What is the point of certifications?

[MXGratefulDiver]

Here's the best part of certification....almost all of it is 100% voluntary. If you don't want to take fish identification, drysuit, underwater photography, boat diver or zombie apocalypse diver, you don't have to! All you need is an OW card and if you want to dive Nitrox, a card for that. You can do the vast majority of the diving available to most of us with just an OW card.

This is true ... despite the fact that I have a drawer full of c-cards, I did not take a drysuit class ... and I have over 3000 dives now in a drysuit. I did not take a boat diving class ... and I have hundreds of dives off of boats of all sizes. I did take an underwater photography class, but it was years after I'd first picked up a camera and started taking pictures ... and there was no c-card involved. I did not take a solo diving class ... although I've logged more than 200 solo dives.

Most of my c-cards were incidental ... I didn't take the class for the card, because I didn't need the card ... I needed the skills that the class taught. The card got tossed in a drawer, where it remains today. I haven't even looked at most of them since I received them.

Cards I will carry and use ... highest recreational certification, in my case Instructor ... Nitrox or Trimix, if I plan to breathe the gas ... Cave, if I'm heading to cave country.

That's it ... for everything else, there's American Express ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[covediver]

There are many other "sports" that are more dangerous than ours. There are many other sports that have more expensive gear than ours.

There are not many sports that also have more expensive certifications.

We certify because?

I certified so that I could get gear that I want to use to go into the water.

Every dangerous activity has training for it, but not always required for ADULTS.

Every dangerous activity has safety gear, but it is not required all the time.

Every dangerous activity has the risk of death, and people do die.

Why am I certifying? Because someone figures that I have to do it.

Do I really need to know the whys when it comes to depth or speed of ascent/decent? No.

Is the diving community being too strict? Is it for monetary gain? Would we see the death rate skyrocket without the certification??

Maybe it is just another way of thinning the herd.



Just random thoughts.

Very provocative questions and from some of the responses you can see why those who question orthodoxy are often branded "heretics".

 

[bracko]

Neither of these require certifications in most cases. Want to drive a race car? Go by one and sign the liability waiver at a track. I remember doing the "boater safety" for FL when I was younger, which was only required for minors. 25 and want to drive a cigarette boat? Knock yourself out. No card needed

Perhaps it's different in Australia, but you still need a driver's licence for both and to drive over 5 knots you need a boat licence.

 

[NAM001]

I assume that the license require recognition of divers present. I wonder if that is the case in AU? I only ask this because of another thread saying that boaters may not know how to recognise if divers are present.

Perhaps it's different in Australia, but you still need a driver's licence for both and to drive over 5 knots you need a boat licence.

 

[swimmer_spe]

Thank you for the responses. I actually read all of them. I have not replied as I was not able to access the internet.

Here is the Basics I got from everything:

1) It teaches you a skill set.

2) It lessens the amount of litigation someone might receive if something went wrong.

3) to make money.

From this lengthy thread, I have been given proof that people do not die from lack of certification. They might die from lack of skill.

I have met divers who have been certified and log more dives in a month than I do in one year. They are horrible buddies. I have met newly certified divers who also are horrible divers. I have been to dive shops that all they want is your money, not you as a repeat customer.

But, the very flip side of this is true too. There is a diver who has been diving longer than I have been alive. He helped me fix many issues when I first dove.
I have been to dive shops that make sure that what I am trying to get is what I need, or will work for what I want it for. They have gotten a lot of my money.
I have dove with some OWC divers who have less dives than me, but they have a mutual understanding for safety.

Making it harder, or more expensive will not solve it. Making the levels the same regardless of organization would solve much more.

I have 3 certs: OW, AOW, Ice diver. I also did a pool session with my drysuit when I bought it. There was no charge for this, and there is no card saying I did this.

Except for Rescue, I do not see the point of getting any more. I do not for sea myself diving in the situation that I would want any other mixes. All those other "specialties" do not appeal to me. Becoming a DM or Instructor seems to be to much of a headache.

Thank you for your replies.

 

[DevonDiver]

Forget certifications and pay for training. Certification is just proof of completing bare minimum training. Training is what you pay for... and what you want.

 

[Lorenzoid]

. . .
Except for Rescue, I do not see the point of getting any more. . . . All those other "specialties" do not appeal to me.

I think I'm just repeating what Andy said above. You say you don't want any more "certifications," but just keep in mind that you can pay someone to teach you things without regard to any "certification card." Within certain limits, you can find instructors who will tailor courses to what YOU want to learn. In the PADI system they even have things called "distinctive specialties," which I understand are sort of off-the-radar courses that specific instructors have put together. I can understand that you don't buy into the whole idea of "certifications," but I can't understand someone who would completely rule out taking more courses.

