Total dive hours

[GDI]

:doctor:
Well fgray1 I see you were just looking for an indicator of experience level, and the thread took off again. Hours are important. However. I have seen, recently in fact, that one may have plenty of hours logged and that still didn't make them very skilled divers. IMO. If you have 1000 hours of diving and you did nothing to improve your skill then you can still be looked at as a unskilled diver. However if you did work to improve your skills then you may be termed a skilled diver with as little as 100 hours. Poorly trained and unpracticed and unimproved skills are the same as untrained skills. And the same goes for knowledge. If your choice is not to learn more then you will not.
Hours under water can be a method of which to base experience but only if that experience is varied and broad based to different environments and conditions of diving. I can show you instructors who have many hours of diving and are skillful, but when placed into low vis conditions they are (excuse the pun) lost as to how to handle it. They don't do well on deep dives either.they rarely dive deeper than 60 feet. Why are they unskilled in these areas? Because they themselves have not improved their skills and knowledge in these areas. They are good instructors

 

[padiscubapro]

GDI once bubbled...
:doctor:
Well fgray1 I see you were just looking for an indicator of experience level, and the thread took off again. Hours are important. However. I have seen, recently in fact, that one may have plenty of hours logged and that still didn't make them very skilled divers. IMO. If you have 1000 hours of diving and you did nothing to improve your skill then you can still be looked at as a unskilled diver. However if you did work to improve your skills then you may be termed a skilled diver with as little as 100 hours. Poorly trained and unpracticed and unimproved skills are the same as untrained skills. And the same goes for knowledge. If your choice is not to learn more then you will not.
Hours under water can be a method of which to base experience but only if that experience is varied and broad based to different environments and conditions of diving. I can show you instructors who have many hours of diving and are skillful, but when placed into low vis conditions they are (excuse the pun) lost as to how to handle it. They don't do well on deep dives either.they rarely dive deeper than 60 feet. Why are they unskilled in these areas? Because they themselves have not improved their skills and knowledge in these areas. They are good instructors

And also perception of what low viz is varies.. People who are used to 100feet or better call 40 low viz...
someone in the NE calls 20fsw good viz...
The skill that is often poor on clear water divers is navigation.. getting to with 100 fsw of the boat gets you home, up here frequently you have to be able to get within 5 feet to get home...


If the instructor is doing AOW he has to go deeper than 60 (albeit just barely - most agencies).. I don't know any instructor that teaches to this minimum for AOW.

There are agencies that BOW allows dives deeper than 60fsw and require deeper for AOW..

 

[pipedope]

is when you need your light to see a few inches.

Good vis means I can see something.

Great vis means I can see things before I can touch them.

 

[DeepScuba]

I hear ya Pipe!

Although I dont dive how you dive, I can related to running into stuff AND THEN seeing what I hit. When your light is on top of your SPG, and you still can't read it, you KNOW you're doing some real diving!

Been there, done that, and I hate it most of the time.

 

[Uncle Pug]

pipedope once bubbled...
Good vis means I can see something.

... you only have to crawl backwards.

 

[Uncle Pug]

DeepScuba once bubbled...
Been there, done that, and I hate it most of the time.

... unless you clean sewers with a hand scraper. Where he goes zero viz is preferable... and a hose down afterward is essential. :warhammer

 

[pipedope]

He said he didn't want his divers to see what is really down there.
If they really saw they would not go back.

For those who don't know. I am an inland commercial diver and am often found in stormwater drain pipes and retention ponds in FL. Almost all of this work is done by feel so vis is not important.

For fun diving I like to have good vis, you know, 3 or 4 feet makes for a much easier dive.

Here is a drill for anyone who thinks 50' vis is needed to have a good dive. Take a wire frame 1' square and place it on the bottom. Now make a list of everything you can see in the 1sqft.
Odds are you cannot complete the list on a tank of air, even in 30' of water.

There is something to observe (see, feel, or ???), something to learn, something to practice, and something wonderful on EVERY dive.

 

[DeepScuba]

Can anyone say Reg clearing practice?

Totally disgusting. I hope you get paid a rediculous amount of money.

 

[Doppler]

DeepScuba once bubbled...
Can anyone say Reg clearing practice?

Totally disgusting. I hope you get paid a rediculous amount of money.

I think if you ask him, pipedope will tell you he doesn't use a regulator... and I don't think he makes enough. Never done it, but have been a line tender to those who did... also part of the team on clean-up... pulp and paper mills and holding tanks... where do those little creatures come from?

 

[DeepScuba]

Mmmmm clean up crew.

I can see where you were on the totem pole

Lemme guess, they made you use your own shirt to clean the hoses