when to 100'?

[vondo]

Thank you Walter, I understand that.

Whatever you want to call it, organizational requirements, guidelines - whatever, there are limits (albeit in a roundabout way) that respective organizations want you to adhere to as far as depth goes.

I'm asking a question to some posts people make, which seem to indicate their OW cards "depth limit" is 130 ft.

I know there is no scuba police.

This 40'/60'/100'/130' comes up all the time. I've resisted commenting until now, but here is what I wrote in another thread:
-----------------------------------
I haven't seen anyone quote the PADI manual in this thread, so I will do it. In the final safety recommendations of the OW manual:

"Limit your depth to 18 m/60 ft as a new diver. Remember that 18 m/60 ft is the recommended limit for new divers..."

Now, considering how market driven PADI is, I don't think it is an accident that they say "new diver" instead of "PADI Open Water Diver" which they use elsewhere.

So, they suggest sticking to <60ft when you are "new." When are you not "new"? Everyone has to figure that out for themselves.

For myself, I really like the diving in the 40-70ft range, so I try to stay there as long as possible.

----------------

The PADI Adventures in Diving manual also states "As a new Open Water Diver, 18m/60' marks the depth limit to which you're qualified..." Note the "new" qualifier. In the deep diving section it also says "Although 40m/130' has been set as the maximum, for general purposes, you probably want to treat 30m/100' as the optimal maximum limit." Finally, nowhere in the "advertisement" for the full-blown Deep Diver specialty does it say anything like "This will qualify you to go deeper than 30m/100'."

So, these "limits" are not nearly as cut and dried as one might gather from reading some of these posts.

 

[Thalassamania]

If people want to buy compressors and dive off their own boats without training, then they have as much brains as a pediatrician who runs a heart-lung machine out of his garage.

Do keep in mind that there are a fair number of folks on this board who taught themsleves to dive and who appear to have done rather a good job of it.

 

[shakeybrainsurgeon]

Do keep in mind that there are a fair number of folks on this board who taught themsleves to dive and who appear to have done rather a good job of it.

If it's possible to do a "rather" good job of teaching yourself, I presume that your official position is that formal training is unnecessary? If your position is that training is a good idea, why? After all, if we can train ourselves, why are we paying for training? Is it a scam? Is it the consensus of the board that teaching yourself is an acceptable practice? Do dive operators accept the "I taught myself and did a rather good job of it" card?

Or is it only needed for some people and not others? And who makes the decision as to what person can teach themselves?

I knew a family doctor from Alabama who taught himself to do surgery, starting with simple appendectomies and moving up to gall bladders...his argument was that in his rural area, no one was available that he trusted so he read surgical books and did the procedures himself. He seemed to be "rather good" at it, too...but would you go to him?

 

[Diving Doc]

i live by the following mantra:

I'd rather be up here wishing I was down there rather than down there wishing I was up here.

I think you really need to think about wether you are ready for 100'. remeber, if there is a problem, its not just you involved. What about your buddy, the DM your with etc etc.

 

[Thalassamania]

If it's possible to do a "rather" good job of teaching yourself, I presume that your official position is that formal training is unnecessary?

Why would you presume that? In point of fact it is my position that the training currently offered is woefully inadequate and insufficient.

If your position is that training is a good idea, why? After all, if we can train ourselves, why are we paying for training? Is it a scam?

My position is that training is a good idea and that about 100 hours of it with 12 open water dives should be provided before a new diver should be permitted to dive with an experienced buddy. But I recognize that some folks are quite capable of training themselves and others are not. That does not make one who has done so an idiot, especially those who trained themselves and went on to develop the training programs that now exist. Is it a scam? It depends on the training program.

Is it the consensus of the board that teaching yourself is an acceptable practice?

I doubt that you will find a consensus on anything on the board.

Do dive operators accept the "I taught myself and did a rather good job of it" card?

The opinion of "dive operators" neither creates nor mirrors reality or, beyond collegial politeness, is of any particular concern to me since posses the pieces of plastic essential to the ritual of appeasing all their gods.

Or is it only needed for some people and not others? And who makes the decision as to what person can teach themselves?

I guess that’s for each person to judge for themselves, after all we permit them to select, what is to my mind, completely inadequate training currently.

I knew a family doctor from Alabama who taught himself to do surgery, starting with simple appendectomies and moving up to gall bladders...his argument was that in his rural area, no one was available that he trusted so he read surgical books and did the procedures himself. He seemed to be "rather good" at it, too...but would you go to him?

