The State of Diving

[Reef Tank]

Only the guy diving in a BP/W with can light seems decent.
(don't mean to bring up the BP/W vs poodle jacket thing)

I think *dave* put that clip in to show how he crashed into the rock.

 

[TSandM]

Diving with the skill demonstrated in the video seems a bit like being dropped on the interstate during rush hour and having little control over your speed. Some people might find that exhilarating, others not so much.

Honestly, when I dove Cozumel, I had several hundred dives and a bunch of training under my belt, and I still felt like I'd been dropped on the interstate during rush hour in California, where they do 70 mph bumper-to-bumper. I've never understood why Coz is recommended for new divers; the current there can be daunting to people with a lot of hours underwater.

 

[fisheater]

I still felt like I'd been dropped on the interstate during rush hour in California, where they do 70 mph bumper-to-bumper.

Must have been foggy that day.

 

[Aigtbootbp]

It took me a few years to learn how to drive safely. Drivers ed, a learners permit and even a license didn't make me a good driver. I believe my driving skills to be acceptable now. Everyone has to learn some way and usually they aren't that great when they first start.
Want to know why they are so bad now days?
Because underwater video was rather rare back in the day. I bet just about everyone here started off flailing around randomly but since there isn't any record of it nobody knew it existed.
Think about it, do you think these folk knew all the mistakes they made? They just got lucky it was recorded for posterity. You older folk who learned years ago didn't make it on tape so you probably have no idea what you looked like.
I bet most people here would be utterly amazed how they look underwater if they had somebody video the whole thing for later. It could be quite educational.

 

[ZenDiver.3D]

Sadly, living in an area with a regular influx of vacation divers I've seen the same types of divers as in the video more times than I care to count. It never ceases to amaze me how many C-cards are given to people with the bare minimum dive skills.

Sidenote: I wonder if the clueless girl handling the scorpionfish has any idea how lucky she is?

I completely agree. And I could not believe they were happy about handing her a scorpionfish. Venom, anyone?

It must be nice to be an experienced diver, perfect in all respects, so as one can criticize and belittle those divers who are just coming on line or only have a few dives under their belt. It must be a really big ego boost for those who are inclined to do so. And: "C-cards are given to people with the bare minimum dive skills"? I guess so, since they are newbies who have only had two days of open water. Get a life.

Oh please. Example- I just finished a father/son pair. They descended on OW1 stopping in a hover at the bottom of the line. Never touched sand. They rolled through skills like that, because I taught them that way, over lots of time and practice. That is typical of students we train. No one Ever uses arms, drags consoles, or hits reef. There is no reason for it, unless they got quicky, roll though teaching. I do Not blame that new diver either. It is not their fault if they were cleared and certified when they should have had more time and attention.
Now, those divers who were trained properly and then let skills atrophy, I do blame. Those who don't try to maintain or better their skills- that is on them.

Sadly, yes ... I've seen a lot of that on my tropical trips.

But I'm not convinced it's solely due to poor training ... like most recreational activities, if you only do it once or twice a year, you'll not only never improve ... but you'll actually lose some of what you had acquired when you initially got trained.

Some of those folks were probably better divers on their final day of OW class than they were in the video ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

And I have seen many of these too. You are right. Unused skills are soon lost.

Holy crap, the DM handed her a scorpionfish? That's spectacularly irresponsible on so many levels.

I would quickly kick that dm out of my company. Totally unresponsible. Also, what happened to the "No Touchy" rule we professionals are suposed to model?

In addition to handing her the Scorpionfish, he also disregarded low air signals to the point that he was sharing air with an OOA diver, while trying to manage another buddy team who was about to cork because their tanks were nearly empty and they were underweight.

The DM seemed to think it was a pretty decent dive.

He should be gone.

