Are Cert/Currency requirements too lenient?

[mikemill]

I don't think it is too lenient. I do believe emphasis needs to be placed on being honest with one's self and his/her skills. I'm trying to get back into scuba diving and if I had to jump through a lot of hoops I would probably not even try. After about 7 years away I took a review course, then did about 5 dives, and stopped again (life got in the way ). 18 months later I'm trying again. I meet up with two other SBers for a dive and I ended up aborting both dives before I got under. I did so because I was honest with myself about my comfort level, the state of my skills, and the risk I would be placing my dive buddies any myself in. I decided to contact an instructor (found through SB ) to do a review session and let him know what skills I felt were lacking. Hopefully I'll feel better after the review session and can continue diving.

To me that should be the only requirement once you've got your cert: Can you be honest about how safely you can perform the dive.

 

[J.R.]

An OW cert is like a H.S. diploma... (... maybe middle school???) It provides you with a set of foundational skills that serve as a good starting point. and allow you to get in the game. It *is* possible to spend a totally pleasant life doing shallower water dives and not having any desire to explore anything beyond that... and that's cool.

SCUBA has an educational structure that will allow people as young as 10 (in the case of PADI) to enter the sport... but can also evolve into a realm real hardcore science and physics... In many ways... it echos the mantra you learned in OW, "Plan your dive... dive your plan"... what you do... what you learn... how you use that eduation... all these are your choices... your 'dive plan' and the variety of dive plans and goals among the community of divers is as easily as diverse as the divers that make up that community.

Education... whether in SCUBA or anything else is nothing more than tools in your tool set... what you (or anybody else) does with those tools is a matter of personal choice... if you don't feel comfortable with your current tool set... add to it... there is a wealth of information out there and a vast army of folks willing to share that with you...

Every LDS offers "refresher courses" and recommends that divers who haven't dove in a long time take one to brush up their skills... not unlike the recommendation to have regs regularly overhauled... or Red Crosses recommendation that everybody learn CPR... yet... people often ignore these recommendations and inherently suplemement their own 'judgement'.

So... are the 'agencies' too lenient? No... it's the indivdual diver who is too lenient... on themselves.

... now, does this mean I don't think there are some things that couldn't be improved... but on the whole... the basics are there.

... my two PSI ...

 

[sabbath999]

DISCLAIMER: I am a NOOB, so please keep in mind that anything I say may be completely stupid.

OK, I am not qualified to offer opinions on the training that other divers have had, because I am not familiar with whatever it was that they did. I can only speak about how I was trained, since I DO know about that.

The people who did my OW training were serious about it... they are safety oriented cave divers, each and every one of them... and you aren't getting your c-card from them unless you actually know how to dive when you get done.

There were 11 in my class, and only 5 of the people that I started with actually received their c-cards together. One quit flat out because it turned out to be a lot more work than she was willing to do (or so she told me as she was leaving), three didn't make it past the pool and the other two didn't make it through open water.

All of those that didn't make it through were offered the chance to work on their problem areas in future pool and OW sessions...

My instructors were insistent that not only did we need to do all of the skills, we needed to do them repeatedly and we needed to do them right. We weren't sitting on our knees at the bottom of the pool clearing our masks once and then we were done... we were put through our paces but good. If you didn't do it perfectly, repeatedly, you did it again... and again...

We did our open water in a quarry, and the visibility was bad on the first day and literally 1 foot on the second day... when we went down to do our skills on the second day we went down with the instructor one at a time and he was literally 6 inches away the whole time just to see us... we were down 25 feet and it was nearly pitch black, the water was cold and thick... and it was (to say the least) challenging. Our "tours" were basically traveling along the quarry wall where the vis was a whopping 3 feet in the sunshine...

During our surface intervals, we practiced the complete skill-sets of everything that could be done on the surface.

I have since talked to a lot of divers about their training, and I am coming to find out that my classes were probably a lot better than what some people get.

You can't train for every type of diving in basic OW, I suppose, unless you happen to have access to both fresh and salt water diving... so if I had a deficiency in my training it was in the fact I had no experience working from a boat... still, my instructors had taught us how to pack our boat bags so we would put the stuff we needed to put on first (wetsuit, boots, etc) on top, and how to keep our areas clean and all our stuff organized and out of everybody else's way... so that was good.

