'Why diving has hit the rocks' article from Times Online

[LimeyDiver]

Hi everyone,

what are your thoughts on this article?

Why diving has hit the rocks -Times Online

From The Times

July 25, 2009

Why diving has hit the rocks
After a decade diving the oceans, Cavan Pawson hangs up his mask disaillusioned by the sport and its greed

Cavan Pawson

For almost a decade diving was a passion for me and my wife, Lucy, and we travelled all over the world to pursue it.

As a boy in London in the 1970s I had watched Jacques Cousteau on television and was so inspired by the way in which he brought the sea to life. I grew up desperate to learn more about underwater wildlife.

We took our first diving lessons in 1997, from a dive master in the Red Sea. Lucy was very nervous at first, but the dive master held her hand and coaxed her into the water.

When you are diving it’s all in your mind and your eyes, and you rely on hand signals and body language — you have to feel relaxed, you need to learn to breathe slowly so as not to use up your air too quickly, and you have to learn how to communicate with your eyes. If the dive master hadn’t been so thorough and patient with Lucy she probably would never have learnt how to do it.

We spent every night of that Red Sea holiday in our cheap two-star Egyptian hotel doing homework for the course. We loved it and we took it seriously.

In eight years of really serious diving we went to Thailand, the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, the Caribbean, the Orkneys — even Swanage Pier, in Dorset. We must have spent about £8,000 a year on diving holidays. That doesn’t include all the equipment we bought — we had all our own kit, underwater cameras, the lot.

The highlights were our trips to Cocos Island, near Costa Rica, in 2003 and the Galápagos Islands in 2004. The diving in these locations is among the hardest and most adventurous in the world. It takes two and a half days to get to Cocos Island by boat. This is where the hammerheads go to mate, and we must have seen hundreds in only one dive. They were everywhere, swimming around us.

It was an incredible, overwhelming experience. You feel hugely privileged to see wild, beautiful creatures such as that up close. In the late Nineties we also saw lots of whale sharks in Thailand and the Maldives. We had very close contact with these huge animals. They made our diving memorable and moving.

But our love of diving began to be tested when we saw things that upset or angered us. By 2003 we noticed that, in places such as Thailand and the Red Sea, there had been a dramatic depletion of wildlife — whether because of overfishing or climate change I don’t know, but it was very noticeable. We would come back from our dives having seen hardly any fish.

A diving holiday at Pemba Island, off the coast of Tanzania, was billed in the holiday brochure as a pelagic dive trip. That means that you would expect to see sharks and manta rays.

But the area where we dived had been dynamited by fishermen. It was like an underwater building site, with no fish or other underwater animals. We didn’t see a single turtle, manta ray or shark.

Even at Cocos Island, which is a patrolled, protected area, there are problems with illegal fishermen poaching sharks for their fins.

We were also sickened by some of the practices that we saw, particularly in relation to the way that dive boats were run, the Padi (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) qualification and the behaviour of other divers underwater.

On a dive in the Maldives we saw a 20-year-old qualify as a dive master with only 40 hours’ experience. This young man was the most irresponsible, unprofessional diver I have yet seen. He would return from a dive saying that he had a bad headache and that he thought he had the bends.

He would forget his dive computer, which you wear on your wrist and which calculates your time, depth and air consumption so that you can resurface safely. He was immature and childish, and a laughing stock among the experienced divers on the boat.

To be a dive master you need to be mature and responsible; you need to be able to communicate with people. It’s not just about certificates.

We saw cowboys all over the world. We saw a Padi nitrox diving course being taught to students sitting on chairs in the sea. That was in Koh Tao, Thailand, a small island. Everyone, including the teacher, was drinking beer and joking around.

Nitrox diving is complicated; you need to concentrate and you need to listen. You’re not going to be doing that with your feet up and a beer in your hand.

