PADI Scuba Diver

[Blasto]

True, very true. But some people shouldn’t dive without a dive pro, and this includes many open water certified divers. There is a segment of the market that only wants to float along in the water and follow a guide looking at pretty fish.

Yes. But the 4-day OW course they do in 3 days and are exploring ways to cram into 2 is really only meant for that. There's only a couple items you can drop without degrading safety, so there's no real time to be saved. The last day of OW that SD cuts just saves the students from two dives following the instructor looking at pretty fish - isn't that what they came for in the first place?

For those who feel that life's too short to do four dives, there's DSD, which really does save time and money.
It's for good reasons that SD is an obscure course. A lot of shops don't offer it, it's barely one page of original content and nothing in the guide, it's just so in between two worlds that you can't be in between. Dive as a hobby, open water and beyond; tick the box, DSD.



If it were up to me, I'd have the card performance-based. You take a course and get a cert, but only Supervised Diver is guaranteed (to the extent OW is today), with Autonomous Diver subject to the instructor's evaluation. If you don't get Autonomous right away - no extra courses, just dive supervised and gain experience, then pass a pool or non-dedicated dive OW evaluation to upgrade.

No chance for that to fly with a certain agency that wants to sell you a card and a book for every occasion, extra $50 if you don't want the the book. But if some sort of an open-source dive agency ever comes true... virtually no extra expense, everyone's happy, everyone dives.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

@Blasto,

Regarding the Supervised Diver being guaranteed, I say absolutely not. I had the most challenging student recently whom I would not certify as a Scuba Diver. He has absolutely no buoyancy control. Even if he went boat diving and hired his own DM, his complete inability to control his buoyancy would have resulted in separation from the rest of the group. All the other pros (we had a number of assistants) all said he was dangerous. None of the other students even wanted to be near him. And he wouldn't listen. He was convinced that he was performing just as well as the others.

So no guarantees, as you do have these kind of outliers. Before him, I would have agreed to a guarantee. I hope this guy doesn't go on a try/discover scuba event, as that's not going to be good.

I am agreement on performance based with objective standards for mastery. Fluid, comfortable, repeatable is just open to abuse.

I don't expect an open-source dive agency ever. It takes time, money, expertise to put a program together. And there are legal issues. Open source won't work like it does with software.

 

[Charles2]

Back in the olden days SCUBA diver was the name of the basic diver training, now that basic training is called OW, I don't know if any agency still uses the old terminology. It would depend on when he was trained, and confusing for one agency for using the same name for two different certification levels.


Bob

NAUI still calls their certification course "Scuba Diver" Get Certified/Scuba Diver | NAUI Worldwide. Dive Safety Through Education

As a matter of fact, I still have my Card from 1966 and it is still accepted if I ever present it.

 

[USdiver1]

Back in 1976 when I was first certified, my certification was PADI "Basic Scuba Diver" which allowed me to get air and dive unsupervised. In fact, the course took 8 weeks to complete along with having to be CPR certified. Could this guy have one of these older certs?

Ditto. My Basic Scuba Diver certification was in 1977. With my C-card, I could buy equipment, get air, and dive to my heart's content without supervision. FWIW, the PADI basic course back in the day was significantly more involved and both physically and academically more demanding than today's PADI OW course. Just my $0.02.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

Ditto. My Basic Scuba Diver certification was in 1977. With my C-card, I could buy equipment, get air, and dive to my heart's content without supervision. FWIW, the PADI basic course back in the day was significantly more involved and both physically and academically more demanding than today's PADI OW course. Just my $0.02.

I don't think that anyone will argue that certifications were much more stringent in the past for all agencies, and standards across the board have been watered down significantly to open up diving to a larger market. I understand that some people just want to float in the water, follow a guide, and look at pretty fish once in their life and then move on. They want a course that is cheap, easy, and quick. They want the bare minimum to do what they want to do. Scuba certifications are kind of like high school diplomas (in the US). The former basically means that the individual displaced water for a bit of time while the latter means the individual displaced air for a bit of time. Yes, this is cynical, but how does we know what someone got out of their open water course until seeing them in the water? As much as this topic gets discussed, I don't see much changing. There's too much money involved.

 

[USdiver1]

We follow PADI Standards, and as PADI Professionals it is our duty to know and distinguish between a PADI Scuba Diver and a PADI Basic Scuba Diver, the latter being a fully trained certified diver, the former being a partially trained quasi-certified diver, although the C-card on the PADI Scuba Diver should state said limitations and requirement to dive under direct supervision from a DM on up.

 

[Blasto]

Regarding the Supervised Diver being guaranteed, I say absolutely not.

As "guaranteed" as today's OWD, of course, not a total 100% pass. Pass the exam, demonstrate not being a hazard to yourself or others. But other than that, yeah, I'd consider investing the extra time in students that can't achieve it on the first try, until they do or prove to be one of the maybe 3% of the populace that just can't dive.

I don't expect an open-source dive agency ever. It takes time, money, expertise to put a program together. And there are legal issues.

I'm not so sure. Time is free, expertise is free, when working for a purpose you believe in - online communities have proven it time and time again. Legal issues may call for money, but most diving is done in places with very limited legal systems. It's certainly not easy.

And even then, there's quite a lot of money in Linux; it just comes from a moderate number of larger sources rather than a small toll on every single user. You can collect funds for essential expenses as a nonprofit, the point would be to avoid the deadweight loss of many useful transactions not being performed due to the overhead of one org trying to collect on everything exceeding the surplus for both parties.

 

[tursiops]

The last day of OW that SD cuts just saves the students from two dives following the instructor looking at pretty fish

If you knew what you were talking about I guess you'd be right.

 

[tursiops]

Ditto. My Basic Scuba Diver certification was in 1977. With my C-card, I could buy equipment, get air, and dive to my heart's content without supervision. FWIW, the PADI basic course back in the day was significantly more involved and both physically and academically more demanding than today's PADI OW course. Just my $0.02.

My NAUI card from 1982 says "Openwater Scuba Diver."

 

[USdiver1]

If you read up on the PADI standards for Scuba Diver, you will see that it is not just the last two OW check out dives that are omitted from the Open Water Diver course. Knowledge Reviews 4 and 5 as well as Confined water dives 4 and 5 are also not part of the SD program, it is more than a student "following the instructor looking at pretty fish."

Only Knowledge Reviews 1 through 3 plus Confined water dives 1 through 3 and some flexible skills, plus Open water dives 1 and 2 are needed for the SD course.

Back in the day, we may have referred to this training as a "resort course" rather than a certification course.