What makes you an experienced diver?

[scubadada]

Experience. (no seriously - dive more.)

Did it take more than 4 years to come up with that?

.........................

I see you just joined, guess you're catching up

 

[george_austin]

i've always thought that 'experienced' is a title given to you by your peers and that those who are truly experienced are too humble to label themselves as such.

Absolutely - it's what your peer group says about you more than what you say about yourself.
A really experienced diver does everything (almost) as second nature and is just as or more comfortable in the water as he or she is out of it.

Plus - if you got into diving because of the recently released films like Thunderball (1966) or the recently syndicated TV show Sea Hunt (1964) and you've pretty much kept diving since then - you're probably as experienced as you're ever going to be - ;-)

 

[sealark]

Still working on it and I'm obviously still alive at 72

 

[REVAN]

1) When you are as comfortable diving without tanks as you are diving with them, you might be an experienced diver.

2) When you know enough to be able to select the right gear to get the best performance on a selected/planned dive instead of using whatever spikey mess of inappropriate equipment that looks technical but isn't, you might be an experienced diver.

3) When you recognize that the things you have been taught about diving might be flawed and that you may have to figure some things out for yourself to really know what's going on, you might be an experienced diver.

Maybe I should have led with #3...

 

[FinnMom]

IMHO hundreds of dives under a variety of conditions. But yes, it would also depend on the context/who is asking. My judgement is colored by knowing lots of people that achieved the above 10, 20 and ++ yrs ago and haven't slowed since. I've also noticed that there are a lot of those types around us all the time that we aren't aware of/don't know them, so keeping it humble is the best way not to sound silly.

I think it's best to identify one's self as a basic or even a competent diver and let others make their own judgements if they wish. People who proclaim great things of themselves easily make others wary. And often bored.

 

[muddiver]

I have experienced every form of diving except finding mines and sneezing into enemy territory, so that makes me an expert diver that doesn't know everything. [emoji3]

 

[The Laconic]

The more I dive, the more I feel like a rank amateur.

 

[TMHeimer]

You can obviously be experienced in this place/climate/conditions and not in that. You can be an "experienced" deep diver, but not the greatest with Search & Recovery or Navigating a triangle successfully in 20 feet. You can't say someone is experienced because they've dived over 10 years, but have done 62 dives. So, the only "one fits all" generic criteria has to be total dives done. What that number should be to be "experienced" nobody will ever know.

This guy made some good points over 4 years ago, but I somewhat disagree about the number of years thing. I myself will hit my 10th anniversary of OW cert. this Fri. Nov.6. So in my case, anyone with 10 or more years is experienced.