What if you never dive with a DM/Instructor/Dive Centre? How would you prove you have the requisite number of dives if all your dives have been shore dives with a similarly qualified buddy?
The number of dives you have done is totally irrelevant. Some people are like a fish when they first get in the water and find diving comes natural. Others log hundreds of dives and never look good in the water.
The 40 logged dives to start your DM course seems a bit of an arbitrary figure to me, however, it does make sense to put some sort of experience level on it to stop inexperienced divers signing up for the course. If a candidate shows up and meets all the course objectives, who cares how many of the dives he has logged are genuine?
I once dived with a couple of trainee DMs who wanted to jump in, swim around until they have used half a tank, ascend, float around, and then drop down again so they could log two dives from one cylinder. I told them what I thought of their idea and told them they may as well just make the lot up if their only aim was to hit some number set by PADI HQ.
Number of dives logged represents experience.
As for certified experience, diver with 200+ dives vs another with 20 means the 200+ individual probably has seen a lot more different scenarios underwater. This also translates that the 200+ individual probably had more opportunities to experience or observe how things are done under different, random, unforeseen circumstances.
Nothing can prepare you to cope and deal with situations better than experience. When sh*t hits the fan underwater, my heart start racing, and my adrenaline starts flowing, I would like to have the experience of been there done, done that before so I can handle it, or if not, I would like to have someone with me that is more seasoned and experienced to help me out with my predicament.
Would you take your car to a mechanic that is genuinely certified by the car company or would you take your car around the corner to some repair show owned by a bloke that pretty much winged his way?
Let's say you are in a market for a second car. You have two same model cars with exactly the same option, mileage, color, and every thing down to the tee, event the asking price. The sole difference being that one has a full service record with paper work from a certified mechanic while the other car has a set of maintenance record from a mechanic that does not have any certification. Which one would you go with?
Again, for me, certified experience matters.
But I respect your opinion. Different folks, different strokes.
Off topic: Looking at your avatar, what is your take on the sacking of Mancini and the hiring of Pellegrini?
---------- Post added July 31st, 2013 at 08:55 PM ----------
How can one truly verify dives? If my husband and I go out diving, no one else is with us- there is no instructor or divemaster, and if we shore dive no boat captain even. We can write down we went to 3,000 feet at a temperature of 107 degrees. Or we could write down a whole weeks worth of dives that didn't actually happen. It seems the log book is kind of taken at an honor code, but it seems like it would be extremely easy to falsify.
To the OP- we were told to log at least our first 50-100 dives as that would help us see a pattern in weight needed in different conditions with various exposure suits. And also because many operators or classes require a certain number of logged dives to participate.
Skittl,
You are right. No one can really verify the validity of the logged dives.
I was under the impression that maybe only the certified/validated logs are counted towards the requirement.
But I guess that is not the case.
Regardless, making up dives just so one can meet the requirement does not really help anyone. Just my two cents.