There are gas mixtures involved that could kill you if you don’t know what you are doing. When you see that kind of thing going on it’s not such a surprise that Padi is sometimes known colloquially by another name: “Pay and Dive In.” It is common knowledge that in many places if you pay the money you will get a qualification.

The number of people diving went up enormously in the time that we were doing it. In the Red Sea, when we first started, you would see perhaps 20 divers in four hours. The last time we were there, in 2005, we saw 130 divers.

In Thailand these days you will see about 15 boats in the same dive site. That’s at least 150 people diving in one small area of water. In such overcrowded situations I’ve seen boats cross the buoys where divers are meant to surface.

And I’ve been on dive boats where the dive master has been completely open about the fact that he is interested in one thing only: the tips. With dive masters like that, anything goes.

In Pemba I saw some divers smashing coral. I asked the dive master to tell them to stop it. He didn’t say anything, because he was worried about his tips. That’s the trouble with diving now: it’s all about dollars.

Some dive masters don’t bother to enforce the golden rule of diving: dive with your eyes, leave with your memories. You are not meant to disturb or touch the fish or coral. I’ve seen tourists try to ride whale sharks, and dangle torches into holes to force octupus to come out.

Lucy and I learnt as much about the technique, safety and rules of diving as we could. We studied the wildlife and have a real respect and love for it. Lucy would hover quietly for ages underwater to wait for a fish to emerge from a crevice of its own accord.

Our lives are too short now to spend our holidays being shocked and saddened by what people are doing to the sea. We became completely disenchanted with diving, and took the decision together in 2005 to stop.

Last year some close friends who we met on a dive in 1997 went to the Maldives, expecting to encounter some amazing underwater creatures. We rang them to ask what they had seen. “Nothing except Russians,” they said.

The sad thing is that they weren’t joking.

Interview by Kate Quill


Response from Neil Fishburne, head of training and quality management for Padi International

Almost a million divers earn Padi certifications each year – we would not have achieved this level of business without our members providing safe and enjoyable diving courses. Regarding the “Pay and Dive In” comment, as the market leader in scuba-diving education around the world, we are bound to get this type of comment from competitors.

However, Padi programmes have been certified as meeting the requirements of the relevant European Standards for scuba diving training — we were the first organisation to receive this certification.

Drinking before or after a dive is discouraged because dehydration may contribute towards decompression sickness. However, I’m not sure that just drinking a cold beer in the tropics while in a classroom setting would be a distraction from the learning experience, provided that neither the divers nor the instructor were inebriated.

Padi has quality-management staff in each of our offices and we take breaches of standards very seriously — they are investigated and may result in expulsion from Padi. An expelled member is no longer allowed to represent himself as a member or run our programmes. We publish details of expelled or suspended members on our website. We regularly send out course-evaluation questionnaires to students and require our members to report to us if they witness another Padi instructor in breach of standards. We follow up on all complaints that we receive.

Padi courses are run by instructors, dive centres and resorts who are independent of Padi, are not employed by Padi and are not agents of Padi. Our professional-level programmes teach Padi instructors to follow our standards in full and use good judgment when running their courses. I would advise any potential divers travelling abroad to check in advance on our website to confirm that a dive centre or resort is Padi certified.

Once there, you can ask to see your instructor’s certification card. We have a “Pro Chek” system that allows you to check, via our website, whether an instructor is current and authorised to teach our courses. If you have any complaints or concerns during the course, raise them with the instructor and, if not satisfied, with the centre manager or owner. You can also contact Padi directly — we will investigate.



NEED TO KNOW

1,044ft deepest scuba dive, by Nuno Gomes in 2005

40ft recommended maximum depth for beginner divers

250,000 estimated number of active recreational divers in the UK

7 number of fatal diving incidents so far this year in the UK

Sources Guinness World Records; British Sub-Aqua Club

INTO THE DEEP END: by Frank Pope, The Times Ocean Correspondent

Diving is easy — too easy. It’s just breathing, after all. The hard bit is not falling foul of the changed laws of physics while you’re doing it. A breath of air is a different thing at 10m, different again at 30m, and yet again at 60m. The dangers are easily taught, but if quickly learnt are quickly forgotten.

