Thrillhouse
Contributor
I've been diving for about 2 and a half years now, with 32 dives under my belt. I really enjoy the sport and belong to an awesome club through my uni which has exposed me to a number of skilled, safe, and passionate scuba divers who've been fundamental to my learning how to dive. I've taken the PADI system to get where I am today, and am currently Advanced Open Water certified... Very glad about that, but at the same time I only really felt "advanced" after my 30th dive or so, and am only now comfortable going down to around 100ft in cold water, feeling in control of the situation and completely relaxed.
The last dive I went on was with my club, and with another diver who's also AOW. She told me she'd done about 20 dives and was totally fine with going down past 90ft plus, but seemed a bit amateur on the surface, forgetting to de-fog her mask, unsure of how to manage a buddy check, and struggling to get her fins on. Once beneath the surface she had a number of bouyancy issues, rarely looked back while leading, and had her secondary and guages dangling along during both of our dives. We agreed to turn back at half a tank and surface at 1/3; when we turned back (having risen to 30ft), she began to tear along as fast as she could, explaining later that she didn't like surface swims and would rather get in quicker... Naturally, this raised an eyebrow.
After, she told me she's taking the rescue diver course sometime this spring, which sounded fairly alarming. I felt unsafe and buddiless with her on a recreational shore dive in crystal conditions, and the thought of her as a "rescue diver" seems quite absurd. I'm sure she can pass the course just like she somehow did for AOW, but what does that really mean? She's clearly not an "advanced" open water diver at all, but a piece of plastic says she is, meaning people like myself happily buddy with her thinking they're with a safe and competent partner. I don't mean to come down hard on her as she was a nice person to be out with, but her skills as a diver were terribly lacking.
So, what are people's thoughts on matters like this? I've heard of people getting AOW certified immediately after getting their OW at resorts, making them even less experienced than this person but still somehow "certified" to engage in complex and potentially dangerous dives. There seem to be some major flaws in this regulating process.
The last dive I went on was with my club, and with another diver who's also AOW. She told me she'd done about 20 dives and was totally fine with going down past 90ft plus, but seemed a bit amateur on the surface, forgetting to de-fog her mask, unsure of how to manage a buddy check, and struggling to get her fins on. Once beneath the surface she had a number of bouyancy issues, rarely looked back while leading, and had her secondary and guages dangling along during both of our dives. We agreed to turn back at half a tank and surface at 1/3; when we turned back (having risen to 30ft), she began to tear along as fast as she could, explaining later that she didn't like surface swims and would rather get in quicker... Naturally, this raised an eyebrow.
After, she told me she's taking the rescue diver course sometime this spring, which sounded fairly alarming. I felt unsafe and buddiless with her on a recreational shore dive in crystal conditions, and the thought of her as a "rescue diver" seems quite absurd. I'm sure she can pass the course just like she somehow did for AOW, but what does that really mean? She's clearly not an "advanced" open water diver at all, but a piece of plastic says she is, meaning people like myself happily buddy with her thinking they're with a safe and competent partner. I don't mean to come down hard on her as she was a nice person to be out with, but her skills as a diver were terribly lacking.
So, what are people's thoughts on matters like this? I've heard of people getting AOW certified immediately after getting their OW at resorts, making them even less experienced than this person but still somehow "certified" to engage in complex and potentially dangerous dives. There seem to be some major flaws in this regulating process.