Training and Standards

Oh boy are you in for an earful.... although I suspect we agree pretty much already!

I believe this is true in general when it comes to diving.

But in this specific instance, most certainly so.

One of the most offensive parts of this in the context of rebreathers is how all these classes are unit-specific.

Its a "Megalodon CCR" certification, not a "CCR" cert, and is worth exactly zero if you decide you'd like a Titan, Inspiration, Prism, or O2ptima! The class is tied to the hardware, and to specific hardware besides.

For instance, there is no such thing as a card for a Megalodon with the new Shearwater controller. The factory doesn't make that configuration; as such, there is no cert for it. Ditto if you take a KISS and put a setpoint controller in it. Or if you replace the Inspiration electronics with the Hammerhead. Or if you build your OWN electronics!

This is, quite honestly, insane.

First principles here: There should be no cards required at all. That doesn't mean that it should not be recommended that you learn - quite to the contrary - but how you learn should be entirely up to you. After all, its your ass down there.

How many of us have seen someone with a fistful of cards who can't dive worth crap? I have - at all levels of diving, including cave and wreck penetration. How many people have gotten themselves killed by violating basic safety guidelines, yet they knew what they were? A bunch.

Cave diving is cave diving. Wreck diving is wreck diving. Is there really a difference in bail scenarios, for example, between CCR and OC? Hell no! If you're 2000' back in a cave you either have enough gas to get out if your "primary" system (whatever that may be) fails or you die. This is in no way different if your "primary gas" consists of doubles with an isolator, a sidemount set of bottles or a CCR! Either way, if you have a failure you either brought a way to keep breathing or can protect enough of what you started with to get out or Darwin claims another one.

This is basic overhead stuff. If you're diving a CCR then you need enough gas to get your own sorry butt out of there if your CCR fails. This means either a bailout rebreather or OC stage(s).

The DPV nonsense is the same sort of game-playing. There is no magic to using a DPV. Gas planning isn't any more complicated - the numbers are DIFFERENT, but its not "more complex." How about you do a few dives with the DPV progressively going in and coming out with it stowed, figuring out your consumption when done that way, before you go blasting 5,000' upstream? As for dealing with a runaway and towing a partner, gee, do you think you might want to practice that (and your trim!) in open water first? This is complicated? I think not. (Yes, I dive with a DPV, and no, I don't have a card for it.) How'd I do it? Exactly that way. I didn't stick my head in a hole with a DPV until I was able to run along the surface of a wreck at a foot or two off the deck with a video camera in the other hand and neither hit anything or stir up a silt cloud behind me. When I could do that consistently in open water, THEN I was comfortable poking my head a short distance inside a hole with one, then swimming out, looking at my gas requirements to do so (then doubling them to cover being wanked if things went sideways for real.) And so on.

So how'd we end up here?

Its your fault. Your meaning collectively - not individually. And to some extent its mine as well, even though I'm the poster child (it would appear) of the "anti-card" crowd - simply because I have some.

What's worse is that we (collectively again) keep painting ourselves into a corner by accepting this paradigm. We believe the bullship that you need a card to dive (you used to be able to buy gear out of the Sears Catalog and still can from Leisurepro, including compressors - no card required!) We then believe the bullship that you need a card for Nitrox, "advanced" open water, "rescue" (one of the biggest jokes of a class I've ever had the "pleasure" of taking) cavern, "deco procedures", etc. The list goes on.

What was no card (read Sheck's Blue Book and find someone to mentor you, learn progressively, etc) has turned into FOUR REQUIRED classes. Cavern/Intro/Apprentice/Full. WTF?! Then you add to that Deco Procedures, Normoxic and Advanced Trimix! That's seven classes, just to be able to optimize your decompression and gas selection, then go dive in a cave! Oh, and you "can't" use your DPV yet.

That, at roughly $500 per class, could easily be four thousand dollars worth of classes - and that assumes you've already learned how to dive!

In the CCR world its worse. You have each class that's unit specific, so if you buy a new unit you get to start over.

There its $1500 per, more or less, and there are three - Mod 1 (air), Mod 2 (normoxic) and Mod 3 (hypoxic dil). Mod 1 is a class that shouldn't exist at all unless it has a sixty foot depth limit, because there is simply no argument for not running 21/35 in the diluent tank of a rebreather on any dive - its cheap as hell on a Rebreather, it can be dove on an air table, its easier to breathe and in the "air diving" range its non-narcotic.

