Dive Training Magazine article on.... Dive training

[Slamfire]

They need TIME to PRACTICE what they have just learned.

This is what I mean. A new OW diver with only 8 dives under his belt will be so much better off by getting 50, 75, xx more dives of experience with a competent mentor than signing up for AOW and just adding 5 more dives of formal training. And the competent mentor may not end up charging anything, so the cost would only be air fills. So you end up with a superior diver, even though he's got less formal education credentials, and the cost per dive is much, much lower than that of the AOW with 13 dives under his belt. It does not need to be an expensive activity.

I got my OW and AOW when I started doing cold water dives in Canada. Before that I had many hundreds of hours underwater in the tropics. To me one of the biggest, most shocking changes was having to wear so much rubber and lead for exposure protection. Before Canada, the most I'd ever worn was a 2mm shorty, and even then I didn't like wearing the shorty too much because it cramped my style. With a full length 7+7mm. I felt like I was diving all tied up, no flexibility, no mobility. Trying to keep proper buoyancy was a nightmare and an exercise in futility and failure -- at least for the first few cold water dives.

Early on, one of my cold water buddies/mentor was urging me to take the dry suit specialty and get a dry suit. Are you kidding me. I can barely descend without creating an impact crater in the bottom and you want me to further add complexity and failure points to my diving... No way, until I get the buoyancy down to a second nature again I am not touching or going anywhere near a drysuit.

During my AOW we would be paired in teams of two so that the instructor would only have to deal with 2 students at a time. My buddy had a drysuit, I didn't. Coming up from the deep dive session at around 70', we note that my buddy is uncontrollably ascending. I dump the air in the bcd and grab one foot and the instructor grabs another. We were hoping to give him more time to open up his neck seal or fix his valves, but he didn't and he dragged us up to about 40' when I just let him go. The instructor went after him, I stayed down in order to do a proper slow ascent. While doing my slow ascent I navigated under water to the shore. When I surfaced, the dive master was looking for me a couple of hundred yards at the point where we initially descended. I signal to him that I was fine. I found out that in spite of the uncontrolled ascent both my buddy and my instructor are doing fine, they're just sucking O₂. A mental note was made at the time that I was not ready for a drysuit and that kind of ordeals.

A little bit later on there a similar incident happened at 15' when the inflator of the buddy/mentor that was recommending the drysuit course got stuck. Again, I managed to grab his foot with one hand, but this time, I found anchoring to a big rock with my other hand. So I spent a good portion of the 3 mins safety stop with arms outstretched while my buddy fixed his problem. Noted again, I'm not ready for a drysuit.

So more than 100 dives later I tried a drysuit for the 1st time at a Whites Demo Day. By that time I was already diving doubles with a hogarthian rig. Buoyancy once again had become 2nd nature -- it felt like i just had to think about wanting to descend 3 more feet and stop and I would do it with no conscious effort. The sponsoring dive shop owner and Platinum Course Director, knew me, my proficiency level, and that of my two (non-professional) buddies and he just signed me off with a few pointers and the comment that it is not often that he has experienced divers in doubles trying out drysuits for the first time. The dive went beautifully. I now have 2 drysuits and many dry suit dives under my belt (including tech dives), but ask me if I have a drysuit c-card .

 

[DCBC]

...Philosophical question. Since there's often so much attention on growing the sport, just how many divers do we think their should be? Half again what we have now? Double? Any ideas?

Richard, it's worthy to note Captain's comments in-that true divers are born. When I was certified in 1965 the closest dive shop was about 30 miles away. Although I considered myself fortunate to live near a major centre (Toronto) I never went to that dive shop until 6 years later. We had a guy who sold equipment (U.S. Divers, Dacor and Healthways) by mail order and who had an air compressor in his garage.

The divers at that time were Club trained. The focus was on learning and developing experience, not making money for the LDS or a certification agency. Divers were well-trained; far beyond today's standards.

The blade is two-edged and cuts both ways. I too have enjoyed the benefits of the "big business of diving," but to sing the praises of better equipment, more dive travel operators and a "streamlined training program" supporting minimal standards that allow anyone to be certified has its disadvantages as well.

