Divers React to How do you know if your instructor cheated you?
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- Опубликовано: 27 июн 2024
- We think this is an important question to answer, but are "easily available training standards" the right answer?
Original video by @DiversReady: • Did your Instructor ch...
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Definitely agree with James that agency standards should be publicly viewable. No account needed, no writing a PR office.
Standards show how the agency thinks. Sure, sharing them can be uncomfortable but so is publishing your tax filings as a company. It's important to have accountability.
I also want to be sure the course fits my needs and what to expect from the training. An outline could do that but often isn't detailed enough.
Most of my tech instructors provided a ton of documentation incl standards before the course. My earlier, non tech, instructors rarely did.
I know this is a little old but I totally agree with you. The point of the Divers Ready video wasn't necessarily to just see the standards just to see them. It was to see them so you could verify that 1, the agency meets your needs and 2, your instructor is teaching you properly.
You only talked about novice or non-divers "shopping" for courses. But it's not only a topic for new divers. I recently was looking at advanced nitrox and decompression procedures courses. And it is almost impossible to compare the course content of different agencies, because only very few publish detailed course content and/or standards. I think transparency can only be beneficial.
Completely agree. It was a quite bad video imo
I totally agree with this. When you get into more technical and complicated courses, knowing what skills to brush up on and practice is extremely helpful as well.
Diving courses are really weird in a lot of ways. You go for a weekend and get taught a skill you may have never done before, then you’re immediately tested on it. You don’t get the time to practice and master that skill a lot of the time.
The problem I have with this notion of "choose the instructor, not the diving agency" is that prospective, new divers who know nothing about diving cannot assess instructors. How will they tell between a good instructor and a mediocre one? Furthermore, when you look at reviews for dive shops with 4+ stars on Trip Advisor and other sites, most reviews are from brand-new divers or tourists who took a discovered scuba class, so how can you expect to choose the right dive shop, let alone the right instructor?
PADI prides itself on saying they are "the way the world learns to dive." Still, it conveniently excludes that if you want to learn correctly and safely, you must do all this research, do background checks on the instructor, and get several personal references... People see PADI, and they immediately relate it to scuba diving. They may even think, "This shop says , so it must be trustworthy!"
Agencies should hold themselves and their instructors to a much higher standard than the bare minimum and ensure high-quality training is conducted rather than entirely leaving it up to the instructors. Improving upon the bare minimum standards and making those public is a good first step
Logically, your reasoning is sound. However, from everything I've experienced in only about 3 years of diving, your best gauge of curriculum quality really is the dive shop, or even, the individual instructor. Most of the standards are very similar and interchangeable between the agencies: I've been taught through PADI, NAUI, and SSI, and I'll say that these acronyms had little to no impact on the real qualities of the skills learned.
In regards to: How will they choose? Similar to how you choose a car mechanic, I guess. 😆 Good instructors/shops develop positive word-of-mouth, and, to some degree, yelp/social media presence. For example, I know shops that have good deals on gear&gas rentals, but I would never take their classes, and vice-versa.
Just like how a good transmission guy isn't regulated by the state, neither is a good scuba instructor. It is true, if you go in 100% blind, you may well get a grifter or unskilled instructor. Even the worst instructors, though, have to at least pretend to follow the agencys' curriculums.
further more when you are doing it in another country, you have no idea who your instructor will be until you show up
20:00 when I picked my college course, I was able to review the syllabus, time schedule, test schedule, exam schedule, from my highschools computer lab, 20+ years later, if I'm not able to do the same for the same thing - a paid course with exacting expectations, where they have no worry of not being profitable (you still have to get certified through one of them), if anything it'd make them potentially more profitable as some people /waves who don't do the equivalent of impulse purchasing, would like to 'know before you buy'.
Exactly
Maybe another way of looking at this “the course standards should be accessible prior to buying the course” question is that students should know what standards they must meet prior to buying a course so that there are no surprises. It’s possible that a prospective student could read through a course’s standards and decide they are not comfortable with the requirements or that they are not yet ready to pursue the course based on what they will be expected to do.
We had someone in our OW course who didn’t know that during the confined water portion that they would have to experience an out of air situation. Despite the instructor explaining how the air would be turned off but that they would be keeping their hand on the valve to turn it back on immediately after, the student had a panic attack and ultimately quit the course.
There's also a case for not knowing until you try. The course is designed to build up skills. That said if someone reads up about an out of air exercise and decides to quit, that's the right move. Not everyone is cut out to be a scuba diver.
@@ppo2424there's won't know until you try, and there's being thrown into it with little notice.
That's a tough one. It's not a REAL out-of-air situation, though. And I would assume in an OW scuba course I would be tought or told what it feels like to be low on air (without actually being low on air) . That seems like a no-brainer for me.
@@FeliciaLim But people aren't thrown into it.
