Graeme Tolton
Contributor
Is there anyone else out there who believes that it is far too easy to get and maintain an OW certification? One or two weekends in a quarry and you are certified to dive in all sorts of conditions!d "I got me c-card in Jamaica in the winter, now I want to dive the 38 degree waters of the great lakes in the late spring." No one asks for log books for you to go on basic dives!! I don't think it is such a bad idea. Our sport needs to uphold more standards! If the certification agencies got together and decided that every diver needed to do X number of dives in X time or else a refresher course was needed, perhaps incidents such as this would be fewer and further between. Rental gear or not, these unfortunate divers had to get their air somewhere. Air cannot be bought on the internet and nobody with 4-5 dives owns their own compressor. Don't get me wrong. I am not pushing blame onto the shop that filled tanks for this pair, but I think that standards definitely need to be reconsidered. The guy with the first PADI card ever issued who hasn't done a single dive since certification can walk into a dive shop in 2008 and get rental tanks and regs. "No, I don't need a BCD" The shop owner thinks the diver has one, but the truth is that the diver didn't even train with a BCD, so he doesn't think he needs it!!! It is far too often we hear about dive 5 or 6 with fatal consequences. THIS SHOULD NOT HAPPEN. Perhaps integrating OW and AOW with restricted depth of 80FT to become the minimum requirement? At least dives 1-10 would be with an instructor present. The system that is in place is OBVIOUSLY failing some of the new divers.