Ah, yes, more bureaucracy as the answer to Life's problems... A few points to consider.
1.) Most divers are adults. Having had the basic OW course to provide the knowledge and make informed decisions, they can choose to repeat training, do scuba tune ups, get additional training, etc... Or not, and deal with the consequences, if any. Sounds to me like adulthood. I prefer it to a nanny state.
2.) Someone else in another thread pointed out how the system would likely imitate the current driver's license renewal scheme; basically a tax that confirms nothing.
3.) The same people who are lambasted for turning out inadequate divers will do a lot of recertification business.
4.) The lifetime nature of a cert. is a good selling point, and since getting more people into the hobby is a big industry concern, making it expire with a bureacratic money making re-certication scheme is not likely to help.
5.) No scheme likely to happen is going to force all recreational divers to be 'good' to the level desired by some on the forum. The standards already in place by mainstream agencies can be used to turn out good divers. I doubt changing them is going to make training fool proof.
6.) If you want a charter boat to let you dive unguided to the limits of your gas, basically however you want to, you need to book a charter that does that regardless of your cert. level. If you go out on a boat running a 2 tank tight schedule due back for an afternoon trip, it doesn't matter if you're AOW, a Master Scuba Diver, a DM, Instructor, Course Director, etc... You're going to do a 50 min. max. dive, be back on the boat at 1 hour max., and if the 'boat rules' for the group are back on boat with 500 PSI and max. depth 100 feet, then letting to break the norm in front of the 'lesser' divers could be disruptive and they're not going to do that.
Recertification is not going to live up to the promise some envision. It
will breed a lot of ill-will and become a scuba tax. And it won't eliminate sub-par divers from the diver population to cause mainstream dive boat op.s to let you do whatever you want.
Richard.
---------- Post added January 24th, 2015 at 09:26 PM ----------
i did a training course to get a card so that dive ops would take me diving. end of story. if you want to get me interested, please present a relevant problem. then we can discuss solutions.
I think one of the problems presented, in a number of SB threads, is that a number of divers don't like how some other people dive, and want something 'done about it.' And they keep trying to dream up ways to make that happen. For their own good, of course.
---------- Post added January 24th, 2015 at 09:30 PM ----------
RJP:
One thing about attracting the wrong demographic; you make a little money off the one time course & gear sale/rental. It's like McDonalds; not everybody eats there, but seems like most everybody in the U.S. has tried it. Eat there one time in your life, and they make money. They'll make a lot more money if they can figure out how to get more people coming back, but hey, if that doesn't work out, better a little one time sale money than no money ever.
Unless we're trying to save future non-divers from the cost & hassle of trying scuba, seems to me we're not out to eliminate the 'temporary diver' phenomenon, just convert a higher percentage of them to chronic divers.
Richard.