@@nickdubil90I’m just offering a direct example based on what I witnessed during my own OW course. The point wasn’t this specific skill-any particular one might cause any given newbie pause for concern-it’s the idea that knowing precisely what you can expect can be extremely helpful not only in deciding whether you’re up to the challenge, but also in scenarios like the one I witnessed. From what I understand, GUE standards are openly available; a lot of “experienced” divers initially think they can skip the GUE Fundamentals course and figure they’ll take whatever the course is in the sequence-until they read the standards for Fundies and realize their skills aren’t quite up to the standards. This is not to provoke any sort of argument regarding GUE, it’s just another example where knowing the standards before purchasing a course can be helpful.
18yo with 50 dives can become an instructor?? That’s a liability for agencies wouldn’t you think.
to be fair, you can also have someone who has 500+ dives all in a 20' quarry in his back yard where he crashes to the bottom, crawls around for 15 mins, then pops back up.....# of dives alone is a really poor indicator of competence.
@@mcameron6031I'll disagree with that, it certainly not a perfect measurement, but it generally gives a good idea.
More instructors means more certs, means more money. That's how they look at it. Experience is important like in any job. Personally I'd make it 100 dives in open water.
I am in a similar situation actually. Started diving in February (~ 4 months ago) and I absolutely love diving. Every weekend I am spending my time in one of the lakes and I do some after-work dives on top of that. I will complete Divemaster soon and could technically fulfill all the requirements and become an Instructor within a timespan of less than a year after having started diving. But it just feels wrong to me and if I was an OWD student and would ask my instructor how long he has been diving already I would expect an experience of at least 2 or 3 years, not something like 6 to 12 months.
Reminds me of Aviation where an 18 year old can go from zero to flight instructor in a year or less. Two years tops. Almost all of their actual flight time is with an instructor but since they passed a check ride they basically cramed for bingo bango they're teaching others to fly with amost no real experience themselves. Teaching in Aviation is the entry level job, not the purview of experienced professionals like it should be.
If woody signs a contract to follow Gus School standards, and then Gus says that woody is a five star instructor just because woody certifies 50 persons per day, then I think Gus School have some blame if some student gets hurt or dead.
Exactly, Dive facilities/Instructores are basicly franchises and the corporate office should be liabil for who they allow to own a franchise. Every single own of them have tools built into the contracts we all sign as dive professionals to suspend/remove/disenfranchise us if we violate standards but they never do. "Gull Dive of Missoula, its owners David & Jeannine Olson, instructors Debbie Snow and Seth Liston and PADI Worldwide"
"The standards are meaningless if your instructor is terrible"
Knowing the standards you're supposed to be taught is how you can identify a bad instructor or class, I am 10000% on his side that standards and what you can expect to learn should be provided.
And frankly, open water is so painfully basic that no wonder some people look at it and think it's a rip-off, the standards are intentionally as low as possible without requiring government intervention
I like him. I like the no BS attitude. I’d take a class from him but I don’t scuba dive 😂
I think he does OW training.
@@Navy1977 I’m sure he does. Should’ve clarified I don’t have any intention of learning anytime soon. But he seems cool- a little extreme maybe but very entertaining.
@@ost324 Got it, thanks for the clarification.
Oh crap!!! I'm underwater photography self certified. Do you think I should take the PADI class???????
I don’t know, did you look at the standards?
💜 Thank you Woody!
I absolutely love the pink shirt 🩷
I get that bashing the agencies isn't necessarily productive and fair, but I also think that James argument for lack of transparency in standards hasn't been properly countered in this reaction video. Granted, the instructor plays a key role in the success of the class, but standards matter and are an essential contribution to keep up the quality and safety of Scuba diving in my opinion.
I agree this video feels more like they want to bash on James for something but they fell short.
Fully agree.
SDI deserves credit for making standards easily accessible, but listing them without context is meaningless for new divers. It's like giving a beginner in football a rule book and expecting them to fully comprehend it-it's impossible without understanding the reasoning behind it. Ultimately, gaining experience with a reputable instructor is more important than choosing the agency.
Exactly! Why do we think brand new students will not only understand what they’re doing (I.E. Imagine not being a diver and trying to understand and agree with “ESA”), but also compare standards between multiple agencies and have enough knowledge to pick “the best one”. Slim to none chance that happens. But even if it did, they can pick the agency and end up with a terrible instructor anyway! This is why choosing the instructor is more important than choosing the standards.
That's on the agencies for not making the standards clear and measurable.
@@FeliciaLim But what kind of students are going-in based on extensive review of the standards?
I started my scuba experience almost 3 years ago with my gf at the time, and the memory is still fresh. I just wanted to know: what, in general, will I be learning? Is there a physical requirement? How deep will I be able to dive to? Boat dive, shore dive, I wasn't even thinking about that, let alone drift diving and deep diving and all of the other modules offered by the agencies.
