How about hearing from someone who has actually taken the PADI Deep course?
I took the PADI Deep course in the Florida Keys in December 2010. As is usually mentioned in this type of thread, I think the instructor makes a huge difference, so my experience is just one example. Just as a frame of reference: We are fairly new divers, and had made one or two deep dives before the December 2010 trip. We took a PADI wreck class just before this deep class (on the same trip; from the same instructor). So we got to make quite a few deeper dives on that trip. The number of dives with a guide did help me.
However, I'm not sure I would say I got a lot more out of my class than I would have got by reading ScubaBoard and making four deep dives with a guide (which is not to say four deep dives with a guide is not a good thing). Basically, we got the PADI book, read it and did the knowledge reviews at home, then arrived for our dives, checked over our Nitrox, and took the boat out to our dive sites. The instructor talked about the dive some on the way out. Then we made the dives, following him. Afterward he photocopied our knowledge reviews and we got our cards.
That sounds like we didn't learn anything, and that's not true. But I would like to have learned more, and it stressed me to feel that potential slipping through our fingers.
A deep diver course, taken with a well motivated and knowledgeable instructor, will provide tools, techniques and knowledge that help mitigate risk within the deeper
recreational diving ranges. The primary thing missing from that course syllabus is
gas management. However, a properly educated and experienced instructor should be able to supplement this into the course to ensure completeness (
if they cannot, they shouldn't be teaching deep diving).
Sadly, it
is true that not every scuba instructor
should be teaching deep diving. The skill, experience and knowledge requirements for becoming a specialist deep diving instructor with PADI, and many other agencies, are virtually non-existent.
Critical factors that need to be expanded for deep diving are:
1) Inert-gas narcosis awareness and management
2) Precision dive planning
3) Gas management
4) DCI awareness and first aid
5) Equipment configuration and appropriate redundancy
6) Team/Buddy Procedures
7) Situational awareness
8) Advanced buoyancy skills
9) DSMB deployment
10) Use of appropriate lighting
11) Emergency decompression procedures
12) Self-sufficiency and self-rescue
Of that list, I would say that we touched on number 9 (possibly because we had requested it specifically) by one of us shooting an SMB on one dive. The rest of the list was somewhat discussed (in varying amounts) in the PADI Deep book, but not really in the class itself (which was just dives; no formal classroom). I would have loved a class that did cover all those points, and we did our best to interview instructors and find the best one; but the really good ones seem hard to find (and/or were not available/nearby when we were there diving).
I don't mean to sound like a downer, and of course we
were diving, we
did dive Deep, and if you are a thinking diver you can't help but learn things on a dive if you try. So this type of class might be just what you are looking for (I was hoping for the type of thing DevonDiver described).
What we (my buddy and I) did do, to supplement the course, was figure out some things on our own, and "practice" and discuss them at our lodging between dives. This made me feel like we were making more use of our dives/class.
For example, we read and discussed NWGratefulDiver's and Lamont's gas planning web pages, and did our own gas planning in the evening (this was not used on the dive, but we knew what the differences were between what we would do later on our own, and what we were doing on those dives). We looked at different tank stats and combinations and discussed things like weighting and how we would handle air shares/gas planning with them.
We also watched videos (from the web at our lodging) about how to send up SMBs. We read up on the different types of SMBs and why/when one might choose one over the other.
We read about (online) and discussed the different ways to ascend (different depths and lengths of stops) and how we might choose to do them when on our own.
I notice you have PM'ed NetDoc. He is one of the instructors I had hoped to take the Deep/Wreck class from, but the scheduling did not work out (thanks to an errant oyster knife :shocked2
. That said, my buddy and I did dive with him a couple of weeks ago, and that only confirmed my prior feeling that a class with him would have been fantastic. It was a great day and even though we were "just fun diving," we got some good tips (and had a lot of fun
)
Blue Sparkle
PS:
As an aside: I had one mini-incident/learning experience that caused me not to finish my Deep class on that trip (there was not time to make another deep dive after that day). Our last Deep-class dive was on a wreck, and (for the first time) there was quite a bit of current. The DM instructed us to hold the trailing line in one hand as we jumped in. He also asked me to fully inflate my BC (although I customarily put air in it, I don't usually fully inflate it before I jump in). Well, I made a dumb mistake: I'm so used to using both hands on other things when I jump in that that's what I did (one hand on mask, one on reg) and I accidentally let go of the line and started drifting away. A mad surface swim got me back to the line, but by then I was so winded/stressed that I decided to thumb the dive (my buddy made the dive with the instructor). Of course two minutes later, on the boat, I felt fine and somewhat wished I had gone, but as they say in boating, "Better to be on the dock wishing you were sailing than to be sailing and wishing you were on the dock."
I did get some advice later on that I might have been better off not to super-inflate my BC because that can actually make it harder to swim on the surface in current. That makes sense to me and in future I will stick with my usual partially filled BC (of course not letting go of the line would have helped too!). I did finish my Deep class a couple of weeks ago by making that fourth dive - that felt good.
