Diver Safety/Preparedness – An Informal Study

[Doppler]

Interesting topic for discussion on the understanding that the conclusions may turn out to be as useful as an ashtray on a motorcycle; however...

Working for an agency and having served on that agency's Training Advisory Panel, my overall perception is that while the standards for an average diver to earn his/her certification may or may not have changed in the past ten to 15 years -- and it would be extremely complicated to form a matrix for meaningful comparison -- the overall fitness level of the average diver DOES seem to have dropped.

During the "early days" of scuba, when instruction was delivered mostly by men and women who made their living working on, in and around water, I believe a standard open-water diver course demanded more of its participants. Agencies such as YMCA, BSAC, CMAS et al, put forward entry requirements that challenged wanna-be divers to demonstrate a fluency with watercraft well beyond the basic "swim a couple of lengths without drowning." This approach was self-limiting; people who were not strong swimmers tended to avoid diving and gravitate to other activities. The cadre of instructors tended to reinforce this in attitude, advice and practice... there were few if any exceptions made to this standard, I believe.

In addition -- and based purely on subjective observation -- the average age of the people signed up for a scuba course seemed to be twenties or early thirties; younger than seems to be common today. Read into this what you may, but logic would suggest that the average 20-year old uni student is more able to withstand the physical rigors of diving -- whatever they may be -- with less stress and angst than the average fifty-something overweight, mildly hyper-tense dentist/lawyer/real-estate broker/sales professional (apologies to those of you who fit this generalization).

The inevitable conclusion from where I sit then is this: The industry stats are inconclusive and it is close to impossible to find data to support either argument pro or con increased diver preparedness and safety. Levels of DCS for example have dropped dramatically during the past decade... even though more divers conduct staged decompression dives. Scuba Diving is more mainstream and various entities have marketed it as an activity than anyone can undertake... even those with ailments that would have precluded their participation 15 years ago. Training is more segmented than before with more options and certainly more advanced topics, procedures and practices are "out of the closet" and rather like the contents of Pandora's Box, cannot be put back inside. Open discussion -- such as this -- and a growing database of success stories -- and disaster scenarios -- supply ample opportunities for the internally-motivated to research and make informed decisions about diving.

So, in my opinion, and without any science to back me up, I would say that there are more divers today who are able to prepare and execute a safe dive plan than ever before. Their gear is better, better understood and successfully utilized. However, these divers form a much smaller percentage of the overall numbers of folks who dive. In other words, there are also more divers today who are total and complete Muppets.

 

[Cave Diver]

My observations are going to be rather skewed. I did two trips with large groups of divers early in my diving career, just after being certified. One of those trips had a 3 diver trainwreck, all of whom had been trained by the same person (Instructor A). The rest of the group was pretty competent in all aspects. The second trip I was the newbie of the group and dove with people much more experienced than myself. That entire group was pretty competent.

Then I headed down the tech path rather quickly, and all of my diving was done in smaller groups with the same 3-5 people. We did trips together, training together and dove almost exclusively together. During recreational dives, we usually opted for smaller 6 pack operators where we "owned" the boat, so we seldom saw other recreational divers for comparison.

As I continued down the tech path, the divers I saw were for the most part all well trained and experienced. I would have to say that entry level technical divers that I observe now seem to come to the table with better skills than some of the entry level from years previous. I think that may be due to the growing awareness and influence of GUE style training prior to attempting tech classes, but can't say for sure.

During the time I was active as a DM, I had the opportunity to observe or work with 3 different instructors. The previously mentioned instructor (A) seemed more about his class having a good time and having fun than teaching good skills. The other two instructors taught thorough classes then and still teach thorough classes today.

My opinion is that there is a certain amount of decline in standards today due to market saturation and competition. Instructors are being pushed to provide the cheapest fastest class they can and the quality of instruction suffers because of it and more poorly trained divers are produced. There is also more awareness of it due to the resources available to us now like ScubaBoard. When I joined the board, there were 5000 members. Now there are 150,000 members. By default we're going to hear more horror stories of poor training, the same way you hear about airplane crashes. No one ever reports the safe landings, just the crashes.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

I was certified in '73 and completed the NAUI Ass. Instructor Program in '78 that was offered as a 10-week elective within a college that specialized in dive training. I think a guy named Drew Richardson was one of the new instructors (or maybe an instructor candidate?) who was helping with the class. It was pretty rigorous, I think I was the only student to actually pass the NAUI Instructor swim test in my college class.

Didn't get PADI instructor rating until maybe 1990.

By the time I took the PADI Instructor course, dive training was already pretty much a joke. When I took the instructor class, I couldn't believe that some of the instructor candidates were incredibly inept, struggling to do a ditch and don in the pool (something my 9 yr old did on first try with no demonstration).