So you spend your $4,500, PLUS you then have to take a "Cave CCR" class, and suddenly you've got $6,000 worth of training! That's damn close to what an O2ptima costs "bare", its more than a KISS, and its more than virtually all second-hand units you might buy.

If you decide you don't like the Meg, you get to do it all over again for a second unit! And a third, and fourth, and......

Gee, that's a damn nice racket!

But it gets better! Not all that long ago I did a nice scooter dive with a guy who I like. It wasn't anything complex; it was his first dive in a particular place, so we did a nice leisurely dive up the mainline, breathing only a (single) stage and reserving ALL backgas. Very conservative, turned and came out. Great experience.

Not long after, he decided to "go pro." Suddenly he can't dive with my any more if I use my DPV, because I don't have a DPV card. His agency's rules say that he CANNOT dive with me without risking his pro rating, EVEN IF HE IS DOING IT ON HIS OWN TIME AND NOT IN ANY INSTRUCTIONAL ROLE! What sort of bullship is that? He's now PROHIBITED from providing (if he is willing to) mentoring beyond someone's formal training level? Oh boy that's rich - now those who proffer themselves as "professionals" are barred from doing it any other way than for money!

You know what we call someone who only does it for money, right? That would be the common name for the oldest profession on earth.

What about the claim that "its for the good of the sport"? Well, let's look at that for a minute.

Diving is a uniquely individual risk. Its obvious to anyone with more than two working neurons in their head that we're not meant to live underwater. We have lungs instead of gills, for openers. So we strap on anywhere from 40 to well north of 100lbs of crap to go where God never intended us to.

Is it not freaking obvious that if anything goes wrong with that stuff your life expectancy could be as short as four minutes? I think so. Ok, end part 1.

Now, part 2. "Its bad for the sport". How? Someone "has to" come recover my dead ass? Why? Is that not voluntary? It sure is! David Shaw didn't have to go to 1000 feet to rescue the dead diver down there. He decided to go of his own free will, just like the dead guy originally had decided to go in that hole of HIS own free will. Nobody makes anyone else get in the water. Getting the picture yet? This risk is uniquely personal!

Second, you cannot put forward a public policy that says "oh we can make this non-dangerous" and then when you fail blame people for not being careful enough. The truth is as above - this is a damn dangerous thing to do. Period! Its like climbing mountains - screw up, you die. Period. But - so what? The proper "face" to put on this for the public is that (1) we choose of our own free will to get in the water, [2] we know its dangerous to do so and if something goes wrong we either sort it out or die, and [3) we, of sound mind, choose to go anyway - now leave us the hell alone!

Take that position and suddenly a dead diver is no different than someone who eats at McDonalds every day for 20 years, "supersizes" themselves and has a heart attack. You decide to eat 4,365 quarter pounders with cheese, you make yourself into a 400lb pig and now you're dead. Same with smoking tobacco. You have the ABSOLUTE RIGHT to make these choices AND you have the right to demand to be left the hell alone!

How'd we get where we are today in diving?

We (collectively) allowed it.

We allowed the incremental gamesmanship. We allowed agencies to decree a "separate card" for Nitrox. We allowed a separate card for "advanced" open water, and the dumbing down of the original OW curriculum (look at what the YMCA used to teach for "open water" and how long it used to take!) We allowed separate classes (FOUR, no less!) for cave diving. We allowed Trimix to be declared a "voodoo gas" and a separate card set developed for that.

And now what have we sown for our lack of vision? An industry that has managed to actually get the force of LAW behind some of their bullship. Try to dive Peacock solo. You can get arrested! Ditto if you don't have the "right card." Yet there is zero evidence that solo diving is actually more dangerous than buddy diving, and plenty of evidence that is either inconclusive or goes the other way! (What is clearly dangerous is thinking you have a buddy when in fact you really don't!) You will get thrown out of Ginnie for trying to dive doubles on an Intro card - even though many of us (myself included) took the class in doubles and had been diving them for an extended period of time up front, and never mind that not all agency cards prohibit their use (TDI, for example, does not.) We have agencies that push for private owners of land to restrict access and require proof of training and waivers, when in fact in Florida it is THE LAW that you cannot sue - period - for an accident that happens while you are on private (or public) land so long as you were not charged an admission fee (ref: FAC 373.1395 and FS 375.251)

I've had this discussion with a major technical agency. I was told, off the record, that the reason that agencies exist and issue cards is to cover the ass of the instructors. This didn't come from conjecture - it was the blunt, no-bull assessment of the President of an actual technical diving agency!

