Judging a diver's experience: logging number of dives and hours of dive time

[Kimela]

I think we should judge by cumulative total depth. A diver that has dived over a mile should be considered an accomplished diver. 10 miles should be required for DM type jobs and 100 miles for instructor.

Mentally running through the various scenarios of would-be instructors. Fairly entertaining thought!

 

[Wibble]

That's the most common myth in scuba.

I have never been asked to mind a beginning diver--NEVER. I have always had dive operators give me an experience appropriate to my certification. Believe it or not, dive operators want their divers to be happy, and they especially want instructors to want to come back and bring others with them. The idea that operators say, "Hey! An instructor! Let's f**k him over!" is ludicrous. If someone were to try to do that with me, I would demand compensation.

Not officially asked. More explicitly told; as per your original pair that you were 'told' to dive with.

Was asked a couple of years ago to buddy up with a novice diver at a 'resort' I was at. Refused "the offer" and the DM was happy enough to let me tag along loosely which worked out fine for all of us.

It's really annoying when you've paid for a dive, a nice simple dive to slowly watch the flora and fauna, only to be buddied up with someone who needs attention or seems to want to sprint around.

 

[TMHeimer]

Don't know if it has been mentioned, but I figure the reason such a huge % log both dive number and hours is that most or all dive logs have a space for both. Otherwise I may not have thought of logging hours too.

 

[Jay Adams]

Paralenz?

Just bought one of those. but I bet you saw my thread lmao. actually my dive log is all gopro hero+ and hero3+

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

Shearwater does it for me.

 

[formernuke]

Great Lakes: Unsalted and Shark Free

That's it, who is up for relocating some bull sharks.


For the record, I don't log I just dive.

 

[kelemvor]

Don't know if it has been mentioned, but I figure the reason such a huge % log both dive number and hours is that most or all dive logs have a space for both. Otherwise I may not have thought of logging hours too.

Yeah it seems odd to bother recording one but not the other. Actually, if you just log times you've inherently got numbers as well. You'd have to go out of your way to only have one or the other.

That's it, who is up for relocating some bull sharks.

Bull sharks.. Such BS.

 

[kmarks]

I think we should judge by cumulative total depth. A diver that has dived over a mile should be considered an accomplished diver. 10 miles should be required for DM type jobs and 100 miles for instructor.

How would you make this work? Somebody who wants to 0 -> Hero could go do a bunch of 150 foot bounce dives for 2 seconds at a time. If they survive, they'll get there a lot faster than somebody who actually spends an hour long dive that peaks (valleys?) at 100 feet and then comes back up slowly. Maybe a sampling time? Every 30 seconds, take a data point, add up the depths?

Also, 100 miles? That's 528,000 feet! If you averaged 100 feet per dive, you'd need 5,280 dives just to become an instructor. You could do it if you made 4 dives per day, every single day for just over three and a half years.

There is a lot more to diving than going deep.

 

[TMHeimer]

Yeah it seems odd to bother recording one but not the other. Actually, if you just log times you've inherently got numbers as well. You'd have to go out of your way to only have one or the other.


Bull sharks.. Such BS.

Yeah, my times average to about a half hour per dive. Once you've got a whole lot of dives I don't think it matters which is more important regarding your experience.

 

[Akimbo]

I think we should judge by cumulative total depth. A diver that has dived over a mile should be considered an accomplished diver.

A lot of US Navy SEALs would never meet that threshold. One dive might last four hours and never drop below 20' — on moonless nights and in sea states where most people call the dive. It would be hard for anyone to say they aren't accomplished divers. We have all met new divers with the intelligence, watermanship skills, and judgment that are excellent divers. We have also known divers with hundreds of dives that shouldn't be sold air fills.