What is Advanced Diving?

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MauiScubaSteve

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OK, there are three pieces to this posting; this thread here in Technical Diving Specialties (for divers who make technical dives), a thread in Advanced Scuba Discussions (for divers who do feel they are advanced divers) and a thread in Basic Scuba Discussions (for divers who don't feel they are advanced divers).

OK you tech divers; looking back into your past, when did you think you had earned the title "advanced diver?" If you have ~1,000 or more dives, when do you now think you were "advanced?"

So, please answer the question in the proper forum; the question is slightly different in each different forum; this question is for those who make tech dives.
 
I am holding an IANTD trimix card and dived few hundred of deco dives etc etc.
Do i qualify as an experience or advance diver?
As far as I know they are all relative.
How would you quantify one's ability in diving?
 
But it is just a couple simple questions. Why the big reluctance to answer a couple simple questions?

When did you think you were an advanced diver?

Now, when do you think you were an advanced diver?

I will say at least you are in the right forum; only the second one so far.
:idk:
 
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I thought I was an advanced diver every time I finished a new course - then realised, with hindsight, that I wasn't every time I started on the next course. After a few repetitions of that, I gave up on defining myself as a worthless cause.
 
It's all relative. I have trimix and full cave cards but I don't really consider myself an advanced diver. I'm still pretty new at technical diving (less than 100 hrs of mandatory staged deco logged). I'd say most people in the local scuba club consider me a very advanced diver, while most people in the local tech diving club consider me a novice. I think they're both right.
 
halemanō;6135996:
OK you tech divers; looking back into your past, when did you think you had earned the title "advanced diver?"
I may be wrong, but it seems the wording here is (very) slightly different, and that may be an entirely trivial part of the question itself. I really don't think about earning a 'title'. But, when I felt that I had 'advanced' beyond my basic skills was a matter of buoyancy and trim control, as noted in a separate thread. From the perspective of pursuing technical diving, I also felt that I had 'advanced' to a new level of diving when I was comfortable that I could safely descend to 165+ feet, follow a detailed dive plan with specific run times and depths, and then ascend to the surface, using gases other than my backgas for decompression. It was a matter of internal assessment though, and not related to any external / peer evaluation or reinforcement. Nonethless, when I reached that point, I definitely felt I had 'advanced' in my diving, beyond where I was as a recreational diver.
 
It's all relative. I have trimix and full cave cards but I don't really consider myself an advanced diver. I'm still pretty new at technical diving (less than 100 hrs of mandatory staged deco logged). I'd say most people in the local scuba club consider me a very advanced diver, while most people in the local tech diving club consider me a novice. I think they're both right.

The question in the OP asks you to think back to the past ...

Was there ever a time when you thought you were an advanced diver?

If so, now perhaps try to answer the second question as ...

How do you now feel about the time or times when you did feel you were an advanced diver?

Are you really saying that during your entire dive life, progressing all the way to Trimix and Full Cave, you never considered yourself to be an advanced diver?


:confused:
 
halemanō;6136601:

Are you really saying that during your entire dive life, progressing all the way to Trimix and Full Cave, you never considered yourself to be an advanced diver?


:confused:

Yes. And no. How's that for a straight answer.

Maybe I never felt advanced because almost all the people I was diving with were what most would consider advanced divers. They were all avid Atlantic wreck divers and/or cave divers. Many of them were instructors. My first dive buddy and the person who got me started diving was a cave diver and an Advanced Nitrox instructor. We met at school office after his boy punched my boy in the nose and later became friends. For most of my diving life I have been one of the least experienced in the group. It's hard to feel advanced in that environment. There are others in the group with less experience now, but I am still below the group average in experience, if not ability.

However, when I went back and took a rescue class after spending some years with that group it became apparent that the other students, the DMCs, and the instructor all considered me to be a very advanced diver. At one point the instructor told me he was going to hold me to a higher standard and wanted to see a perfect rescue. So what was the difference between me and the others? I didn't show them any cards or brag about my diving exploits. On day 1 I went with completely recreational gear, so it wan't my BP/W or long hose that gave me away. The difference that showed was better comfort in the water, better situational awareness, better buoyancy control, better trim, better propulsion, etc. Somewhere along the way I became an advanced diver.

