What constitutes a loggable "dive"

[live_2_dive]

you can log whatever you want to.

exactly...a dive log is for the owner of said log. It's so that YOU can remember things that were important such as lessons learned, gas mix, animals seen, accidents to correct, etc, etc, etc. If you have something that you want to be able to go back on and learn something from a 3 minute dive at 3 feet then log it! There is no standard other than you want to keep track of something and learn something.


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PADI Rescue/DM 09100Z7445
Dr Dive/Wet Dream/Sea Cobra/Y-Knot

Diving is my passion...I live to dive!

 

[g1138]

18 feet for 8 minutes is my record for shortest dive ever. It was a dive where my buddy's computer failed, so we called the dive.
Another was 16 feet for 9 minutes collecting bags of sand for aquarium husbandry purposes. I may have another short dive this Saturday, setting float and scouting the viz and conditions for a wharf clean up event. Shouldn't last more than 5minutes, but I'll log it.

For me a loggable dive is any dive with a purpose, may that be a fun dive, working on skills etc. If I were to descend and find a problem immediately, my computer may read 1min or it may have not even registered. I wouldn't log that. If however I've committed to a dive, and later aborted or complete one, I'll log it. Use your best judgment is what I'm getting at.

Agencies on the other hand have a specific requirement for what counts as a dive (in essence, what you can log as a dive). This pertains more to class settings, the way I interpret it at least. Instructors can have the final say when reviewing your log book to see if you have the required amounts of dives to sign up for a class.
My NAUI Standards and Procedures Manual states a scuba dive is one that includes an entry and exit and lasts 20 minutes at a depth of at least 15ft.

It does however give exceptions in case water temp or conditions make this unsafe. Substituting extra skills and/or entries/exits will suffice. A specific example it gives is a 12minute dive (including entry and exit) followed by a separate 8minute underwater activity (also including a separate entry and exit). Also:

A series of excursions in a course involving 80minutes of underwater activity on scuba would comprise four scuba dives.

So from my interpretations, what constitutes a loggable dive is really more for the terms of fulfilling the minimum standards of a scuba course. From my interpretations, personal dives can be logged at the divers discretion, but instructors can always contest since it's their class. So log what you think should count and let your instructor have a final say if you're logging for a class pre-requisite.

 

[Frosty]

Ok, no bites on this one. So how about something like this: divetimeXdivedepth >=100 is a valid dive. Any comments? my thoughts here would be that the dives in OW are less than this, but are certification dives. Seems like a oxymoron.

This time last year I did a 35 minute dive to max depth 4.0m. It was in a shark tank with 20 sharks. So did I log the dive and get it stamped off. Darn tootin I did.
I did a lagoon dive in again 4.0m of water -what was special about it was the entire family -from the 8 year old up to me the "old man" did the dive. It was amazin being in the water with my whole family (7 of us)
lately I havent bothered logging a lot of dives because they have become all about getting in the water and getting wet rather than anything significant.

 

[TMHeimer]

As far as the required "official" dives an instructor must give the OK to for a class--If you just log every dive you do you'll probably have more "official' ones than you could ever need for anything after a while. Unless all 100 of your dives are 10' for 10 minutes, etc.

 

[Searcaigh]

When I dived with a BSAC club back in the 80s it was minimum 6M for 20 mins, but as others have said it is really up to you, your dive log is a personal account of what you did.

I rarely do short dives, my most recent was helping fix a zinc anode to a prop shaft on a friend's boat, about 7 mins after an initial 1 min check, did not log any of that though.

 

[Insta-Gator]

As stated by others, it's your log, enter what you want.

Personally, I tend not to log pool dives because they're usually just play time. But if I'm in a pool working on a specific skill or testing equipment/setup, I will log it so I do not forget what I went there to learn. A log book is a data collection device, like a computer or anything else. What you do with the data is up to you.

 

[Lorenzoid]

I assume you've already found all the previous threads addressing this question. I just did a search using your keyword "loggable" and found many relevant threads. It seems to be an age-old debate over factors such as time, depth, pool vs. open water, etc.

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/search.php?searchid=6899786

 

[Phil_C]

I agree with several of the responses that you need to seperate out why you are keeping a log - the number of 'dives' or immersions, whatever you choose to call them, you put in the log book is not directly related to how many dives you have for the purpose of certification.

I will always log any 'immersion' on scuba gear, but will not always count it towards how many dives I have when people ask me how many I have done. I will also log all pool work done. But my log is for me, when did I dive what gear and weight worked in what conditions, when did I last practice a controlled bouyant lift, mask removal and clear and so on.

So my log has some short 'immersions' of say 3 or 4 minutes to maybe 6 metre where I have practiced a CBL, it has all my pool work, but also every 'real' dive I have done. I keep an electronic log book so if I am asked how many dives I have done below 25 metres in sea water I can filter it in seconds and tell you. Equally if you want to know how many times I have practiced a CBL or when was the last time I did so I can pull that out also.

For me a 'dive' is not in a pool, is mostly for fun or training and must be of a reasonabe time. My longest logged dive is 109 minutes to a maximum of 4.5 metres on a night dive, this certainly wouldn't meet some of the depth criteria of the 20 for 20 and so on but was definately a dive in my book.

I have recently sat with my instructor and gone through it like this to review my diving history for my CMAS 3* and she loved it. It gives a complete picture so far of everything I have done.

Interestingly CMAS (at least locally here) do not count training dives, done as part of a course or as certification dives, towards your dive total for progression to the next level.

Have fun - P

 

[DivemasterDennis]

My recollection is that PADI defines a dive as breathing air from a pressured tank at a depth that is such that you are "under pressure." Counting dives in done as a predicate to starting and finishing the divemaster program and the instructor program. It also is a definition that would allow a dive to be extremely short. That being said, I do not log pool dives. I think a dive should be an open water dive to be counted as a dive. Now an aquarium dive is an exception, because it has components of an open water dive as to depth ( more than 10 feet) and animals ( like sharks). It is important to log enough information to describe the conditions and activity of each dive. For may purposes, like volunteering as an aquarium diver, your total bottom time is more important than total dives. The real value of a log book is both as a diary of experience and compendium of data for planning future dives. Put in it what you want to memorialize, and what is useful to you.
DivemasterDennis

 

[drbill]

I log any dive that merits it. Sometimes it may be short if I have an issue I want to document (such as the situation when my dip tube clogged and I was "OOA"). Generally speaking I will not log a dive less than 20 and preferably 30 min. Depth doesn't matter to me as I may be diving and filming up in the kelp canopy where my maximum depth may dip to an incredible 20 fsw!