I have to agree with Garobbo. Like many if not most of you on here, I'm an instructor with 1,000+ dives. However, I still remember, with great dismay, my first 10-15 or sadly a few more dives after getting my OW C-card. Upside down, head in the sand, mask strap breaking, stirring up silt, feeling like there were 10,000 things going on all at the same moment in time, and frustration! I still remember the exact dive and where I was when the epiphany, as it were, happened. I remember how awesome it felt when the buoyancy and the trim all fell into place. I remember coming up thinking; wow...I actually got to see some stuff and enjoy the dive without having to concentrate only on staying trim and off the bottom. All of you "elite" instructors out there think back. How many people over the age of 35 or so have made this comment: I look back at the things I did as a kid, and I'm lucky to be alive."???? Anybody ever said that? The same goes with diving. I look back at how bad I was on my first 10-15 dives and it's a wonder I ever got the hang of it. We dive for a living. These people come down and dive 1 maybe 2 weeks a year. I dive more in a week than 80% of the diving population does in 5 years. Let's get off our high horse for just a moment or two and show some humility.

Then you were taught as poorly as I was. And as a fellow instructor, you know that.
I didn't know it back then, but when I took my OW course, I was only required to perform a skill one time in the pool, and then once again in the sea. We Never swam, just did fin pivots. I didn't know any better and worked hard. I learned most of my skills after I was certified and found a great friend who was a dm to be my buddy. I watched him and followed along like a puppy. And I learned.
But- it was wrong. Sure, we all improve our confidence and skills as we continue to dive and learn, but we should be given a much stronger skill set to begin with, than most get. My horse is not high, but honest. These people should be trained better and those who are trained, should maintain skills if they plan to continue diving.

Honestly, when I dove Cozumel, I had several hundred dives and a bunch of training under my belt, and I still felt like I'd been dropped on the interstate during rush hour in California, where they do 70 mph bumper-to-bumper. I've never understood why Coz is recommended for new divers; the current there can be daunting to people with a lot of hours underwater.

Location and comfort zone make a huge difference, huh?
I train students in low vis with strong changeable currents. They think All dives in other places are a breeze. It is all relative. Interesting though.

 

[Diver0001]

I put this video together from clips from the DVD we bought after a two tank Cancun dive. I'll be using it in my OW class to demonstrate poor trim, buoyancy control, situational awareness, dangling gear, hand sculling and finning technique.

I don't dive with many groups I'm not familiar with, so I was a bit surprised to find the level of skill displayed in the video to be so common on the dives I did in Mexico. I thought I'd get your input on how the skills displayed in the video compare to your real world experiences with divers you aren't familiar with.

Is this representative of today's state of diving?

So let's break it down. What are we seeing here:

sec 0-30: one diver with poor trim (the woman), and her boyfriend who is more experienced (the one with blue flippers trying a frog kick). The main issue here being that they are not adhering to the same tempo. She is focused on him and he is focused on him.

Further some divers sculling and/or swimming with the hands. This takes about 2 hours of instruction/practice to correct but is probably happening because they had never been made aware of what they are doing.

sec 31-60: more hand sculling, one diver who is absorbed in his own thoughts, one diver whose fin tips are a bit low and an interesting shot of 5 divers who don't appear to be formed up in any recognisable buddy teams.

sec 61-90: The same three divers shown in the first part with the hand sculling. The current seems to be affecting the balance of one of them. The more experienced guy with his girl friend are still showing good buddy contact

sec 91-120: the dive is slowing down and a few of the divers are having to scull a bit with hands and feet for station keeping. nobody except the guy with the ridiculously oversized wing seems to be able to make it look easy. One or two show balance issues because of not being horizontal but nobody looks uneasy.

sec 121-150: Right around the two minute mark the woman who started out in the first seconds with trim issues shows us clearly what her issue is and also shows us that this is really the main issue she's having. Other than not being in trim her other skills look reasonably under control and her buddy contact has been good throughout the dive. I'd say this diver probably has anywhere from 30-40 dives under her belt but really needs about 1hr in the water to reposition some of her weights and to do a proper buoyancy check.

