Three dives in one day against the rules?

[crispix]

YMCA Scuba has an equivalency agreement with CMAS. I was YMCA OW certified last year and got two C-cards: YMCA OW and CMAS 1-star.

Best part is: an extra c-card and $3.95 will get me a frappuccino!

 

[beester]

"CMAS training is state of the art"

That's a statement I would take issue with.

You are correct... blund black & white statements like the above are anecdotal and obviously not true but your statements regarding CMAS divers is anecdotal as well. You know as well as I do that traininglevel has to do with standards but much more with the individual instructor teaching the course.

I'm of course just a new guy... I don't know all the ins and outs of CMAS or PADI and I'm not a knight in shining armor trying to defend either agency. Since I'm working (finalizing) my 2 * certification I can however provide a closer look into CMAS (BEFOS = Belgian Federation) certification since I'm doing it now.

2 * Diver consists of a theoretical examination, practical pool tests, open water tests and open water dives. This is boring stuff but could give some insight (copy paste).

Theoretical examination:

• federation structure and certification levels
• practical insurance issues
• blood circulation and breathing mechanism
• the working of the human ear + be able to draw and assign parts
• the effects of pressure changes on the human ear
• the effects of braciardy
• composition of air (pp)
• units of pressure, calculations of pressure based on bar, mB, Pascal
• Differences in pressure (atmospheric, hydraustatic, relative, absolute)
• Law Boyle Mariotte + influences on diving (buyancy, barotrauma)
• Law Henry + influences on diving (deco)
• Law Archimedes + influences on diving (buyancy)
• Law Pascal + influences on diving (pressure)
• Law Dalton + influences on diving (partial pressure)
• Law Snell + influences on diving (light infraction)
• Mechanism of hyperventilation and linked dangers
• Mechanism of overbreathing (hypercapnia)
• Different forms of pulmonary barotrauma, symptoms, treatments, dangers
• Squeeze, symptoms, treatments
• Alternobar barotrauma, punctured eardrum, barotrauma of sinus, symptoms & treatments
• Mechanism and source of DCS, symptoms, treatment
• Additional causes of DCS
• PP, Hyperoxia, Hypercapnia, Hypoxia
• N2 narcosis, cause, symptoms and dangers
• Dangers of apnee and freediving (shallow water blackout, syncopal dangers)
• CPR
• O² administration / treatment
• In depth knowledge of material, uses, repair
• Use of divetables, calculated single, multiple, deco dives.
• Exceptions to normal table calculations (blow up, deco violations, in water recompression)
• Calculating rock bottom & SAC rates
• Responsibilities of different 'roles' during a dive (diveleader, tail end)

It was quite thorough and consisted of 8 x 3 hour lectures. You realy had to study for the examination.

Practical pool tests:

• 200 m swim
• 25 m swim apnee (pool length)
• Duck dive + clearing of mask
• 30 secs apnee
• Combined test =abc equipment + scuba. Backward fall in pool, 50 yard swim at surface with equipment using snorkel, dive to deep end pool, take mask completely off and breath couple of times, do 3 mask clearings, buddy breath 3 times with partner, go up, swim 50 yards at surface using regulator.
• Swim 30 m under water with 2 people using 1 tank (buddy breathing)
• Between tanks test: 2 tanks are on the bottom of the pool separated by at least 10 m. Drop in pool using giant leap, swim to farthest tank open tank valve breath 15 secs, close tank valve, purge regulator swim to other tank repeat 4 times.
• Test with jacket simulating stuck in nets (taking off jacket, buddy breathing, AAS)

Open Water tests (only 1 test per dive):

• Swim 500 m fully equipped at surface using snorkel. After finishing this candidate must perform a normal dive (part of test...no waiting time between the swim and start of dive).
• Ascend test: Ascend from 45-50 feet in blue water (no reference), adhering to the rule of ascend (no more then 30 feet a min).
• Ascend OOA test: At 45-50 feet instructor will give OOA signal. Candidate initiates buddy breathing, after 3 times candidate gives his AAS and starts controled ascend to surface. Test performed in blue water (no reference). Adhere to rule of ascend.
• Combined rescue test: At 45-50 feet instructor simulates unconsciousness while negative (no air in bcd). Candidate takes instructor in rescue attitude (keeps instructors head in hyperstretch, keeps regulator in mouth of instructor) and starts a swimming ascend to surface. At surface candidate takes instructor and tows him for 50 meters. After arriving at the bank/shore de-equip instructor, analyse symptoms, perform cpr and administer O². (this is a biggy.. you are quite fatigued after this test).

Open water dives where you lead a diveteam.

• Lead 3 dives (buddy pair): Consists of briefing, equipment check, planning the dive (calculating tables), signals, dive it selve, OSB inflation (part of test), debriefing + information about sucessive dives. These dives are done in cold, low vis waters with current. So navigational and deep water skills are also needed.

Quite a list :11: I started for this certification in the beginning of February. Now almost 6 months later (50 dives later) I'm almost finished. Think about it what you want... but it took some time and effort to do this. (pleasant times tho )

 

[Gil57usa]

So, outside of my usual diving habits I have joined a local diving club. They're all CMAS divers and their belief in CMAS almighty puts any DIR cult talk to shame. They despise anything PADI, and lo and behold - I am carrying a PADI badge.