When I was graduated, I was 100 percent ready to dive in the conditions that I trained in. I recently did my first open ocean stuff at Kona, and I took my AOW training there because I was not as familiar with ocean diving and boat diving as I needed to be, so I took more instruction the AOW, doing deep, boat, night, buoyancy and navigation... all of which are basic skills I felt I needed more work on...

 

[shoredivr]

In Quebec, we do have this kind of control due to the constantly harsh cold conditions in the St-Lawrence... Temp is around hi-30's to low-40's even in summer. So, if you want to dive anywhere in the province and if you want to rent gear or buy air, you need both your c-card and your FQAS card, which is only good for 3 years. When it expires, you need to go to a FQAS-approved instructor (or directly the FQAS office) and prove that you meet one of the following:

1- 10 dives in the last 3 years in conditions that meets those in Quebec
2- Took a refresher course AND did a supervised dive with an instructor
3- Passed a certification

Of course, one could always fake his/her logbook, but at least the instructor really looks at it and could see if it is suspicious...

What really happens NorthO, is this:

The Ontario part of the St. Lawrence River around Brockville and Rockport becomes part of the annual stampede of Quebecois/e divers who don't want to put up with the FQAS nonsense...there are more and more Quebecers diving in Ontario every year. It's great for the economy

The reverse is also true: last time I checked, the FQAS website had no english language translation, making it more difficult than needed for any non-french speaking person to try and comply with the FQAS money-grab, er, regulations. So you get less non-Quebec divers coming to spend their money in say, les Escoumins.....it's sad, really.

 

[Web Monkey]

What really happens NorthO, is this:

The Ontario part of the St. Lawrence River around Brockville and Rockport becomes part of the annual stampede of Quebecois/e divers who don't want to put up with the FQAS nonsense...there are more and more Quebecers diving in Ontario every year. It's great for the economy

The reverse is also true: last time I checked, the FQAS website had no english language translation, making it more difficult than needed for any non-french speaking person to try and comply with the FQAS money-grab, er, regulations. So you get less non-Quebec divers coming to spend their money in say, les Escoumins.....it's sad, really.

I wanted to dive in Quebec this past summer, but after a few attempts at running the website though Google Translate, we went to Brockville instead.

OTOH, I really like the idea of annual recertification requirement and would have no problem showing someone my dive log, I just don't happen to speak French.

Terry

 

[boulderjohn]

I wanted to dive in Quebec this past summer, but after a few attempts at running the website though Google Translate, we went to Brockville instead.

OTOH, I really like the idea of annual recertification requirement and would have no problem showing someone my dive log, I just don't happen to speak French.

Well, this is certainly bringing me some ancient memories.

Many years ago I went to college in Northern New York, and I used to love a bilingual radio station out of Quebec, CHOM. It played great music, and it was completely bilingual, changing from one language to another regularly, sometimes in mid sentence. I spoke enough French that it was no problem for me.

One night some kind of pro-French group raided the station and demanded 100% French language, not just for the station but for the entire province. The DJ who was supposed to be on the air tried to get them to talk about their grievances and rationale in English, but they refused. He pointed out to them that it was the English-speaking audience they were trying to convince, and if they spoke French to the English-speaking audience, it would be hard to convince them that their cause was just. That argument did not work, and it was French only until the arrests.

We went over the border quite a bit, mostly on the conviction that the Canadian beers which were then unavailable in the U.S. were superior to our limited diet of Budweiser, Miller, Schlitz, and Papst. We learned that there were certain restaurants and bars that simply would not wait on you at all you if they heard you speaking any English.

In the decades that followed, I have travelled quite a bit, and I have never encountered anything like that anywhere else in the world.

 

[shoredivr]

I wanted to dive in Quebec this past summer, but after a few attempts at running the website though Google Translate, we went to Brockville instead.

OTOH, I really like the idea of annual recertification requirement and would have no problem showing someone my dive log, I just don't happen to speak French.

Terry

The reason I said cash grab is because you have to pay for the FQAS card even if you fit #1 of NorthO's listed FQAS requirements (have 10 dives in last 3 years in conditions like Quebec diving).