I think we have seen a steady decline in the ability of recently trained divers, but the decline was much earlier than the mid-90's. The certification level of divers now means almost nothing.

I am amazed at the number of instructors (usually PADI) that are just terrible in the water. Now, when talking with a prospective dive buddy, I don't even ask certification level, I just inquire about experience; certification is meaningless and if somebody brags about being an instructor, I am more likely to decline to dive with them.

On the other hand, when I used to teach the PADI OW class, I was always amazed at how well it was constructed, how the modules and skills and things all worked together to provide students an extremely efficient means to learn diving. The biggest problem was that it was way too short. I strongly encouraged all my students to immediately sign up for AOW or join a club or sometimes, I would even recommend they do baby dives with each other.. but I tried to push the idea that they needed to do more dives ASAP if they were going to really retain the skills they demonstrated on one or two weekends.

I know the courses have gotten shorter and more abbreviated and they have removed essential skills from the class (like buddy breathing). The average student still has no idea what the common scuba failures are and how to deal with them, they can not use a snorkel to save their life (literally). They have almost zero understanding of gas consumption basics and they are way too often uncomfortable in the water.

I really don't see that the mid-90's was a whole lot different than now.

 

[Akimbo]

Frankly I do not see a whole lot of difference between new divers in the 1990s and today….

Although I have not observed newly trained divers as much as other posters, I tend to agree with Thal. However, I do see a big difference between inexperienced divers trained mid to late 1970s and before versus after. Not much magic here, classes were longer and designed to be complete — no additional merit badge$ unless you wanted to become an underpaid instructor or commercial diver. Divers trained since then tend to be far more dependent on equipment and others (buddies, instructors, dive masters, etc.).

…Far more variation on the basis of diving environment than with respect to year.

As far as environment; absolutely. More severe conditions dramatically shifts the dynamic. The average person who learns to dive at sea in turbid 50° F water is more motivated than someone trained in 80° tropical lagoons. These factors force students and instructors to approach the class differently. It is a form or natural selection.

 

[Cave Diver]

I was certified in '73 and completed the NAUI Ass. Instructor Program in '78

That explains a lot!

 

[Jax]

:spit:

 

[drbill]

I first used SCUBA in the winter of 1961-62, but because I lived in the Midwest and cleaning swimming pool bottoms and an occasional quarry dive in the summer was all I could really do, I didn't really start diving ocean waters until I moved to Catalina in 1969. I taught at a private high school where about 50% of the students were certified SCUBA divers so it was a really unusual "population."

My first thought on the changes are that SCUBA gear is much more complicated now than then and therefore a bit more difficult to set up. In the 60s and 70s we had J-valve tanks with just a simple reg with first stage and one second, no octos or SPGs. We had hard backpacks with no wings. There were no computers. Given that we did have to weight ourselves much more carefully, giving strong consideration to our intended depth for that dive. Today, using a BCD, I maintain a constant weight on my belt whether I am diving a 3/2mm or a full 7mmm with hooded vest. However, the kit is a bit harder to set up because it is more complicated.

In my early days I very rarely went deeper than 100 ft. With no backup (pony) and no octo in case of second stage failure (which I've never had happen), I wanted to be in a depth range I could do a CESA from. My last real CESA, done in my mid to late 50s, was from 75-80 ft which was definitely near the limit for this old geezer but not back in the days when I was a competitive swimmer.

Not only have our kits become more complex and added safety we didn't have back then, I think the gear has become safer. Although I don't ever remember a failure in my personal regs (rental equipment while traveling is a different story), back in the days of J-valves and no SPG deeper diving was not as safe because we didn't have the information (remaining pressure in our tanks) or the backup (octo) we have today.

I didn't use a BCD until 1989. I was a poor teacher back in the 60s and 70s and my students, who came from wealthy families, often had the latest gear... like those weird Mae Wests. The first time I used a BCD was because I was diving with a Cousteau team and it was required equipment. The stupid thing kept autoinflating, preventing me from submerging. The DM didn't believe me until I showed her. She asked "What can we do?" I said I'll just disconnect it and dive without the darned thing. She said "You can do that?" I replied "Been doing it for 28 years." Of course today I wouldn't dive without a BCD (except perhaps for a little fun).

I can't remember a single diver back in my early days who dove with a pony bottle. Today the only time I'll dive without mine is if I know my dive profile is going to be pretty shallow (above 40 ft). There is little risk of entanglement in man-made things like fishing line or ropes where I dive. Kelp is easy to extricate one's self from if you're experienced.