Too often Padi instructors fall into the same trap. Full certification can come within six months of their first dive, leaving little time for crucial experience to build up. As any diver knows, it’s only experience that will stop a bad situation escalating into an accident.

But unreliable crews mean that experienced divers are at risk too, from having their tank filled with bad air to being run over by badly driven boats.

Unscrupulous and uncontrolled operations are to blame for damaging some beautiful dive sites. Boat skippers often throw anchors on to reefs rather than use set moorings, and divers with bad buoyancy control can easily break the delicate structures.

But the blame for the disappearing fish and crumbling coral lies with our long history of assuming that the sea is infinitely resilient and productive. We now know that it’s not, and dive organisations such as Padi are partly responsible for spreading that awareness.

Now is not the time to hang up your fins, however. Marine Protected Areas are springing up around the world, and ecosystems can bounce back fast if properly defended from overfishing and other impacts. Whether or not they will offer refuge from the mass-market diving monster remains to be seen.

 

[mikemill]

Honestly, it sounds like two people going "well back in my day...."

Sorry but nitrox calculations are not complicated. I wouldn't say that drinking during a classroom session is the best idea but it isn't that bad.

And when you go to popular vacation spots you get vacation divers. I saw nothing about them diving at home, which sounds like the UK and I know people do dive in the UK waters.

No matter what you'll always find bad apples. The trick is finding out where they like to go and not go there.

 

[DA Aquamaster]

You are making a bit of an ad populum logical fallacy - just because a large number of nitrox divers do not take nitrox classes all that seriously does not make 2 people who feel otherwise wrong for saying so.

Exceeding an MOD can kill you, but I'd bet you $100 that more than 50% of nitrox divers cannot recall the forumula to figure a MOD or derive it on paper 12 months they complete the course. They instead ride their computers or at best look at a table and figure it from there.

I learned to dive in 1979 and got certified in 1985. It was different then as it was much more rigorous in terms ofswimming ability, under water skills and academics and courses were designed to produce divers capable of independently diving as a buddy team. Within a few years after that, course standards and content refelcted a attitude of catering to a dive travel industry with the result that courses now churn out divers with minimal swiming ability, minimal diving skills and extremely limited knowledge, offset by the idea that new divers would be herded along by knowledgable dive masters to keep them safe and within limits.

In short, a dumbed down let (almost) anybody learn to dive model of instruction. The sad thing is that the accident statistic suggests it works, at least in terms of safety, but the end result is still a million new divers per year just from PADI, most of who can't hover over a reef without damaging it.

To the credit of many instructors, they have more or less stayed with older ideals and turn out decent students, but others are more likely to award a C-card just for surviving the class, puting in the time and paying the $ even if the skill levels are deplorable.

Roto tillers abound in ever growing numbers. Part of it is perhpas a lack of expectation as their instructors never expected higher levels of performance, part of it may be a lack of pride as diving is now largely an "anybody can do it" sport, and in some cases just lack of knowledge of how bad they really are in the water.

Personally, PADI's response did not impress me, basically: "We churn out a million divers a year, therefore we must be good." Any logical argument should be able to be stated in the extreme and still make sense so lets try this: "We churn out a million (incompetent, reef tilling) divers per year therefore we must be good." Obviously being a "good" training agency is about a lot more than just numbers. Similarly, the comment that alcohol in a class setting was not neccesarily bad. Boy, that speaks volumes. I cannot imagine teachaing a class with alcohol present and or with a beer in my hand. State dependent learning and other cognitive/memory/retention issues aside, it just sets the wrong tone for a class setting. And PADI obviously was not real alarmed and seemed more interested in justifying or excusing it.

 

[irishsquid]

Honestly, it sounds like two people going "well back in my day...."

