Qnape
Contributor
I'm pretty new here and at diving, and I realize that like many of you I knew less than I thought at the various stages of my training to date. As the purpose of this section of the forum is to discuss how to avoid incidents such as the present case, I have a question.
While I understand why it it wise to gain some real world experience before continuing from OW to AOW, suppose that the diver in this case had done just that. Would he not at the very least have obtained additional experience and enough additional training to potentially have avoided the outcome here? Would denying him that training seem wise in retrospect had this incident then occurred?
As I explained in the divemaster resposibilities offshoot of this thread, I am guilty of rushing to AOW (yes, through PADI, but after being rebuffed by my instructor at first then completing 6 additional dives, 2 accompanied by our instructor). My reasoning as a complete novice was that as I had heard (perhaps here?) that many dive ops brought their groups regularly to 90+ feet in Cozumel regardless of OW / AOW status and we were heading there, my buddy (15 year old daughter) and I should get more experience and training than I first surmised was needed (i.e. OW cert). Of course, the option to not dive if the plan was unacceptable to us is always there, but as most novice divers I am sure, we wanted to dive.
As it turned out the dive op we chose was particularly safety conscious and responsible and we hired a private divemaster for the week despite our additional training.
While I understand why it it wise to gain some real world experience before continuing from OW to AOW, suppose that the diver in this case had done just that. Would he not at the very least have obtained additional experience and enough additional training to potentially have avoided the outcome here? Would denying him that training seem wise in retrospect had this incident then occurred?
As I explained in the divemaster resposibilities offshoot of this thread, I am guilty of rushing to AOW (yes, through PADI, but after being rebuffed by my instructor at first then completing 6 additional dives, 2 accompanied by our instructor). My reasoning as a complete novice was that as I had heard (perhaps here?) that many dive ops brought their groups regularly to 90+ feet in Cozumel regardless of OW / AOW status and we were heading there, my buddy (15 year old daughter) and I should get more experience and training than I first surmised was needed (i.e. OW cert). Of course, the option to not dive if the plan was unacceptable to us is always there, but as most novice divers I am sure, we wanted to dive.
As it turned out the dive op we chose was particularly safety conscious and responsible and we hired a private divemaster for the week despite our additional training.