Blue Hole death - a defence, sort of!.

[darthmoll]

Originally Posted by bunny

Firstly, let me say that I am not in any way condoning this type of diving being carried out by the irresponsible or ignorant.

But you cannot compare your driving license to your Padi cert. Your driving license IS a legal decoment which entitles you to drive within certain limitations. No you're not allowed to drive and HGV with it. But you are also not allowed to drive ANYTHING without it. At all. (ok, maybe a go-cart).

By contrast, your Padi cert is NOT a legal document, you ARE allowed to dive without any certification whatsoever, and no one can legally stop you. Yes, I agree that diving outside your certs almost invariably invalidates your insurance, but I would hazard a guess that people who are that idiotic about their risk taking activities, that insurance becomes a moot point. But in it's form as a "permit" it has no legal standing whatsoever.

Sorry, i am not sugesting that it is a legal document, but the cert is for 18 meters, the fact that it is not a criminal offence does not change the fact that PADI have certified you to dive to 18 meters, if you chose to do otherwise, thats your choice.

[David Wallace]

Originally Posted by darthmoll

Sorry, i am not sugesting that it is a legal document, but the cert is for 18 meters, the fact that it is not a criminal offence does not change the fact that PADI have certified you to dive to 18 meters, if you chose to do otherwise, thats your choice.

no padi have certified you to a reconmended depth of 18m that is a lot different to certifying you to 18m

regards

[darthmoll]

Originally Posted by Skipper

no padi have certified you to a reconmended depth of 18m that is a lot different to certifying you to 18m

regards

Thats not what it says in my manual, it is quite clear, and we are told to advise our students that if they want to dive any deeper they should take further training.

[Mark Chase]

Originally Posted by darthmoll

Thats not what it says in my manual, it is quite clear, and we are told to advise our students that if they want to dive any deeper they should take further training.

Yeah but thats a PADI manual. It says the diver should take further training to wipe their ass, for a fee of course

ATB

Mark Chase

[darthmoll]

Originally Posted by Mark Chase

Yeah but thats a PADI manual. It says the diver should take further training to wipe their ass, for a fee of course

ATB

Mark Chase

You got to make a living somehow

[Simon TW]

60 mtrs on air is quite common with the Technical divers here (or should I say not so tech)

The person who recovered the Kit was trained for it as are many others here. If you'd have asked for a volanteer you would have had several, honest. It's not a nice thing to have to do but it does give the divers who are trained a reason for all of that training.

I don't think that there would be many firefighters if all they did was retrive cats from trees.

[Lanny]

Originally Posted by exbenzine

I have done over 170 dives so i am experienced.

Demonstrating quite nicely one of the main problems with many divers attitudes, particularly on the recreational side.

170 dives is not anywhere near experienced. I thought I was experienced and a great diver when I had a couple of hundred dives under my belt. Then I dived with some people who knew what they were doing and realised what a complete dive pygmy I was.

I am now approaching 500 dives and would still not consider myself anywhere near experienced. If anything, having been in the water and under instruction with some of the best in the world (particularly JJ), I consider the bar even further away than it was before.

This sort of attitude stems from the PADI 100 dives and you can be an instructor rule. Most people can't find their arse with both hands and a mining helmet after 100 dives, but will consider themselves great divers. BTW, before I get flamed as Anti-PADI/Recreational agencies, I originally learnt with PADI and am a current PADI DM and BSAC OWSI.

[tom]

Originally Posted by Lanny

Demonstrating quite nicely one of the main problems with many divers attitudes, particularly on the recreational side.

170 dives is not anywhere near experienced. I thought I was experienced and a great diver when I had a couple of hundred dives under my belt. Then I dived with some people who knew what they were doing and realised what a complete dive pygmy I was.

Bingo.

I'm up to about 115 dives now, and I'm painfully aware of just how bad I still am in the skills department. I'm only just beginning to "understand" fundamental things like buoyancy control (I thought I had it sorted about 60 dives ago, WRONG). I would still describe myself as a novice.

The worrying thing is that I don't think I'm an especially slow developer, and I don't think my skills are bad compared to people I've dived with who have similar levels of experience. When I hear about people with less experience going off to do DM/instructor training (both PADI and BSAC); deep or deco diving when they have trouble holding stops; solo diving; getting into technical stuff, trimix etc - basically it worries me (if I wanted to I could name people on YD falling into each of these categories).

I think one of the problems with learning to dive is that in the early stages you simply don't know how much you don't know; you have no idea how inexperienced you actually are and how much you need to learn in order to become competent.

I know a buddy pair who qualified as an AOW and a couple of days later were experiencing the joys of a free-flow at 37M in the NDC. Shouldn't have been there. I know somebody who's a DM trainee, who had problems with their mask on a dive, lost it, and bolted for the surface in an uncontrolled ascent from 28m. If they do that, are they anywhere near ready to work as DM?

I think there's a really big element of 'too far too fast' in diving. I don't agree that it's a consequence of the PADI system - a lot of the examples I can think of on YD are actually BSAC trained. I do think there's a peer pressure thing, and I do think that hearing about more "advanced" diving here and elsewhere has something to do with it as well. For instructor training it may be different, but I suspect PADI is not entirely to blame.

[jamesp]

A post I can really identify with, the more diving I do the more I realise I have to learn. What counts as experience?? As a newbie I would jump in a puddle to log a dive, but realised I had too few sea dives, started filling dive trips to get that sorted and have dived numerous sites around the UK now(and the obligatory red sea run). I now have about 180 logged dives ranging from 12m in vivian to 52M(and a free flow) in dorrie, Drift diving the Menai Straits and poking around the bow of the Rondo. I still dont count myself experienced, the Straits still scare me and I am now a BSAC DL grade, what I do consider myself is skilled, experienced and competant for dives up to 35M with limited deco requirements in the sea. deeper and longer for me is starting to push the limits, its not that i dont do those dives, I just find them a little out of MY comfort zone at the moment.
A buddy of mine has just done his Advanced trimix, he used to think that they should back fill about 30M of Dorrie, He wanted me to do the course with him. I was interested, but was not doing the diving to justify it, interestingly to me, at that time I had more dives in the sea past 30M than him.
A PADI trained diver came to our BSAC branch intending to cross over, he wanted to do `more adventurous` diving, his experience at this point was 15 dives, all in dorrie, max depth 40M.
Prehaps I am too staid????

[Finless]

Originally Posted by And

Whilst I agree that your life is your own and all that, it is hard to believe the guy knew what he was actually risking, because if he did, he wouldn't have done it. 100 mtrs on a single AL80 results in a ppo2 of 2.31 and a consumption of 165 ltrs per minute with only 2200 litres available. Plus mandatory deco on that dive.

And,

For some reason I rcv'd a "delayed reputation adjustment" from A.N. Other. and couldn't remember exactly what this post was about so ....... sorry about the late question.

Just a query on the PPO2 point. For a bounce dive I don't think this (PPO2 of 2.31)is a problem as the time below 60ish mtrs (whatever PPO2 you work to) is minimal and very unlikely to be an issue.

Due to my screw up once I dived an EANx mix with a PPO2 of 3.04 for a few minutes and noticed no ill effects at all. I know someone who due to a major f*ck up was breathing a mix of 3.8 during rebreather training (for a short while) - eek!.

A sports limit of 1.4 is well within actual safety margins (I believe / based on a normal scuba dive duration) and 1.6 is something I will use if a mix comes back a bit rich.

Bryan