Off to the Red Sea in a week. Don't scuba (can't fit in another hobby/obsession!) but love to snorkel
I wouldnt say there is a real difference in the quality of qualified PADI and BSAC divers who have been trained PROPERLY. As regards PADI students being 'rushed through', this should not happen under any circumstances. ive taught a PADI 5* centres in the UK and the UAE. If a student required additional support they always got it. In my personal experience the UK dive centres trained to the highest standards ive ever witnessed. ive also helped out at a centre in San Diego and one in Hawaii.. They were very good, but not quite as belt and braces as the UK centres. if a student is struggling or slower, then we ALWAYS used to give them additional support, training or time..without exception. Ive personally NEVER signed off any student unless i was 100% confident in their abilites..As an Instructor, one has to keep the students record for 7 years. It is your arse on the line if a former student gets into trouble. This never happened to me because i i demanded the highest standards and would go on and on about buoyancy, checking air, maintaining safe diving practices etc..but we all make mistakes. I used to take great pride in my buoyancy control, and one of my tricks was to sit in mid water like bloody buddha watching students...this motivated the students to get better. i did this because i was lucky enough to have some incredible instructors, one of whom was an ex Navy diver with more qualifications than you could wave a shitty stick at...i wanted to be as good as these guys.. Teach by example. A former dive pal of mine lost his brother at Stoney..he died in the hydro box at 30m...why? because he de-kitted and pissed about, got trapped and drowned. he was about 25...He was also a BSAC diver...Does this mean BSAC teach shoddy diving practices? Certainly not..it was a moment of madness and a lack of discipline that cost him his life. He could have been a PADI diver, CMAS or anything else... In my view, British based schools are the best ive personally seen, irrespective of organisation. As for PADI, they wouldnt have grown into the largest organisation in the world if they were dangerous. But like every huge corporation, its all about making more money, which i dont like.
I'd agree with all that Rimp, but getting in the water involves others in the chain who may not be as competent , I'm talking of the dive shops/ service agents , bottle fillers, my incident involved me being stupid enough to rely on someone else's expertise. If your interested here it is. I decided to become a safer diver for myself as I dived on my own, so I thought I'd invest in an octopus set up, thinking a back up reg will be a good idea, I had a spare Poseidon reg so I took it to a dive shop authorised to service it (it hadn't been used for a few years . Anyhow they didn't do a proper job resulting in me hitting the bottom , checking my contents gauge and finding it was headed to empty as I took my last breathe. After that I went safer and used a pony cyl. Set up by me . But to be honest my enthusiasm was already waning and I stopped diving not long after. I never dived in tropical waters , perhaps I should have to get the enjoyment and wonder back. I suppose it's a bit like motorcycling there are good and bad in all service industries
I think that there is a great amount of willy-waving amongst male dive enthusiasts. Like motorcycling, it quickly seems to be about individual performance instead of what is could be - a means to explore the fantastic life beneath the ocean surface. I appreciate people's skill and experience, but certainly, in tropical waters there is so much to see in the first 30m that there's barely any point in diving much deeper. Tropical waters may just be too "easy" for committed divers, but I'd sooner spend my time looking at the abundance of life on the reef, than diving in zero viz hoping to see something interesting. I'd recommend the Maldives to anyone who likes diving. The light, the visibility and corals and fish are just staggering. And if you choose the right island, you having got the contents of 5 dive boats trying to dive on your head.
ive never done tech diving..i just never got round to it, and its very equipment intensive. Im dyscalculic so i could never get my head around the numbers. Pete, i understand your reservations about relying on others, i guess its a bit like parachute jumping..would you let anyone else pack your chute? Ive never used Poseidon regs, although i do have a Poseidon Unisuit and BCD (cant remember which model)..but i recall a lot of the tecchie guys used Poseidon regs and they were reknowned for being extremely sensitive to set up and conditions. I stuck with Mares as they werent quite as fussy. Re tropical diving..if i had to make a choice it would be tropical diving first and foremost because its so relaxing, but most of the earth is open ocean....wreck diving, ice, caves etc arent all about who has got the hairiest arse, or 'willy waving' as Glidd puts it...its just another unique environment...If it can all be done within 30m then im all for it..id certainly love to go to micronesia or Thailand and experience some of those sites... Tropical diving is one of a plethora of environments. To want to dive other sites, or if one prefers more challenging dives for their own sake, thats up to the diver..for me, the skills acquired are a means to an end. If i was very interested in diving on a particular wreck say, id want to research the history of the ship etc and if i didnt have the expertise to dive that site, then i would get additional training. The tecchie guys like the ex Navy Instructor i mentioned had done tropical diving to death and obviously wanted to go to the next level, same as anything else really. For me, im not really that interested in going down with 27 stone of cylinders just to have 10 minutes bottom time @100m, then spend hours hanging on a deco line looking at my watch until its time to surface. So, if it comes down it, im quite content to swim about with the turtles and pretty fish in a shortie and not have to bother. To each his own and all that.