If I was looking at the standards before taking any classes, and those standards specified the difference between a neutral-buoyant swimming ascent vs an emergency buoyant ascent, I would only have a very general idea of what that could possibly mean in-practice.
I should add: it IS very important that all students know and can reference the standards during and after the class.
Not only are these good to know for the sake of review, but also to know if your instructor actually properly taught them to the class. Holding instructors accountable to the curriculum they teach is certainly important, for everyone's sake.
The only class I ever had an instructor fail a student was my deep-diving class. In this case, I think the student already knew before the end of the dive that this was the case. After being down at around 70-80ft, this student had a very hard time maintaining buoyancy at a safety stop. I, meanwhile, was fumbling with 7mil gloves trying to deploy a marker buoy 🫨 I did get it properly deployed, but it spun up and off my spool, after the instructor verified it at the shop, so he didn't hold it against me. 😂 I should probably find a better way to tie it off to the spool (it may have broken the line).
I'm curious what do you think is confusing about their standards that a nondriver wont understand?
Some instructors seemingly haven’t mastered the skills themselves.
Aka South Asia :'D All the open water I got from there have 0 skills in any strandards, they mostly can't even dive... Why is this still happening ?!
Standards should always get updated as we collect more data on the science of Diving. When I got my PADI cert in 1984 we used Navy Dive Tables and ascended at 60 feet/Min....today's tables and 30 ft/min standard are far more appropriate not just for OW but for divers at all levels. As for liability - Instructor Trainers also have exposure because they are the ones certifying an instructor is qualified to follow the standards.
I got all the course standards, electronically, for the handful of agencies I'm interested in by asking for them. I used those standards to compare courses, prices, prerequisites, skills, limitations etc. to determine which courses I wanted to take from which agency. Pretty much settled on SSI, SDI/TDI. I also spent a lot of time talking with different instructors and developed my own short list of instructors I'd feel comfortable receiving training from. Your mileage may differ.
Another thing standards do is provide a CYA for the instructors and the certification agencies. If they are followed they can provide protection in the litigious world we live in for everyone involved.
GUE is one that he didn't cover. On their page where you can see the class descriptions, they also have a direct link to the standards.
Interesting!! I was wondering when you guys would react to one his videos.. He’s pretty blunt.. I like his approach (in general)
Blunt..? Idk I found it just scraping the ice and then turning into a.rant on how well he did things... I'll watch it again, bit I remember being very frustrated with the video, as I was expecting high level information that I could actually use in my dive master training. Well.. nope..
I got my open water and Nitrox through Naui using the same dive shop, with really great instructors who followed the course line by line. With me being a multi-rated skydiving instructor, It baffles me as to why scuba doesn’t take the same approach. There’s one governing body with skydiving, the USPA (United States Parachute Association). They are responsible for all instructor ratings once that candidate has completed the course for the rating desired from an examiner. This approach leaves examiners who make instructors the same course outline as it’s from a single governing body. When I am teaching students to skydive, I have one manual that has the requirements for that method of instruction. Where the student wishes to go tandem progression, Instructor Assisted Deployment, Static Line, or Accelerated Free Fall, it’s all in the Instructional Rating Manual, to include the First Jump Course (ground school). This keeps a standard across skydiving when it comes to training. Are there bad skydiving instructors? Sure. Do some omit, or pass students on to the next jump in training when they may not be fully ready? Sure, but to me, one set standard across the board is a better way of ensuring training standards are adhered to.
I'm a fan of the show, but I think Gus on this one was not seeing the forest through the trees. Gus and James had the same overall message - the quality of training a diver receives is based on the instructor giving the course. James is trying to advocate for the student - making sure the instructor is teaching the courses AT LEAST to the standards provided by the agencies. And, the agencies should be helping by making their standards 100% visible and easily found for all students so that instructors are, as much as possible, held to those standards even if the language of the standards makes it practically difficult.
Gus - I think you jumped to conclusions when you indicated that James is to blame for not reporting incidents that he's seen (you don't know that he didn't report them) and that sign-offs are a sufficient means to ensure a student is learning those skills (the paperwork is often a last-minute formality that the instructor just shows the student where to initial and sign without the student reading it).
Please either call or meet with James and sort this out. Thank you
I would also like to see that episode since i follow both of the channels for some time now. (and would like to see constructive conversation and not the "who is right" debate)
@@SMF36K Never happen just like we will never see the transcripts for the DAN episode.
I think that by knowing the standards in advance it might help people by working on their swimming?
The conversation about instructors being tied to shops who have course directors misses a huge point. In South Florida, there are a ton of people who are independent instructors who are getting found directly through word of mouth, shop referrals, charter referrals, etc. So there is a potential gap and I think is James' point...if I was "shopping" for an instructor through these other means could create a lot of inconsistent results because the validation is not there.
