No, what you are saying isn't accurate at all, your basing your judgement on your own experience of diving in the lakes and ponds with very little environmental significance on the dive.
Many of the dive skills we teach and keep practicing are never used in real life and they aren't used is because we have practiced them but also because we learned how to avoid the situations that lead to scenarios where emergency skills are needed. All serious potential issues in diving are rare because of prevention not because of luck in the greater majority of time.
Any diver who claims to be an "advanced" diver who only knows buoyancy control, trim and stops there and isn't aware of the environment and doesn't know about the marine life and environment he is visiting, as a guest, is an incomplete "advanced" diver with lacking skills and knowledge.
Heck, at minimum, if marine life and the environment knowledge were important and significant part of divers' safety, your agency wouldn't have include marine life and environment orientation in the dive briefing a dive leader has to include when taking students or diver out diving in any location. If they didn't include this information in their briefing, they would be in violation of their respective agency's standards.
Perhaps we are arguing because we come from different school's of thought here, I come with a NAUI background that places heavy emphasis on education and being thorough in its diver training programs and view diving and diver training more than just few dive skills to become a diver or, especially, an advanced diver. NAUI has extensive marine environment, biology and ecology, details in its entry level course and must be taught. It is all part of a complete package, we are only guests in the water environment and it is only fitting that we learn about our hosts.
