What makes a master diver?

[LavaSurfer]

i only show my active diver card when i go on trips , otherwise i end up hand holding some new ow diver .

I hear ya, I show my Rescue Card

 

[Tigerman]

I dont show any, I just say im AOW and jump in the water
If they dont ask, its not like im gonna waste energy on picking up the card

 

[stevewirl]

all good shops and schools ask for cards . if they dont ask i dont dive with them .

i dont want a non diver walking in of the street and buddied with me only to kill me on the dive .

check that the shop checks first .

 

[stevewirl]

hey lavasurfer good luck in your ie .

 

[Tigerman]

all good shops and schools ask for cards . if they dont ask i dont dive with them .

i dont want a non diver walking in of the street and buddied with me only to kill me on the dive .

check that the shop checks first .

Its not like they need to check when they are the people who certified you, people who know already that you are certified and so on

I guess if I walked into a random dive shop and said "take me diving" it would change...

 

[a_siren]

Wow. Rough crowd. I'm disappointed that people would laugh at a PADI Master Scuba Diver Card. If you know anything about PADI, you'd know that you just had to take a bunch of classes and have 50 dives to get it. It says nothing about your skill, but does indicate you've had at least 50 dives and made an effort to get instruction beyond just OW, including Rescue, Navigation, Deep (both required for AOW) etc. I'm continuing with doing AOW, Rescue and specialty courses because I don't feel that PADI OW is enough training for me to be let loose on my own. I am trying to get as many supervised dives and extra knowledge stuffed into my brain as I can. I don't think people should begrudge others for wanting to learn, and learn with instruction, as opposed to just going out an practicing possibly the wrong way to do things over and over.

I think it is good for me, because unlike at a gym where I can see myself in a mirror to check my form when I am lifting weights, I find it hard to focus on maybe smaller things I could be doing better diving because I'm still focused on the basics.

I don't really care what you call the card. It just seems that some people on here are making fun of others who are taking classes in an effort to get better. Not all of us dive for a living and can rack up the kind of macho street cred of Navy/career divers have and I for one, wouldn't want to represent myself as having that kind of experience because I don't. However, I feel the only people that might possibly be confused by the terminology is people who don't scuba dive and don't know what it means to be a MSD.

On another note, I think it is ridiculous that a dive operator wouldn't take a Navy diving card as acceptable proof for at least having covered AOW. It is like someone not accepting a passport for identification, with the non-thinking policy that they only take a school ID.

 

[Paco II]

I don't think anyone is making fun of anyone else. And definitely not someone who is trying to learn and better themselves in diving. I think we are all really just laughing at how silly the different certification levels have been named.

 

[45yrold_newbie]

If it is a PadI Master Diver, a credit card is all that is needed.

If it is otherwise meant to be meaningful then it would require hundreds of dives in many different diving environments and perhaps peer recommendations.

Wow! I knew just by reading the thread subject that PADI was going to get blasted. I didn't think it would necessarily be within nine (9) posts. So now the rest of the thread is going to be about how freakin' wonderful everybody else'e agency is and how everybody who is PADI is a pi$$ poor diver with no skills and will end up bent or dead. Let the "fun" begin!!!

 

[Tigerman]

Wow! I knew just by reading the thread subject that PADI was going to get blasted. I didn't think it would necessarily be within nine (9) posts. So now the rest of the thread is going to be about how freakin' wonderful everybody else'e agency is and how everybody who is PADI is a pi$$ poor diver with no skills and will end up bent or dead. Let the "fun" begin!!!

Im casper, the friendly ghost..
I have only PADI AOW and Ive done deep, wreck, nav, s&r, cold, drysuit, drift, cavern, night and OMG! SOLO! dives.. Ive gotta be dead already...

Oh, and some of them even being combinations, maybe even throw in a BOAT in the mix.. Geeze im lucky to be alive come to think of it.. Im going to another alphabet soup to get resurrected..

 

[45yrold_newbie]

Try this for a comparison.

When we did our Navy Scuba Diver graduation day water final it went like this.

Nine guys swimming circles in a very large pool. Gear was shorts, shirt, combat boots, Duck Feet, twin 90’s, regulator and a mask. No BC, no SPG, nothing more than I already listed.

All of a sudden the water exploded and we got the living poo kicked out of us by a lot of people. On the bottom was a set of twin 90’s with a double hose box without hoses on it. Now we were all in various states of dress and undress. I had my shorts and one boot left. Everything else was gone except the surface and that set of twins on the bottom.

The surface meant you were out and on your way back to a non diving command. Go for the twins and you’d make graduation later that day to start a life of diving.

Try having multiple people buddy breathe off a regulator set up and see how difficult it is. Now try it without hoses and nine people. That is the result of four weeks of intense training just to become a military Scuba Diver. The result was all nine of us went to graduation after lunch.

Later when I went to second class school I had to repeat the four week Scuba program as it is incorporated into this one. Having already graduated the class I got it a bit worse than the others because they made an example out of me.

This time the graduation swim was sixteen weeks later. Almost identical to the first one except this time there were thirteen of us. Still one set of twin 90’s but sharing it between more people.

A wrench got thrown into the mix when a second set of twins hit the bottom. My first thought was great, this will make it easier but then an instructor pulled the first set out. The reason, we were wasting too much air so we got a penalty of more down time.

But with good training and good solid team work thirteen guys picked up their graduation certificates and orders to diving commands around the world.

Now you can imagine what the students go through to get to a point where they can pass a test like that. So saying a rec agency doesn’t know if the training meets their standards or doesn’t understand what other areas cover is just plain bovine piles.

Gary D.

Having been in the Navy and knowing several divers and S.E.A.L.s I commend you on your abilities and skills as a diver. I know the military is very intense in their training regardless of branch or specialty. However I'm not sure I make the connection that you are trying to explain. How would a civilian agency let alone a dive op know what a navy dive card qualifies you for? C-cards at least list the qualification level of a diver (AOW-EAN-Master-etc).