Dive Professional

[MXGratefulDiver]

I've taken a few classes in my time, and also do not own a PADI card. I was once denied access to a dive charter on Maui because they only accepted PADI certifications.

Apparently, I wasn't qualified to dive Molokini by their estimation ... none of these were considered valid ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Jim Lapenta]

You didn't want to give business to a shop that stupid anyway.

 

[T.C.]

I bolded the part of the quote. I am guessing the Department of Transportation cares if the cylinder has a valid hydro test. I am not an expert on the regulations set forth by the Department of Transportation, or if those regulations even apply to personal transportation of a handful of cylinders (i.e. not a large bulk quantity). Local Johnny Law probably won't know or care about DoT standard or regulations, but that one auto accident where the cylinder is involved, now you have lawyer using the DoT regulations against you.

Sorry, but this is wrong. This is one of the biggest myths in diving.

DOT regulations have ABSOLUTELY ZERO IMPACT on recreational divers. The DOT has no authority over you unless you are transporting tanks for a commerical venture. And I'm confident even a first-year law student could show that commerical law does not apply to private citizens.

Cylinder Maintenance and Testing reuirements, for high and low pressure service cylinders. Code of Federal Regulations 49, Part 173.34. Department of Transportation. Cylinder and Valve requirements for maintenance.

The fact that there are millions of scuba tanks around the world that are "out of hydro" and don't explode prove that this is, really, a pointless test for divers.
You could go through a DOT checkpoint with Jacques Cousteau's un-hydro'ed tanks from the original Aqua-lung set that you have been filling and using yourself, and you know what could do to you? Not a blessed thing. We only get a hydro because shops aren't allowed to fill them without it.

 

[DogDiver]

Just another FYI. DOT hydro only applies to cylinders that are portable. Otherwise those that are transportable. The large cascade bottles that are chained to you local dive shop walls do not have to be hydroed only every 10 years.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[beanojones]

First, diving for a living, and being a professional in recreation diving are vastly different things. There are many people whose job includes diving (Dr. Bill comes immediately to mind). And then there people whose job consistes solely of recreational teaching/guiding. (No one at SB I can think of comes immediately to mind other than myself. Which of course does not mean they do not exist. There are people in the industry, but they are shop owners, boat owners, manufacturers, and weekend warriors. Back when I first joined SB there were a couple of people who actually were working instructors, who I guess got tired of being told how things actually were or how they should be, by people living on the mainland US. (Ignoring Florida to some degree, just because.)

because there are a bunch of divers local to me who earn a living purely from scuba diving. This woman for example built her business from the ground up ... and scuba is all she does. She lives and works right here, in the greater Seattle area ...

I am glad someone can make their living solely through recreational diving and nothing else in Seattle. Or I would be, but I also do not believe such a person exists. Not calling anyone out, just suggesting that there is a significant other, pension etc. backing up that "money-making" endeavor. Lots of divers are 'professionals", vanishingly few are plumbers. Working at a dive shop full time is not diving full time, neither is owning a dive shop.

Because I am a plumber, I get to deal with all the various fetishes that people who to where I am bring to diving, most of which are simply extraneous to the activity itself. (Gas planning as presented at SB comes to mind as a perfect example. I would add DIR here, but...) People who do nothing but recreational dive for a living have to handle things that simply are outside the range, and clearly, in many cases, outside the imagination of people who are erstwhile dive "professionals": instructors who do not make a living from diving, divemasters who do not carry insurance, cave divers who run into problems equalizing when doing more than two dives a day, etc. etc.

So talking about excelling in diving first has to have the requirement that they make a living in diving, because until it is what people do for a living, people can and do have all sorts of beliefs about diving, as shown by the number of frankly silly things people take seriously at SB.

That above talks directly to below in my mind

Just an FYI here. 5 year hydro's are a DOT regulation. Dive operations in the carribean are not required or even inclined to annual VIP much less 5 year hydro. Most aluminum 80's the valve is corroded to the tank. When the tank/valve is no longer serviceable they become scrap metal.
No shirt, no shoes, no VIP, no hydro......no problem.

My comments are not about diving 'skill' or "excellence", but about actually engaging in recreational diving for a living. There are plenty of people who can cook a great meal, but there are very few who can work a line in a restaurant. Seeing professional chefs working in a busy McDonalds because building up hand speed is crucial to long term success says something about the difference between "excellence" and doing things for a living. There is no excellence to prepping two garbage cans of salad a day, there is just doing it for a living. It's required, and taking a long time to do it means you never get to be a chef, excellent or not. Hand speed is completely on point, "excellence" is immaterial. What's an "excellent" garbage can of salad taste like?

