To those considering an OW class...

[vondo]

Please excuse me as I only skimmed the posts but I didn't see this option listed...

How about adding a Diver Learners permit (like driving permit) that requires people with the shorter resort classes to be required to dive with advenced divers only?

This shouldn't impact the resorts who sponsor supervized dives anyhow, right? It would make them need to complete an expanded OW coarse to get the full OW certification.

So casual divers can use them on supervised vacation dives, Dive shops would be needed for the expanded OW classes more.

Sure a little more paper work and admin changes would be required, BUT... it would solve some big problems that are life threatening. I would change refresher classes into the second stage full OW certification class so that existing card holders are not stripped of their certifications, but simply upgraded when they renew or refresh...

Sound logical? No one is degraded and it allows for abriviated classes with new divers, as long as they are supervised, untill they get another class for full certification.

Or is that what the "Basic OW" and "Advance Diver" set up was supposed to provide?

I was thinking along the same lines. That I was supposedly qualified, after my OW, to go with an equally inexperienced buddy, rent tanks, and dive with just the two of us in a local lake was shocking to me. That I was qualified to get in the water with other divers was not.

When someone completes driver's training in the U.S., they generally have a period where they must drive with an adult. Then another period where they can drive alone or with an adult but not with other teenagers.

Maybe diving should be the same. Basic OW and then 10 dives with a DM in the water (not as your buddy, per se). Practicing skills during this time would be highly recommended. Then another 10 dives supervised (off a boat say). Since this is basically how a lot of people dive, I don't think this would be hard sell AND it would enforce upon the diver that they have the basic knowledge but still a lot to learn.

 

[vondo]

For PADI that's the Scuba Diver cert. Complete 3 pool sessions and 2 open water dives and you're eligible. The problem is students don't want that restriction. They want to be able to dive on their own. Not many people will pay for the scuba diver cert, even though many divers won't ever dive outside of a resort setting where there is always a DM or instructor anyway. Kind of ironic.

I'm not sure that's the reason they don't want the Scuba cert. The scuba diver cert has a couple of other "features."

1) One can't do scuba diver, then do a bunch of supervised dives, and graduate to Open Water. It requires taking everything again. Ok, maybe the standards say you can, but in general it doesn't seem like an option unless you take private instruction and the cost is higher

2) Maybe I am confusing this with a resort course, but doesn't it generally mean you can dive for the week but after that you are back to square one?

 

[dolphinfish]

Once again, diving is a recreational activity. Yes, it's more dangerous than walking around the block. However, many other recreational activities are dangerous and don't require a certification that compares to OW. Some examples are skydiving (don't want to make too many mistakes doing this one), moutain-climbing, white-water rafting. I was involved in a rafting mishap that I will never forget. Could have easily drowned. In my opinion, rafting can be a very dangerous sport partly due to the "guides" who I found to be nothing but a bunch of partiers & people I would never want my life to be in the hands of again.

Mistakes are unacceptable in medicine, obviously because people's lives are in your hands. It was a lose comparison to diving. Dive certification after dive certification doesn't mean you'll never make a grave mistake. Unfortunately, many diving deaths involve highly skilled & certified divers. Point is, diving is one of those sports where it makes sense to restrict participation to those who have been deemed competant & are thus certified according to PADI or NAUI or whoever's standards.

In the original post, it was stated that "diving, like many sports, isn't much fun unless you've been given the skills to do properly and those skills can't be learned in two days." I disagree with that. I think you can learn the skills required to dive in a 2 day PADI approved course. Doesn't mean you'll have experienced everything diving has to offer, both good & bad. But, you should be ready for everything a recreational dive has. Doesn't mean you'll do it perfect the first time, but you're not likely to die either. OW cert. doesn't mean you should go on a 110 foot dive as your first real OW dive. But, you could probably do it as one of your first ten dives. I did with no problem. Maybe someone else couldn't do it but, according to PADI, you can get your AOW right after OW so you could be making your deep dive pretty soon after OW cert.

Bottom line is diving is supposed to be fun. It's a very equipment oriented sport that can have a very negative impact on the human body. It makes sense to have some sort of training/certification in order to do it safely. PADI, NAUI, DAN, etc, etc. are all doing a great job with certifications, studies, recommendations, continuing education, etc, etc. Let's not kill the industry by making the certifications more complicated & lengthy than necessary.

 

[dolphinfish]

Again thia all goes back to liability. At least one of those AOW dives is supposed to be a deep dive for virtually all agencies. This is one small way that the dive operation can say to the courts--look, this guy/gal had training in deep diving and understood the risk and problems related to deep diving.

If you ever get named in a lawsuit based on your professional status you will understand this.