At what point did it happen? Hard to say. I really don't know. It's akin to asking at what point a rich man became rich. Unless it was due to a sudden windfall, there really isn't a an identifiable moment.

Perhaps there is a fallacy in the question assuming that being advanced or not is binary. It's seems more of a continuum as we advance from novice to wherever we are going to end up. There might also be several continua- Would it not be possible to be an advanced quarry diver, a proficient wreck diver, a beginning cave diver, and a novice reef diver all at the same time?
 
Well, I can do a three-hour stage dive into Mexican caves and feel modestly competent throughout, but a 150 foot dive on a wreck in Lake Washington makes me feel like a beginner.

On any given day, I'm more advanced than I was a year ago, and I hope less advanced than I will be in another year.

"Advanced" has to have a context. In my view, it has something to do with skills, something to do with experience, and a lot to do with one's poise and equanimity in the face of surprises or problems. A beginning diver at ANY level is struggling to execute the basic competencies of that level, and has little bandwidth or emotional reserve to cope with things that aren't as predicted, or things that go wrong. As one's competence becomes more and more solid, there is more reserve to deal with issues, and less stress on the diver from encountering them. Still, throw enough new variables at someone, and they can look and feel rather "unadvanced" in that particular environment.
 
It seems to be very hard for some to be honest about the past.

My big problems usually come from being too honest (imho).

I was not really worried about scuba diving for many years after my PADI OW certification. I regularly spent 3-4 hours freediving into caverns (mostly tunnels and 5-caves) with my cameras, trying to take a whole roll of 36 exposure film pic's of the white tip reef sharks.

A kayak made it a "couple rolls" of 36 exposure film.

After I got access to a 14.5' Sillenger w/ 40hp Johnson, I turned my freediving "down" instead of "in," and regularly spent 3-4 hours at Molokini, trying to shoot a couple rolls of pic's. Molokini kind of weened me of "just" sharks, because there were other really good photo op's!

Then I decided I wanted to work in the ocean with my camera in my hand. I was working as a "cabana boy" and I watched the resort dive instructors pocket a couple hundred cash per day, for pictures of turtles! It took me a couple years to make a plan, and then I was off to Key Largo.

During the nearly zero to past hero, I did not have much chance to reflect on whether or not I was an advanced diver. I was different than my classmates, and different from the IDC Staff, but I have always been different, so it did not seem different.

At the end of the Key Largo period, I was making Draeger Dolphin dives at most of Key Largo's sites (not the Bibb :depressed:).

I got lost away from the Benwood, perhaps due major compass heading over camouflaged ship debris. I surfaced at 60 minutes, and the boat was a couple hundred yards into the stiff current. I tried to hump into the current on the Draeger, but that is not right. I switched to the bailout, for a little too long.

That bailout was supposed to be always off, but when the boat took off for Molasses before I was seated, I forgot to turn off the bailout valve. Since that valve was normally always off, it was the valve that leaked when on.

:idk:

Now that was explained to me earlier in the week, more than once. Fourth dive of the day, fourth and last dive of the soda-sorb, was at The Winch.

This was not planned as a long dive, for me, due also to being near the bottom of my diluent bottle. I was within sight of the back of the boat, ~30 feet deep, when I decided the spg for dil was as low as I would let it, so I went to finish with some OC on the bailout.

Turn bailout valve, turn off RB mouthpiece, switch to bailout reg, exhale and get nothing. Get RB mouthpiece back in, turned on and purged; now breathing possibly less than inspired math percentages. Fiddle with valve handle; righty tighty, it's closed! Open valve, repeat mouthpiece change, take two breaths on the bailout and it's empty! (no spg on bailout).

Another frantic mouthpiece exchange to get back on the RB and a "paranoid" indicated SS on my Uwatek, hoping that I'm breathing something with O2 in it.

I felt pretty advanced to have handled that without boat crew knowing anything was up. :D

I knew however that other divers had no doubt saw something, so when my RB Instructor debriefed at the dock, I told him what happened. He did not smile, but he did say he guessed that showed he was right to let me go off by myself with his rig.

Now, I look back on that an think how naive I was. When I became comfortable with 4 Intro divers at 35 feet with active turtle cleaning happening, that was when I really started feeling advanced.

:coffee:
 
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