And hand speed in working in recreational diving matters too. Being able to swap out/set up thirty sets of gear in a few minutes. Handling customers gear problems before they are unaware the problem happened. "Excellence" does not matter when stripping the fins off a customer getting banged against the ladder, speed does.

Crotch grabs, boob grabs, losing skin off the arms from fingernails pinched into them, mask swipes, etc. are just something a professional (rather than a "professional") has to learn to deal with without reaction. All unintentional, all just part of the job. As often as not I get these from 'professionals', because most non-"professionals" actually listen to the briefs and follow the suggestions.

We severely haze DMs here: shutting off their valve just before they go in, swapping their gear onto empty tanks, etc. etc. because a bad reaction to the unexpected is a good sign that they should be gone, because we don't want their **** splashing onto us. That hazing is certainly not 'professional' but it is absolutely necessary to weed scary people out. Probably "excellent" divers in the water, but work is work.

Getting the reg stolen from the mouth, and then getting bear hugged into immobility by an OOA diver is just something a working diver better handle simply without reaction. The reaction to my telling SB that that is what can happen in real world OOA consistently gets disbelieved. As is my suggestion that to handle this situation a professional should be able to handle a CESA from whatever depth they guide to, without a second thought, comes from working as a diver in the situation as it presents itself. Because work is work.

Plumbers don't only fix shower heads, they also run snakes through diarrhea. Because doing whatever for a living means taking it as it comes, and doing what one is paid for, not as one would like it to be.

ie, Professional vs. "Professional"

Now once one does actually do it for a living as described above, then we can talk about "excellence" because then it really does matter. Working divers train more divers in a slow year then most instructors do in a lifetime, so what we do matters far, far more. Wokring divers train hundreds of students every year. And do a thousand intro divers every year. And a thousand boat divers. And the customers come from everywhere. While we do not move,

“​

If you

wait by the ​

river long enough

, the ​

bodies

of your enemies will ​

float

by.” Or something like that.
​

But one ongoing problem is that everyone who ever gets a diving license thinks they know diving. Or they get tech instructor certified, and they know diving. Or they get cave instructor certified, and then they know diving. Or they got certifed 40 years ago, and they dive twice a year, and they know diving. I have learned from lots of things, but mostly from actually working as a diver.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I am glad someone can make their living solely through recreational diving and nothing else in Seattle. Or I would be, but I also do not believe such a person exists. Not calling anyone out, just suggesting that there is a significant other, pension etc. backing up that "money-making" endeavor. Lots of divers are 'professionals", vanishingly few are plumbers. Working at a dive shop full time is not diving full time, neither is owning a dive shop.

Well you can believe whatever you want ... but what you choose to believe doesn't make it the truth. I've known Cindy since she first decided that she wanted to be into scuba diving full-time ... and she built her business by herself from the ground up. She just got married a month ago ... and her husband helps her at the shop. But it was her vision, her energy, her determination, her effort, and her money that made that business a success. She's got my respect for that, because you're right in one respect ... it's a damn difficult thing to do in a place where people don't go for dive vacations. For the sufficiently motivated, it is possible however. For my money, Cindy's probably more of a professional than you are because she's had to make a go of it in a more difficult environment, and had to become more versed in more aspects of the business of diving than you have.

But do carry on with bragging about how uniquely qualified you are to determine what it means to be a professional ... if nothing else, it's entertaining.

We severely haze DMs here: shutting off their valve just before they go in, swapping their gear onto empty tanks, etc. etc. because a bad reaction to the unexpected is a good sign that they should be gone, because we don't want their **** splashing onto us. That hazing is certainly not 'professional' but it is absolutely necessary to weed scary people out. Probably "excellent" divers in the water, but work is work.

Getting the reg stolen from the mouth, and then getting bear hugged into immobility by an OOA diver is just something a working diver better handle simply without reaction. The reaction to my telling SB that that is what can happen in real world OOA consistently gets disbelieved. As is my suggestion that to handle this situation a professional should be able to handle a CESA from whatever depth they guide to, without a second thought, comes from working as a diver in the situation as it presents itself. Because work is work.