Yes, I understand the AOW cert. is something they can cling to that says, yes this diver made a "deep" water dive. What about the diver who has made 10 deep water dives? Why can't he/she dive the Spiegal? What makes someone who is AOW cert. who possibly hasn't made a dive in 18 months more qualified to dive the Spiegal than someone who is OW cert. and dove a dozen deep dives within the last 3 months? I think the dive shops could at least let people who are not AOW cert. sign something that says they've made deep water dives & know the risks or whatever. We already have to sign waivers to dive, what's one more for a deep dive.

I have to think most people who are certified at least understand the risks involved with diving. I don't know about you but I've read many of the accident reports in DAN's magazine & other scuba mags. One of the common threads you will find if you do a root-cause analysis of an accident is people put themselves in situations they are ill prepared for. One of the most important things they should teach in OW classes & all other after that is don't put yourself in a situation you can't handle. If you're unsure about dive conditions or the way your head feels or whatever, don't make the dive.

 

[jbd]

In the original post, it was stated that "diving, like many sports, isn't much fun unless you've been given the skills to do properly and those skills can't be learned in two days." I disagree with that. I think you can learn the skills required to dive in a 2 day PADI approved course.

Two people come to mind regarding this. One was a person I saw in a quarry. Depth was about 20 to 24 feet. The person was alone, completely vertical in the water, finning furiously to maintian the depth and pulling herself through the water with her arms with a breaststroke type of movement. The look on her face was anything but this is fun. She declined any assistance and I never saw her again. What a rip off of a class she got IMO.

The other was an incident related to be by the by person involved. Second dive post certification and was at a depth of 105 feet. Breathed the last half breath he could take before he knew he was completely out of air and all alone. I wonder where the training went wrong in this case? Doesn't sound like much fun to me. Again what a rip off of a class.

I'm not advocating 50, 60 or 70 hours of training as a norm but 10 to 12 hours just isn't enough time to develope any real skill at all. It leaves the new diver in an un-necessarily dangerous situation.

 

[dolphinfish]

I was thinking along the same lines. That I was supposedly qualified, after my OW, to go with an equally inexperienced buddy, rent tanks, and dive with just the two of us in a local lake was shocking to me. That I was qualified to get in the water with other divers was not.

Ok, put it into perspective. For instance, just because someone completes a swim class at the YMCA doesn't mean they should swim across the Atlantic. No one expects a OW cert. diver to be this vastly experienced diver who is ready for any & all diving situations. Be sensible. Yes, you could swim the Atlantic but it wouldn't be a good idea. Yes, you could rent tanks & jump in a lake - may or may not be a good idea with limited experience.

As I said in another post, diving is a recreational sport for most. It's a very equipment oriented sport that can have a very negative impact on the human body. It makes sense to have some sort of training/certification in order to do it safely. PADI, NAUI, DAN, etc, etc. are all doing a great job with certifications, studies, recommendations, continuing education, etc, etc. Let's not kill the industry by making the certifications more complicated & lengthy than necessary.

 

[Matsya]

Yes, I understand the AOW cert. is something they can cling to that says, yes this diver made a "deep" water dive. What about the diver who has made 10 deep water dives? Why can't he/she dive the Spiegal? What makes someone who is AOW cert. who possibly hasn't made a dive in 18 months more qualified to dive the Spiegal than someone who is OW cert. and dove a dozen deep dives within the last 3 months? I think the dive shops could at least let people who are not AOW cert. sign something that says they've made deep water dives & know the risks or whatever. We already have to sign waivers to dive, what's one more for a deep dive.

I have to think most people who are certified at least understand the risks involved with diving. I don't know about you but I've read many of the accident reports in DAN's magazine & other scuba mags. One of the common threads you will find if you do a root-cause analysis of an accident is people put themselves in situations they are ill prepared for. One of the most important things they should teach in OW classes & all other after that is don't put yourself in a situation you can't handle. If you're unsure about dive conditions or the way your head feels or whatever, don't make the dive.

There is a kind of Catch 22 situation here. With Open Water Certification you are NOT SUPPOSED to dive greater than 18 metres so if you are only open water certified how do you say that you have made deep water dives?
And if, as you have said, OW classes teach you not to put yourself in situations you cannot handle, you SHOULD NOT do deep dives with only open water certification because that is a condition that you have not been taught to handle.

 

[jbd]

Yes, I understand the AOW cert. is something they can cling to that says, yes this diver made a "deep" water dive. What about the diver who has made 10 deep water dives? Why can't he/she dive the Spiegal? What makes someone who is AOW cert. who possibly hasn't made a dive in 18 months more qualified to dive the Spiegal than someone who is OW cert. and dove a dozen deep dives within the last 3 months? I think the dive shops could at least let people who are not AOW cert. sign something that says they've made deep water dives & know the risks or whatever. We already have to sign waivers to dive, what's one more for a deep dive.

