Some thoughts on restructuring SCUBA training ...

[SeaHound]

Hello -

My journey into SCUBA began in 2001 and today I am an AOW with some specialty certifications. Over this time I have encountered some poor training methods, financially motivated business malpractices as well as some dive-shops / instructors who were crooks to say the least. Based on my limited personal experience and limited training, I have thought how we can improve training of divers.

I am pointing out in SCUBA curriculum/diver training issues that I see as problems. I am hoping that divers with more experience, especially instructors and industry professionals can give their insights into what is a good idea and what isnt from what follows.

1) NO SCUBA "CRASH-COURSE" PLEASE: There are a lot of dive shops that proudly advertise "EARN YOUR CERTIFICATION IN TWO DAYS!" Most of these dive shops are situated in places where influx of diving tourism is so much they want to maximize profits by reducing the training time spent on each student. Once they have your money, they want you to get out of the shop ASAP so that new students can come in. Instructors have the "assembly line" mindset where maximum certifications in minimum time is the formula for success of dive shop.

I think this is a recipe for producing incompetent divers who will put their lives in danger along with other people. Imagine if pilots were trained like that! Or brain surgeons or anyone else who is handling a potential life and death situation.

Any thoughts on now the above can be rectified?

When I was an Open Water diver with twelve dives, I was diving with a woman who was an ADVANCED OPEN WATER. She would jump into the sea with so much lead that by fully inflating her BCD she would become neutrally buoyant at depth. Very poor swimming and very bad buoyancy. I asked where she got her certification and she said she was the product of a 2 day SCUBA course in Thailand.

2) RESTRUCTURING OF OPEN WATER AND ADVANCED OPEN WATER

I feel this is strongly needed because the way these courses are taught presently, it seems like students are paying money to learn in Advanced what they should have learnt in basic OW. I mean what do you mean by selling PEAK PERFORMANCE BUOYANCY to a certified diver? Kidding me??? That only means that PADI and the affiliated dive shop will allow you to get certified with bad buoyancy so that you can be charged money later to correct this training deficiency. Same is with specialties like BOAT DIVING or SHORE DIVING. Doesn't make any sense! First a guy becomes a certified diver and after getting his certification he is going to learn how to jump from a boat???


In order to get the ADVANCED OPEN WATER a diver should have a minimum of 20 dives in 60 ft depth. These should include the following:

Deep Dives
Nitrox
Navigation
Drift
Night
plus some reading on Altitude diving

I feel that ADVANCED OPEN WATER training should also include RESCUE DIVER course. Since the motivation behind rescue course is to be able to save lives, the more people who know these skills the better / safer your dive boats become.

Beyond AOW+RESCUE we could have Specialties that are true specialities and not someone charging you for basic open water skills. These are:

dry suit
ice diving
photography
search and rescue
wreck or cave penetration

These would add additional skills and equipment know-how beyond what just makes a good diver. Beyond these we can have training for professionals like DM course or Instructor course etc.

Please let me know your thoughts.

Thanks

 

[redacted]

I'd be happier with just passing a good test to receive a certification. There are many ways to obtain the required skills and knowledge besides sitting through someone repeating what a book taught, telling war stories about his/her diving exploits, and selling gear.

 

[Epinephelus]

1. From dive one get the students off their knees and striving for good trim & buoyancy control. Do drills mid-water.
2. Teach students to manage their own tank valve underwater.
E

 

[*dave*]

1) NO SCUBA "CRASH-COURSE" PLEASE: There are a lot of dive shops that proudly advertise "EARN YOUR CERTIFICATION IN TWO DAYS!"

Can you provide a link to three of these courses? Since there are "a lot" of these courses, you'd think it would be pretty easy, but I have yet to find one.

 

[elan]

Those agencies only exist due to the instant gratification and "give me another coupon for the crap I do not need" mentality of the consumers and this ain't going to change in the near future.

Just move to the agency with higher training standards that have that implemented already

 

[rstofer]

All of this has been discussed ad nauseum!

There used to be some complete training classes (YMCA, LA County) but the vast majority of divers are only interested in resort diving. That's the market - resort diving. Everything else is noise.

When I took the NAUI program of OW, OW II, AOW, Rescue ('88), I made exactly one beach entry and that was a night dive. In my first 100 dives - exactly that one beach entry. There was never a need for a boat diving specialty. Of course, I got my butt handed to me when I tried a beach entry on a rather poor day. For a diver with far more than 100 dives, I must have looked like a doofus! Maybe a beach specialty would have been good.

Maybe calling them specialties is the wrong term. Maybe 'extensions'? Extended training for buoyancy, boat, navigation, deep, etc.

But there isn't enough time in 4 OW dives to perfect buoyancy, for example. The choices are: extend OW (which the market will reject) or offer it as an 'extension'.

Every single thing you are asking for simply extends OW training beyond the 4 dive approach currently in use. The market doesn't want it and the market is resort diving.

Above I mentioned my 4 course training. There was never any question about taking all 4 classes but there was some of everything in each class. Even OW had a decent bit of rescue. OW II really worked on navigation and AOW dealt with depth. But the total was 19 dives (I think) and this is rather more than the 4 dive OW program.

What you suggest isn't going to happen. It's a waste of time and bandwidth to suggest it.

Richard

 

[boulderjohn]

Can you provide a link to three of these courses? Since there are "a lot" of these courses, you'd think it would be pretty easy, but I have yet to find one.

I would like to see that, too.

From time to time on SB people grip about people getting certified in only two days. When challenged to produce those courses, the best they can do is something like classroom and pool being done in two days. (Not counting the self study time before that and the open water dives after that.) There are three day courses in some resort areas, and I am a product of one of them. It was three packed days, and when I later learned what was supposed to happen in the class, I learned that they skipped a whole bunch of required stuff. They could not have done it in three days if they had included all the required work.

 

[spacemanspiff1974]

I used to think that nitrox and navigation as well as peak performance buoyancy should be taught in basic open water.

I now realize that perhaps I am mistaken. People get into diving for different reasons and stick with it to different degrees. When I took basic nitrox there were people in my class struggling with the basic calculations and clearly weren't having fun with the math. I believe they just wanted to use EAN32 and computer dive on their next trip to Mexico because they believed that Nitrox was just what you do. Navigation is also pretty useless when you are on a cattle boat with the follow the divemaster routine.

Perhaps we should have one level of certification for diving with a guide (divemaster or instructor - but beyond a discover scuba class) and another for doing it yourself (with a buddy) where you need to plan your dive, dive your plan and know how to get to and from the dive site.

Then again, a lot of what makes for a good diver is problem solving when you created the problem to begin with. I still make mistakes, learn from them and adjust my diving accordingly.

 

[IXΘYΣ]

Can you provide a link to three of these courses? Since there are "a lot" of these courses, you'd think it would be pretty easy, but I have yet to find one.

just google "scuba certification in two days"
here are a few... there are hundreds listed.
FAQs ~ Learn to Scuba Dive in Two (2) Days, Tampa (Fl) Florida
PADI Scuba Diving Lessons and Scuba Courses in Belize
Avadon Divers - Placencia, Belize - Diver Training & Certification
SCUBA Diving Lessons
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[IXΘYΣ]

But there isn't enough time in 4 OW dives to perfect buoyancy, for example.

True, that. I'd go so far as to say there isn't enough time in 40 OW dives to "perfect" buoyancy. However, I agree with Epinephelus that we should get students off their knees from pool session 1.
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