Blackcrusader
Contributor
You are supposed to do an actual CESA vertically, but when they are in a swimming pool, they can't, so they do it horizontally. That is what is wrong with it. A fundamental concept in all performance instruction is that you do not have the students practice differently from the way it is done for real. In athletics, it is called making the practice gamelike.
Well when I was in the BSAC training in 86 - 88 what training that needed to be done in deeper water we did shore dives and did a lot of that extra training at depth of 15m or so. 20 years later on when I did my PADI rescue cert that was done in open ocean water as the dive center was right on the shore line so we started from the house reef.
If you advised new divers to join a BSAC club where the courses takes a lot longer and have more materials to learn and train I think less people would choose that over hey I can do an PADI OW Nitrox and AOW in several days.
I've seen plenty of new divers do the OW & AOW and Nitrox in a week. When new divers also look a the cost of buying a complete setup including wetsuit and DC it is a large outlay if you are not going to be really doing a lot of diving.
So renting equipment is the way to go. Makes entry into diving a lot cheaper.
When people also read about US$1000 plus diving computers that may also put them off.
Also is the cost of dives. In Indonesia / Philippines you might pay between US$20 - US$25 per dive. Not too expensive for vacation divers.
One dive center I dive with any student who returns to dive there never needs to pay for rental equipment except they don't rent DC's as they are for students in training. I do not enjoy the diving in Taiwan so much it is mediocre at best and I do not feel like I have gone on vacation when diving here.
So all my diving requires flying to other countries. I am fortunate that I can afford to do so several times a year