Certainly a valid point and one I agree with you for the most part. It still reamins an issue of what holds up in court. Training and documentation of it holds up in court, lack of it doesn't.

I have to think most people who are certified at least understand the risks involved with diving. I don't know about you but I've read many of the accident reports in DAN's magazine & other scuba mags. One of the common threads you will find if you do a root-cause analysis of an accident is people put themselves in situations they are ill prepared for. One of the most important things they should teach in OW classes & all other after that is don't put yourself in a situation you can't handle. If you're unsure about dive conditions or the way your head feels or whatever, don't make the dive.

For the most part I agree but just being UW is a situation that we as land dwellers are ill prepared for unless there is sufficient training. Part of this in my mind means not only how to dive in and of its self (which is pretty easy)but also how to deal with potential problems if they inadvertently arise. A simple example involving myself. While diving at the local quarry and just a foot or two off the bottom a rather poorly trained diver landed squarely on my back and buried me in the muck while he failed away trying to get control of himself. The last thing I saw before the muck covered my mask was the failing pink fins of his diving companion stirring up a huge cloud of silt as she hit the bottom right in front of me. In this case I didn't put myself in a bad situation, someone else did. I waited patiently until the, IMO at the time, buffoon got off of me and I felt it was safe to move through the silt cloud to clearer water found the guy I was diving with and resumed the dive. How would that have played out with a two day shake and bake wonder diver? I suspect not so well, although most likely without serious injury. But what if it had happened at 80, 90 or even 120 feet?

 

[dolphinfish]

I agree that you don't develop a high level of skill after 10 or 12 hours. We have to ask ourselves (& PADI, for that matter) what the goal of an OW cert. is? Is it a high level of skill? Maybe it doesn't produce a highly skilled diver, but does the individual have enough skill to build on?

From my experience, the OW cert. did give me enough skill to build on. But, I dive within my experience/comfort level mostly. I'm not interested in cave diving, tech diving, penetrating wrecks. I'm a pretty conservative person as a whole so I dive pretty conservatively. Some people are risk takers. The diver who ran out of air is most likely more of a risk taker. So, more hours of training in an OW cert. course probably wouldn't have helped.

To say no real skills at all are developed in the 10 to 12 hours is really not true. They're not all the skills you'll ever need but some of those skills can't be taught. They have to be through experience - they are confidence-based skills. Diving in current, for instance, gets easier the more you do it. Night diving gets easier the more you do it. Newer divers use more air than more experienced ones. These are just a couple examples of important skills you really couldn't learn by adding a few hours to the OW cert.

If we could get OW cert. divers to appreciate & be aware of the risks involved with diving and how it all relates to their level of experience at any given time, we would be helping our new divers more than by just throwing more hours or pool time or more dives at the OW cert. requirements. It's just like throwing money at a poverty problem. Sounds good, might solve things short-term but it's not a long-term fix. Don't add hours just to say, "hey, it now takes XX hours, dives, etc to get OW cert. Look what we've we've done to increase diver safety."

I'm all about diver safety. I just don't think the PADI OW cert. course is lacking, esp. with regards to safety. I think you are skilled enough to set up your equipment, take a giant stride, enjoy the reef, wreck, fish, etc., watch your air, depth, buddy, clear you ears & mask, etc., make your safety stop & climb back on the boat. That's diving. It's fun, has some risks, is not "normal" (you're a human breathing underwater), & can be "out of your control" at times. But, we've allowed for all that by requiring people to take a class & learn stuff about it.

 

[dolphinfish]

There is a kind of Catch 22 situation here. With Open Water Certification you are NOT SUPPOSED to dive greater than 18 metres so if you are only open water certified how do you say that you have made deep water dives?
And if, as you have said, OW classes teach you not to put yourself in situations you cannot handle, you SHOULD NOT do deep dives with only open water certification because that is a condition that you have not been taught to handle.

I'm not aware of any PADI restriction saying OW cert. divers shouldn't dive deeper than 60 ft (which is around 18 meters). I don't think they are supposed to do any OW cert. dives deeper than that. But, beyond your cert. dives, I don't think there is any regulation, at least not one that's enforced.

Deep dives are different than a 40 ft. dive, I'll give you that. But, all it takes is one in your AOW cert. process & PADI says you're "qualified" to do deep dives. So, I've done over 50 dives, not sure right now exactly how many were "deep" but probably 1/3 of them were. If it helps, I did all of them with my PADI divemaster friend as my buddy.