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Claudia, This is an industrywide problem as I am sure you are well aware of. The instructors are turning weekend warriors out in all levels of certification and justifying it by saying " they are up to my agency's standards ". I personally think that instructors need to be held liable for cases where lack of instruction is the obvious cause. This would make for much better classes when the instructor knew his ass was on the line for turning out divers that really knew what they were being certified for. Don -----Original Message----- From: Claudia Milz [mailto:cmilz@Mi*.ED*] Sent: Friday, March 10, 2000 8:07 PM To: techdiver@aquanaut.com Subject: Is there a thing like inofficial training? was Re: Bondage Wings Just kicking off a discussion - A diver with "intro to cave" cert is scootering back in a cave, doubles on. This is not covered with his formal training. For what he was doing, he would have needed cave3 with GUE, or a scooter specialty on top of full cave. True, this is far away from each other. He could have just gotten the intro cert, average talented diver, *wrong gear*, average fitness, and the panicking hints that there was a huge lack of experience and therefore, an inability to make the right decisions (at that point, it was too late to find out that some dives are not so easy). But indeed, the lack of the right cert doesn't tell you a whole lot. Ehem, how many people have all the formal training they would officially need for their diving? I.e. a PADI diver without a "deep diver" cert isn't supposed to go deeper than 100'/30m. Which is a very good idea regarding narcosis. But who sticks to that? It is more than common practice to dive deeper than 60'/18m after the open water training. The chick (it really was one) with the poorest health who barely made it through the PADI exam (!!!) went to the Red Sea the weekend afterwards and did 100'+ dives. Another girl had made her cert on vacation and died on her 6th dive in cold low viz water, 110' deep. Maybe people are in general more careful when it comes to technical, esp. cave diving. But, some people find technical training overly expensive and play around with gear, deco and whatever without any clue. This is stupid to say the least, but it seems to be accepted, as long as nothing happens. So we have 3 cases: a) formal training first, dives to gain experience b) S#!+ on training c) informal training To make a long story short, how is c) regarded in the community? The prospective student shows the talent, mindset, etc, and knows his gear. Now an experienced diver *trains* him. The student is very good, doesn't have a problem, maybe shortcuts a bit. What if 1) something does happen on an 'inofficial' dive, even if formal training wouldn't have made a big difference. 2) everything's fine, the former student wants to do dives like this scooter dive in a cave, has knowledge and ability and - there are people who wouldn't let him, since he lacks the cert. What does the list think of liabilities and the moral responsibilities here? Thanks, and have a great weekend. Claudia > Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 17:40:06 -0600 > To: cavers@ca*.co* > From: Grady Richardson <grichardson@wo*.at*.ne*> > Subject: Re: Bondage Wings > Like Dan and Lance and George said, it wasn't the bondage wings or > scootering that did the guy in, it was the mind set that did him in. The > wings and the scooter were the outward appearances of his attitude. > > They were going "too far, too fast". They were taking giant strides with > their experiance instead of small incrimental steps. This goes back to mind > set and attitude. > > Divers are taught in OW1 to dive within their limits (read training).Their > mind set allowed them dive way beyind their training. If they had more > experiance, maybe they wouldn't have been in such a situation in the first > place. > > Grady > > > > > > > > -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'. -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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