....................As far as expense what is the cost of OW and AOW combined? Probably around $500-600? The OW course at a resort is what 2 days? Two days of training and someone is a certified diver for life. Then the next day they are taking AOW for another couple of days. Now they are certified to be let loose in the ocean as an advanced diver. What a training model!
My original training was by NASDS, 12 weeks 2 nights per week 2 hours per class,......snip........................
Combined cost here would be about $1400, so a major investment, but its going to vary. Its surprising how many OW courses are gifts, so you can be certain those would cease. I don't live in a tourist town, the majority of divers and students are locals. How many OW divers go on to do AOW, those would probably sign-up for a combined course. The others might, but probably not. The AOW gives you a 30m depth limit, but deep specialty gives you 40m, many will never hit the 18m limit imposed on OW cert.
My course was two full days of classroom and pool, in 1992, none of the remote learning that is so popular now. Even as a high school student I recall being somewhat bored, dive theory is not advanced physics if you have a mind for it. Its quite complex if you have zero aptitude. In 2008 we were doing a few hours of learning assessment on one evening, based on people studying at home, then another evening in the pool, generally 3-4hrs, then a full weekend of diving. I'm curious as to how and where you can do a full course in two days, seems kinda tight.
My Dad had done a BSAC course in the mid 70s, much more like the quasi-military style course common for the era. I have a number of concerns with this, for starters even the military struggle with maintaining the standard of instructor. Anyone with any time in uniform can tell you about doctrinal asshats that have zero concept of what they are teaching, but they have swallowed the manual and they will teach that manual. When Dad got back in the water, it was pretty half-assed. It didn't reflect on his instructor or his course or his skills or knowledge, rather his proficiency and the range of diving he did after his course.
What i would like to know is exactly what skill can’t be learnt by doing it yourself. I understand your going to need a cert if someone demands one but that has nothing to do with learning any skill.
Buoyancy is one, mask removal and clearing is another that seemed to take up an inordinate amount of time. Hair in the seal, a lot of people freak out when the water hits their eyes, many put the strap back on too high on their head so the seal leaks. The one that most fail it is exhaling during ascent, specifically the CESA. Very few remembered to do it, you had to tap your lips and blow bubbles to remind them. Self-awareness is a pretty uncommon trait. The ability to self-critique on a new skill is not going to achieve a high quality outcome.
Your position glosses over the fact that the average recreational diver (what agencies are catering to) does not dive enough to develop, much less maintain proficiency. Within a year of completing their OW class, they’ve likely brain dumped the majority of what they’ve been taught.
This, to me, is the primary reason that resorts insist on guided dives, and the first dive is a really basic site. Its a check-out dive in every single sense, they are watching. And when you go somewhere like Truk, the guides are taking notes and adjusting the next days' sites based on in-water proficiency of the group. As the wrecks get deeper, people start hitting the spare tank due to low air and the group gets smaller or the sites will get shallow again.
........................When I certified with PADI 22 years ago we were required to do a skin dive to 25’ without a weightbelt and had to grab a handful of sand off the bottom. I got smart and pulled myself hand over hand down a stalk of bull kelp! This was on the first day before we did any scuba skills.
I did an SSI course in 92, we did nothing like this, straight to scuba diving.
This is PRECISELY what I’m talking about.
I can add that in a vacation tropical environment where somebody wants to try scuba on a whim, the cert they would get would not be a real full blown cert like what you would get if every detail of a standard OW course was followed, but rather a provisional permit to dive under the direct guidance and supervision of a DM to no more than something like 40 -50 feet in benign conditions.
I don’t think it’s fair that some people go through a regular complete course to the letter and some people can get the same OW card just doing a barely half ass course.
There needs to be better standardization. When an operator sees an OW card it should mean that the diver went though a full blown course, it shouldn’t be a big mystery that maybe they got a Cracker Jack course. This is just wasting their time.
There is a 'scuba diver' cert in most of the agencies that requires diving supervised. Have you observed a half-assed course, or just half-assed divers? The resort courses might be cut right back, personally I'd be surprised if they were. Perhaps someone here has recent experience of a tourist resort OW course. If people arrived on their holiday, e-learning complete, medical complete, it would still be three days.
The OW dives should be two days, there should be another day of pool and theory, perhaps two extra days if you have not had the chance to prepare or completed e-learning. We did five dives across a full weekend, depending on schedules and weather, four to qualify and the fifth was their first qualified dive.
There is the centralised standard these days and if you compare the skills requirements across the major agencies, its pretty standardised. I've dived with some very proficient European divers that had zero ocean experience, swells and currents were new to them. They were smart enough to get guided dives and listen. It doesn't reflect poorly on their instructor or their training, its unrealistic to expect they should have traveled to get a broader range of sites during their OW course or been issued a restricted cert. They knew what their weaknesses were, they addressed them.
The accident rate doesn't suggest to me that we have plagues of bad divers, the last few divers through the chamber here were all commercial divers. Maybe standards are being violated, but its all up to the individual regardless of how people get certified. The course director that did my IDC was a lot more stringent than the IE, I can't see how a separate certifying agency will raise standards. Divers are proficient when they complete their OW course, instructors can be accused of lowering standards to get paid, so could the independent certifier. They'll stop getting bookings if they are too rigid, someone else will sign-off if the diver is safe and competent, some will sign-off if not safe and competent. Divers will be just as proficient a week later when they visit the certifier, and will taper off just as quickly if they don't dive again till the next holiday.
The retail agencies have brought a lot of new divers into the industry. That makes gear much cheaper, we get investment in new designs, I just don't see it as a bad thing. I'm not envious of those that qualified more easily than me. They aren't a risk to me, they are only a risk to themselves if they think they are great divers. I also don't know that I see an issue from the Operator's perspective, my observation is that have this very much in hand.
If enough water goes into the mask your going to take it of and look at it. I learnt that that when I was 10 dabbing for flounder. The first thing anyone would do with a leaking bottle is turn it off and check it. If a tap was leaking water all over the floor would you need an instructor to tell you to turn it off.
Have you worked in heavy industry at all? Seriously, the number of times I have walked around the workshop and had to tell someone to isolate a leaking tap. The number of times we'd get a low level alarm on the tank levels because there was a leak and find that people had just been ignoring the flood. You cannot rely of people to do the right thing when you are paying them, that is why you employ supervisors and managers, and the dive industry has DMs and Instructors.
More broadly:
As the world learns to dive, the world's abundance of personality traits and flaws will be brought to diving. Personally I don't want diving to be an exclusive sport, so we just figure out how to deal with people that are unobservant or absent minded outside of their chosen profession. So for me, the cert is essential, levels of cert are essential, and the right of a diver to choose to not dive should be sacrosanct. When a bad diver appears you can not let them join your group, or teach them something, or refer them to someone else. I've never had a bad diver force me to dive with them, so I really just don't feel that bad divers are a risk.
