What makes a master diver?

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

I just wish I lived 5 minutes from a fill station so I could get 2 dives a week instead of 2 dives a month on average.. That would help me improve some issues fairly quickly I think.. Like my SAC, which is what bother me most atm :p
 
There have been a lot of good points brought up here. But I think the words Advanced and Master should be eliminated or at least re-evaluated in Recreational diving.

Having a hefty check account or a credit card will get greatly help you get that title. Another thing is the good old boy promotion. Combine the two and one can move forward weather one deserves it or not.

The whole system needs to be reworked. How, I don’t have a clue but something needs to be done.

Commercial, Military and other NON-Recreational divers don’t qualify for any of the recreational titles without writing a check, swiping a credit card and taking classes.

I’ll use myself as an example. NAUI in 1962 got me to the scuba recommended limit of 130’ and I could dive at night in current under some overheads in fresh and salt water off the shore or a boat.

Then my Navy rating was a max. “Working” depth of 150’ in scuba on “air” with a max. Scuba depth of 190” on air. Included was confined spaces, wreck, mixed gas, night, true zero vis, diving from boats, ships, submarines, aircraft, rebuilding and maintaining ALL of our own gear including tank inspections and filling them. All of the safety techniques and procedures a recreational diver learns plus much much more. We even learned fish ID so just about everything a checkbook or credit card will get you in recreational diving is taught in the military. Besides, being a Repair Diver I managed to average over 1000 dives per year at times in some real nasty conditions.

But without the specialty card, Advanced Open water for example, I was not qualified to exceed 60’ on a rec. boat even when I showed my Navy dive card along with a recreational OW card.

Something is wrong with this picture.

Gary D.
 
Whats wrong with that picture is basically that the rec dive ops dont have knowledge of what the non-rec certs covers, aint it?
 
Its makes you thnk when you put it that way Gary. Compared to you I am a new diver but I do hold the Advanced tag. I have always felt that AOW and Rescue should be part of the basic OW and would therefore solve most of the problems we see with new divers getting into trouble.
As well there really needs to be different classes of open water certs because I see people all the time coming where I live and jumping into 32-40 deg water in low vis and never having been in salt water then finding themselves in trouble.

A true Master diver in my mind would be what Gary just described from his Navy days.
 
Gary D.:
the words Advanced and Master should be eliminated or at least re-evaluated in Recreational diving.



I agree! master divers are technical divers.
Click to expand...
 
Tigerman:
Whats wrong with that picture is basically that the rec dive ops dont have knowledge of what the non-rec certs covers, aint it?
Click to expand...
They might, if they dove more.
There are some people on here with <50 dives and >800 posts. Something is wrong with this picture...:eyebrow:
 
SparticleBrane:
They might, if they dove more.
There are some people on here with <50 dives and >800 posts. Something is wrong with this picture...:eyebrow:
Click to expand...
Indeed there is.. Guess its too far to that fill station..
 
I think that for the recreational diving world NAUI got the Master Diver definition right, its a diver who has the same level of diving skill and knowledge that is expected of a NAUI Instructor without the teaching and course management stuff. A NAUI Master Diver should be able to dive and manage a dive as well as you'd like to see an Instructor do.
 
I just got a PADI Master SCUBA Diver Card this summer. I took specialties I liked as a reason to dive in the midwest, and I need rescue for future tec considerations. I got the card to mess with the people I dive with.

It does not mean I am a great diver. I do OK, but I see a lot of things in my diving that can use improvement.

I even got a nifty backpack! :dork2:

When I go on trips, I show my AOW card, because that is all they really care about, unless they need my nitrox card. I usually do not do nitrox on trips because the dive ends when the DM thumbs it and then you do not gain any dive time anyway.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
https://www.shearwater.com/products/teric/

Back
Top Bottom