PADI Certification too quick?

[MikeFerrara]

Rightly or wrongly, PADI standards allow the class/pool session to be completed in two days. Open water dives require an additional two days. Hovering is not on the list of required skills.

Hovering is on the list of confined water skills but they can do it in any position and it only has to be for a minute.

PADI and the other CMAS training agencies are living up to their end of the bargain - only rarely do you find the bodies of newby divers washed up along the shoreline and the numbers of participants has gone through the roof in the past 30 years.

Are you sure? Maybe the numbers have gone through the roof over thirty years. I can't say but in the time that I've been actively diving the numbers I see at local sites seem pretty flat. The funny thing is it seems to be new faces every year. I don't think new divers keep diving very often.

Of course I've pretty much given up diving local sites because conditions are so bad when other divers are around. Seeing the vis go from good to none in the first hour of diving just takes all the fun out of it for me.

Training requirements are fine right where they are.

Not in my opinion.

New divers are reasonably safe

That would depend how you define "reasably safe" I guess. Injuries really aren't that common but I think that's because you can crawl around the bottom without a clue and it usually doesn't become life threatening. On the other hand I see lots of divers having trouble, it doesn't look like fun and it seems like it's rare that a diver trained to these standards is able to handle a problem if it does happen. Things like a simple free flow result in a rapid ascent almost 100% of the time even though it's usually doesn't result in injury. Buddies are seperated all the time even though injuries are rare. I know because I've had to go search for the missing buddies.

They have a long way to go before they become proficent divers, but it's okay to let them crawl for awhile before insisting that they run a marathon.

And crawl is exactly what they're taught to do.

 

[MikeFerrara]

I was going to reply to this thread earlier today and had the same sentiments you expressed here! When I was first OW certified I honestly thought they were trying to make a SEAL out of me. What a course that rigorous seemed to accomplish was to create two groups of graduates: hardcore divers and people who would have loved diving but washed out of the training. It's sad to think of all the people who missed out on the joy of diving because they weren't Special Forces material.

It's also very sad to see a diver hurt because they can't handle a simple problem like a free flow without bolting for the surface.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Hovering is required for the PADI OW, but watching students hover over a platform a few moments and then leaving the platform and dropping like a rock is an eye opener and makes you wonder.

I used to wonder but now I'm pretty certain.

Anyway, the PADI course is sort of performance based, you go as fast as your skills allow you too. You perform the skills to your instructors liking and move on...complete all the skills, pass the test and your on to the open water dives. That is how my training went anyway...2 pool sessions and a couple classroom sessions and to the quarry we went.

Yes, and since the required skills are just some simple tasks done while kneeling on the bottom just about any one can get through very fast. Since standards only require divers to perform the same skills still kneeling in OW and don't require anything in the way of basic technique the open water dives can be done very fast also. It's just that a diver is often certified without ever having actually planned or done anything in the way of actual diving.

I plan on becoming a PADI instructor. I have already decided that I am going to expect a lot from my students, I won't teach any other way. That I look forward too.

Good luck. That was my thought in the beginning but PADI doesn't really seem to support that so I ran out of reasons to keep paying them.

 

[SDAnderson]

Check your/an instructor manual. Try page 2-14 of the Open Water Diver section.

Todd

Required in confined water...

Bouyancy control (hovering for at least 30 seconds) – In water too deep to stand up in, demonstrate and have student divers practice hovering using only buoyancy control (no arm or fin use). Stress use of breath control to make final adjustments but avoid breath holding. An orientation device, such as a stationary line, may help students determine whether they’re rising or sinking.​

Required in open water...

Ain't on the list of skills​

Mike has made a comment that seems worth considering: "The funny thing is it seems to be new faces every year. I don't think new divers keep diving very often." Perhaps if divers were better prepared, the drop-out rate wouldn't be so high. In the old days, the drop-out rate was high in the class but those that made it through tended to continue diving, my first OW class lost most of the people. These days, the drop-out rate in the class is far lower but many graduates stop diving within a year or two. I don't know which is better for the sport, I definitely know which is better for the dive shops.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Required in open water...

Ain't on the list of skills​

It used to be.

That's a change that's been made just in the last couple of years. I could get a date if some one was interested because I believe that it was changed after the printing of the standards I have so the change is written in by hand with a note indicating the quarter and year the change came in.

