I understand that these issues might not be covered in basic open water courses but my disappointment is that these skills do not appear to be taught at any point in any of their diving classes. Are these skills not of value for scientific divers? It seems that the intent of scientific diving would be to not disturb the sites when performing any scientific study whether it be reefs, breeding grounds or historically sensitive sites.
I agree. And I have seen many canidates that are lacking in these skills.
GUE, UTD, NSS-CDS, NACD, how come AAUS isn't in this? It appears that the University of Miami is teaching these skills as their diving safety officer is a GUE instructor.
You just named a bunch of small certification agencies that are not mainstream and usually considered Tech oriented. Diver trained by those agencies will be few and probably drift toward cave diving and wreck diving, rather than science.
Yes we discussed these concerns and my son will not be in their diving program. He is already a PADI MSD and NSS-CDS Cavern Diver and will enroll in their Marine Ecology curriculum part time as he will be working at the Naval Research Laboratory on Fleming Key full time. He would have complemented his studies with scientific diving courses but it is doubtful that he will use now use his electives on these courses as his goal is to eventually transfer to another Florida public university for his bachelor’s degree in ocean engineering.
Excellant! That was my minor.
Overall we very much like the balance of real world work experience and university study that he will experience with this arrangement. We like that the school offers a 11:1 student-to-faculty numbers and the campus and facilities are beautiful. My questions are not to denounce this or other schools but to try an understand why such skills and equipment for perfecting trim and buoyancy, streamlining and alternative propulsion techniques are not of seeming interest in scientific diving.
I lot depends on situational awareness. Most young people that want to count fish just don't think about things like where their feet are when they are diving. It is really too bad that such a large program does not take such skills into consideration, but as I stated before, most programs are built on the PADI or NAUI scuba training standards that do not seem to include such fundamental watermanship skills. Everyone has a lot to learn from everyone else.