Diving Education Today

[fnfalman]

Tough training didn't just help me become a better diver. Tough training helped me to be a better person. All I knew when I started diving at age 13 was that I wanted to be a diver. My instructors took care of the rest. I did what I was told and it was challenging, but fun. I had no idea how those skills would still be paying off to this day.

Tough training didn't help me to be a better person. My papa and mama's teachings do that. If a person has to take a rigorous scuba course in order to be a good human being then that person really should look at that person's life and those who are around him or her.

 

[fnfalman]

I spent sometime in the military, attened a few schools, involved in a few conflicts. Guess what. Same crap comes up. Our military is getting weaker, our soliders are getting less training, less PT, more fatty foods. The "old days were tougher".

I skydive and guess what...same crap come up. The "old days blah blah blah"...


Macho elitism is all it is.

Yep. When I was an active duty airborne infantryman, I walked around with a stick up my rectum too about how "chicks" can't do this and "chicks" can't do that. Nowadays they have female soldiers shooting up the joints, racking up the kills, putting notches on their riflestocks. Hell, they've seen and done a lot more than my bad old self used to do. So much for weaker training and equal opportunities.

 

[Diver0001]

It seems by the data that less divers are dying every year.

Of course.... I've always hated that statistic.

Measuring incident rates compared to number of members is pretty pointless if you consider that many members don't dive. The BSAC has large numbers of "sleeping" members and DAN probably does too.

The only good statistic would be to plot incident rates as compared to the number of divers who actually dive. I think (I'm guessing) the trend would still show downward but not as much as it looks when you include all the sleeping members.

R..

 

[Gerbs]

So you seem to be saying Germany has defined divers as recreational, sport and technical divers; would an obese person be able to qualify for the sport diver qualification?

It's not defined, it just seems that people who diving fall mainly in one of the above mentioned groups, each with a sligihtly different approach to diving. The groups are by no means exclusive, there is considerable overlap.

For the German sports divers association, which is mainly clubs, there is no weight defined. For CMAS* / German Diving Sports Certification Bronze, you need to be able, with fins, to: Swim for 30 seconds on a breath hold, 25m on a breath hold and for 20 minutes covering at least 500 meters. You also need to swim 50m to a simulated casualty, rescue them from 3-5m depths and tow them for 50m.

If you can do that, find a doc that signs you off as fit to dive and a suit that fits, no one cares how much you smoke, your alcohol intake or how much you weigh. However, you will be taught to take these factors into account when planning your dive.

The main difference is in attitude, though. Zen vs pretty colours vs understanding.

Gerbs

 

[SolarStorm]

Lots of discussion on what used to be and what it is now. So how would you change it? More time is not the answer. From the new divers perspective, there were only 5 of us in the course (we started with 6 but had an instant drop out) and if it was much longer or much more difficult, we would have been down to me and my daughter very quickly.

The course did cover the basics, we can now get in the water, and hopefully out. I am not dumb enough to think I know everything I need to know from the course, but I am quite confident that we can now go to mexico and dive down 30' or 40' (heck I think ive manged at 20 -30' snorkeling) and see the pretty fishes.

I already know I want to do more, and I hope my daughter does too. But, the current course has gotten us through "grade 1"

So now what?

The problems with the course I saw were:

Too much self study. Its easy to the chapter reviews, memorize the answers, write the test and pass. I know 2 people in our course that did just that, yet I would not trust them to put my fins on for me.

The course needs to be more interactive in teaching the material. We basically did the chapter reviews together and discussed a question if anyone got anything wrong.

Ditch the one weekend blast. the average adult has trouble concentrating for 45 min, never mind 2 or 3 hours, followed by a pool session. I cant guess what the actual retention rate is.

A lot of the pool excercises were good, but add a final "test" review of each skill. How long would it take if they were done one after another. I read about things like "I have never had to remove my mask" but what I found with my daughter was that she was nervous at the first pool session, by giving her a task load, mask removal or what ever, could even be a swim through a pylon course. By the end, she commented on how much more comfortable she was. But without the "tasks" it was quite boring at the end when we had free time to simply catch the frisbe at the bottom of the dive tank. Even a simple underwater hockey game would have kept us under the surface becoming more comfortable. Which I believe is one of the goals of the pool sessions.

Personally I would spend some time reviewing some dive accident reports and why they happened. Give each buddy pair an accident report, have them answer what went wrong, who was at fault (they could even say the divers training) then open the discussion with the rest of the class. This may scare some students, but some need to be a little more scared, and some may realize, that diving may take more planning than just jumping in the water.

We spent time going over the dive tables. but in every case, we were given all of the parameters. Why not a question on "You want to dive HERE" What do you need to do. Have material on hand to answer the question but get the pairs to find the information instead of trusting that the DM on the Resort will have it all figgured out.

My course did not cover computers at all. I purchased 2 Atom 2.0 for me and my daughter. Then wondered if the manual was written in klingon. I swear it took me 3 days of manual internet and questions so that I am fairly comfortable with the NORM dive mode now and can check my buddies computer. I would be nice if the course went more indepth into the advantages and disadvantes of using a wireless computer. I have lots more to learn with this toy.

