So you have x amount of dives...

So I notice for certian certs you need to have a specific amount of dives under your belt. I also notice that below peoples names that there is an amount of dives.

What qualifes as a dive?

anytime you strap on the gear and go in the water as far as I have been told...when we did some pool sessions this winter for training (did not do pool for OW) they instructor told us to log it I was a bit sckeptical but made sense. But, then I only have 20 dives to date so not all that experienced.

Hope that helps

Normally a dive is considered by a number of agencies to have been to a depth of 15ft (5m) for 15 minutes in open water. I do not consider pool dives to be dives but require my students to record various pieces of information such as weight used, air used, skills covered, skills they feel they need more work on, and exposure protection used.

It also depends on the reason for the dive if it is less than what I noted. If I had to go into a farm pond to clear a clogged pipe and it's only 10 feet deep but posed specific challenges and I want to remember how I dealt with them I will log it.

There are some who pad their log book for whatever reason by recording things like one diver I know did during a rescue class. He logged four 3 minute dives while he was playing the victim in the unconscious diver scenario. We wondered if he fell into a puddle if he'd log that as well?

I never understood this requirement it mostly shows nothing. I have seen people popping to the surface every 20mins to ramp up their dive count to meet the DM and later instructors cert requirements. We often do two hours shore dives which we still log as one dive.

Bottom time in specific conditions that what should matter.

Heck we had an incident two weeks ago when a DM candidate paniced at 60 ft because his BC was not inflating. He spit out the reg and bolted. He had almost 50 dives thus almost met the requirements. The guy was in a drysuit with a single tank. So inflation failure shoukd not really be a problem.

It's your divelog, log what like. Myself...I don't consider a pool dive a "dive". (unless maybe it was a really, really big pool) But that's just me. It's your log, feel free to log whatever you feel like logging. It's all about being under and enjoying, not the numbers. Good to have the information about the dives for later if you want to remember something. (weight, weather conditions, water conidtion, what equipment you had, what was good, what was bad, etc.....) That way you don't have to guess next time your in the same place with the same conditions, you can just look at your log.

You're not going to get many people to disagree that # of dives is mostly irrelevant; however, you're still going to find a large % believe the dive count to become a DM or OWSI should be higher... which is an interesting departure and doesn't make a lot of sense considering how little a dive log really tells us.

When someone asks how many dives you have... answer: "Good idea, let's talk about dive planning..."

You certainly want to log what happens in the pool, especially if it included new gear or a good weight check for instance. It's all about tracking what you have learned.

For instance, I'm getting ready to go make a dive this afternoon that will require an odd combination of cylinder, suit and be in fresh water where I only make perhaps 20% of my dives. I was able to go to my log and see what weights worked for a comparable dive last year. Configuration recall may be my greatest use for my log as we have a wide range of conditions around here.

Personally if it's not a bonafide open water dive I will log it but not increment the counts (year and lifetime).

A dive to me is a trip into the water. If we stop at an island or surface it's still 1 dive until we exit at the entry point or destination if it's a site to site dive.

In the end consider it your personal journal and track what is important to you. I like to include the apres dive activities along with what happened in the water.

Pete

Although I personally do not agree with doing bounce dives just to boost up #'s (no experience really gained), I've had some of my most memorable dive in less than 10 ft of water. I spent 45 min, in Ginnie Springs Devil's run, practicing slave drills & buoyancy, then chasing these little fresh water flounders around the run. I've never had so much fun! I also did a dive at Sipadan in less than 10 ft of water. There was soooo much to see. Fish & coral everywhere. I have also done some very short dives,... most of them dives that were aborted early for this reason or that. I took the effort to gear up & get down,.. I'll count it. Do I count pool dives? no,... but if a reasonable effort is made to make the dive, I count it.

For you, since you're uncertified I would follow what your instructor tells you about logging dives. After that you can follow your agencies policy so you won't have any problems signing up for classes in the future.
If you decide to just dive and take a break from classes (highly recommended), then log what ever dives you feel like logging. Your dive log is a your journal and you'll feel a lot better when you can read and look back on your dives. Just keep in mind that some instructors may not count pool dives or very short and shallow dives.

Between the scientific and recreational dive programs at my university, in general a dive is:
- Any time you breath compressed air at depth (sci)
- Pool dives aren't officially logged, just logged for practice on separate sheets of paper (sci)

- Anytime you breath compressed air at a minimum of 10ft for 10mins (rec)
- pool dives are never logged (rec)

- Any dive(s) separated by at least 10mins will count as 2 dives; exceptions to this are during class hours
ie. rescue or basic classes where students spend 3mins down and 13 mins up discussing etc.

For me personally:
I log any dive that has a purpose, whether that's for fun, for a class, or for science. I do NOT log pool dives since that's not an open water dive.
Any dives that are separated by at least 10mins count as 2 dives for me. The only exception to this is if I haven't left the water, which usually occurs when I'm TA-ing for a class.
A few examples:
- I'll spend 3 mins deploying a sand anchor then spend about 2 hours total on the surface. In those 2 hours I'm descending and ascending, collecting 2-5min dives. By the end of that day I'll just total up all my dive times since all those "dives" had one purpose, therefore it's one dive in my log book.

- I once did a 15ft dive for 9mins to collect bags of sand. I logged it as one dive

- I did a 38min dive with my buddy and surfaced a few feet from shore. We spent a little over 10mins waiting for the waves and surf to subside. Then we descended, waited a bit longer, and did an exit crawl out. I logged that as one dive.

I was helping my buddy do some drills for his divemaster course (I was equipment handler and also got to watch and learn). They were doing the unresponsive diver drill. My computer logged it as 4 dives. One 20 min dive, one 3m dive, on 5m dive and one 7 min dive. I downloaded only the 20min dive. I felt the others was cheating. (my guideline is 20ft 20min, conditions relevant. with an entry and exit).