Plumbers don't only fix shower heads, they also run snakes through diarrhea. Because doing whatever for a living means taking it as it comes, and doing what one is paid for, not as one would like it to be.

ie, Professional vs. "Professional"

Now once one does actually do it for a living as described above, then we can talk about "excellence" because then it really does matter. Working divers train more divers in a slow year then most instructors do in a lifetime, so what we do matters far, far more. Wokring divers train hundreds of students every year. And do a thousand intro divers every year. And a thousand boat divers. And the customers come from everywhere. While we do not move,

A lot of that doesn't sound all that professional to me ... but I guess all that really means is that you and I have very different notions about what it means to be a professional. Fixing problems is all well and good ... but a true professional will be proactive enough to be able to prevent most of them from occurring in the first place. That's the world I prefer to live in ...

But one ongoing problem is that everyone who ever gets a diving license thinks they know diving. Or they get tech instructor certified, and they know diving. Or they get cave instructor certified, and then they know diving. Or they got certifed 40 years ago, and they dive twice a year, and they know diving. I have learned from lots of things, but mostly from actually working as a diver.

... and you may be surprised at how many things you haven't learned yet ... many of which are obvious to some of us who dive in environments that you've apparently never been exposed to.

People who really are good at what they do don't need to brag about how good they are ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[rivers]

First, diving for a living, and being a professional in recreation diving are vastly different things. There are many people whose job includes diving (Dr. Bill comes immediately to mind). And then there people whose job consistes solely of recreational teaching/guiding. (No one at SB I can think of comes immediately to mind other than myself. Which of course does not mean they do not exist. There are people in the industry, but they are shop owners, boat owners, manufacturers, and weekend warriors. Back when I first joined SB there were a couple of people who actually were working instructors, who I guess got tired of being told how things actually were or how they should be, by people living on the mainland US. (Ignoring Florida to some degree, just because.)

I know at least 2 people, personally, who make their living off of dive instruction full time in the UK (and Europe, with the occasional classes taught further afield). They don't work in shops, or do anything besides teach. Actually, come to think of it, I know a few more than that.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

There are plenty of dive professionals who don't even teach anymore ... they've been there and done that and have moved on to other aspects of the dive business. My friends Peter and Kathy Mieras come to mind. They left the lifestyle that beano's describing about a decade ago and bought a dive op in Barkley Sound ... on the west side of Vancouver Island. They brought with them a vast knowledge based on their experiences as professional dive instructors and guides in tropical parts of the world ... and their learning curve was steep once they moved into the colder climes and started running a full-time dive operation in a remote area. They're not just "plumbers" ... they're also electricians, carpenters, mechanics, cooks, and a whole raft of other roles out of necessity ... the closest town is about 2 hours by boat, and it ain't much of a town. Yet they manage to make a living through diving ... full-time, year-round, in an area where it ain't just the water that's cold. And people come from all over the world to dive there. Same can be said for several other dive ops at various places around Van Isle ... most famously those up in the Port Hardy area.

It's silly to categorize the term "dive professional" by specific aspects of the activity, or limit it to living in a specific part of the world. The very notion suggests a limited knowledge and experience of what diving entails in other parts of the world.

To be clear ... I do not consider myself a dive professional. I'm a part-time dive instructor who does more diving for fun than for money. On the other hand, I personally know several people who have made a living in the dive trade for more years than beano's been alive ... and I most certainly consider them dive professionals. In some cases, I consider them something of dive pioneers, because of their influence on the activity over the past few decades. Those of us who have come along and discovered diving over the past 20 years or so stand on the shoulders of many of those people ... and for someone who's been in the business a relatively few years to come along and claim that because they don't live in the tropics they aren't real professionals isn't just insulting ... it's ignorant.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[beanojones]

Rather than quote bit by bit, I will just say you walked right by the important distinction between those who do recreational diving for a living (almost none, including none of the examples you gave), and those who work in the industry (plenty, including all the agency reps, PADI IEs, course directors, gear manufacturers*, shop owners, etc. etc.)

The person in Seattle as you mentioned owns a dive shop, and gets free labor from her siginificant other in that shop. That is working in the industry; that is not diving for a living.