In this thread dated 2004, the price for getting your yearly FQAS card is $17. I'm sure it's more now.

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/ontario-fresh-water-freaks/68602-viz-morrisons-quarry-2.html

Here's two people's experiences with an FQAS "dive inspector" at that same quarry in August, 2008.

Ontario Diving


To the OP: while there are many ways of encouraging divers to stay current with their skills, surely the manner and method experienced by the two people in the OD posts is not a good example.

And how exactly are the dive inspectors going to police the max 60 ft for open water divers, anyway?

 

[Web Monkey]

The reason I said cash grab is because you have to pay for the FQAS card even if you fit #1 of NorthO's listed FQAS requirements (have 10 dives in last 3 years in conditions like Quebec diving).

OK, this is getting to be a really difficult decision. Do I want pulled pork, wings and beer or to fill out forms for the SCUBA Police?

Hmmmm.

I'll have to let you know . . .

Terry

 

[shoredivr]

One night some kind of pro-French group raided the station and demanded 100% French language, not just for the station but for the entire province. The DJ who was supposed to be on the air tried to get them to talk about their grievances and rationale in English, but they refused. He pointed out to them that it was the English-speaking audience they were trying to convince, and if they spoke French to the English-speaking audience, it would be hard to convince them that their cause was just. That argument did not work, and it was French only until the arrests.

All that fervor culminated in Bill 101, Charter of the French Language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
as a result of which, though Canada is "officially" bilingual, you have a dickens of a time educating your children in english if you live in Quebec. The only truly bilingual province is New Brunswick, but every single Ontario government document must be available in both french and english. It just makes sense to me to communicate "officially" in both languages if you're running an organization that regulates something, such as the FQAS.

Sorry, OP, end of hijack

 

[David_57]

Well, this is certainly bringing me some ancient memories.

Many years ago I went to college in Northern New York, and I used to love a bilingual radio station out of Quebec, CHOM. It played great music, and it was completely bilingual, changing from one language to another regularly, sometimes in mid sentence. I spoke enough French that it was no problem for me.

One night some kind of pro-French group raided the station and demanded 100% French language, not just for the station but for the entire province. The DJ who was supposed to be on the air tried to get them to talk about their grievances and rationale in English, but they refused. He pointed out to them that it was the English-speaking audience they were trying to convince, and if they spoke French to the English-speaking audience, it would be hard to convince them that their cause was just. That argument did not work, and it was French only until the arrests.

We went over the border quite a bit, mostly on the conviction that the Canadian beers which were then unavailable in the U.S. were superior to our limited diet of Budweiser, Miller, Schlitz, and Papst. We learned that there were certain restaurants and bars that simply would not wait on you at all you if they heard you speaking any English.

In the decades that followed, I have travelled quite a bit, and I have never encountered anything like that anywhere else in the world.

I came over to Canada from England do not speak a word of French have been living in a small village called Coteau-Du-Lac in Quebec for the last 10 years have never had a problem with the locals refusing to serve you if you speak English. I have had the odd communication problem at times but a lot less than when I travelled around Costa Rica in a jeep, or worked in Germany for 3 years. I find the younger Quebekers love to try and speak English as they think its cool as most of their Hero's on television or in Rock bands are English speaking.

Now if you go into a Establishment and speak English in a sense you are demanding service in English they may retaliate by ignoring you but my experience has been if you make an effort in French and try to embrace the French culture they will gladly help you and are very polite. By the way get over it Quebec is predominately French speaking and French culture. I have travelled and lived in many different countries and seen a lot worse, CHOM has never been a bilingual station it is a English speaking station. The distinct cultural difference obvious in Quebec when compared to the US and the rest of Canada for me is a nice change. Sure I do not agree with all of Quebec politics but how many of us can say we are in agreement 100% with our political reps.

Now back on the subject this thread is about, I agree the FQAS are a joke and a complete waste of time I have my FQAS card but have never been asked to show it and cannot see how this card is supposed to improve safety. We dive often in Wakefield Quebec at Morison's Quarry the only time I was asked for my card the owners stated PADI OW or FQAS was good enough.

I wonder how dangerous Scuba Diving is when compared to other sports and if in fact there is a need for big brother to step in due to safety and accidents?