WORLD ’ s Youngest Master Scuba Diver

[Walter]

Perhaps you do, but you've given no indication of it.

 

[TCDiver1]

The cert means nada...it all in the water.

I would agree with this but do not consider most certs "meaningless." Any cert, at least in theory, means the certified met the requirements of that cert at one time. Thats all it means, since who knows if the certified can meet those requirements at some later date.

In the end, the worth of any cert is best evaluated personally,and individually in the water. No two people with the same cert, will ever have the same skill level in every skill.

That is true of any diver, or any agencies cert.

 

[matt_unique]

I don't think you understood anything I just said. Let me try again...

>>To state a point without being an ass will tend to make your point more readable and less likely to be dismissed.

I too was talking about the nature of certifications and we both agree that a certification is only an indication of the lower bound. Someone can far exceed that minimum but the certification doesn't tell you that and it certainly is not a necessary condition. My claim is that for a certification to be meaningful the minimum it indicates should be sufficiently high to guarantee some level of proficiency. The problem is the bar seems way too low in this case to be a reliable indication of anything.

>>You are talking in circles, to borrow your arrogant tone. To summarize what you are saying - 'certification bar too low thus certification is meaningless'. OK....I totally agree the bar is set too low, but there is a bar and thus it has some minimum meaning. This ties in with the next paragraph about required courses.....

For example, here is one path to MSD:

• OW (4 dives)
• AOW (5 dives)
• Rescue (5 dives)
• Five specialty classes...
  • Equipment Specialist (no dives)
  • Fish Identification (2 dives)
  • Underwater Naturalist (2 dives)
  • Underwater Photographer (2 dives)
  • Coral Reef Conservation (no dive)
• 30 dives outside class

>>The MSD application reads 'Non-diving certifications are not applicable to the 5 required speciality courses'. You can't be a MSD based on the courses you described above. All applicable specialities have to be diving and that ALONE means this person will have AT LEAST been exposed to several environments. The specialities I chose were Dry Suit, Night, Deep, Wreck, and Nitrox.

After this you qualify (as far as I can tell from reading PADI'S website) for the MSD rating because you have satisfied the minimum requirements. What have those specialty course done for you? Two of them don't require dives and one of them (reef conservation) doesn't even require you to be a certified diver! How is that making you a better diver? While they may be interesting course, are equipment specialist and UW photography helping you become a better diver? How are you any better off than if you'd stopped after rescue and logged 36 more dives (for a total of 50)? Shouldn't achieving some level of certification be an indication of your skill level? You seem to think so, Yet you claim that, "The PADI MSD can be as useful or as useless as any other certification depending on the diver" (emphasis added). Well which is more meaningful, the card or the diver? And if it's the diver what good is the certification?

>>This is redundant - dive experience means more than cert cards - cert cards represent a minimum bar - there has not been a single post by anyone that has said otherwise - move on.

Going back to your doctor analogy, you can compare doctors to each other and say that guy the finished last isn't as good as whomever finished first. However, the bar is sufficiently high that the minimum requirements for the title of 'doctor' to still mean something. If we cast the MSD issue in to the medical realm we would have everyone from people with first aid training to brain surgeons called 'doctors' and the term wouldn't be very meaningful.

>>You're adding context to my previous example - my point with the doctor analogy was cert alone does not make someone good. Obviously relative to the discipline at hand....

I'm sure there are lots of very skilled divers out there that have earned a MSD rating. However, the bar it set to low for the certification to be meaningful by itself.

>>I agree 100%.

 

[ElectricZombie]

from your earlier post...
Sorry I missed the part about where "it doesn't matter"

"Most of the adults I see that have a "master" certification really should not be diving at all."

If you want to live in fantasy land and pretend that the above statement is false, I can't make you get a clue.

"I totally agree. The standards in the industry are so low that none of these "certifications" mean anything. As someone pointed out earlier, it's easy to go from zero to Instructor in 6 months. I heard a LDS here try to push a newly certified basic student into a tech class. I don't give any value to the various "certifications" someone may have...people have to prove themselves to me in the water."

If you can't understand this quote from my original post, then you are in no position to comment on standards and certifications within the diving industry. If you don't get "It doesn't matter" from the above quote, all I can say is good luck in your upcoming "master" class.

 

[cornfed]

I don't think you understood anything I just said. Let me try again...

To state a point without being an ass will tend to make your point more readable and less likely to be dismissed.
You are talking in circles, to borrow your arrogant tone.

It wasn't my intention to be arrogant. Sorry if I came across as an ass.

To summarize what you are saying - 'certification bar too low thus certification is meaningless'. OK....I totally agree the bar is set too low, but there is a bar and thus it has some minimum meaning.

And the value implied by that minimum seems too low to be meaningful.

For example, here is one path to MSD:

* OW (4 dives)
* AOW (5 dives)
* Rescue (5 dives)
* Five specialty classes...
o Equipment Specialist (no dives)
o Fish Identification (2 dives)
o Underwater Naturalist (2 dives)
o Underwater Photographer (2 dives)
o Coral Reef Conservation (no dive)
* 30 dives outside class

The MSD application reads 'Non-diving certifications are not applicable to the 5 required speciality courses'. You can't be a MSD based on the courses you described above.