And that's the point. There is an enormous difference in skill level, comfort, expertise, etc. etc. between people who sometimes do something and those who do that exclusively. The working diver is a better diver than any PADI IE they have ever interacted with. They are more capable instructors. This is not any wonderful about us, it's just a basic fact that people who do things for a living do them several orders of magnitude better than people who occasionally do those things. We have far more experience than anyone, at "pick the agency" HQ's, at least now that Giliam has sold off SDI/TDI, because he dragged piles of intro divers around every day for several years.

Diving just so happens to be one of those things that people are loathe to admit lack of expertise in, because basically anyone can go diving, and most importantly because the metrics are screwy. People who live in the mainland US get better at driving in a linear manner with the number years they have held a license, beccause people drive every do, in some cases for several hours a day every day. That is working divers, about diving. Several hours a day doing something, every day, for years. Someone who got certified as a diver in 1980 (pick your date) has not spent the intervening years spending several hours a day doing it. Someone who got certified in 2013, and then went straight to work as a diver is just several orders of magnitude better than that 1980 certified diver, because all activities yield to experience. What that experience results in is often up for grabs, but.

It would be like anyone but an actual working welder to think they have meaningful opinion about welding tools, or how to frame things things for welding, or what kind of wire to use, etc.. I have taken welding class, and I have stuck metal together. I would never tell someone who welds for a living how to do their job. I would ask them all kinds of questions, and learn from them. They are going to be several orders of magnitude better at it than me, no matter how assiduously I read about it, and how much I play with every MIG I see. The difference between a hobbyist at anything and a working professional is basically the same as someone with utterly no experience and that same professional. In other words, the uncertified diver, and the dive "professional" look a little bit alike, from a certain vantage point.

That difference is how people who fix cars for a living get raises when the shop rate does not change much year to year, because those who do it for a living, and do so for years get several orders of magnitude better at it, so the shop rate time the book hours for a job is how they get paid, not by the actual hours it takes.

Professional vs. 'professional'.

In the end the thing that gets me about many of the stated opinions is this, if people who think of themselves as thoughtful about diving (people here at SB) do not actually value experience in actual diving, the activity itself and not the ancillary stuff), then it is little surprise that people look down upon those who do this for a living. Because apparently doing it full time for a long time buys absolutely nothing in their eyes.

I love that the tropics suddenly became an easy place to dive again. That gets pulled out all the time. It means the opposite of what people think it does though. Outside of the tropics, it is simply impossible to literally dive all day for thermal concerns. Again, the metrics are screwy, and badly misread.

Would it help if I said Gladwell, and 10,000 hours? Would that make it more palatable to say that experience matters?

How does ego enter into the idea of experience anyway? Again, the ego matters in that those without experience often have their ego in the way of learning through experience?

 

[T.C.]

The person in Seattle as you mentioned owns a dive shop, and gets free labor from her siginificant other in that shop. That is working in the industry; that is not diving for a living.

Without knowing her; How do you think she earns a living? Plucking the money tree in her backyard after she leaves the dive shop she owns and runs? If she runs a shop and teaches diving; that is, by definition, diving for a living.

We have far more experience than anyone, at "pick the agency" HQ's, at least now that Giliam has sold off SDI/TDI, because he dragged piles of intro divers around every day for several years.

So all these very experienced divers; who've worked theire way up, are worse than you because...your ego demands it?

Someone who got certified in 2013, and then went straight to work as a diver is just several orders of magnitude better than that 1980 certified diver, because all activities yield to experience.

So the diver with 1 year of experience is "better" than the diver with 24+ years? I think this has to be the dumbest thing I've ever read.

It would be like anyone but an actual working welder to think they have meaningful opinion about welding tools, or how to frame things things for welding, or what kind of wire to use, etc.. I have taken welding class, and I have stuck metal together. I would never tell someone who welds for a living how to do their job. I would ask them all kinds of questions, and learn from them. They are going to be several orders of magnitude better at it than me, no matter how assiduously I read about it, and how much I play with every MIG I see. The difference between a hobbyist at anything and a working professional is basically the same as someone with utterly no experience and that same professional.

So, you think an actual working welder, straight out of trade school, with no experience, is better than the guy who's had a metalworking hobby for the last 45 years?

In the end the thing that gets me about many of the stated opinions is this, if people who think of themselves as thoughtful about diving (people here at SB) do not actually value experience in actual diving, the activity itself and not the ancillary stuff), then it is little surprise that people look down upon those who do this for a living.

Well, I'll say this...I'm definitely looking down on you. But this sillyness didn't make that hard.

Enjoy the flak you're about to catch.