It seems to me that the only people who talk about increasing the number of divers in the market are those that hope to gain financially by it in some way. I consider myself in this group, as I'm employed by a national training agency. Regardless of the financial incentive, many instructors insist on maintaining high diver training standards. There are many like myself that believe that short programs do a disservice to the Student who plans on diving in more harsh diving environments.

 

[Stu S.]

Want more divers? Figure out how to break the America's addiction to video games. You'll read that hunting, fishing, and golf are all losing participants. I ask the young guys at work about golf; many play..... as a video game. When the latest game device is released, America lines up early for it.

As a youth, there wasn't much for me to do indoors. Fish, swim, or get up a ball game was what boys did. Outdoors = Fun was my formula. How can we get that back?

 

[captain]

It would be interesting to see how long the average OW or AOW diver stays active after initial certification. About the only way to gather such information would be to have an expiration on certifications.

 

[Stu S.]

Hello, Captain. One of our local instructors estimates only 10% of the divers he certifies are active a year later. And, there are plenty of opportunities to dive if you live here in Central Florida.

 

[Thalassamania]

I made a point to try to track my divers for at least 5 years. This was made easier by the university requirement that they turn in monthly dive logs and the fact that many, when they graduated, did not move to institutions with AAUS dive programs and so they maintained their affiliation with us. The only divers that "dropped out" in that time frame did so for medical reasons, but mine is a rather select and motivated sample.

As an interesting sidelight we did a study of Instructors (NAUI in this case) back in the mid 1980s using the yearly instructor registration forms, which listed the year certified, where their ITC was and who the course director was. Keep in mind that up until the late 1970s the only way to become a NAUI Instructor was to go to a Branch run ITC. Instructor training through shops and individual "Course Directors" did not exist. What we found was that the expected half life of a non-branch ITC trained instructor was about two years, while the expected half-life of branch trained ITC was somewhat greater. Two ITCs, that ran yearly, showed significantly longer half lives, the one run at the University of Michigan by Lee Somers and the one run at Rockport by Fred Calhoun.

 

[captain]

Hello, Captain. One of our local instructors estimates only 10% of the divers he certifies are active a year later. And, there are plenty of opportunities to dive if you live here in Central Florida.

If it is that low in Florida just imagine what it is in other locations.

 

[drrich2]

It's interesting that there are some sports where it is well accepted that people often participate briefly or sporadically; I'd think para-sailing, bungee jumping and parachuting might be examples? Perhaps even mountain biking or horse back riding?

While the time, effort and money investment to get OW scuba certified is significant (especially if you buy much gear), is it wise to regard people who dabble in scuba awhile and move onto other things as 'failures?'

Or are we projecting our own sense of 'what a waste' onto them, since we value the future diving experiences they walked away from?

If we rounded up a random sample of 1,000 OW-certified former students who quit diving within, oh, 3 years just to pick a number, and hadn't dove since in 10 years, I wonder what percentage would regret the waste of investment, and what percentage would remember it fondly and be glad they tried it and got a little life enrichment in the process, however brief?

Richard.

 

[spectrum]

drrich2

You make some good points. Many do enter diving (and other fleeting pursuits) as a been there, done that got the T-Shirt, cross it off the list endeavor. Next year (or month!) it will be something else.

I think as divers we want to see the sport grow and we can find the passing involvement frustrating. We all know how often we run int certified divers who haven't made a dive in eons and probably never will again. Sometimes we want to feel sorry for them but they have moved on.

Another factor has to be location. Anyone anywhere can long to dive. However many divers are not fortunate enough to be in a location that offers engaging local diving. In most cases a diver will not recognize what they have or do not have locally until they are involved. Lacking a bounty of time and travel funds I doubt that I'd be here if I didn't have my local opportunities.

Pete

 

[drbill]

I never considered SCUBA diving to be expensive, but if you look at some of my gear you'll understand why. I rarely buy anything new other than computers (and have bought them used too).

I have the luxury of diving a short walk from my home which most do not have. For those without such luxury, a trip to the beach (or the expensive dive boat) is much more of a hassle.

On top of that, there is a fair bit of downtime involved in diving as one off gasses which may diminish the "value" of the activity for some. For me, surface intervals are seen as an opportunity to chat with other divers. Here on Catalina I have the benefit of many mainland divers visiting to dive our park. That makes it a great social opportunity. Divers on the mainland don't always have such opportunities unless they are in an active dive club.