I think you kind of glossed over James entire point that the agencies shield themselves from liability by not providing the coarse standards
They do though. They may do it after you signed up for the class. But they always do.
@DIVETALK that's too much like picking between Door 1 or Door 2. But I choose instructors, not agencies so it doesn't matter to me
I don't understand why "standards" could different ... if they standards, by definition should be all the same.
about choosing instructors not agency for OWD is next to impossible (at least someone recommend to "future diver" instructor), rest of the people are "fished" on holidays / vacations by the most commercial agencies.
next steps of diving path more suitable to the statement - find good instructor not agency.
BTW would be great make video how to recognise good / right instructor for OWD (for someone completely new in to diving world)
I trained in the UK with BSAC and their courses run to ISO-standards. When I started, I was told I should have done PADI because it was easier. I think the agency part gets more complex. So I used to have a CMAS 4* card. This was great in Europe because dive shops generally recognised it, or if they didn't I probably didn't want to use their services. Their standards used to be open, so if someone looked at the CMAS website, they could see what their star system meant. That's now hidden behind logins. Hopefully a good dive shop should have a login or know their certification system, but it's extra hassle.
I agree with Woody that their are commercial issues, and running an organisation like CMAS costs money. But on the reciprocity side, I do thing agencies need to be more open so divers can just dive, rather than waiting for instructors or shops to fight their way though agency websites. I think competing agencies and commercial pressures do make things harder, or more confusing for divers than it needs to be.
Personally I'd be dubious as to wether students would bother reading all the standards. I'm not opposed to giving them to students though. Standards get broken or bent all the time. I'm more concerned about the lack of enforcement, its rare for an instructor to be dealt with strongly if they have been found to break standards.
Regarding getting certifications and having someone monitor those - I've personally went through a PADI wreck diving course with an instructor while being on a diving trip with him. The PADI wreck diving course says that its a minimum of 2 days of diving which entails multiple dives, surveying, following lines. In my case I went through 1) theory, 2) line skills on land, 3) 1 entry into a wreck by doing a tie off at the entrance and doing a very short entry and exit and 4) entering a wreck that had line with arrows set. This was all in scope of 1 day. In the last entering I decided to do what I know is a skill - following the guideline in zero visibility and getting to the exit. I did that on my own as I knew that the instructor is done with the training. I felt disappointed afterwards when reviewing other wreck diving courses on youtube and elsewhere. Suffice to say I don't dive with this instructor anymore but I've witnessed first hand an instructor that had 0 accountability about the standards that were taught.
Sadly no refund and if you want to retake the course you pay again. Or accept the cert and find another diver with that skill level and learn from them in hopes that they too didn’t have a crappy instructor.
I don't think it's about the agencies or the standards... I think it's about being able to verify if you have a good instructer/got a good education or not. Doesn't mean if you didn't do the swim test you got a bad deal, but you should have something you can fall back on in case you need it.. And then I don't understand why an agency would obscure that information. Ok for me that you have to sign up first, but it should be clearly stated when you take the course.
This.
As someone who's been diving for 15 years (CMAS 3* - Divemaster, SSI Extended range adv. nitrox/basic trimix)... I've seen a lot of instructors and have taken quite a few course. I do agree that course standards should be visible to all, regardless of if they make sense to a new diver or not. We are not talking about only basic open water, but all courses. Why? Because every potential course goer should know what he/she is entitled to receive in the course. What skills, how many dives, how many class hours etc, not in marketing jargon but in clear list and text.
I do agree wholeheartedly that it's not about the specific organization, but the instructor you have. Sadly, in many many cases, one doesn't get to choose much, especially early in the hobby. If you're lucky enough to live by the coast where there are plenty of centers, then yes. But for everyone else who is in mainland, especially if you're living in a smaller city, you might have only one club, and you have one or two people who are instructors. It's only later on, after diving for several years and meeting other folks, that you can say if you had a good one or a bad one. So just saying "pick a good one" is more easily said then done, especially for rookies. On the other hand, I do agree that even if you can check the standards, it's not gonna matter much if you end up with an instructor who cuts corners.
it is clear why they don't want you to know the requirements you need to meet to be certified before you actually purchase a course…. money, not sure if you guys are being honest with us there
I almost never sign up with a service or buy a product if the force me to sign up to an account to review it, and I never pay if I can't read what I get for my money. Transparency is always a good thing and withholding information is always in the service provider's/manufacture's interest, not the customer's. If their product are good there no reason to hide any information. It doesn't matter if I understand everything, or not.
“You might not find this video interesting if you haven’t gone through training”. I’ve never scuba dived a day in my life and have watched every single one of your videos. Love you guys!
and you are the taregt of this duo praying on people like yourself not having a clue
Same. :)
Have you watched the RUclips doc, “Dave: Not Coming Back. A Documentary?”