As I said in another post above, I wish the agencies would simply stop using the term "certification" for courses other than those few--pretty much just OW, AOW and tec courses--that are specifically intended to protect dive personnel against liability. Fish ID is NOT a "certification"! It is merely a "course."

 

[captain]

You really have to examine the evolution to understand how we got here. Around the late 1950s to early 60s the sport was starting to grow quickly. There’s relatively a lot to know in this sport to prevent people from hurting themselves. A host of forces worked together to organize training and later to begin to standardize it.

There were frequent editorials in Skin Diver Magazine, the leading publication of the time, promoting self-regulation before the government came in and did it for/to us. Diving fatalities were, and still are, very newsworthy and hyperbaric medicine was little known in the general medical community. The concern was that the media and lawyers would soon learn all the different ways an ill-informed diver could kill or injure themselves.



Several enterprising people also saw an opportunity to profit — not only by standardizing diver training but selling dive shops other services like sales training, insurance, inventory management, etc.

The vast majority of dive shops in the US were very responsible and sold customers very good classes, even though internationally recognized standards didn’t exist. Manuals published by Navies all over the world spelled out the majority of what people needed to know if they were interested enough to slog through them. The big problem came from the fledgling dive resort business, mostly outside the US.

People would go on vacation to someplace with warm clear water and want to experience diving. Obviously a six-week course wasn’t going to work so they gave them a quick list of rules, like never stop breathing and follow the guide. The “show-me” dive was invented. It worked out OK in warm shallow water with a baby-sitter… err dive guide.

Unfortunately some of these people would return home where sea-state nasty and cold was the norm and insisted on buying gear so they could go diving on their own. Their “experience” in the Caribbean (among other places) made some of these cocky SOBs think they knew it all. It didn’t take advanced degrees and computer models to see that a lot of really bad press and government bureaucrats were in the future.

So several certification agencies sprang up, some focused on the overall “good” of the sport and some much more profit-centric. Competitive forces slowly drove the relative cost and time commitment down to what we see today. To make up for reducing Scuba 101 (OW) to something closer to the “resort courses” than those of the 1960s, they figured out that selling more merit badges was a profit center and would eventually produce competent divers. This article in Diver Magazine by Bret Gilliam explains a lot:

Dive Training Today A Perspective | DIVER magazine

One thing most don't know or have forgotten is the first dive cretifications were done by non profit organizations such as the YMCA and LA County and there were very few dedicated dive shops. You bought equipment at the local sporting goods store or department store, Sears & Roebuck sold diving equipment in store or by mail order. It wasn't until dive shops and training became for profit that training standards began to decline because of competition from business, in other words cheapest and easy got the business. YMCA abandoning scuba training was the result. YMCA had a very good certification program but couldn't compete with cheap and easy.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

One thing most don't know or have forgotten is the first dive cretifications were done by non profit organizations such as the YMCA and LA County and there were very few dedicated dive shops. You bought equipment at the local sporting goods store or department store, Sears & Roebuck sold diving equipment in store or by mail order. It wasn't until dive shops and training became for profit that training standards began to decline because of competition from business, in other words cheapest and easy got the business. YMCA abandoning scuba training was the result. YMCA had a very good certification program but couldn't compete with cheap and easy.

I was certified through the YMCA in 2001 ... did my OW, AOW and Rescue classes with them before switching over to NAUI to pursue professional training. My classes were very thorough, and not really all that expensive. What they had a hard time with was what a lot of independent instructors struggle with ... teaching entry-level classes without the resources of a dive shop is very difficult, because of the amount of gear you have to provide your students. My YMCA instructor had a partnership with a local dive shop, but that shop went out of business and the local chain that dominates the scene in our area won't do business with independents. The whole dive shop "loyalty" model is designed to limit what independents can do. Fortunately I live in an area where there are dive shops that welcome partnerships with independent instructors, so I don't have that problem. But for a lot of the YMCA instructors, it made teaching OW class an almost insurmountable problem.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Adventure-Ocean]

If you have your own equipment and a source of air for your tank, it is not against any laws to go diving. Once you involve another person or company, liabilities arise. I dove 10 years in the 70's without being certified. At that time and place I could get my steel 72 filled without certification. Once the dive shop upgraded their policy, certification was required. At that time I was asking the same question your are. Why, after so many years of diving, was I asked to get certified? At that time, liability was the word. I took the class with 9 years more diving experience than my instructor. Adventure-Ocean