I am sure some courses do this, but I would make the students clean their own gear, instead of throwing it back in the pail. Start habits early and you never have to break bad ones. I view cleaning as "post inspection" after a dive. How do you know if you broke something unless you look. Cleaning, takes care of the equipment, and now you dont show up for the next dive and realize "Shoot, I lost the screw to the ...". For rental equipment, make the students inspect it first, sign a damage waiver, and then have them "present" it back. This way we dont find things like the busted guage in the pool (we did, becuase the last user didnt say anything)

I am sure I can think of some others, but thats a start

 

[dadediver]

My last rescue this past Spring, while teaching a scuba instructor course from shore, involved swimming a good distance in 3 foot chop to put the victim in the old cross-chest carry and tow him to safety in a rip. Without the old training and the principle of primacy having learned those skills from day one, that rescue could have been more difficult, or resulted in the inability to rescue. That guy is alive and smiling. Rather than put him down for getting in trouble, I praised him for knowing when to call for help and having the smarts to realize he was in trouble before he was in grave danger. Since I'm so "macho and elitist" I obviously didn't have any concern for the guy's emotional state and preservation of his ego. Sometimes it takes guts to call for help. I told him that. Coincidentally, I just started getting back in decent swimming shape a couple weeks prior by swimming Master's workouts and workouts pulled from swimplan.com. Lucky for both of us. Nothing elitist about it. My old instructors set the bar for training and I did what they told me. As a lifeguard instructor today, another lifeguard instructor and I, still teach the old stuff in addition to the standards. That LG instructor is a high school teacher. He just wants the best for his students whether in his high school class or in the pool.

We teach a little different.

You put yourself at risk. Could had very well had two victims to save. I kinda wonder if you stopped, assessed the situation and then react BEFORE hitting the water. Why not do the save with a floatation device. Perhaps a BCD.
Macho Elitism is really an attitude that carries over in ones everyday activities. Right from how they teach, perform rescues to how they even deal with loved ones.

To each is own....

 

[Diver0001]

I don't want things to go back 40 years; I like the technology. That said, I believe that people are depending too much on it. People who can't swim shouldn't be jumping into the ocean because they have a BC on. Divers should be less dependent on equipment and in better physical condition. But that's just my opinion.

Yeah. Maybe I'm blessed but living in the Netherlands makes this a non-issue for me. It's obviously a Western country so people aren't as fit as they could be, but the number of suicidally unfit people here isn't very high at all compared with North America and literally 99% of the population can swim. I've never seen it as a problem.

I agree with you, though, in principle. If the gear is your only parachute then like Icarus you must be careful where you try to fly....

I'm pleased to hear that you think that there is room for improvement. We can agree on that at least.

Yes. I'm sure if we explored this we'd find some more common ground too. I don't think you're wrong about everything. Just a little stuck in the past...

R..

 

[dadediver]

The scenario would test the watermanship ability and in-water and underwater combat capabilities of the old school training vs. the new school training. It would be interesting to see if naval combat swimmers of the past could best today's elite warriors despite their better technology.

They wouldn't stand a chance against the firepower the modern Navy could bring to bear on the surface. SEAL support is daunting compared to what UDT's had on the surface in the 1950's, but it would be interesting to see how they'd match up in the water.

The comment was directed at anyone who enjoys The Ultimate Warrior TV show on Spike since they will pit out of time warriors such as Ninjas against Spartans, Apaches against Gladiators, and current warriors like Green Berets vs. Spetsnaz or Irish Republican Army vs. Taliban against one another based upon points earned for weapons and tactics to determine who would emerge victorious from single combat.

It is only related to our discussion because it would be interesting to pit the combat divers of yesterday against the combat divers today for fun.

Sorry, I didnt know that this was a tv show. I dont watch a whole lot of tv. But remember that it is a tv show. I love when the phrase of "testing ones combat capabilities" is used. I never did understood what that meant. I am sure if you have Fred Flintstone in his "flippers" and todays GI JOE in his "flippers" duke it out underwater with each using thier own technologies, well I would ventured to say Joe and his scuba gear would come out a little ahead if he held Fred underwater for more than 4 minutes.

 

[dadediver]

The National Park Service lifeguards at Gateway National Seashore at Sandy Hook, NJ have increased their swim test standards and are the highest in the United States. They have many young petite female lifeguards on the sand.

The last that I knew, the Nat'l Park Service used the USLA training standards. Which is a 500 yard swim (it used to be 800 yards) and their mininum equipment standards which is a can or resuce tube also. So they too "lowered" their standards.


http://www.usla.org/Train+Cert/USLA_Guidelines.pdf

 

[Thalassamania]

The last that I knew, the Nat'l Park Service used the USLA training standards. Which is a 500 yard swim (it used to be 800 yards) and their mininum equipment standards which is a can or resuce tube also. So they too "lowered" their standards.

http://www.usla.org/Train%2BCert/USLA_Guidelines.pdf

I don't know about that, but back in the late '60s you needed to make a rather long swim (Manhattan Beach to Redondo Beach) staying in the surf break the entire way to qualify as an LA County Beach LifeGuard.

We teach a little different.

You put yourself at risk. Could had very well had two victims to save. I kinda wonder if you stopped, assessed the situation and then react BEFORE hitting the water. Why not do the save with a floatation device. Perhaps a BCD.
Macho Elitism is really an attitude that carries over in ones everyday activities. Right from how they teach, perform rescues to how they even deal with loved ones.

To each is own....

You may see it as macho elitism, and elitism is may well be, but I suspect that folks who have qualified as beach lifeguards for organizations with high standards and who have kept their skills up are the best judge of when time is critical and when and where danger lurks. I think I'd honor Trace's judgement (and actions) on this one.