Is guided diving bad for developing skills?

[Kevrumbo]

The Truk Lagoon Wrecks planning dilemma -especially for the GUE-trained Divers- as to overhead protocol: you will either be with a dive guide who will lead your team on traverses through the shipwrecks' cargo holds, superstructures & engine rooms etc. --all without running line-- or choose to run a reel-line & egress out on reel-line without using a leading dive guide.

The advantage of running a reel-line is of course safety & standard operating overhead procedure as trained; the disadvantage is that you won't have as much bottom time to fully explore the wreck than if you did a through-and-through traverse. In other words, the dilemma will be whether to do "Trust-Me" dives with a Dive Guide or not. . .

The Trust-Me Dive goes both ways in Truk --the Guide is vetting you on the initial easy checkout dives, making sure of your general trim & kicking technique as well as your aptitude & temperament for wreck diving. He's gotta be sure that you won't panic when the rust & silt starts "percolating" all around you. . .

!

There will be times where you will be in a tight engine or crew space in a near silt-out; or momentarily lose sight of the Guide around a corner corridor or up through a vertical gangway; or going thru 'Black Hole' caverns -burned out blackened ship spaces that totally suck-out the illumination from your canister light (and where the worst of all zero-viz conditions can occur -"Black Ash Silt-outs"). You have to trust that the Guide knows where you are at all times as well as all wreck egress pathways, and the Guide has to know that you won't make a potential emergency contingency worse by freaking out. . .

A compromise best solution is to have a "Pathfinder Team" --that is a team laying line with a Dive Guide in front leading a traverse through the wreck; and then having other teams come in later following that line to video/take pictures/sight see etc. --and then finally later a "Clean-Up Team" to reel-in the guideline, while traversing back in the opposite direction and winding-up reel-line. . .


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[Goodtime Adventures]

We operate in a location where the pure volume of divers makes none guided dives unviable for safety and supervision reasons. That being said, our standards in terms of briefings and the environments we take divers into are definitely a whole heap better than your description! For many divers who learn in similar environments, following an instructor on courses, or a DM on fun dives is all they know. While guided dives do not test your navigational and depth maintenance/buoyancy skills etc as you are on the whole just following, there is still lots to learn from these experiences, and our DM's make an effort to debrief and council our divers on how to improve their skills and techniques if/when they notice it is warranted. We also keep our group sixes to a maximum of 4 per guide, which makes things a bit easier to manage. Sadly however, we appreciate that this is not the norm with guided diving. Despite this though, there are still some things you can learn from guided dives including:

Where to look for marine life (most likely habitats, hidey holes etc)
Honing your buddy skills
Spacial awareness with regards to other divers - and how to move/turn/stop quickly to avoid collisions in larger guided groups!
Dealing with varying instabuddies
An appreciation for what makes a good - and bad - guide, for your future reference. you can pick them a mile off without even getting on the boat.
A whole heap of patience!

 

[Diving Dubai]

Having read the thread fully (and it's a good one) my little piece..

Until Jan of this year my huge 22 dives had only been guided. I was a vacation diver - and the fact I hadn't dived for 3 years proved that. Having moved to Dubai last year and found a great club which is equally social as it is diving. I consider myself hugely fortunate that I can dive 52 weeks of the year. In our cold season the water temp is around 68F (20C) at the end of the summer the water is up to 90F (32C)

Our club diving is from boats, you get a site brief max time etc and off you go. You and your buddy dive your plan, and because of the challenging conditions with currents etc, my skills have come on leaps and bounds. I'm still pants at navigation generally because we don't need it as we pop up under an SMB and the boat is patrolling the dive site.

This year I've been on 2 dive trips both with guides, and I don't have an issue - generally after the first or second dive we get some slack and are allowed to potter at the back of the group and do our own thing within the boundaries of the dive. Indeed if there is no dive posted for AoW divers, we'll happily go with OW just to get wet

I think what's more important on whether or not you go guided or not on - your skills are more determined by the frequancy of your dives and experience of different environments. On my Maldives trip one of our group had over 250 dives but these had been gained over 10 years, so his skills and comfort level in currents wasn't as high as mine who dived in challenging environments weekly.

At the end of the day people dive for their own enjoyment - some have only a few days on vacation in-dispersed with getting some sun time in, some head of for Liveaboards for more challenging diving, but are still only vacation divers, and then there are those that can dive at every opportunity.

Like everything, its practise, practise, practise and you only get out what you put in. Equally a lot of people are happy with their skills for the type of diving they do - which is just fine as it's recreational after all?

 

[PeterNBiddle]

We did not complete half of the dive plan, and we did not get anywhere near that (I guess) fabulous cavern. After the dive, he was raving about how great the dive was for him. "I got more than 120 shots!" he exclaimed. I said, "I think the rest of us were really looking forward to getting into that cavern." Not me!" he replied, "I'd rather look at living fish than rocks any day."

