Safety in training

[waterbearer]

If the DM student has successfully demonstrated mastery of the required skills during the DM course and has successfully shown that their skills are fully up to standard with the requirements for the certification level why should he/she not be allowed to qualify for the certification?

I agree with you...if the DM candidate has demonstrated that they are a fantastic diver...then by all means.

On the other hand, I have personally witnessed a shop certify a DM whose skills I felt were not up to par. One thing you definitely need to be in comfortable in the water...and it was painfully obvious that this person was not.

 

[TheRedHead]

Let us make this very clear, the DM is never directly responsible for someone else's life, that is the responsibility of each and every individual diver - why do you think you sign liability waivers when you check in at your dive resort?

In many resort areas with DM led dives, the DM is leading someone who might dive once or twice a year. Resort divers are blindly following the DM and trusting them to get them back to the boat. Whether or not the DM acknowledges this, they are responsible for these in people in the eyes of those divers. These divers have no clue where they are going or even how to navigate.

I'm curious though, what part of recreational diving is impossible to master in 60 dives but can be in 40 more?

Lack of breadth of experience in situations when things go bad. With 60 dives, you can probably learn to give a speech and sit on the boat, hopefully rescue someone without drowning them. What about when the current whips up and the viz disappears on a 120 foot wreck, can they get their charges safely on the upline? What if you are on a drift dive near a wall and see the divers caught in a down current? Can a person with 60 dives handle that? I think a good DM should have 100s of dives in varying conditions.

 

[MikeFerrara]

PADI follows a very stringent quality control process to ensure that Instructors keep in line with the standards and procedures. Students are often randomly contacted for Total Quality Assurance (TQA) interviews after a new Instructor has been certified - just to make sure that he/she is putting to good use the knowledge gained on the IDC.
Then also it is the responsibility of all instructors to report any incidents they witness where an instructor is violating protocol. PADI's Quality Assurance team then launches an investigation by again contacting students to verify that the instructor has been following procedures properly. If it is found that he/she has been flying under the line, PADI issues a warning first to the instructor; warnings become suspensions and eventualy expellations if it is consistently found that the instructor does not keep the standards.

I'd say PADI pays pretty close attention to making sure that the standards and procedures are followed. That having been said however, I agree that it depends on the Instructor you get as a student - not all people make good instructors who can connect with their students and instill a sense of pride in their skills learnt on their courses. I guess it's like all teachers - you get the good ones and you get the bad ones.

after spending time as a PADI instructor and owning a "PADI" dive shop, I have to ask where you people get thisd stuff?!!
PADI sends out questionairs that essentially as if the students did certain things but they don't ask to what level they were done. further, since the students aren't permitted to see the standards (their not made public) the student isn't even qualified to judge their class.

The whole thing is a monster joke.

 

[MikeFerrara]

If the DM student has successfully demonstrated mastery of the required skills during the DM course and has successfully shown that their skills are fully up to standard with the requirements for the certification level why should he/she not be allowed to qualify for the certification?

I'll ask the same question that I asked the last poster that I responded to...where do you people get this stuff?

DM candidates are esssentially required to demonstrate OW level skills...to demonstration quality...but that's still generally done on their knees. When do they demonstrate that they can really dive?

It is not the DMs responsibility to teach divers how to dive, as certified divers they should already have mastered their skills on their own training courses. The DM really is there only to act as a tour guide, to show the group around the dive spot they visit, to assist divers with queries, problems, and concerns, to make the dives fun and enjoyable and to effectively manage emergencies when they arrise. A well trained DM with 61 dives in his/her log book can do this. The more he/she does this after their first 61 dives the more they will learn to do it better in the future. The best teacher will always be the water and real life experience.

They can do more. They can act as training assistants.

I fail to see how restricting DM qualifications to a minimum requirement of 100+ dives will make any DM beter skilled than 60 dives (PADI requirement). I do agree that you get excellent DMs and then you get the really, really bad ones, but I attribute this more to the training they received from their instructors than whether they had done sixety and not a 100+ dives.

Well, we see the ones who do 15, 10 minute dives sitting on the bottom at 15 ft sitting on a training platform to get in their 60 dives. If they do that 60 times they haven't yet done a single real dive and their real in-water abilities are never tested.

 

[AquaDuck]

Personally, my buyoancy improved immensely, SAC, trim, etc. Even from Dive 100 to almost 200 now for me...

