Do you consider yourself an 'Advanced' diver?

[Snowbear]

... perhaps, we would be looking at someone with some experience (say 1,000 ish non teaching dives) in a wide range of different conditions who has taken responsibility for other people and who continued their diving education.

To use this criteria, you still need to look at the diver's actual skills in the water.... Just because someone dives a lot doesn't mean they have advanced skills.

One of the divers on the Palau liveaboard trip I did was an instructor with thousands of dives in many conditions ~ he's from Alberta and dives in cold water as well as a couple of warm water trips a year. This guy was boastful of his experience and skills. Yet he was the only diver on the whole boat who was standing on live coral to take pictures. He was oblivious that he was doing it... A couple times I pointed it out to him and he acted shocked, then later made excuses like he was concentrating on getting a shot of that anemone and didn't notice he was standing on a coral head More than once he went swimming across above me while I was hovering near a wall looking at something or taking a picture. As he passed over.... whap-whap-whap-whap-whap went his fins across my head or tank He was oblivious that he was doing this. He had to be swimming or standing or lying on something to hold still. He could not hover. At all. Most of the time, he swam nearly vertically.

There were several once-a-year vacation divers on the boat who had far better skills and far more respect for the reef than this "advanced"/"above average" diver.

As an instructor, he's taken responsibility for other divers. He was on the trip with his 19yo son, who he had taught to dive of course. Most of the time, he was oblivious to his son/buddy. Yet on the surface he would be admonishing his son to "stay close." The kid mostly just worked hard to keep up with his dad, though he did seem to be enjoying the dives.

Most everyone would call this man an "advanced" diver. I would say he needs to learn some basic SCUBA skills

 

[Bruciebabe]

To use this criteria, you still need to look at the diver's actual skills in the water.... Just because someone dives a lot doesn't mean they have advanced skills.

One of the divers on the Palau liveaboard trip I did was an instructor with thousands of dives in many conditions ~ he's from Alberta and dives in cold water as well as a couple of warm water trips a year. This guy was boastful of his experience and skills. Yet he was the only diver on the whole boat who was standing on live coral to take pictures. He was oblivious that he was doing it... A couple times I pointed it out to him and he acted shocked, then later made excuses like he was concentrating on getting a shot of that anemone and didn't notice he was standing on a coral head More than once he went swimming across above me while I was hovering near a wall looking at something or taking a picture. As he passed over.... whap-whap-whap-whap-whap went his fins across my head or tank He was oblivious that he was doing this. He had to be swimming or standing or lying on something to hold still. He could not hover. At all. Most of the time, he swam nearly vertically.

There were several once-a-year vacation divers on the boat who had far better skills and far more respect for the reef than this "advanced"/"above average" diver.

As an instructor, he's taken responsibility for other divers. He was on the trip with his 19yo son, who he had taught to dive of course. Most of the time, he was oblivious to his son/buddy. Yet on the surface he would be admonishing his son to "stay close." The kid mostly just worked hard to keep up with his dad, though he did seem to be enjoying the dives.

Most everyone would call this man an "advanced" diver. I would say he needs to learn some basic SCUBA skills

This is a problem with lots of cold water divers, they go down the line to the wreck and up the line to the dive boat. They don't actually dive in the sense of buoyancy control and finning technique. This is why I specified a wide range of conditions. I have seen boastful British divers going on about their superiority due to diving conditions here and who look an absolute mess on a tropical reef.
Also I specificaly precluded training dives as valid experience because it is self evident that they aren't. It is easy for an instructor to log thousands of dives without getting any better as a diver.

 

[El Orans]

Me? I'm just an experienced beginner.

 

[Mike Veitch]

sure, why not?

 

[wardric]

You might not want to be considered advanced or technical... these types of divers die far more often than newbies... check the stats!

right, most if not all of divers who died on The Empress of Ireland were "expert" divers with thousands of dives and hundreds on that wreck. In most cases, they were diving solo and probably tought they could handle any situation by themselves... (one guy went solo to rescue another that had gone solo. Both died.)

http://www.fqas.qc.ca/coroner_fr.htm It's in french but coroborates what I just said.

I'm not against solo diving but blackouts kill. Someone I knew died in mexican caves recently. Contaminated air.