It's not hard to guess why he was diving solo. Everyone who's ever dived with him becomes mysteriously engrossed with other hobbies... "No, sorry man, can't scuba this weekend. I'm working on my raptor scat collection."

 

[supergaijin]

You do need it! Because as I had already mentioned many places(countries) would not let divers to dive unguided. From Maldives right across to PNG.

The Maldives do allow unguided diving with provisions.
Right now I'm a guest at Thulhagiri Resort with some old colleagues who now manage the dive center. Here divers regularly dive unguided. However you have to prove your experience... and this is where many experienced divers cannot. Many experienced divers for example do not have an up to date logbook.


When I operated Laamu Dive and Surf, we also encouraged unguided divers- but again, the key thing was that you had to prove to us that both buddies were in fact capable of planning, navigating, deploying DSMBs etc.

 

[TSandM]

Equally a lot of people are happy with their skills for the type of diving they do - which is just fine as it's recreational after all?

I'm not sure they're happy. We see an awful lot of posts here from people who will try anything -- including ridiculous lung-expansion gadgets -- to improve their gas consumption. We see stories about uncontrolled ascents. Just recently, there was a thread from a guy who's unhappy with his video because it isn't steady.

I think in many cases, people are RESIGNED to their skills, because they either don't know how much better they could be, or they don't know how to improve them.

 

[Tigerman]

I'm not sure they're happy. We see an awful lot of posts here from people who will try anything -- including ridiculous lung-expansion gadgets -- to improve their gas consumption. We see stories about uncontrolled ascents. Just recently, there was a thread from a guy who's unhappy with his video because it isn't steady.

I think in many cases, people are RESIGNED to their skills, because they either don't know how much better they could be, or they don't know how to improve them.

Or they dont have the time and money to do it because they dont own their own equipment, dont live near somewhere they can dive or are too busy with work, kids and/or other things in their everyday life..

 

[drrich2]

I suppose if we banned taxies & tour busses and made everybody rent cars, more people might cultivate more advanced driving ability. Then again, many would stay home. (Think big city destinations with traffic congestion).

A lack of guided options would likely lead some divers to improve navigation & planning skills, but would lead many not to dive, or avoid the given destination.

Some practical application.

1.) I love shore diving Bonaire. Navigation is very easy, unless you dive a site where you need to exit at a particular fairly shallow area (this came up at Aquarius; I know because my wife got sea sick & insisted we exit without getting back to it, which entailed crawling over rocks), you wouldn't need a compass most likely.

2.) On my other Caribbean dives, it's all been guided and I've had a good time.

3.) Some Florida Keys op.s don't do routine guides unless you pay for one, but Rainbow Reef Dive Center does, which was one of the reasons I chose them for my trip, and with 20 dives in 5 days, that took a whole lot of stress off of me.

As for cold water vs. warm water, I suspect that divers who dive cold are more driven, feel the need for greater proficiency to cope with the conditions and dive more out of greater average drive coupled with more opportunities (since they consider local conditions acceptable), and are on average less likely to need a guide. Hence the local dive economy is less dependent on out-of-state/country dive tourism.

The example is California, where I've heard a number of charter boat op.s act as dive taxis; shuttle you to & from a site, give a basic dive brief, and a guide doesn't even get in the water unless you hired a private one. But from what I understand a lot of their customer base is regional; people who actually live in California. Where the colder water and more limited & variable viz. doesn't compete well with Cozumel, Bonaire, Roatan and Key Largo for the far-traveling tourist diver market.

After all, when I look at the area dive shop/club travel offerings, or even on ScubaBoard's marketplace section, it's usually one of the above locations, or Blackbeards, Aquacat or other Bahamas live-aboards, or something similar. I'm in Kentucky, and offhand I don't recall noticing any local dive shop trips to coastal California. You've got kelp, sea lions, great whites for the creepy factor, seems like you'd get better business...but who wants to fly for hours to dive in a 7 mm wetsuit or a dry suit?

Richard.

 

[TSandM]

but who wants to fly for hours to dive in a 7 mm wetsuit or a dry suit?

Three years running, my friends HBDiveGirl and Mo2vation ran an invitation-only three-day charter in the Channel Islands on the Peace Boat (best boat ever!). HALF of the people who filled the boat came from Seattle. Half of the rest drove down from Monterey.

Some of us will fly for hours to do the kind of incredibly superb diving that SoCal offers . . .

 

[Centrals]

The Maldives do allow unguided diving with provisions.
Right now I'm a guest at Thulhagiri Resort with some old colleagues who now manage the dive center. Here divers regularly dive unguided. However you have to prove your experience... and this is where many experienced divers cannot. Many experienced divers for example do not have an up to date logbook.
When I operated Laamu Dive and Surf, we also encouraged unguided divers- but again, the key thing was that you had to prove to us that both buddies were in fact capable of planning, navigating, deploying DSMBs etc.

My experience on Maldives were all on liveaboard so I should had made it clear in the beginning.