I didn't even know that they changed the CW requirement from a minute to 30 seconds though. That must be pretty new.

Next they'll use weighted boots so divers don't have to mess with a bc at all.

 

[WileEDiver]

Required in open water...

Ain't on the list of skills​

Are you sure? I've got it in Open Water Dive 4 (Pages 4-21 and 4-22 of the IM).

 

[gkwaldee]

I am going with her this weekend on her checkout dives. There were 3 people in her class. She says that she is comfortable with the class. It just really concerns me that is was so quick. I know it took me a while to learn to hover. I just dont see how they crammed it all in to a day at the pool.

How many of us got hovering down within the OW class? There are divers all over the world that stated without a "class" or an agency..........and theyre safe.

All a cert does is give us the ability to get gas in our tanks. Its our minds that keep us safe.......

ghettodiver
nitrox/deco

 

[HammerNoMore]

Mike has made a comment that seems worth considering: "The funny thing is it seems to be new faces every year. I don't think new divers keep diving very often." Perhaps if divers were better prepared, the drop-out rate wouldn't be so high.

While I certainly prefer the 6 weeks of training I had before my OW dives to the two weekend method, I don't think it has any direct bearing on the dropout rate other than attracting divers who are likely to drop out.



I think the real issue is that a large portion of divers in an OW class are there because they are going on a cruise in two weeks and think: "hey let's try that scuba thing." If it took a real time commitment, more of these people would skip it and do the resort course thing.

In the old days, the drop-out rate was high in the class but those that made it through tended to continue diving, my first OW class lost most of the people. These days, the drop-out rate in the class is far lower but many graduates stop diving within a year or two. I don't know which is better for the sport, I definitely know which is better for the dive shops.

It's just a matter of when you weed the tourists out of the divers. You can do it before they are certified, which is probably the safer alternative, or you can do it after they are certified, which is the most profitable.

James

 

[gkwaldee]

Ya know, we talk about this all the time..........and it always seems to be about what the agency is doing or not doing......I couldnt care less what PADI or SDI does. They dont plan my dive, and they dont dive my plan.........im on the line, not them

A persons safety should never be more important to someone else than it is to themselves. People do stupid **** all the time, like getting behind a wheel while seeing double.........I guess we gotta start blaming the lil old man that sat in the seat and taught them to drive huh?

Mistakes and accidents are one thing, stupidity is something different.

Darwin was right

sorry about the back to back posts, this topic just pisses me off. I say just do away with the agencies and let those that will fend for themselves.........

tiny bubbles,
ghettodiver

 

[TCDiver1]

This debate will never go away. Its better, its worse, its safer, its more dangerous etc. My opinion differs from many and here is why.

Although i think it has gotten more convenient to get certified i'm not sure its any worse than when i got certified in 1979.

We didn't learn about trim or buoyancy control, we crawled around on the bottom because this PADI instructor was still using horse collar BC's. The horse collar wasn't there as a buoyancy compensator, it was there as an emergency surfacing device and/or a PFD for the surface. Anyone remember those cool CO2 cartridges?

We did however have excellent push-up technique while wearing our scuba units.

We didn't learn about gas management. Oh wait, yes we did. It went like this. See this little wire hanging off your tank J-valve? When you run out of air, pull it, then you'll have enough air to hopefully get to the surface. I remember thinking how that was a pretty cool safety feature. Back then, J-valves were high tech, k-valves sucked.

So we didn't need no stinkin pressure gages!

We did learn a lot about task loading and problem solving as i recall. At any time in the course your mask could get ripped off, your air turn off, you could be forced to buddy breathe, your fins could get ripped off, etc, with creative, multiple variations of all the above fair game at any time. No doubt, you failed the class if you couldn't deal with getting hassled underwater.

I think considering the equipment of the day, the hassling had its place. Horse collar BC's, non failsafe regulators (regulators that could just lock up & stop delivering air), no SPG's and J-valves definately task loaded you more than todays equipment configurations and technology. I don't think it has its place in todays configuration and society.

I bet over half the people i have certified would not have made it through that 1979 course. I know some of you feel that is the way it should be. I don't agree. Some of those people who most likely would not have made it, are my best dive buddies today.

I think with proper care, todays mainstream standards can put out good apprentice OW divers. IMO, with proper care they are a much more rounded OW diver than i was in 1979.