When certified divers cannot explain an NDL...
When certified divers cannot estimate their air consumption for a given dive...
When certified divers cannot estimate their weights ...
When certified divers cannot set up their equipment...
When certified divers cannot do a buddy check...
When certified divers cannot perform a safety stop
When certified divers cannot deploy an SMB
When certified divers give you a blank look at even the mention of one of the above...
they need a DM and should expect to pay for it.
Actually, anybody who doesn't know these things shouldn't be diving period. They need to go back and retake open water.
For exception of line 7 which is technically a specialty which they don't teach in standard OW (unless things have changed),
for all the other things they should have been covered and things they should know.
That's like missing over half the stuff on a drivers test, they would deny you a drivers licence with that much stuff missed.
Agree. Other than the SMB, these are not just things taught in OW, they are also very basics that you need to know just to function before and during all diving--especially on a boat.
There is a huge difference to diving locally and in vacation areas where most of the DMs earn their keep.
Having been in supergaijin's neck of the water recently, I can understand completely where he's coming from ... the expectations are different. And no matter what your skill level, if you don't know how to deploy an SMB you really need to be accompanied by someone who does. It's not an advanced or technical skill in the Maldives ... it's a required one ... just as it should be in other areas where current is a dominant dive planning consideration.
When I was in the Maldives, I was appalled at the lack of skill I saw at certain dive sites. Some of it comes, I'm sure, from divers who go sometimes years between dives ... but some of it also comes from the incredibly low level of training that divers receive in certain parts of the world before being handed a certification card. We like to complain about the low bar set for training in the USA, but in comparison we're not that bad ... some of those divers I saw at certain sites looked like they just purchased their C-card at a convenience store ... crawling around on the bottom like they hadn't a clue how to move underwater without grabbing ahold of something.
Despite expectations, a diver just shouldn't be relying on a DM to "keep them safe" ... that's your job as a diver, and if you can't accomplish it, then that's a clue that you've chosen a dive site that's beyond your ability ... and there are certainly plenty of those in the Maldives and elsewhere in the world that new divers find themselves exposed to. That's why we keep reading about all these accidents in places like Cozumel, for example ... I've never understood why people who just got certified want to go there when there are so many more appropriate places for new divers to get some bottom time before taking on diving conditions that are going to require them to place themselves in the hands of someone else for their safety.
Here where I live and teach, the expectation is that if you haven't been in the water in a while ... whatever your prior experience level ... you should take a refresher and/or choose a relatively benign site for your first couple of dives. But expectations are often driven more by economic considerations than safety ones ... people whose livelihood relies on income from divers are going to find a way to get as many divers as possible in the water, whether or not they're really prepared to do so without relying on someone else's help. That's the reality of the vacation spots we all love to dive. It's also why the majority of the dive guides in these places are instructors ... who are trained to deal with people who don't know what they're doing ... and why so many of these places impose rules on everybody that assumes they are basically incompetent. Because, unfortunately, so many of the people they have to deal with day in and day out are ...
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
