fast). The only purpose it serves is to sell equipment. For those who want to do this for a living it isn't all bad because it's actually what most people want.

That sounds like, to some degree, a diveshop owner has strong disincentives to increase the cost or improve the standards of the training they offer. Of course, a nearby shop could quote prices that are lower and training that is shorter, and thereby steal your students. But since the agencies (or at least some of them, including the largest one, apparently) have arguably lower standards than a) they did in the past and b) than they should now, they don't help a dive instructor who wants to teach or offer a better course.

I hadn't thought before that if the agencies raised the bar, that could help dive shops make diving education less of a 'loss leader' and more of a valuable service for which the shops and instructors are fairly compensated. Or at least so that they don't LOSE money.

With the equipment you must play the manufacturers game. That means dumping $18,000 into an outfit like scubapro for an opening order and letting them tell you how much of what else you can carry and how much of their stuff you must sell

Then you have to teach in such a way that sells it. .

Are you saying that the manufacturers force you to buy stuff that you don't want to sell? So, let's say I'm a dive shop owner, and I want to sell scubapro jetfins, because I like them, but I don't want to sell scubapro bc's, because I think they suck. I would have to buy their bc's anyway? And have them collect dust, or compromise my values and try to sell them to my customers when I don't think they're safe or good quality?

That doesn't seem fair. Am I being terribly naive?

Margaret

 

[TCDiver1]

Walter once bubbled...
Diversauras & diverbrian,

I believe you are mistaken.

These divers are fine as long as nothing goes wrong. Fortunately, things rarely go wrong. When problems arise, they quickly panic. I've witnessed it many many times. I've rescued many of them.

I do agree there are some instructors who do an excellent job. I wish the % were higher.

I agree more with Diversauras & diverbrian on this. I've rescued my share of divers also Walter and will admit that the majority of them were less experienced divers. However, a good number of them were very experienced divers. We are all just a couple of oversites, mistakes and/or gulps of water away from panic.

It would be statistically anomalous to think nothing will ever go wrong with any group of divers .... regardless of how well trained they are. Diving statistics are probably not telling the whole story due to unreported incidents but they do tell part of the story.

Divers are not dying in large numbers .... thats kinda a hard stat to not report by the way. And they appear to be not getting hurt in large numbers. The agencies and instructors must be doing something right.

 

[ScubaScott]

sorry, I f*&$ed up

SS

 

[Whirling Girl]

diverbrian once bubbled...
Yes, there are places like the quarry or certain shipwrecks up here that attract divers into areas where they don't have the skills yet. But open water divers fresh out of class shouldn't be diving 120 ft. in 40 degree water. No amount of training will fix the divers that insist on that.

diverbrian, I'm not trying to take your quote out of context, and I appreciated your comments, but I wanted to respond to this specifically.

PADI does train divers to think that they can go to 120 ft. in 40 degree water when they are fresh out of OW class.

I took PADI AOW right after my OW class, and was urged to do so by my instructors. I decided to take AOW not because I thought it would make me an advanced diver, but because I didn't think I was safe to dive without an instructor yet. (I did a few dives, actually, and made some really stupid mistakes, so I had a basis for the opinion).

So, my AOW dives were dives #12-17, I think.

There was no classroom discussion in AOW, it was just five dives. My PADI "deep" dive was to 130 feet, on air. We went down, we kneeled on the bottom, I tried to write my name, address, depth and time on my slate, and we left.

After that, I was officially blessed to go that deep on air.

That, in my opinion, was inadequate training, but I digress.

The divers you object to, are not objected to by PADI.

Margaret

 

[ScubaScott]

Whirling Girl once bubbled...


Are you saying that the manufacturers force you to buy stuff that you don't want to sell? So, let's say I'm a dive shop owner, and I want to sell scubapro jetfins, because I like them, but I don't want to sell scubapro bc's, because I think they suck. I would have to buy their bc's anyway? And have them collect dust, or compromise my values and try to sell them to my customers when I don't think they're safe or good quality?

That doesn't seem fair. Am I being terribly naive?

Margaret [/B]

Yes.... to all your questions, and no, I didn't call you naive....

And then give a report to them at year end explaining why you had a good year or failed miserably. Then have run the risk of them pulling your "authorized dealership" from you....

Fair? No, but what are you gonna do? I think Genesis has some tank stickers for you.....

SS

 

[divemed06]

MikeFerrara once bubbled...


Ahhhh...Horse cookies. Just because he didn't do a good job doesn't mean that no PADI instructor would have.

What's the point anyway.

Mike,
I think you missed the point of the quote. The point was that he (the instructor) took responsibility for his courses. In other words, he challenged the guy to find a better dive school (PADI or other) and by doing so, educated his "possible" clients about the other agencies/school available. This is the put-up or shut-up philosophy as it relates the quality of dive training he offered. In other words, he didn't try put any of the other schools down...he basically said "try several other schools/agencies to further your education and I can almost guarantee you that you'll come back to my shop...if you don't come back, I did something wrong in my instrution/approach not to keep you as my student". BTW, this instructor has been in business for 17 years, certified over 2000 divers. Of those 2000 divers, nearly all of them have gone back to him to further their education...guess he's doing something right.