So - we have agencies lying to landowners in order to promote the instructors ability to make money. We have agencies that exist for the explicit purpose of giving instructors cover. We have an industry of agencies and instructors that we as divers have enabled to exist and grow so that they can retroactively impose more and more restrictions on us and pick our pockets to meet ever-tightening constraints, and what's worse, we've actually allowed some of this to bleed down into actual "we'll draw guns and shoot" LAWS!

Can we fix it?

You betcha.

A few years ago I declared war on the "no parts" policies for open circuit gear. I found that there was actually nothing in the dealer agreements that prohibited parts sales over the counter. It was nothing other than a way to force people to pony up for labor charges every year! Nice, eh? But who takes your place and dies for you when the shop screws up the reg rebuild? Nobody! Anyone ever had a rental reg that breathed like a firehose? I have. You think I want that very same shop screwing with my gear? I think not!

Anyway, that war has basically been won. There are now multiple brands and options available for parts. To a large degree, the price-fixing war (which I also took on) has basically been won too.

I built the K1, in part, to prove that there is an option available at a reasonable cost to those who are tired of being bent over the table. Reproducing the loop is a trivial exercise - you can build one without an oxygen controller and displays for less than $2,000, including a BOV, or $1,500 if you're satisfied with a "regular" DSV. That's buying all the "dive stuff" absolutely at retail (manual adds, drysuit OPV, Nielsen Sessions latches, etc) and it requires no special tooling - not even a drill press, although that makes it easier.

Now add the O2 system of your choice. 3 sensors + display + KISS-style valve (from Hydrogom) = under $1,000 more. You're done and out the door for under $3,000 (plus regs, backplate, wing, etc) That's quantity one.

Build it, test it on the couch, test it AGAIN in the pool, test it AGAIN in shallow water, KNOW how it works because you put the fool thing together.

Now give the finger to the industry.

If we had even a small percentage of people who did this, and we pulled up in our trucks to Ginnie and when told "sorry, no card no dive" we said "F* you, we'll go to Little River instead!" - or even better - go rent a pontoon boat, pull up in the river run (this is perfectly legal although Ginnie wishes it wasn't), drop an anchor and dive away - while flipping the bird to their security staff - the problem would disappear. If Connie gets told to shove it a few times and suddenly there are 10 pontoons anchored in the run full of divers - all with scooters and no DPV cards - you can bet her attitude would change in a big damn hurry. Hell, she might decide to actually do something about the rampant gear theft problem there instead of worrying about what sort of wristband you have on!

Even better, tell Connie you're going to drive up to Marianna. Bring a SMALL pontoon boat or rent one of Edd's. Guess what? You have access to caves that cannot be controlled because they are on navigable water (just like Ginnie is if you come by boat) and the people there want you around. No card, no problem. And again - tell Ginnie-cum-laude where you are going and why, do it in writing, and CC the Gilchrist County Commission - tell 'em you're taking YOUR tourist money where someone appreciates it.

Then tell the NACD and NSS/CDS to stuff it. I refused to renew my NSS/CDS membership a couple of years ago over exactly this sort of hypocrisy.

(Oh, by the way, Hole In the Wall and Twin are easily two of the nicer caves I've dove, and if you swim under the fence - legal provided you do not tie up your boat to the dock or set foot on land - you can get into Jackson Blue without any card-checking nonsense either - arguably far nicer than Ginnie will ever be! If you have any form of overhead card - Intro or better - you can go by the sheriff's office, pay $25, get a key and dive Jackson Blue from land - no BS, no hassles, just pay 'yer money and have a good time.)

If the shops start demanding cards down there to get the fills you want (they've so far left me alone) then cart a couple of full "80s" and a transfill whip, and just get air tops. Screw 'em. If you were to get together with your buddies and buy a compressor, you can give the finger to your dive store entirely. Buy a boat between three or four of you - for many areas like South Florida it doesn't have to be a BIG or EXPENSIVE boat - and you can give the finger to the charter guys TOO. Tell your friends and invite them out on your PRIVATE vessel - no cards required. You think this is not cost-effective? Nonsense - at $100/trip it sure as hell is in a hurry! Dive 20 times in a year and that's $2,000. Get three or four guys together on a boat and $5k will do the job for a small older vessel that's quite capable. Bingo - in one year you paid for it, and from then on you keep the money in YOUR pocket. Make damn sure you tell the local shops WHY you're doing it too, so they know EXACTLY how much of your money they're NOT getting.