"should the agency be responsible for a instructor that does not follow standards?". Well that depends I would say, if the agency is sufficiently influencial and holds a big market share, then the answer may potentially be yes, because maybe they should never have offered that instructor their standards and paper work in the first place. At some point I would say you have social responsibility.
I agree that it seems like the dive agencies are all about money but it does come down to the instructor and how he teaches you. After that, you are responsible when you go diving. Great video.
To play devil's advocate, I think knowing the standards isn't necessarily about knowing the scuba jargon but knowing the main disqualifying factors. (Medical conditions, inability to swim, ear problems) Could be helpful for someone who doesn't yet scuba dive. For example if I have medical ear problems and don't understand that it may have consequences in my dive class I wouldn't want to pay $700 to show up for class at 8am to find out I'm not able to dive
Physicals are usually required before the class, especially for new to be divers.
James has ranted about bad instructors and self certification a number of times. You guys are probably on the same page with way more stuff than you disagree with. He just seems to be a bit more aggressive/assertive about his beliefs on camera and it can be a wee bit inflammatory at times. His channel is a wealth of great information about all levels of SCUBA training.
There is a conflict of interest. Not hard to tell that Divetalk guys became very defensive when it comes to SSI.
@@laod7192 I caught that as well.
GUE have the highest standard in Instructor Training. They are all just awesome.
Nah there are shitty GUE instructors, I will not name who, but apparently not all of them are awesome.
I like the weird cycle of saying it’s good because the WRSTC sets the standard and then the agencies go off that, and then it turns out the WRSTC is made up of agency executives.
Who are these people and who decided they were the right person to set the standard for everyone. Hell PADI is owned by a hedge fund.
All problems inherent in a self regulated industry. Is government oversight better?
Gus: If you're watching this you're probably one of those students.
Me: [Blushing] Gus called me a stud!!!
Great video!
Mate and i did our padi open water back in the 90s. Saw instructors not care about the swim. Pushing for us to do the advanced open water b4 we had even finished our open... Guess thats why the dive chain had the nickname "pro death". Only a handfull of those open now. And we kinda developed our skills on our own as we did our own thing.. love watching you two and james too. Keep up the good work guys 😁
In the Netherlands the swimming test is almost an insult to most people, essentially everyone in the Netherlands lears to swim from a very young age. If I tell my students to do the swimming test the parents sometimes ask why? They feel like it is a colossal waste of time, and feel like they should not be paying me to see their children swim. Truth be told, in the Dutch setting, I understand them. I always tell them that I'm legally required to do so, even though it is indeed kinda pointless for most people here. I literally call it "american paper work", they have a good laugh about it, nod and let me continue my briefing 😂
If you want to avoid the government regulating your industry, all agencies that provide certification should have their standards and procedures available without cost. It is a matter of transparency. The more transparent the agency the more trust can be placed in them by the general public. That is especially true in industries we're getting it wrong could result in the loss of life.
If they where regulated, they would all have to adhere to publically known set of rules defined in the regulation itself. They either adhere to all rules they same way or they fail to legally comply to a set of expectations. At that moment it's all up to the instructor and it ties back to their argument but in the opposite direction (in favor of regulation rather than keeping it unregulated) so it feels dishonest to see how they try to spin it their way.
After seeing you guys react to Audrey Mestre’s death… im not surprised at how lax the rules are. I know free diving and scuba diving are different, but the agencies AND instructors can still be sketchy.
love your content and have watched for years! just about to do my PADI OW course this summer on the 8th, keep it up guys :)
Another deep dive (pun intended) video. Most excellent! Another stellar episode, good sirs!
When I started my journey into Diving, I WANTED to KNOW that the Agecy/Instructor is being held ACCOUNTABLE for their adherence to the WRSTC!
"I wanted to make sure the "Candy" wasn't being made with fake ingredients."
I would really like a central clearing house that ALL certified Agencies/instructors with their current ratings are housed and searchable!
It's ABSOLUTELY infuriates me that sincere students, novices, and new divers have no way to ensure validity.
Respectfully, I'm not looking for a Nannie. I'm looking for responsible Quality Control.
We're talking about life support equipment after all.
Well my recent Naui class seemed like a joke. Im a first responder and we did more training about our fire helmet than my entire scuba class talked about any gear. We never even talked about the specific functions of the bcd which explains why multiple students rapidly ascended from 40 ft down. I ended up with MEBT before class even finished. Luckily, I know to treat the injury like the best lesson learned because now I know to teach myself and keep myself safe. For a hobby with such detrimental consequences, I was surprised how much was glossed over. Btw, this wasnt a mom and pop organization but a regionally well known training center. If my ear ever heals I may just pony up another $700 and take a class with someone who isnt “old school”
Personally, I'd argue that the jointly agreed standards should be published. In what universe is it EVER better to restrict knowledge. It has been remarked many times that there is no "scuba police". You can't stop people from doing stupid things. But giving people the knowledge they need to make better decisions is always good.