Let me say that I entirely agree with you that everything improves by more experience. If you read my response closely you'll see that is exactly my point - leading dives, like any other skill, improves with experience. Buoyancy should not be problematic anymore when an instructor signs off a DM student, if it is, that instructor should not sign off the DM cert if he/she is has any integrity or sense of ethics. Admittedly there are many DMs who have been forced through the meat grinder by LDS' just for the bux they make off the courses, but that reflects poor training, not a problem with the *minimum* requirements for a student to certify as a DM.

I have also seen people on the board (no names) who are DM's who post pretty stupid questions IMO, and I would hope that DM's would know the answers to those questions, without having to post their questions on ScubaBoard.

Again, is this a problem with poor training or a minimum requirement? The meat grinder scenario comes to mind again here.

Why don't you start a thread and ask exactly that, and see what people have to say. I bet you'll find that a lot of people here would agree that the amount of experience you acquire from dive 50 - dive 100 is HUGE.
I know you're new here on the board... So check around.

I cannot quite decide if this is a "I know you're new so scoot along" brush off or not.
I never disputed the value of more dives = more experience; I think my analogy of the pilot training vs scuba diving kind of reflects this. I just fail to see any concrete evidence that shows me that a well trained (and I emphasize this - *well trained*) DM certified with 60 dives *can* be just as adept at leading a dive as a DM who qualifies with 100. At the same token I've seen moronic instructors with 800+ dives get themselves into trouble because of stupid indifference to safety and responsibility.

I have sworn 4-letter words at DMs before myself. Heck, I've had my jaw drop in amazement of statements made by some instructors. I'm not trying to defend all DMs here, you get the good ones, the average, and then you do definitely get the ones. In my mind safety is a state of mind that is the responsibility of all divers starting right from OW, but this is a question of proper training and application of standards.

 

[MikeFerrara]

I'm curious though, what part of recreational diving is impossible to master in 60 dives but can be in 40 more?

All the parts that the agencies fail to teach in any class. To name just a few...

Gas management.
Trim.
Functional buddy diving skills.
Controled ascents and descents as they relate to buddy diving.
Problem management midwater (not kneeling on the bottom)
Buoyancy control to a functional level.

Before you try to say that these skills are taught, I have to ask you to look at the performance requirements of each course and take a good hard look at what is really required to pass. Review the OW performance requirements. An instructor acting completely within standards can certify a mudpuppy as a dive master and that same mudpuppy can easily pass the IE with flying colors and then be an instructor who will certify many other mudpuppies.

 

[HowardE]

I cannot quite decide if this is a "I know you're new so scoot along" brush off or not.

No brush off... I know you're new on ScubaBoard. It says so in your profile.

 

[AquaDuck]

No brush off... I know you're new on ScubaBoard. It says so in your profile.

Just imagine that:brain:!

 

[TheRedHead]

I agree with you...if the DM candidate has demonstrated that they are a fantastic diver...then by all means.

You should go to Cozumel and dive a site like Tunich where the current is ripping and full of groups of inexperienced divers crashing into the reef and spinning in circles and watch the DMs. They make sure everyone is with the right group, is on target with their air consumption, not overweighted or have too much air in their BCs. All the while they are finding the frogfish and pointing out other critters, entertaining and educating. They are also diving heavily overweighted, carrying extra weight for any diver too light on the stop. They dive with 120 cu foot tanks with 9 foot octo hoses because sharing air is not uncommon leading deep dives. During the SI they coach divers who have bouyancy problems or problems dealing with currents. It's a humbling experience. These guys are consumate professionals underwater usually with 1000s of dives logged and have witnessed just about every kind of underwater problem and know how to deal with them safely.

How do you define "fantastic" diver?

 

[MikeFerrara]

You should go to Cozumel and dive a site like Tunich where the current is ripping and full of groups of inexperienced divers crashing into the reef and spinning in circles and watch the DMs. They make sure everyone is with the right group, is on target with their air consumption, not overweighted or have too much air in their BCs. All the while they are finding the frogfish and pointing out other critters, entertaining and educating. They are also diving heavily overweighted, carrying extra weight for any diver too light on the stop. They dive with 120 cu foot tanks with 9 foot octo hoses because sharing air is not uncommon leading deep dives. During the SI they coach divers who have bouyancy problems or problems dealing with currents. It's a humbling experience. These guys are consumate professionals underwater usually with 1000s of dives logged and have witnessed just about every kind of underwater problem and know how to deal with them safely.

How do you define "fantastic" diver?

Let me get this right...you're saying that a consumate professional takes divers down who are crashing into the reef and can't manage or plan their own gas while they themselves are diving overweighted?

If they have witnessed every underwater problem as you say, might I suggest that it's because of their willing participation in what could only be defined as very questionable practices in the first place?...Do what you've always did and you'll get what you always got.