It would depend on his statistics, was his complication and infection rate any worse than yours was?

 

[ClayJar]

I was trained by an agency, but I also taught myself much more than that. Was the training a scam? No. Was teaching myself worthless (or unsafe)? No. Setting the two concepts against each other is a false dichotomy.

 

[DavidHickey]

Well,
Most of the posts seem to be from dive proffesionals which I'm definitely not one of. I'm a new diver in my upper 30's and consider myself intelligent. Currently I have just over 50 dives, half average about 50' deep and up to 70' in cold low visibility gravel pits. The other half average deeper probably around 60 to 65' deep in crystal clear 80 degree ocean water "Bonaire, Grand Cayman, St Thomas" with some going into the 90 to 100' range. My deepest dive not that it matters was 117 feet in Bonaire. Although I'm still a very fresh Newby without AOW I still have in my opinion far more experience than some of these card hungry "Sheep" the LDS run straight thru OW and then directly into AOW. I may eventually take the AOW but in my mind the LDS who continually ask me to take the course are more money driven than they are looking out for my safety or enhancing my dive training. Alot of what I've read concerning going deeper is about the dangers of air consumption at depth. If you're not aware of that and do not constantly monitor your air, you have no business diving to 30 feet. I'm a large man 240lbs and I suck alot of air regardless of my depth "at least compared to my 120lb fiancee" but I personally do not like going much deeper than 60 to 70 feet because of the air consumption, at 100' I do not have much time before I must ascend. And from my experience the deeper I went the less sea life I saw. Anyhow I just don't think everyone should be discouraging new divers from doing deeper dives, but I think the diver needs to aware of the situation and stay more focused on air consumption and don't push the limits of your air supply. Diving does have its dangers as do all sports but I guarrantee its safer than sticking a 16 year old new driver behind the wheel of a 6000 pound car and sending them down the highway. I personally feel in my VERY limited experience that conditions of the dive are more of a concern than the depth. I've done both and I guarrantee that 60 foot in a low vis cold gravel pit is a far more difficult dive than 100 foot in crystal clear 80 degree Carribean water. Well thats my 2 cents worth even though I don't know what point I was trying to make! Just bored at work!
David

 

[Tortuga James]

Diving does have its dangers as do all sports but I guarrantee its safer than sticking a 16 year old new driver behind the wheel of a 6000 pound car and sending them down the highway. David

Never thought of it that way, but man so true. My 16 year old daughter was hit by an impaired driver last Thursday. Totalled the car and the air bag saved her life. She was driving too fast, and the other driver just barely crossed the center line. Sure, it wasn't her fault technically, and she had the required training and certifications to be driving, but I haven't been able to get this thought out of my head. If she had more experience driving, and had been more aware of her surroundings, could she have avoided the collision altogether?

Food for thought

 

[Tigerman]

Having read most of the posts here, I have some thoughts.
1. An instructor cant teach you ANYTHING. Youre the one that has to learn, the instructor only provide the means for you to learn it. How well he does this depends on how good instructor he is.
2. There is no "number of dives" that make you qualified for a certain depth or not. What you have learned on the dives you have done is more important than how many dives you have done.
3. There is no underwater police. Nobody can stop you if you decide to dive deeper than you have been trained for.
4. I chose to go to 85 feet without having formal training for it, but I did it with the instructor I used for OW and later AOW certification. This was my 9th dive (including course dives).
5. I would never do my first deep dive without a very experienced diver that I trusted, simply because I wouldnt know how Id react to being narced. Being with another narced novice diver could get ugly.
6. I have done my AOW certification and I have been at over 100 feet. The reasons has been training and exploring wrecks. I wouldnt go to 100 feet without a purpose.
7. Even though ive been to 100+ I havent felt narced. The closest ive been was that I lost track of directions (E, W, S, N.. Where did i come from?), which COULD be that i was narced, but just as easilly because of the limited visibility, the fact that I did a lot of turns or simply not paying very much attention.
Does it mean that you havent been narced if you didnt FEEL narced? No. It means that I have yet to experience the feeling of being well and truely narced. It might or might not happen that I feel that at some time, with or without me "pushing it". However, whats for sure is that I WONT try to trigger a bad narc without having an instructor with me, and even if I did have an instructor with me, Im not sure if id think its a great idea to do it, as there is definetly dangers related to it..

 

[matt_unique]

....

Remember-you can go as deep as the bottom. It is the return trip that really counts.

....

Classic quote.....awesome!