Also my certifications are through TDI/SDI and while I did not read the instructor standards for my open water course, I DID read them for subsequent courses.
Standards must be available for free to allow for educated choices. The argument against- people may abuse these to self-train- doesn’t hold up, since all kind of diving books can be freely purchased. Those who don’t publish their standards seem to wish to hide something or fear litigation. I am not aware that organizations which make their standards easily available suffer any drawbacks. On the contrary, they gain credibility. And yes, the individual instructor is the most important factor, but not the only one, since instructors are bound by the framework of the organization they are affiliated with.
Just to add: most of us are emphasizing the importance of the instructor. But for a newbie, this is hard. So starters will have in many cases to rely on info made available by training providers. And even if you don’t know anything about diving, you’ll be able to draw some conclusions about a program. The key issue is that most agencies have no thorough system in place to ensure their instructors deliver to the highest level. In this case, instructor choice could be left to the agency (like more demanding sports diving as provided by BSAC, CMAS and the DIR-based orgs or easy diving by others) and the personal style of an instructor. While I fully agree that diving needs to be profitable for those living of it professionally, the delivered service should also be professional. In diving, this is not always the case, to say the least…
Dry caver here. Though I’m not yet a diver, I still found this video interesting. Over the past couple years your videos have taught me a lot about diving, which makes it much easier to follow along on the more technical conversations.
I am in Georgia and want so bad to enroll in an open water course very soon. I so wish that I could have one of you as my instructor! The way you guys explain things makes so much sense to me and gets me so excited about getting involved in the amazing sport!
I wanna bring another view in:
Diving is actually pretty save. If you look at it, surprisingly few accidents happen in rec. scuba diving.
Tech and cave is different, but even their it`s - most deaths in tech diving happen in caves.
So the agencies can`t be that wrong, though they have plenty of flaws. In the end, they are a business. And want to make money.
But if you want to understand the quality, take a look on their instructors, and their instructor training. That usually tells you a lot.
I've tried to tell nondivers this, that diving is a safe hobby...especially compared to skydiving, which is NOT so safe.
I would just point out that the #1 cause of death of tech divers is not caves. It is swapping to an incorrect gas mix while doing multiple gas dives.
Some people aren't rich and can't afford to pay. Give people access to the safety standard for free to save lives
@22:08 To be honest when i was looking into diving, i was disappointed i couldnt see the skills/standards before i paid for the class.
I think its important to understand if the skills required are within your comfort level.
Someone getting into diving may not understand they need to do the float/swim, or take their mask off underwater until after they've paid and show up to the pool.
This makes it awkward for everyone. :)
Having access to "heres what you have to do to get open water certified" would be very helpful, dont need details because tbh its the same for most agencies anyways.
When you train to become a diving instructor, you (I believe) are told to "set-up" your own shop front from the start, promote yourself and create a word of mouth style system that others would follow. Surely the instructor research should be key here? As Gus stated, with all the best standards good-will in the world, things could still be a nightmare and be very difficult, right?
I agree with James. I think Woody is siding with the agency from a business owner mindset. As a diver or new diver, I think having the standards give you an idea on what an agency prioritise and how strict they are. For example, GUE standards for passing are measurable and you know when you fail.
I'm honestly disappointed in Gus' logic that because he thinks that no one is going to read them, means that publishing standards are not important. If that's the case, then why do companies publish terms of service. We all know that hardly anyone reads them, but we also know that it's important that they're posted for everyone to read if they choose to.
In getting my OWD with SSI my instructors did not make me do a swimming skill, I was asked before appling for the course if i could swim (ofc i could).
I've later seen on the web material that the first pool lesson should have been focused around swimming and how to use a mask and snorkel... I dont know how to feel about having skipped that lesson, i dont think it was rekless because me and the other guys taking the course were yung and born on an island and it was obvious we could swim, we also told the instructors before the course that we were free divers so maybe they trusted our word?
For the remaining part of the course the instructors were amazing, demanding with the skills, precise with safety instruction and they put enormous focus on trim and buoyancy control.
Overall i feel very satisfied with them eaven though they "skipped" that part (we never brought it up).
Maybe in our case it was ok to skip it? I dont know, what do you guys think?
Was the same for me when I did the SSI OWD. I also was only asked if I could swim, but I did not have to actually show it. Apart from that the course was great and they always teach just 1 to 3 students per instructor, so each student gets a lot of attention. That is far below the upper limit specified in the course standards. My friend did struggle a bit and received 2 days worth of extra lessons at no additional cost until he finally mastered the expected skills. After all a dive center is a business and it absolutely makes sense not to waste time with swimming when you instead can spend the saved hours on teaching actual diving skills. This just means the training is optimized and individualized for the needs of the student.
