BSAC/PADI

[Jonathan]

and did all my recreational qualifications with PADI up to and including AI. I was under no illusions as to my qualifications after o/w and had no intiention of hooking up with a buddy from the same course and jumping into the channel!

There is nothing to stop any qualified diver (and even some that are not) putting "their" gear in the car and heading off to the coast - PADI, BSAC, SAA or whatever. The values of the club atmosphere installed by BSAC may prevent that is your choice.

Speaking to the shop owner on my last visit he was talking about the values of the PADI system - he does not have to convert me so it was not a sermon, just two blokes having a chat about TEC Rec. He says that has failed because PADI has abandoned their usual approach of progression. They have now gone back to teaching TDI.

I think the modular approach is excellent - but maybe local conditions should dictate that in places like the UK or the NW and NE coast in the US you should not dive unaccompanied until you are at least rescue diver, offshore at least.

I would have to disagree with Mike though - if you look at PADI divers and BSAC divers with the same number of open water dives you will see a big difference in them. Certainly in the beginning. That would also go for a lot of UK trained divers - time and time again I hear or have received comments of disbelief from warm water divers, one huy even assumed I had in the order of 5,000 dives! Don't worry it did not go to my hear and I only had around 150, but 80% in the UK.....

Still learning and listening - which is the key....

Jonathan

 

[Adrian Kelland]

Jonathan once bubbled...


I would have to disagree with Mike though - if you look at PADI divers and BSAC divers with the same number of open water dives you will see a big difference in them. Certainly in the beginning. That would also go for a lot of UK trained divers - time and time again I hear or have received comments of disbelief from warm water divers, one huy even assumed I had in the order of 5,000 dives! Don't worry it did not go to my hear and I only had around 150, but 80% in the UK.....

Still learning and listening - which is the key....

Jonathan

When I first read this thread, I thought there were more than a few points to be corrected. I am glad others have made these corrections. Club Diver=Rescue Diver indeed...RD is higher.

However, re Jonathan's point above I would say conditions of the dive site and Instructor quality are the key, not the number of dives. If you have been given poor instruction, you will have repeated poor skills on all those dives.

Given equally capable instructors, a PADI diver would be equally capable as a BSAC/SAA/SSAC/CMAS blah blah blah diver if they have learnt in the same conditions. I have come across those UK divers who have learnt in low vis conditions, who get freaked by the good vis of the Red Sea etc and can see how far down is down. OTOH, good vis divers can be equally freaked by not being able to see the end of your own fins. I have dived with divers, good and bad, trained with various agencies. Some I would dive with again are also from those various agencies.

Any one who starts these 'my agency is better than yours' should realise all they are really commenting on are those agencies representatives.

Adrian (15 years BSAC, PADI, TDI)

 

[Phoenix]

I find most of those comments pretty unsubstantiated to be honest
having spent quite a while looking for a decent dive club/org to cert with i settled for the one i'm with, its PADI, but my instructor has been training since the days when BSAC wouldnt let you in the open water for 2 years, in todays world thats just unacceptable, its probably the reason they almost went bust (as i recall the british government bailed them out) there standards these days are no more superior than anyone elses, and angencies themselves do not define good/bad divers, instructors do, it's thier ability and there experiance which allows them to be good informative instructors, or book junkies that read page for page from a manual, i have much respect for the BSAC, and the SAA, in fact it was a few SAA try dives when i was 14 that got me into diving in the first place (albiet many years later) but i do get bugged when people just spurt out unsubstantiated claims, especially when it's there first post on a forum thats had the debate numerous times before!

 

[Diver0001]

MikeFerrara once bubbled...
There aren't many around more critical of dive training these days than me but where do some of you get this crap?

Most divers I come accross don't look to good in the water and I avoid any and all tourist diving situations but I'll put up real money right now that I would see the same lack of skill watching the average BSAC diver as watching the average PADI, NAUI, YMCA, SSI, CMAS or whatever agency student. I'll bet the instructors are just as "off" in the water also. The mistakes I see in one agency are the same as the ones I see in another. My money says BSAC isn't any different.

You're right. I live in Europe and I encounter BSAC and other flavours of CMAS divers often.

I was on a boat full of BSAC divers in Turkey last year. What I saw were divers acting about the way you'd expect for the level of experience they had. What happened top-side, though is that the "pecking order" of "I'm good and you're not" carried on and inexperienced divers were ..... uhmmmmm .... "mothered" (for lack of a better word) by their "superiors". It created some really strange social dynamics that I wasn't at all fond of.

On the whole the BSAC has a good reputation but in terms of skills I actually expected BSAC divers to be much better than they were. I was really surprised about this.

R..

 

[Phoenix]

On another note
a PADI diver that did thier qualifying dives in january on the south coast, in order to actually PASS would need to have vastly more skill than say someone who only just managed to pass in the middle of summer in egypt, and i dont care what agency they are with, i think i just read something about BSAC opening a site in the canary islands, not much good when they come home and think they can just jump into the north sea and dive like they were abroad.

 

[Jonathan]

BSAC in Japan - the link only being a name because if any BSAC divers came over from the UK they would freak!

I'll take Adrian's post as pretty much agreement with what I was saying - not sure if that's what he thought though. If you get a good instructor in poor conditions they will turn out better divers.

I think the proportion of better dive instructors in places like northen europe and nothern americas is going to be higher than say the Carribean or SE Asia.

I am not a BSAC diver myself - but those that I have met and speeak to do not display the traits that rotuner has seen, guess you got unlikey mate. However, the number of PADI divers that try and come off as I'm better than you is too many to count. Don't you just hate badge collectors!

Jonathan

 

[annie]

>>However, re Jonathan's point above I would say conditions of the dive site and Instructor quality are the key, not the number of dives. If you have been given poor instruction, you will have repeated poor skills on all those dives.<<

As a PADI Divemaster who has just joined a CFT club in Ireland (CFT is the same as the French CMAS) I would have to agree. I don't know anything really about the actual training the CFT divers received because I haven't gone through it myself. On paper it does appear to be more rigorous. But I wouldn't say that always shines through when actually diving with them - in water skills come from the quality of instruction.

 

[Adrian Kelland]

Jonathan once bubbled...


I'll take Adrian's post as pretty much agreement with what I was saying - not sure if that's what he thought though. If you get a good instructor in poor conditions they will turn out better divers.

Jonathan

Yep, pretty much.

Adrian

 

[esteilz]

Hi Kev !

I am Estelle et I am a translator from English into French.
I have to translate "aircrew diver" for a text but I absolutely do not know what it is and I cannot find it anywhere (dictionnaries, Internet ...). So could you please explain me in a few words what is the job of an aircrew diver so that I could find its equivalent in French.

Thanks a lot !

Estelle

 

[NauticalbutNice]

Hello estelle...

This is an old post. Those posters involved may not be around anymore. Don't expect a reply.

Nauticalbutnice :fruit: