Is guided diving bad for developing skills?

(not sure if this belongs in the Basic or Advanced forum. Mods, please move as appropriate)

(Warning: Long rant coming)
When I took my OW cert, our 5th and 6th OW course dives (yes, even a PADI OW cert requires six open water dives here) were done as independent buddy pairs. The instructor reviewed our dive plan before we splashed, and neither the instructor nor the DM did any instruction or guiding during those dives. They superviesd, provided backup and reviewed our dives with us after we surfaced. IMO, this prepared us for the kind of diving we do here: as independent buddy pairs, without a guide holding our hands.

During my diving as a certified diver, I've been working more or less continuously on developing my skill set. I've been lucky to meet both great mentors and people demonstrating practices I don't want to develop myself through my club's trips and outings. And I've never dived as a part of a guided group back home. The most extensive guiding I've received has been a dive site briefing and the requirement to state max depth, dive duration and dive direction before eveyone hit the water with their buddy and we all went our separate ways under water.

On my first post-cert dive I discovered how one of the other guys could hover effortlessly above me and my buddy as we both, equally inexperienced, thrashed around silting up the bottom. It was an eye-opener, and since that dive I've been trying to copy that type of buoyancy control. I'm slowly getting there.

Just a few dives later, I was mentored on how to perform a backroll off a small boat. It was my first dive from a small boat, but far from the last, and I quickly became comfortable with that kind of entry.

About the same time, probably on the same dive that I learned to backroll, I discovered how disorienting it can be underwater. We got off the boat and were told by the boat tender that we should just go in a straight line and that he'd pick us up when we surfaced close to the little island on the other side of the small bay we were diving. We had great viz - probably some 15-20m - but the terrain was flat with not much to base our navigation on. After we had flitted around a bit and stuffed perhaps half a dozen scallops in the bag, we were thoroughly confused. Looking at my compass, I discovered that my bearing was at least ninety degrees off the direction we were supposed to swim - and though we were swimming. That taught me about keeping tabs on my direction at all times and taking responsibility for my own navigation. I'm continuosly working to improve my navigation skills, since I know that no-one else will guide me back to the entry point or the agreed pick-up point.

After experiencing my mentor planning depth profile, time and directions before we splashed, I took to planning - on the site - a tentative depth profile for my dives, basically making almost every dive a multilevel dive, and I read up on gas planning since I didn't feel that the "turn at half tank, surface at 50 bar" rule was insufficient. And reading up on rock bottom planning and doing the math, I realized that I was right.

I could continue describing my continuous learning process, but I've started rambling. To cut a very long story a little shorter, I don't think I've had one single dive in my home waters that hasn't been a learning experience. My regular buddy and I routinely do a short debrief after each dive, and every single time we find something we could have done better. Also, since each diver always is fully responsible for his/her own kit, I've ended up firmly in the "don't touch my gear unless I explicitly allow it" camp.

After some 30-40 dives like this, we went on a diving vacation. A PADI diving resort in warm water, yay! We arrived, got quizzed on our certification level and latest previous dive, were equipped, boarded the boat and arrived at the first site. I felt uncomfortable when one of the DMs started helping me to kit up. 'Uh, thanks, but no thanks'. We got a rudimentary dive briefing which didn't say anything about depth profile (approximate max depth only) nor direction nor gas planning except 'tell me when you reach 100 bar and when you reach 50 bar'. Half a dozen tourists then hit the water, and we followed the guide, who was familiar enough with the site to keep a speed that precluded any navigation my the tourists. Whenever I tried to check my compass, I found that I was lagging behind. Of course, it didn't help that I also was taking pictures

For all of the dives during that vacation I had no control over my diving, I had handed that responsibility over to the guides. Guides who on one of the dives took a group into a cave, with entry at 40m, without a line and with only one torch per diver. My buddy and I politely, but firmly declined that dive, since we both have a deep mistrust in overheads and enter neither caves, caverns nor wrecks. Period. And it was only after the other divers surfaced that we learned to full extent what kind of dive it had been. Bottom line, I felt I was back to being hand-held, guided and herded as one of a flock of sheep, just like in my first OW course dives.

After coming home, I started wondering what kind of a diver I'd been if all my diving had been like this. I'm pretty convinced that my skills wouldn't have been a fraction of what they are today, even if I still have a long way to go before I can call myself "skilled" or "advanced". I'm slowly getting there, though.

(for tl/dr version skip to here)
Going from the specific to the general - and the questions I'm trying to ask: Is my experience typical for resort diving? Is this kind of guided diving bad for the divers themselves? Should - in a nonexistent, idealized world - guides demand more from their customers, or is (figurative) hand-holding good enough? Should resort/vacation divers - in a nonexistent, idealized world - work with themselves and/or the dive operators to develop independent skills, or is just following the guide's instructions good enough?

I really don't know. I know that I wouldn't be comfortable doing only "trust me" dives with a guide taking the lead, but I get the impression that quite a few divers are. Am I right?

May I preface by saying I dont work and never have in the dive industry but am a travelling diver so I have to do guided dives. Do I mind? No. If I travel 12,000km to dive one site, id like someone who knows it like the back of their hand to show me it so I get to see the best of it in the time I have there. Because dive ops are businesses volume = sustainability. People come, people go. Divers want to see x y z species, dive shops employ guides to show them the ''best of'' not to train good diving habits into everyone. Take thailand for example where you have big boats with lots of divers and often multiple dive shops using the same boat. From a business point of view they need to seperate up those doing courses, those doing DSD, those certified who are there to see Thailand underwater...they dont have time to help those people with skills. They have time to make sure everyone has given an OK signal, air has been checked, tell one diver to add some air to their bcd, tell another diver to come closer, come up if theyre heading deeper etc, thats about it I would imagine. You show up with a card, they assume you can dive. They're there to show you and respond to any emergencies and get the group in and out the water on schedule all happy and alive.
Has that given me bad habits as a diver? yes and no. How regularly do I put my gear together......only when im home. Do I check it after the boat guys have put it together..yes. Do I use a compass and navigate well? no but as ive dived more ive become a lot more adept at recognising my surroundings. Is it possible for me to logistically use a compass on every dive and do a pre dive plan with navigation - yes and no. I can read as much as I can about a dive site, I can watch a million youtube vids of that site, but until I get there and know the conditions on the day I cant plan and execute the plan to the letter....which is where the guide becomes necessary.
Be interesting to hear what people working in the industry think...I dont know, maybe im a terrible diver and no ones ever told me????

Also not all guides are good guides, not all dive ops provide any more than a revolving door experience...its bread and butter.

I agree 100% with the OP. Once I finished what was then called a Basic SCUBA Diving course; I’d say better than today’s AOW course. I was on my own, with a buddy that is, for a while anyway.

I don’t travel much and not at all outside the US so I’ve never been on a hand holding/trust me dive after being certified but, I can see where it would tend not to be helpful in developing skills and self-reliance.

I like the way you describe your course it seems to me you had a very good instructor.

I agree that guided diving is bad for developing SOME skills, but not all. I know many 'holiday' divers who cannot plan a dive for themselves for love nor money. Yet the same divers have very good buoyancy and trim and excellent buddy skills and other personal skills.

I think you could split skills into two major groups - firstly personal skills such as buoyancy, trim, finning, mask clearing, and rescue skills which divers can develop and practise whether guided or not so I do not think are affected as much. Secondly you have dive planning and management skills such as site selection, safe entry and exit points, dive timing in relation to currents and tides and so on, and more importantly navigation. These are the skill sets developed by doing your own diving, and which I think do suffer if you always follow the leader.

One of my regular dive buddies is content to follow - his buoyancy, trim and personal 'diving form' are excellent, but he will be the first to admit he can't navigate to save his life - literally. Compass work for him is cumbersome and inaccurate and he has no spatial awareness of where he is in relation to entry and exit points. Crucially though he doesn't want to lead or plan dives, he is quite happy to be self sufficient for his personal skills and let someone else select and plan and navigate and he enjoys his diving as much as anyone else, and he doesn't aspire to do more. Does that make him a bad diver? - I suggest not.

OK - you could say that if he can't navigate how is he going to save the day if things go wrong, but for recreational diving in an emergency there is going to be a controlled ascent and deal with things on the surface so maybe not such a problem at all.

So my answer would be that guided diving does not help the development of certain skills, but not everyone wants or needs those particular skills which are not encouraged by guided diving, so guided diving is not inherently bad for diving skills. - Phil.

My skill development was much like the OP. My first 30-40 dives was in the Puget Sound as shore dives with another beginner diver. We both learned together to navigate and dive.
I agree that guided diving doesn't develop navigation skills. In fact, after I started to do guided dives, my navigation skills dropped off and I forgot how to use a compass. My new husband got after me and insisted that I "relearn" how to navigate, since he's an instructor. I now use an a compass every dive, guided or not.

Storker:

I really don't know. I know that I wouldn't be comfortable doing only "trust me" dives with a guide taking the lead, but I get the impression that quite a few divers are. Am I right?

Click to expand...

yes you are right

Anyone seeing the common thread here? Cold water divers who learn to dive (and dive at home) in cold water develop better skills than those who learn in warm water resorts, although Perth isn't exactly the warm water capitol of the world. Diving in cold water is just plain harder than in warm water, so cold water divers have to develop better diving skills so something is left over for the rare emergency that comes along.

That's my opinion, anyway.

Wookie:

Anyone seeing the common thread here? Cold water divers who learn to dive (and dive at home) in cold water develop better skills than those who learn in warm water resorts, although Perth isn't exactly the warm water capitol of the world. Diving in cold water is just plain harder than in warm water, so cold water divers have to develop better diving skills so something is left over for the rare emergency that comes along.

That's my opinion, anyway.

Click to expand...

I'm gonna try to remember this and hope doing so will make me feel warm all over next Saturday.
Temp. forcast -15C. :blinking: And here I was ready to admit that I dive local just because I'm poor.


Seriously though, there must be great market edge out there for guided dives that are a good service. I've only been on 2 commercial dive boats but both had guides that justed guided (showed you the highlights and items you might have missed). Both also let everyone with the certs and observed skills dive w/o a guide if they preferred. Our red sea guide asked me if I wanted to go the boat solo because I had double tanks w/ plenty of air when all the single-tank divers climbed into the zodiac. That gave me twice the dive time of anyone else (not solo certified). That's not exactly a control freak mentality.

If I'd missed out on diving with a significantly more skilled divers (as a guide would hopefully be to new divers), I would never have realized how much better a diver I could be. Even now there are many times that someone more experienced gives instructions that I'd never heard before and realize are an excellent idea. I think maybe the problem is more in the cattle boat experience than in diving w/ someone who is clearly the leader compared to the rest of you.

For example, one of the things I'm really working on is getting the "20 dives or so" people to re-learn doing a buddy check before each dive. They tend to think this is something for beginners. People don't like to be told what to do but if us slightly more experienced people and esp. the cave cert. boys clearly do buddy checks, the younger folks will too. You do your own check but you observe that your buddy does his too. You know his stuff works too & if something is different you see how it works. No one ever goes in with air off, suit not connected, zipper open, lamp dead, tanks nearly empty etc.

I have a few thoughts from your account. They might be a bit disjointed, so bear with me.

First: The biggest problem with diving and divers is IDGAS or I Don't Give A Snark. When an instructor or a student feels that they don't need to improve then we have a problem. You don't seem to suffer from this affliction, which is great! Another big problem and especially in instruction is TTWWADI or That's The Way We've Always Done It. Combine the two and we can have a real problem. Diving has been a "learn on your knees" proposition for much of it's existence. I've seen it since the seventies even though you'll run into a bunch of people with creative memories on how they used to do it. A number of us have broken from this tradition and teach everything, or most everything mid water. It produces the kind of diver you are wanting to emulate. Most of my students have the buoyancy to go straight into a cavern class if they wanted. It's just not that hard to get them there.

Second: Guided dives are fine. I've done them and led them. Some people want a guide who knows where the cool stuff is. However, that doesn't mean you should give up control. If they fail to tell you what you need to know, then kindly ask them for the information. You'll find that quite often they are surprised you want to know these details as they are used to dealing with the occasional diver. That's OK, just kindly ask for them anyway. Now, you showed that you are in control already when you refused to enter into an overhead. Most of the overheads in Caribbean locations are not caves, but swim throughs. However, if you don't feel in control, then simply opt out and swim above them.

Finally: The kind of diver you turn out depends on you. Your natural abilities, your perception, your comfort in the water, your ability to adapt and more make more of a difference than your actual instructor. Sure, a great instructor will shorten the learning curve dramatically, but the pursuit of excellence is dependent on the diver. I teach a propulsion, trim and buoyancy class here in the Keys. It's two to three days of patient albeit remedial instruction on how to be an in control diver. Most of my students could figure it all out on their own, given enough time. Heck, I know I did. But after the class it's all on them. I can't take the credit for their awesome trim no more than I could take the blame for their crappy trim. I've seen people simply forget the principles of breathing after only a month or two. Then again, I've seen other students pass me in their effortless diving. You can get all the right training you need, but you need to apply it. Similarly, even if you get less than stellar training the onus is on you to go beyond that. It's your dive: dive it well.

I don't think it's water temperature, except that cold water tends to be low viz, which means you have to develop compass skills.

But I do think that you don't learn to navigate unless YOU do it, and if you only follow a guide, you learn how to follow well, but nothing else.

I did a trip to the Red Sea a few years ago, with a very nice older couple who had been diving for quite a long time. But the dives off the Tala were the first time they were OFFERED the opportunity to manage their own dive, and they found even a plan like, "Reef on the right shoulder going out, reef on the left shoulder coming back," to be a challenge they were pleased to have met. Their personal diving skills were excellent, but they had never planned and executed a dive by themselves.