 

[drbill]

After 45 years of diving and several thousand dives, I think I'm a pretty good diver... but there is always something new to learn! Right now I want to learn more about warm water diving since a reliable report from our dive park this weekend gave the bottom temp as 51 F. Although not horrendous, it is early January and...

 

[Diver0001]

After 45 years of diving and several thousand dives, I think I'm a pretty good diver... but there is always something new to learn! Right now I want to learn more about warm water diving since a reliable report from our dive park this weekend gave the bottom temp as 51 F. Although not horrendous, it is early January and...

Dr Bill....with all due respect 51F *is* warm water.

We're diving in 38F over here and it gets worse. There are days that the water would freeze if it were standing still and throwing a big-ish rock into it causes the surface layer to solidify.....

Do you dive dry? If you ever get over here I'd be happy to teach you (although I can't give you a card for it).

R..

 

[utnapistim]

yeah, i'm advanced

... errr ... whom are we comparing against? I am advanced, not expert.

i started to know my way around water:
I did ... three or four dive plans almost by myself - if I remember correctly (that is four, not fourty and not four hundred or more), got to call two dives which were beyond my experience level, and I had some screw-ups which could have ended badly and gave me lots to think about afterwards.

... and I'm nowhere near other divers, but way beyond where I was after OW course.

 

[MSilvia]

You might not want to be considered advanced or technical... these types of divers die far more often than newbies... check the stats!

Ah... "check the stats!" The battle cry of those who apparently haven't.

If you look at DAN's 2005 report on DCI and diving fatalities https://www.diversalertnetwork.org/medical/report/2005DCIReport.pdf, you'll see on pages 71-72 that more open water divers died that year than either advanced or technical divers, and that nearly 45% of deaths involved divers who hadn't been diving at all in the last 12 months, and 72% (total, including the previous 45%)involved divers that had been diving less than 20 times in the previous year. Most advanced and technical divers maintain their skills by diving regularly. Perhaps inexperience is more dangerous than calculated risk taking?

You'll also notice on page 69 that the highest incidence of diver fatalities occurred in the Carribean, not in deep wrecks in the North sea, not in Florida cave country, not under the ice in the Pacific Northwest, but on Caribbean reefs... well known as a mecca for tech divers, right?

As Samuel Clemens once said, "Get your facts first, then you can distort them as much as you please."

 

[ghostdiver1957]

Ah... "check the stats!" The battle cry of those who apparently haven't.

If you look at DAN's 2005 report on DCI and diving fatalities https://www.diversalertnetwork.org/medical/report/2005DCIReport.pdf, you'll see on pages 71-72 that more open water divers died that year than either advanced or technical divers, and that nearly 45% of deaths involved divers who hadn't been diving at all in the last 12 months, and 72% (total, including the previous 45%)involved divers that had been diving less than 20 times in the previous year. Most advanced and technical divers maintain their skills by diving regularly. Perhaps inexperience is more dangerous than calculated risk taking?

You'll also notice on page 69 that the highest incidence of diver fatalities occurred in the Carribean, not in deep wrecks in the North sea, not in Florida cave country, not under the ice in the Pacific Northwest, but on Caribbean reefs... well known as a mecca for tech divers, right?

As Samuel Clemens once said, "Get your facts first, then you can distort them as much as you please."

If you add up the number of Advanced, Instructor, Technical and Specialty dive fatalities as one "advanced" group, they do in fact outnumber open water diver fatalities in the DAN Report.

I think you should check your facts... Of course more divers die in the Carribean... the number of people who dive there annually far outnumbers the number diving in the Northeast or doing deep wreck penetrations. You can not go on pure numbers alone. The percentage of advanced and technical divers that die is far higher.

Additionally, DAN's numbers are skewed because it does not keep great records of divers diving outside of "recreational" limits or those that are considered technical dives.

Finally, DAN itself says they are not an investigating agency and that their information is unverified and frequently incomplete. They rely on things being reported to them by divers themselves... not exactly scientific... and since many "technical" divers think DAN is a joke, it is likely that they do not share information with DAN.

While I deeply respect DAN as an Insurance provider and source of dive medicine information, the annual report does nothing to support your claim.