Anyway, this weekend I went diving with these guys. We made one dive to 22 meters (72 ft) in the morning and made plans for the second dive to split the groups into less & more experienced ones. Less experienced divers were supposed to dive the afternoon dive (18 meters - 59 ft) and us, more experienced were to go for a night dive that evening (11 meters - 36 ft). All dives were to last for about 35-40 minutes.

At that moment I said: "Hey, I'll join you guys in the afternoon AND do my night dive later "

They replied: "CMAS and our club strictly forbids to go for three dives in one day!"

To cut the long story short, I did have it my way in the end, made three dives in one day (as I've done on several occasions before, to much bigger depths too) and survived to tell the story. But, I've never heard of this rule before ever! Need I say it makes no sense to me that such a rule would exist anyway? Does it exist? In CMAS? Anywhere else? Anyone heard of it?

There are no "Rules". Consult your Tables, plan your dives, be prudent and stay within your limits.

 

[Meng_Tze]

Ditto here. Thanks.


So, according to these rules, both me and they were right. I was right because the dives on that day were less than 30m/100ft deep and in the correct succession to make three or more dives and they were right because indeed there is a rule within CMAS that limits the number of dives in one day under specific circumstances.

The final verdict being that with the profiles of those dives (22m/18m/11m) there shouldn't have been any fuss over making those dives under CMAS rules.

too complicated for me to follow. Can you make the dive: yes/no. Should you make the dive: yes/no.

 

[TeddyDiver]

YMCA Scuba has an equivalency agreement with CMAS. I was YMCA OW certified last year and got two C-cards: YMCA OW and CMAS 1-star.

They are the same cards (cert levels) with the same standards. Just a difference with the names, YMCA and CMAS...
So any of the YMCA instructors can answer as well to any question about CMAS standards...

 

[Skeeter1097]

A CAMS instructor told me 2 dives is the limit. [2 in the morning, 2 around noon, 2 in the evening. If you are only diving 30 to 60 ft.for 35 to 40 min. 2 more night dives too.
Well that might be to much. You might have to louse one somewhere.

 

[cowboyneal]

I've done 7 in Wakatobi all with the proper surface intervals and never once going into decompression...it's a function of your depth, time at depth and your off-gassing (surface) times. There is no limit based on "how many dives" you did, therefore.

 

[AbyssalPlains]

This sounds ridiculuous. I obtained my training and certification from CMAS in Germany about 12 years ago. I haven't kept up with their later developments, but in the meantime, I've had a lot of exposure to PADI and further training with SSI, and I must say, both these agencies' standards are nowhere near the CMAS training I received. I feel very fortunate to have gone through the CMAS training, which, just as an example, included rescueing an unconscious diver from 45 feet as part of the open water certification.
That said, I never heard anything about a rule limiting the number of dives in a day. If anything, I have always found CMAS to be much more liberal, for example, there was never a distinction made between recreational depth limits of 80 vs. 130 feet. In both SSI and PADI, IMHO there has been a lot of confusion as to what the recreational depth should be, depending of whether the diver has completed a "deep diving" specialty. I say "confusion" because there appears to be no clear-cut rule as to whether a diver without deep diving training should be merely discouraged or downright prohibited from going beyond 80 feet. They even call it "deep certified", as if there was an absolute requirement for deep diving training before a diver is eligible for those dives.
CMAS, on the other hand, - unless things have changed - has always kept it simple: "Don't go deeper than 40 meters/130 feet", period. No distinction between "regular" and "deep" open water training and all that, no guesswork or leaving it up to interpretation. I'm not saying this is good or bad, all I'm saying is that IMHO, CMAS has an advantage over SSI/PADI in terms of being more clear about things. Comparing CMAS to the more wide-spread agencies, one cannot help the impression that the differences arise from economic reasons more than anything else. To my knowledge, CMAS has been practiced mostly through diving clubs, with no or very little monetary interests involved. (Just for illustration, my training involved one-on-one instruction in the open water with two (!) instructors over the course of several weeks, and I paid - nothing). What most commercial agencies practice looks very much like taking all the necessary components of a comprehensive and safe scuba instruction program and dissecting it into as many pieces as possible to be marketed separately. Of course, this observation is nothing new.

But relating to your original question: What you describe does not sound like a CMAS rule, it sounds like pure nonsense someone made up.

Let me know if I'm mistaken! Like I said, it's been a while....

 

[drbill]

I won't read all the posts here, but this seems ridiculous to me. Is a diver doing three dives to a max depth of 40 ft with adequate surface intervals in danger? Unless they are doing something pretty stupid... no! I've done three dives in a day with an average depth of 180 ft (but with well extended multi-level deco stops and long surface intervals, and I certainly don't recommend this to others) and as many as 7 dives in a day and somehow I'm still alive.

Most liveaboards (at least the ones I would go on) exceed 3 dives a day.

 

[Mr. Bubble]

It's all based on your RNT (Residual Nitrogen Time) Refer to your tables. I just recieved an E-mail from a dive trip member that racked up 33 dives on a week long trip. That averages out to about 5 dives a day. If you wake up early enough, and stay up late enough, and do enough surface time, the sea is the limit.....