Right after that she's holding a scorpion fish. Wow! Bigger cajones than I have.

I think I recognized the swimthrough. Even here where the temptation to go one after the other our couple is showing good buddy contact and communication.

sec 151-end I'm counting 9 divers not including the camera man or his buddy who are behind the scene and only 4 of those are formed up into what looks like buddy teams. And as far as I can see only one of the buddy teams has shown consistently good buddy contact.

So breaking that down, we're seeing 3 really obvious issues:

1) lots of sculling with the hands/feet for balance. Ordinarily dealing with this issue is a question of a couple of hours of practice once the diver is made aware of what they're doing and how to avoid it.

2) a few divers, but one in particular who needs about an hour working on awareness of trim and repositioning some weights + buoyancy check. Interestingly it would not appear to be the least experienced diver in the group

3) with the exception of one buddy team, poor buddy contact and generally speaking a somewhat chaotic scene due to the fact that buddies are not formed up and all swimming with purpose. That last bit (swimming with purpose) being more of a style issue than anything else, but is visually appealing.

Now I haven't read the responses yet but I'm guessing will spark off a lot of moaning about how poor training is, how lazy instructors are, how people don't *really* want to learn how to dive and how the resort industry is destroying our sport. A few of the elite will join and blame PADI and everyone will generally agree that things like this shouldn't happen.

But : if you *really* look critically at this video then you'll see that there are three prominent issues : (trim, sculling and buddy contact) that could be sorted out with about 1-2 hr of instruction and one or two dives of practice. Some people will insist that this happens because courses are too short but my observation is that adding one dive, or 5 dives or 100 dives to the training isn't going to do a damned bit of good if students are not being taught the right things. What we're seeing here are by and large not skills issues at all but simply awareness issues. The amount of "skill" required to solve these things is minimal ..... once the coin falls.

For example, I pointed out earlier, the woman with the major trim issue probably has up to about 40 dives, which means she's probably spent at least 5 times as much time under water on her own than she has in training and she still has the problem. A 5 minute debriefing, a few minutes of preparation on the next dive a bit of fiddling with weights is all she needs but what she needs most of all is to become AWARE that (a) she has this issue and (b) that it can be solved in two easy steps. For the rest, she's not a bad diver at all...

R..

 

[Thalassamania]

You missed one other failure, most of the divers in the video have no idea of how to wear or secure their gear, they move through the water like floating trash heaps.

 

[Pullmyfinger]

What is being depicted in that video is the product. That is the culmination of someones training program, no more no less.

The product is in need of an upgrade. The process is in need of revision.

This is what you get when the customer asks, "How soon can I get certified?" And an agency steps in to create a program that allows them to answer....."A couple of weekends."

It's like encountering a High school graduate that can't read......you can't help but wondering what school produced a graduate like that.

-Mitch

 

[super7]

I think *dave* put that clip in to show how he crashed into the rock.

Oh. I think I missed that part

 

[ScubaSteve]

But : if you *really* look critically at this video then you'll see that there are three prominent issues : (trim, sculling and buddy contact) that could be sorted out with about 1-2 hr of instruction and one or two dives of practice. Some people will insist that this happens because courses are too short but my observation is that adding one dive, or 5 dives or 100 dives to the training isn't going to do a damned bit of good if students are not being taught the right things. What we're seeing here are by and large not skills issues at all but simply awareness issues. The amount of "skill" required to solve these things is minimal ..... once the coin falls.

How is possible that you can say that this deficiency exists, is so simple to correct yet not call the Instructor lazy? Perhaps Lazy is the wrong term. Perhaps "rushing them out the door so they can get more money through" is a better term. If all it takes is an extra hour or two to correct some fo this, how is this not the Instructor's fault?

By the way, you mentioned TAWNMNBN. I think you deserve a recess in the corner or perhaps priviliges restricted .