This is timely I just completed my open water. I was on a long vacation and decided to make the jump thanks very much to this channel. The instructor I had was pretty mediocre. I didn't get to pick and it took a day for me to realize so I felt kind of stuck. On the one hand I did complete every padi skill. On another hand i felt fairly rushed. I'm glad he pushed me hard but I'd have liked to have gone slower. Very often he'd tell me what we were going to do then he did something else and he get irritated. I feel like after certification I'm less likely to drown but I sure don't feel great about my skills.
This is a major problem in the industry, James from Divers Ready dives deep into issues just like this, its easy to pretend our industry is all great instructors and dive agencies but its not.
Originally, I thought that a useful parallel would be comparing this to Private pilot instruction: although the standards are made publicly available by the appropriate regulatory agencies, it's up to the individual instruction companies to figure out how to get people to those standards. In other words, the consensus standards should be publicly available because they are NOT proprietary information; rather, the proprietary information is HOW/ by what process people are trained to those standards-- this is when businesses can keep their software, or videos, or text, or instruction methodology secret. And, just like in aircraft accident investigation, having publicly available standards helps to identify places in the model which may have resulted in error, and which need to be corrected.
That said, personally, when I was looking for a dive agency, the secrecy of materials was a turn off. I suspected, and subsequently found, that different agencies will teach above and beyond the standards. When they do, they are usually up front about why, and how they seem to take things more seriously. So for instance, the difference between taking a padi advanced Open water diver and A GUE fundies course is profound. I unfortunately think that, given that the more difficult classes are usually more open about what a student is going to get into, the secrecy surrounding some courses just seems to imply that a student would be turned off by hard work, and are designed to " hook them" into their training system.
Standards should absolutely be available up front.
I really like these type of videos; I could listen to you guys all day.
No issue with not divulging in depth content that is apart of your course. But at the same time, if it's international standards that are not proprietary to you alone, then it's not hurting you to have those accessible for no cost to divers or prospective divers. Like others have said it helps with accountability of not only the agencies, but instructors as well, making sure you're getting the instruction you should be.
Just wanted to say you guys are great and I look forward to every single episode best Vibes always
Ethics is vital to maintain the standards of diving. I'm happy that my instructor required me to complete the swim as described. I think this was one of the hardest skills to complete. I would be happy to have James as an instructor, I want someone to push me to master the required skills. How can we assess the instructor's competency?
All standards should be published or they are useless. That's what standards are for. This is not the same as publishing your training material. You can definitely keep your training materials private, that's how you make money, but if you don't keep the standards public it's not a standard, it's a proprietary secret thing.
Just to be clear, I also agree that selecting the right instructor is _much_ more important than the standards.
Disclaimer: I’m not a diver. In college I took skin diving. We were taught in the pool and took 2 scheduled dives out of Laguna Beach. Gotta tell ya, I was scared going out into those waves. Another thing is, I’ve never enjoyed swimming much due to my poor eyesight. I couldn’t wear contacts in the water without losing them. So blind skin diving wasn’t so great unless I was very close to the sea life.
I enjoy your videos and seeing what I have missed. Even this video I enjoyed due to you guys. I could understand your feelings about this subject. I hope you keep on posting for a “good long time.”😊
Prescription mask lenses aren't super expensive nowadays I think I paid $60 for the lenses in my scubapro solara.
Remember that place that killed that girl with faulty equipment? And they had all kinds of problems in the past prior to that. And they are still in business. The organizations dont enforce anything, they give suggestions.
I just finished an SSI drysuit class and it was not good. During the ow part, I was kinda surprised the instructor never owned a drysuit, and gave me bad info on my auto dump valve. Maybe self certified idk but I've learned more from just watching videos and spending time in the pool with it.
And here you uave it: How do you know, that a agency allows self certifying, when those standards aren't publicly available. They won't write that in the marketing materials right.
If training standards are not available until you buy the course, prospective OW students need to pay for the course in order to find out whether they meet the swimming standards which does seem rather unfair. Internet chat forums are full of people asking if they can scuba dive even though they are not a good swimmer, it would be much better if they had an official answer to the question
Is there some kind of website database/review site for individual instructors or dive shops/training companies that aggregates a bunch of ratings from students? Or do you just have to go around and ask people at a random shop or a forum like reddit?
I live in Utah right now, so there’s pretty much nowhere to learn scuba. But when I eventually move somewhere more active, how am I supposed to find a good instructor?
Also, I think it’s important for potential students to be able to see and agree with the standards before paying for a course. I’ve heard multiple stories (one in this vid’s comment section even) of people not realizing they had to do out-of-air training and completely panicked because it came up so suddenly and they dropped out and never learned how to dive because it was so unexpectedly traumatic for them.