Cave diving was just a way to get further into the cave system I was exploring in the hope that at some point I'd be able to surface in a new passage and know that nobody had ever been there before. There aren't many places left on this planet where you can easily indulge yourself in this way yet if you're a skinny bastard like me and can switch your mind off to certain aspects of the sport cave diving will always offer the opportunity. The only other ways to find new passage in caves are to go for risky climbs wearing welly boots or to go for the 'chemical' option and blow away blockages such as boulder chokes but getting hold of explosives isn't that easy these days and once you've used them there's a chance that the blockage will be so unstable that you're likely to end up wearing 100 tons of loose rock the first time you try to get through
That's really why I got into mixed gas closed circuit. Loads of bottom time with optimum ppO2 throughout the dive for a nice clear head and minimum deco. Aside from the rebreather you just needed a side-slung seven for bailout and your Argon suit inflation gas. With an integrated computer the thing flew itself and you could just get on with the dive. You had to watch out for the CO2 though - not filling and loading the scrubber canister absolutely 100% properly could (literally) be lethal under certain circumstances (e.g. inverted). I gave up technical diving when the kids got to the age where it became difficult to do it a lot. I'd lost a few friends and had helicopter rides to the pot a couple of times myself, and to my mind it is just too risky unless you are doing it all the time to keep the skills honed. I still enjoy the odd bimble in warm shallow waters though. Once a diver, always a diver ... bit like bikers really
great post Dave. Tech diving appealed in terms of venturing to the great unexplored. When i was in the scene i knew some guys like you on rebreathers/trimix etc who'd had some simply unbelievable dives...now with the advent of gopro cameras and such like its even more tempting. As you said though, tech diving is something you really MUST keep pin sharp on, and now, at my age ive still got the bottle but not the commitment or the contacts. Also the risks, rather like base jumping can be monumental..you cant just kick for the surface and hope. Its safe when done correctly, but if theres an accident, even when the dive has been meticulously planned if often ends in death and thats a risk im not prepared to take. Thing is, now ive been thinking about it again, and dug out some of my kit, its making my itch to get back in the water. Id need to sign up again with PADI and renew my cert etc, then ive got to try and find a club and do some pool practice to sort my sh1t out..thing is, i dont fancy doing any more freshwater diving..i well and truly kicked the arse out of it...and i'll be buggered if i can find my dive log and dive tables etc...
Hehe ,pool practise , I used to hate that especially clearing the mask , I'd do it naturally in the ocean but found it awkward in the pool, why I don't know, also the de-tanking and sharing regs, buddy breathing I think, then there was the navigation at the local park walking around with a compass like a boy scout. Brilliant really and I'm pleased I've ticked that off the bucket list. I know with BSAC we had to have a chest xray as well , do they insist on that at PADI.
I can't remember if it was BSAC or CDG training where I had to kit up underwater while wearing a blacked out mask but I suspect it was the latter because they were sadistic bastards.
No, BSAC do (did) black mask training too. Ditch and receive, foreign rigs, shared air, assisted ascents, search techniques, life saving dragging bodies out of the water whilst de-kitting, mouth to mouth whilst towing, continued mouth to mouth and heart massage until relieved.............
Im kicking around the idea of renewing with PADI and getting back into teaching status. The medical is very thorough but ive never had a chest x-ray..i wonder if my spinal surgery would be a problem(?)... All of the above 'harrassment training' is done on the higher lever PADI courses (Divemaster etc), although no black mask..bit pointless that one, just close your eyes... This gets more intense when you train for the IE (Instructors Exam), because the friends you made on the intensive course take great pleasure in trying to fk you up at every opportunity so air gets turned off and all sorts..but no one is downright dangerous or stupid. By the time i qualified as an instructor i could swap kit with my dive buddy whilst buddy breathing etc completely on auto pilot. id probably make a right balls of it if i tried that now. We used to practice these skills all the time, even in open water wearing drysuits..It was great when all my dive buddies were at the same level of proficiency...it makes you much more relaxed and confident.
The chest x-ray was I believe to check the lungs , probably to see if you were more susceptible to embolisms. Could be wrong though as it was 20 plus years ago
I hadn't been in water for years (14 +yrs) but dived with my 11yr & 14 Yr old in Maldives this year. Was fantastic to watch kids take to it so easily, lots of turtles, octopus & sharks to see. Even did a night dive without kids, really nice to be in warm water after mainly drysuit stuff on South Coast back in the day. Worked a bit as divemaster in my youth, got instructors ticket but only really hearded crazy Russian on try dives in Tenerife for 6 months. Think I'm going to put kids through openwater as birthday/Christmas presents, figure experiences are better than electrical crap they normally ask for.
The problems I use to see in UK with tech divers on South Coast was age. They where often in the late 40s to 60s range & diving using calculations/computers/gear designed for 25yr old super fit military divers, not overweight middle aged desk jockeys.
Did it years ago almost every weekend in The Red Sea when I was in Saudi. BSAC for me. Loved it, fun days.
I moved (1981) to the small Canary island La Palma as a young lad with my parents, at that time it didn’t exit much to do there, just football, tennis, smoke pots and curvy roads and all that rounded of the sea, So I begun making apnea and harpoon spearfishing there and later around the world, now days I don’t fish so much, I love going feeling the freedom with the nature being part of it. I will never live far away from the coast!