I think I was clear that this was my interpretation from PADI's website.

After this you qualify (as far as I can tell from reading PADI'S website) for the MSD rating because you have satisfied the minimum requirements. What have those specialty course done for you? Two of them don't require dives and one of them (reef conservation) doesn't even require you to be a certified diver! How is that making you a better diver? While they may be interesting course, are equipment specialist and UW photography helping you become a better diver? How are you any better off than if you'd stopped after rescue and logged 36 more dives (for a total of 50)? Shouldn't achieving some level of certification be an indication of your skill level? You seem to think so, Yet you claim that, "The PADI MSD can be as useful or as useless as any other certification depending on the diver" (emphasis added). Well which is more meaningful, the card or the diver? And if it's the diver what good is the certification?

>>This is redundant - dive experience means more than cert cards - cert cards represent a minimum bar - there has not been a single post by anyone that has said otherwise - move on.

There is no redundancy. This isn't about whether certs are more important than experience or vice versa. It's about the value of a particular certification and my claim is that it doesn't have much value. My claim is based my conjecture that the minimum requirements are to low and the corollary that this provides too much variation between individuals. The reason I won't move on is because pretty much everyone is hung up on the cert vs experience issue and not dealing with the issue I presented.

Going back to your doctor analogy, you can compare doctors to each other and say that guy the finished last isn't as good as whomever finished first. However, the bar is sufficiently high that the minimum requirements for the title of 'doctor' to still mean something. If we cast the MSD issue in to the medical realm we would have everyone from people with first aid training to brain surgeons called 'doctors' and the term wouldn't be very meaningful.

>>You're adding context to my previous example - my point with the doctor analogy was cert alone does not make someone good. Obviously relative to the discipline at hand....

At the risk of sound arrogant again, you still don't understand. The minimum for calling someone a doctor is sufficiently high that it is meaningful. Sure you could argue that the one doctor is better then another because he finished higher in his class, has been practicing for twenty year, etc., but when someone says, "I'm a doctor..." you know what that means. This isn't the case the MSD.

I'm sure there are lots of very skilled divers out there that have earned a MSD rating. However, the bar it set to low for the certification to be meaningful by itself.

>>I agree 100%.

However, I believe a certification should have merit by itself.

 

[Big-t-2538]

the worth of any cert is best evaluated personally,and individually in the water. No two people with the same cert, will ever have the same skill level in every skill.

Is it O.K. if I blatently steal this and hand it out to some of the divers bouncing off the bottom wearing entire catalogs of gear?

 

[MechDiver]

However, I believe a certification should have merit by itself.

The "merit" of a certification is to the holder of the cert. If the card is meaningful to them, then it has merit. Whether is is meaningful to anyone else is irrelevant.

The value of a cert may be different things to different people. The charter boat captain lets someone dive because they have an AOW card. Thus the card has "value" to that captain.

As has been stated, the c-card means a certain criteria was met on a certain day by a certain individual. Thats all. It does not affect the merit or value of the card.

I have a number of c-cards. Some were hard, some were easy. All were worked for and earned. Some have merit (to me), all have value. Whether 99% of the posters on this board agree with the value of those certs is totally irrelevant to me.

'Nuff said about this nonsense.

MD

 

[RiverRat]

As a new diver I'd like to comment here, so take it with a grain of salt....
So far I've got OW, AOW and Nitrox certs and 20 logged dives including 10 outside of certification. I recently blew off a Rescue Class, not that I don't want to take it , I DO, and will, but I chose a dive trip to the tropics instead. I just want to get dives in and perfect what I've learned already instead of "collecting" cards. So far in my experience, if you have the $ to take the course you can go right through. I had a great dive trip and was able to tune my BP/W rig pretty quickly and actually LEARNED some good stuff from experienced divers out there. Just some hints such as dropping my belt at the line, swim around without it and see how I feel (I was close to neutral at this point) then grab it on the way up, etc. Taking what I learned in class and actually "diving" it really helped big time. Now if I took the rescue class before I went on this trip I would have had to either get in a test dive before the class to get my trim/weighting right or dive right into class overweighted with bad trim. Would the instructors have checked to see if I was a good diver or just blow me through Rescue regardless? I'm guessing the latter. In any event I don't feel I SHOULD have gone to that class without getting to at least where I am now after my "learning" dives. How the heck can you practice rescuing someone if you can't even maintain neutral buoyancy? I could be wrong, as I did not take the class yet, but it's my gut feeling as they tried to sell me on the "fast track". OW, AOW, Nitrox, Dry Suit and Rescue. Even drysuit, as you know, brings a whole new set of issues. Anyway, I will do rescue soon and take it one step at a time.

Just my 2 cents............

 

[drbill]

I've been diving off-and-on for 42 years now and I'm not sure I'd consider myself a master SCUBA diver, card or not. It is very difficult to believe someone that age really has the skills and the maturity to merit the rating.

Dr. Bill

 

[cornfed]

'Nuff said about this nonsense.

Well do you know where I can find more nonsense then?