Organize groups of divers and, effectively, initiate a boycott. Take the business where its wanted and give the finger to those who desire to pick your pocket. Make damn sure you carbon the County Commissions and Tourism Bureaus while you're at it too, so they know you're not only doing it but encouraging others to as well.

Next, tell the manufacturers you will not buy until they require only one sort of card to make your purchase - and that card has numbers on it, not agency names. Tell the boat operators you'll dive off a friend's boat - or your own - instead of theirs until they stop supporting this crap.

All the arguments about "liability" are nonsense. There are well-understood ways for a dive boat operator, for example, to make themselves immune from judgment and thus a VERY unattractive lawsuit target. Nobody sues if there's no chance of collecting - you have to pay your lawyer to file and press it in that case, and that ain't what drives the system! As soon as there's a few million in insurance then there's a million (or few) reasons to sue.

The power is, in fact, ours.

We ceded it originally but we can take it back. Starve the monster of money and it'll suddenly get far more reasonable. Classes will become suggested instead of required. Businesses will require waivers (and there's no problem with them either), but nothing more. Around Florida, at least, this is more than good enough - dive waivers are absolutely enforceable. Other jurisdictions that want people to actually come and dive can either conform or lose. WE hold the power - WE have the wallets.

The only question is whether or not we care enough to do something about this or whether we want to continue to be raped at will.

When training becomes voluntary then and only then will the options become rational both in suggested "requirements" and pricing.

Only by cutting the legs out from under the "required" crowd can this problem be solved.

With all due respect, you should be blaming the legal sharks and the society that produced them, not divers frustrated at having to pay thousands of dollars for often redundant training.

Once more I am not against proper education nor certification but I hate having to pay for a full program when all I want is to show I'm proficient at a certain level.

I hope this will be picked up in a positive fashion as this is really a request for flexibility...
For the previously mentioned example I'd say: Take the desired equipment into the environment of your choice under supervision of a qualified instructor until he think's your good so as to obtain the required c-cards. It's not like you need any real training do you?

Let it be clear that real instruction is needed in some cases, in other cases however it is just validation. As long as instruction level costs are involved in what should be a simple validation then people will get the feeling they get ripped off. Simple as that...

I think some things can be done in all fairness but the will to do it apparantly lacks...
I mean IANTD offers several shortcuts in the program for those that are qualified in another way. (The instructor will decide who and what he'll accept (no problem with that))

Imho for a diver that is really proficient in some discipline but lack certification should be easy to get certified in a fraction of the time. It's just the course price that can't seem to go down

One entry level example (purely fictive).... When I'm OC qualified as Advanced Recreational Tx diver (48m/15min acc deco limits) and ANDI L2 KISS certified and want to become ANDI L3 CCR (normoxic Tx and max depth 50m and deco ceiling max=9m or something along that lines)
Then I think you could safely state that I should have covered all the theory... To verify that 1 exam taking 1hours ?

Then IMO I need to demonstrate my planning skills and perform the drills (that I have practised before)... When I'm really really proficient i can do that in 1 dive can't I?
All in all that's 8 hours plus some expenses for the cert organisation and the instructor payment for materials...

Then isn't 750€ a rip-off for just this validation excercise? (If you think it's not then I'll consider taking up another career path )

I think so and decided to go back to IANTD and an instructor willing to do a minimum program at a minimum fee....
Organisations not offering this degree of flexibility I will avoid whenever I can.

Once more I am not against proper education nor certification but I hate having to pay for a full program when all I want is to show I'm proficient at a certain level.

I hope this will be picked up in a positive fashion as this is really a request for flexibility...
For the previously mentioned example I'd say: Take the desired equipment into the environment of your choice under supervision of a qualified instructor until he think's your good so as to obtain the required c-cards. It's not like you need any real training do you?

...One of my instructors has said that the further you get along the path the less you actually learn and it becomes more of a validation that you've 'achieved' than it is a class for learning new stuff. On this I agree.