What is a logged dive?

[SKMoss]

Just a casual question. What do you consider the requirements to log a dive? The question came up the other day at the LDS. Back when I got certified only the ocean dives counted. Just after that PADI started making noises about counting the pool dives as well. Talking at the LDS it appears this never happened. I remember the rational back then was two fold. First was marketing on their part. Sooner students logged a dive the better. Second was that if a student, or anyone else, is underwater, wearing scuba gear and breathing air from a scuba tank then that was a scuba dive.

Does where you're diving make a difference?

Many students don't use a pool for their confined water work. When you are in a confined water, but it's actually a lake, quarry, ocean, do those dives count toward logged dives?

Does how long you under the water make a difference?

My buddy lost a fin during a dive. We know where it is. After a surface interval of an hour I go back and get it. It's in 60' of water, but Im only under the water for a total of about 5 minutes. Is that a dive?

If you're in a pool, for an hour doing an in-water repair of some kind is that a "dive"?

Does how deep you are make a difference?

I was under a boat, on scuba, at about 5' doing a repair on a pranged prop for a couple of hours. Was this a dive to log? I did a night dive, laying in the grass along the shore for about 2 hours watching sea horses at about 6'. (I actually fell asleep for that one for a few minutes, according to my dive buddy). Is that a dive?

Thoughts?

 

[fire_diver]

Log whatever you like as a dive. Technically, any time assemble your gear and spend time underwater breathing compressed air is a "dive".

Personally, I won't log "pool" dives. If I dove in an aquarium, I would log it for it's uniqueness. For everything else, I have to be diving deeper than I can ordinarily swim too (so at least 20 feet) and I need to spend enough time to do an air check, which is about 10 minutes. If I'm down that long, I'm probably going to be down a lot longer. If I went to 20 and had a reg failure, I would log that dive to record the failure and the what, when, where and why.

 

[grantwiscour]

I don't count pool dives...the others probably so.

 

[Basking Ridge Diver]

I agree with FireDiver - including the pool time. We have spots in NJ that are considered inlet dives (seawater) where the depth is 10 to 20 feet - that to me is a dive. I untied an anchor line at 70 feet for less than 4 mins this after a 1 hour SIT - we planned a two tank dive but the weather started to turn - my PDC logged it so I logged that dive - quick down, untie and back up - I had not done that before and thought I may use this information some other time.
You will decide over time if you want to log a dive - did I learn something, did I see something, did I practice something - every dive can have a function and purpose if you think about - so why not log it? Quarries to me are not pool time - so for me quarries are definite dives.

 

[Zen1300]

A slight twist on the original question...

If you go out on the lake and you go down for 20 minutes navigating to an underwater site, then surface to get bearings on the next site, then navigate again 20 minutes, then surface to go to the next - would you count it as one dive or three?

 

[fire_diver]

A slight twist on the original question...

If you go out on the lake and you go down for 20 minutes navigating to an underwater site, then surface to get bearings on the next site, then navigate again 20 minutes, then surface to go to the next - would you count it as one dive or three?

I would call that a single dive.

 

[tursiops]

I let the computer decide....if I'm at the surface less than 10 minutes, it is the same dive when I go back down.

Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF700T using Tapatalk

 

[boulderjohn]

Just a casual question. What do you consider the requirements to log a dive? The question came up the other day at the LDS. Back when I got certified only the ocean dives counted. Just after that PADI started making noises about counting the pool dives as well.

I believe you have a unique background. I don't believe any agency ever said only ocean dives count. PADI began its life as the Chicago branch of NAUI, and they formed PADI when NAUI decided to make its focus the west coast and they felt slighted. I am pretty sure they thought those lake Michigan dives should be logged.

I have never until now heard of PADI every talking about logging pool dives.

PADI's standards for dives are for training dives only. They have no standards for what you do on your own dives in terms of logging or pretty much anything else. That is for you to determine. Your log is for you, and it serves your purposes.

Personally, I have never even considered logging a pool dive, but I log any dive I do in the open water, whether it is in the 23 feet, no visibility depth of Chatfield Reservoir or at 300 feet on an ocean wreck.

 

[Zen1300]

My computer broke it into two dives. LOL. My software allowed me to join them. Of course the software calculations for SAC and all that are not worth any value with the surface time - a 60 minute dive with an average depth of 19' (max was 35').

Anyway, back to the point of the OP's question. I think it's what you want it to be and how you want to use the data. It's not going to matter to anyone else.

 

[CT-Rich]

A slight twist on the original question...

If you go out on the lake and you go down for 20 minutes navigating to an underwater site, then surface to get bearings on the next site, then navigate again 20 minutes, then surface to go to the next - would you count it as one dive or three?

Definitely one dive. I generally consider pop-ups as part of a single dive. I only log dives that I consider dives. Its a loose definition, but a log is about what I am interested in. The scuba police are not going to get on your case one way or another. There are divers that log just about every time they make contact with the water, inflating there dive number, so they can get enough logged dives for solo, DM or whatever.

I am currently enjoying making videos logs. A thirty to fifty minute dive gets edited down into a five minute video that I can share with friends and enjoy myself. Will I show it to PADI or NAUI? Not likely.