Sorry but nitrox calculations are not complicated. I wouldn't say that drinking during a classroom session is the best idea but it isn't that bad.

And when you go to popular vacation spots you get vacation divers. I saw nothing about them diving at home, which sounds like the UK and I know people do dive in the UK waters.

No matter what you'll always find bad apples. The trick is finding out where they like to go and not go there.

Not judging the folks in the article, but; it does sound like "vacation divers" upset that their vacation dive spots aren't what they used to be. They may well be correct that the places/times are changing, but so is the whole planet.

 

[Jeff Toorish]

To be honest, this post sounds like a whining rant and nothing more.

I won't go into it point by point, but to give a couple of examples: Nitrox calculations are not complicated --if I can do them, anyone can. Learn the PPg circle or simply buy an APP for your iPhone or Blackberry.

The author of this piece admires Jacques Cousteau, as many of us do --then laments the destruction of reefs by modern day divers. Apparently he does not know Cousteau was known to dynamite reefs to get Calipso into a harbor.

Decrying money is scuba is, frankly, idiotic. Again, Cousteau could do what he did because he had mega-sponsors. Some types of diving are the most gear intensive activities on the planet. That requires money, get used to it.

There is no doubt, the oceans are suffering. There is less life, both animal and plant, but divers may well be the solution. As one emminent marine biologist told me for a documentary I am filming, "divers are the canary in the coalmines."

If someone wants to stop diving, fine, more ocean for the rest of us.

Jeff

 

[divad]

Who is Cavan Pawson?

 

[AbyssalPlains]

This is along the "The old days were all better" line of reasoning. Of course, the world is in a bad condition with respect to the environment. You can lament that all you want but that won't make it better. If you just quit doing what you love, well, then I guess you don't love it enough. Ever since I've started to dive with a great passion three years ago, it has led me to pursue the opposite of what is stated in this article: I am now at a point where I'm systematically plotting my way out of my current career (public relations in the health sciences) and make a career change toward ocean conservation.

 

[John_B]

Who is Cavan Pawson?

Apparently, some sort of British news photographer who fancies himself guardian of all recreational diving.

Though why he didn't use his professional skills to "tell the story" in a photojournalism piece, I don't know.

Just a guess, but maybe he's also our very own "LimeyDiver"?

 

[divad]

Perahps he's a dandy.

 

[DA Aquamaster]

The author of this piece admires Jacques Cousteau, as many of us do --then laments the destruction of reefs by modern day divers. Apparently he does not know Cousteau was known to dynamite reefs to get Calipso into a harbor.

Different times, different ideas about what was acceptable. Cousteau to my knowledge dynamited some coral heads to get the Calypso to the Blue Hole. Not a big deal in the big picture, especially then when reefs were not what you coudl call threatened, but on the other hand not something you can have everyone going around doing.

But to put it in perspective, he did a lot less damage in that instance than a weekend's worth of cattle boats loaded with newby divers would do to a pristine reef if it were found. All that little diver damage here and there that everyone conveniently ignores adds up to a helluva lot of destruction and that was the point of the OP's article.

What do you, as a diver do when you see some moron roto-tilling the reef or beating it up with their console/wrecking ball? If the 10% of us who can really dive competently created some social pressure on those who can't to improve their skills or stay on the boat, it might make a difference. Or perhaps if we pressured operators to either refuse service to people with poor skills to conserve the reefs and /or park them out in the sand where they do less damage.

To say "the world just sucks louder than it did back then and that's just the way it is" does not accomplish much. Nor does calling a diver a "whiner" just because he or she is trying to point out just exactly how much more it now sucks and why.

My personal beef with Cousteau had to do with his cave diving segments where he insisted on going into pristine caves with those silly arsed flares when he had access to perfectly good lights and had experienced cave divers guiding him who were telling him how much harm the contaminants from those flares were going to cause. That made zero sense, but I guess it looked dramatic.