I consider one's reaction to unexpected situations to be a very critical component of knowing how well prepared a diver is to dive. Unfortunately this is something difficult to train new divers on. Although I am a solo diver, I never recommend solo diving to others because in almost all cases I have no idea how they react to emergencies. I've learned over the decades that I almost always respond with calm and think my way through the situation, often while instinctively taking actions that help me get out of them. For example, when my first stage stopped delivering air at 80 ft (just 3 1/2 min into the dive) I instinctively began ascending as I checked my equipment to determine the cause (it was a plugged debris or dip tube inside the tank... nothing I could do about it underwater). My first emergency situation back in 1969 or 1970 occurred at a depth of 90 ft while descending with a student to take a photo of a worm he had seen. We picked tanks from the "filled" rack but the surface pressure gauge was missing (no SPGs back then). so we couldn't check them. When our breaths became difficult, we both tried pulling our J-valves open... but the kelp had done that for us already! My reaction was calm and the student and I made it back to the surface to dive again. If one panics (due to poor training, little diving experience or a tendency to do so topside as well), they could be in serious trouble if their buddy is not attentive and close by.

As for dive training, I truly believe the training I received from my Los Angeles County course back then was FAR superior to anything done for BOW today. The course took three weeks, had many classroom and pool sessions plus a boat dive and a shore dive. It covered everything including Rescue from today's training. No 2-3 day course can match that kind of training, but such a course would be very costly (it was back then too). While I wish training was more intense today, it has opened up the activity to more people. However, we still need to do a much better job of retaining new divers by more comprehensive training in other things than dive technique alone (underwater photography, fish and invert ID, etc.). I've seen instructors who don't have a clue about the critters they encounter and give all sorts of misinformation to students. Of course that's a niche I've tried to fill myself through my columns, DVDs and cable TV shows.

Of course opening up diving to a wider range of people has made the diving community much different than it was in the 60s and 70s. Back then more divers were avid participants, most of my friends dove to harvest (I did a lot of that too until I stopped in 1975). Many of them still dive today. Of the current crop of new divers, I see too many who get certified just so they can dive on a honeymoon or other vacation trip and don't keep up with it much after that. Sad. Of course the "sport" isn't for everyone, but we need to find more ways to make it exciting to people and generate an interest that will keep growing. Certainly videography was something that did that for me. Once I bought my first camcorder and housing, the frequency of my dives skyrocketed. The motivating factor was (1) I could better understand and document the things I saw as a marine biologist, (2) my eye became even keener looking around for subjects and (3) I could now share what I saw with other divers and, perhaps more important, with people who may never dive. As a conservationist, I believe very strongly that we need to improve THEIR understanding of our oceans, what is in them and the need to protect them for future generations.

Today, given the marked improvement in dive gear and the addition of safety-related "accessories" (SPGs, octos, computers) I dive more extreme than I ever did in my youth. I have dived to twice the depth I considered safe in my early years, have done as many as 7 dives in a day (back then doing two was a busy day of diving... mostly because of my work schedule) and do things I would not have even considered in the days of J-valves and no backup.

As for my "technical skills" in diving, I do not consider myself a highly refined diver despite nearly 50 years underwater. I guess I'm just a slow learner. I don't worry much about trim, I rarely do drills these days (and even then only as a brief exercise during a dive with another purpose)... I do manage to get myself around underwater with sufficient efficiency to conduct my primary mission: bring home the bacon, er I mean the video I can use in my educational and scientific efforts.

 

[boulderjohn]

First of all, I agree with the people who said that it is close to impossible to give a truly accurate response based upon memory. We tend to look back at the past with rose colored glasses, and our memory is of only a very tiny and perhaps unrepresentative portion of the entire picture. As an example of what I mean, everyone "knows" how badly the American public education system has declined in the past few decades, but as Harvard business professor Clayton Christensen pointed out in his book Disrupting Class, by all objective measures it has steadily improved over that time period. (His contention, as is mine, is that it can be improving much more rapidly with appropriate changes.)

I can tell you for certain that I have never witnessed any OW instruction as poor and incomplete as the instruction that gave me my first certification. As I look back at my first dive log and look at the instructional standards that were ticked off as having been completed, I see that the standards are virtually the same today as they were then; the problem was that many of the items ticked off were not actually done. (I didn't bother to look at those pages until long after the class was done.)

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Although I was invited to participate in this discussion, I'm going to defer based on the fact that I didn't start diving until 2001 ... and so it would be impossible for me to judge what divers were like in the '90's ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[SeaHorse81]

Although I was invited to participate in this discussion, I'm going to defer based on the fact that I didn't start diving until 2001 ... and so it would be impossible for me to judge what divers were like in the '90's ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

I hope you'll reconsider, Bob. Though you can't address the 90s, ten years is a long time to observe any patterns, especially with the amount of diving you've done in that time. :shocked2: