"Piece of Paper Syndrome"

[Gambitt]

I've recently been posting in the Diving without Certification thread...

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/basic-scuba-discussions/331834-diving-without-certification.html

and it came to me, that a lot of the posters advocating not to do it, are those with a vested interest in having someone "take a course". DM's, Instructors etc.

I personally know lots of Divers who have Never taken any course beyond the Open Water, and only that just to have a "piece of paper" to get a tank filled. And some of these guys have 3-4000 dives.

I have a dive buddy (we've been friends for 40 yrs) , who's not "technically" an instructor, but he's a Sat-Rat on the Hibernia Oil rigs. He showed up at the house one day, with 2 Draeger Re-breathers, Kirby-Morgan dive hats (complete with voice-gear) , and said "Come on, we're gonna do some "Real" Wreck diving today. Off we went to Brockville to dive the wrecks.

Being used to 1 hour dives; it was totally new to me, to be doing 1 hr Decompression stops!!!! He monitored me (including that I was comfortable), my gear, and our dive times using his skills that he's learned over the years.

So bottom line... This guy is not an "Instructor", he took an "unqualified diver" deeper than they had ever been before, using equipment that I had never seen; and yet I felt SAFER diving with him, than with many of the "Instructors" I have dove with at other destinations.

IMHO, You can have all the "pieces of paper" you want, but it don't mean crap, when it comes to real world experience.

Thoughts?

 

[Jeff Toorish]

So your point is you did an incredibly dangerous thing and you didn't die, so it's okay?

Is that you point?

 

[Gambitt]

No, My point was, that while he doesn't have the "Pieces of Paper", he has more than enough "Real World" experience, to show me something I might not have enjoyed otherwise.

 

[Jeff Toorish]

And you believe this should be the norm for diving, or only for you?

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Hmmm ... I've learned a lot from mentors over the years ... important stuff like gas management, for example, that somehow just wasn't included in my formal training. I did my first doubles dive with a mentor, my first drysuit dive with a mentor ... so I can see the value in stuff like that without the necessity for a formal class or instructor.

However, there's a big difference between taking someone who knows how to dive and expanding their knowledge/experience vs taking someone who knows nothing about diving and entrusting them in the hands of someone who isn't qualified to teach. I've known some really, really good divers who would make horrible instructors ... or even mentors ... because they don't know how to convey what they know in a way that makes sense to someone who knows less. And it's easy for such a person to make assumptions and leave out something really important. In that other thread I remarked how my first dive was with someone who forgot to mention that I shouldn't hold my breath ... imagine where that could lead for the first-time diver.

Instruction and mentoring both have their place in the progression of diving knowledge. And at any level, there's a certain amount of trust involved for the diver who's aspiring to learn. The question is one of risk ... as with all things diving ... how much trust do you want to place in someone who may or may not be able to identify all the key information you need to learn those new skills safely?

You are correct that "pieces of paper" don't mean squat ... on the other hand, someone who's been through instructor training has at least been evaluated on their ability to manage the risks normally associated with teaching someone new skills underwater. By comparison, your friend may be very good at it, or may not have a clue how to do it. How will you know?

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Gambitt]

And you believe this should be the norm for diving, or only for you?

I believe that it should be the norm, for people who have a friend that they can trust to "show them the way" if that friend has both the Experience and Ability to do so, even if they haven't paid their money to some dive organization that will give an "instructor permit" to a chimpanzee if they submit enough paperwork.

 

[Walter]

Gambitt, in general I agree with the concept, but having read your first couple of posts in the referenced thread, in my opinion you are foolishly advocating extremely dangerous behavior.

 

[Jeff Toorish]

You should consider taking an instructor course, or a dive master of DiveCon course to see what is involved.

I suspect nearly everyone who is a technical diver or has advanced diving experience (not AOW but real experience) has learned from people who are not instructors. I know I have.

But that is a far cry from strapping on a rebreather and doing an advanced technical dive with no formal training. That is how divers become statistics.

And, of course, much of your thesis suggests that the diver being mentored is sharp enough and knows enough to handle the new environment; which is actually the more dangerous assumption. For example, in the thread about diving without a certification, you seemed to have some misconceptoins about the danger of shallow water diving regarding AGE.

While there is certainly a place for mentoring, for example, learning how to dive a dry suit or side mount without a formal class --for anything that involves significant risk, learning from a qualified instructor is just plain smart.

Experience may be the best teacher, but school teaches how to spell experience.

Jeff

 

[TSandM]

In the course of my DM class, I have received MANY excellent tips on supervising students from other, more experienced DMs. Some of the things are things I would not have thought of on my own -- for example, when students are doing their first giant strides into the pool, my DM friend makes sure he is watching from below the surface and reasonably close to the landing point, in case any of them manages to jump in without his gas turned on. It's little stuff, and maybe not useful for every diver and every class (I have yet to see someone jump in with no gas), but it's the kind of experience-based information that someone coaching without training would lack.

I have done a lot of mentoring, which is not quite teaching, because it involves taking someone who has ostensibly been taught to do a dive which, in theory, is within their capacities. I can say that it isn't always true, and there are times I wish I'd had a bit more experience with OW students, to be able to predict the kinds of problems people get into.

I have also seen, in real life and definitely here, people who are moving into professional training and discover that their grasp on the theoretical aspects of diving is significantly less solid than they had thought. Much misinformation can be transmitted that way.

I think there is a role for instructors, and a role for mentors. Someone who would encourage a diver to strap on a rebreather and go for a wreck dive with no training is neither, in my opinion.

 

[Peter Guy]

Gambit -- you already have your own answer and clearly don't want to hear/read any other thoughts -- so this is NOT for you, but, to the contrary, for others who might be faced with similar situations.

What you did was a classic "Trust Me Dive" which is what we ALL do when we are diving with someone who is leading/teaching us. The question is "How much trust?" should any diver put in the hands of another diver?

In your case, you literally put your life in the hands of your friend, had a good time and lived to tell about it. Since nothing untoward happened to your friend, he was always about to fulfill the trust you had in him. THE question is though, what could have happened and what would you have been able to do HAD something bad happened? For example, believe it or not, people do have heart attacks while diving making them incapacitated. An hour into your deco obligation, would you have known how to survive had he had that heart attack? Or, for example, had something happened to your breather (flooded the loop for example, I'm told it does happen on occasion) would you have been able to survive it? That it didn't happen just means your dive went well within the norms.

BUT, in general, divers start small and take progressive steps with diving -- not because things often happen (they don't) but because things CAN happen, and when they do, you can find yourself a long way from safety.

For example, in cave diving, almost all of the instruction is about surviving bad things that can happen -- but, in reality, almost never do. That is why there IS instruction -- to prepare the diver for what can happen, not for what will probably happen (except of course in beginning diving training because THAT training is all about what WILL happen -- you inhale deeply, you will go up; you put enough weight on you, you will go down; you inflate your BC you will (should?) go up; and on).

So to all those OTHER than Gambit, think of how much you actually know and, in general, just do "trust me" dives to expand your diving to the next step -- not Gambit's jump off a blind cliff (that turned out to be very low and thus not dangerous at all -- but he didn't know that until it was all over).