PADI Divemaster without Advanced?

[Leatherboot69]

There is no practical way to record number of dives. I don't know how estimates are being made. I'd be curious as to their confidence percentages. Number of tank fills would be a decent approximation for recreational divers. As tech divers are a small number in comparison, my guess is the numbers by all their cylinders would not skew the results too much, especially as deco cylinders. The non-peasant CCR divers (a joke people! ) are too small in number to even bother factoring into the equation.

If it’s good enough for DAN, the medical profession and the HSE it’s good enough for me.

 

[Leatherboot69]

[P]eople repeating old beliefs that have no basis in truth, and I generally step in and try to deal with actual facts... For example, you will regularly see rants about how PADI keeps continually lowering the standards for the courses, requiring students to do less and less.

This times 1 million million

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

If it’s good enough for DAN, the medical profession and the HSE it’s good enough for me.

I know a few people at DAN..I'll try to find out.

 

[Leatherboot69]

I know a few people at DAN..I'll try to find out.

I expect the methodology will be buried somewhere in the reports I cited or their sources

 

[Edward3c]

The 1.8 deaths per million dives is mentioned in this 2017 paper: Epidemiology of morbidity and mortality in US and Canadian recreational scuba diving

Regarding HSE, you’re referring to legal governance of professional activity, but of course HSE’s mandate for inquiry and research goes further than that. For example, this 2010 DAN report is one example of HSE conducting research on recreational diving. The HSE states that diving is as safe as jogging and driving, with 163 deaths per million participants per year (pp. 7, 76-77). Sure, the data is old, but the long term trend has been for scuba to be getting safer, not more dangerous… Even though a lot of SBers complain about how things aren’t as good as back in the day when they were being chased around a pool by a retired Navy SEAL and everybody is dying because they haven’t done fundies and are unable to recite Henry’s Law at 60 metres.

https://d35gjurzz1vdcl.cloudfront.net/ftw-files/Fatalities_Proceedings.pdf

Divers who train for OW in good conditions are only ever certified to perform a safe, relatively simple activity in those same conditions *unless* they have further training for tougher conditions or more complex diving. It’s important to look at OW diving as it is.

The cited paper (Cumming, et al, 2011) gives two fatality values:
1. 0.53 per 100,000 or 5.5 per million - BSAC member,
2. 1.3 per 100,000 or 13 per million - none BSAC member.

Both are much higher than the figure you stated, because the HSE has no jurisdiction over recreational diving in the U.K. The exception, is commercial training provided by dive schools (PADI etc).

 

[Leatherboot69]

Sorry, I don’t understand your point. The HSE may not have jurisdiction over non-commercial diving but that doesn’t mean it cannot or has never carried out research into recreational diving.

 

[Edward3c]

Sorry, I don’t understand your point. The HSE may not have jurisdiction over non-commercial diving but that doesn’t mean it cannot or has never carried out research into recreational diving.

The only legitimate research the HSE can do on recreational diving is when individuals are either paying for tuition or paying to go diving (including charter boats). UK dive clubs (BSAC, SSAC and SAA) are outside their remit - they are funded to ensure the safety of employees and customers, they are not permitted to spend Public money researching non-commercial recreational diving.

 

[Leatherboot69]

Sure, ok. But the core of my original argument still stands, which was that the HSE considers diving to be as safe as jogging and driving, based on work that it (the HSE) published. That paper was on health and safety risk management rather than scuba specifically, but (at least so far as I can tell from what is cited, not being enthusiastic enough to dig through every reference) a 2008 scuba fatality data set to compare diving to other activities.

Basically all I’m saying is that I think the facts show that scuba is a safe activity, nothing too controversial; and that IMO OW training should, and does, adequately reflect that.

 

[Trace Malinowski]

Sure, ok. But the core of my original argument still stands, which was that the HSE considers diving to be as safe as jogging and driving, based on work that it (the HSE) published, in 2001.

Diving could even be safer thanks to the training and equipment available today. But just like living right up to the limits of one's financial means, divers take their training and equipment right to the edge of skill and performance.

For example, one could take a GUE-F course and master buoyancy control and individual and team skills in double cylinders to be a safer recreational diver with excellent redundancy. But the first thing that diver will do with solid foundational skills will be to enroll in a Tech 1 course where the risk of DCS will increase.

I was on a Tech 1 dive with a GUE instructor where a team of three ran out of all deco gases, completed the dive by gas-sharing on back gases, and one diver suffered DCS.

How did I start off diving using an AL50 as a 13-year-old kid in 10 feet of lake water and end up a solo cave diving instructor? Oh, right. The industry always offered me another dangling carrot to reach for until I tied my own carrot on the string by getting a solo cave diving course past the agency's attorney and insurance company. The industry encourages us to take risks for profit.

 

[tursiops]

I could not find the thread, and I do not have access to course manuals that are 30 years old. If you can find one of any age, we can do a comparison.

I became a professional in 2004. I can assure you that no requirement has been removed since then. It would take me a while, but I can go to the standards and list all that has been added since then, most of them coming in the revisions of 2014. As I said earlier, there were about 15 additions, things like dropping weights on the surface, additional buoyancy requirements, a requirement that the final OW dive be student planned and led with the instructor only following, a mini-dive at the end of the pool sessions, students need to be able to give a reasonably accurate response to the amount of air they have left without checking (because they have been checking regularly), new emphasis on the buddy system, teaching trim, fixing a loose cylinder band, responding to emergency scenarios presented by the instructor while diving with a buddy during the pool session, etc.

Nothing on that list was in the standards when I started instructing or when I was certified in the late 1990s.

Some data points:
PADI required Alternate Air Source use in training starting in 1986.
In 1994 PADI made buddy breathing (two divers, one regulator) an optional skill for OW certification.
Attached are the OW training dives 1998, with the OW skills listed.
Buddy Breathing was removed as an optional skill in 2009. It is still taught as part of DM.