I think free market, profit, yada yada is all fine and good. But if there’s gonna be a universal set of standards, it should be readily available to the public as well. A truly Free market requires freedom of information.
And, yes, agencies SHOULD have some liability for the instructors they choose to employ/allow to teach their standards. If you are going to let a lunatic teach people diving, that’s completely on you. Every school, every university holds liability for what their teachers put into the students’ brains. Should be even more so in a life-or-death situation like diving. At the very least, there should be an overseer directly under the agency watching over the training of said instructors to verify that they are following procedures correctly. Even if it’s not every single session of every single class, they can send in an undercover auditor as a “student” and take note of the teaching and respond accordingly.
No the industry hides compllaints on bad instructors, a instructor or dive center can kill a student by being negletfull and you would never know.
I agree with both of you. As dive candidate you should be able to fulfill the basic training requirements but you are responsible to find the best instructor based upon your expectations.
Customer Side: Short Term expectations
Dive Instructor Side: Avoid to train divers like a factory without any personal care or understanding the student limitations or capabilities.
I was first trading in 1978 by Cmas and today’s ow courses are jokes compared to it.
My believes are:
Personalized training with higher requirements and more expensive in order to make profitable for the Instructor.
Instructors associated with a Dive Shop in order to make profitable sales.
My 2 cents!!
Congrats for your channel.
I can't believe this is a discussion. If you are looking to learn how to SCUBA and you do your research of all these agencies and can't find the information without paying to help you make your decision then it is the agencies loss. Ask others how they made their choice where to go and if you don't know anybody then talk to your local dive shops. If you go to the dive shops and talk to the instructors then you can get the information you need and also get a feel on the instructor! Not everything has to be handed to you thru the internet!
Also, I do agree that the agency is at fault if they do not police their instructors. We have a local dive shop that is known to be the "Puppy Mill" of divers and instructors, so they can make a dollar!
My school just pumps'em out!
Open - VERY loose standards. I didn’t even feel i passed but okay 🤷🏻
Advanced - Didn’t complete deep dive and passed. Also forgot eLearning Exam and was somehow completed for me. When asked about exams was told “we have our ways” 🥸
Rescue - 2 days of accident story time. ONE dive less than 20 minutes all course. 🪦
I guess am I’m a rescue diver? 🤔 🤷🏻
How do I plug in the oxygen machine to the tournaquit!?
Thanks for y'alls thoughts.
I enjoyed this Episode all topics discussed were juicy and interesting 👊🏾
Like my driving teacher when I was 15 1/2- never showed up to one lesson and then passed me
If the materials were the cause of an incident then yes the training agency should be held responsible. If the instructor wasn’t following the agencies guidelines/materials then fault is on the instructor. I’m trained as a divemaster (not working as one) so I can’t speak to this as I really have no real knowledge on this topic, but this is my opinion. Also I want my next class to be on the DT GO, 1 can I get it in green and 2, if you teach deco procedures for the GO, will that also be acceptable when also using OC or will I have to be trained for deco for OC?
As a non-diver I find all that you talk about very interesting
I'm not a diver but I love y'all's videos! Maybe one day. In the meantime hell yeah love y'all's videos! Cheers!
Just thought of a question regarding the new agency. How are you handling reciprocity? In other words, if I complete my advanced Nitrox training with you and go to a shop to request a 50% Nitrox fill if they are losers that don’t religiously follow Dive Talk and aren’t “In the know”, what recourse do we have?
We are following all industry standards and will apply to become members of RSTC when we’re ready. The shop can always decline a card if they don’t feel comfortable (from any agency) and you can go to another shop.
As of now, we’ve been in multiple boat operators who asked for a card and accepted our Dive Talk Agency certification card for the GO. No problem.
@@DIVETALK Thank you for the reply. I’m looking forward to earning my first DT certification!!! 😎
I am in the process of becoming an instructor but even with over 1000 dives, I have a lot to learn. I am wondering if the wrong question is being asked here. If the website is not showing the standards, could it be as simple as adding the spot to click for user ease for some places like PADI? Also, thinking about my journey there were times I had no idea what the standards were until I had a conversation with the instructor. So my question would be, can an instructor with any agency give you the standards prior to paying for the course? If yes, then that supports shopping around for an instructor. If no, then that agency is, in my opinion, is a company I would not choose. I have spoken to every one of my instructors to this point and even course directors prior to taking courses and never felt someone was hiding something but there have been instructors I would not go on a fun dive with after meeting them.
20:10 I would simply argue that knowing the standards ahead of time is what will allow you to determine if your instructor is terrible or not. You may have to sign off on the evolution at the end but who is going to refuse to sign after spending all that time and money to go to the school? I don't see what the problem is, standards by definition cannot be secrets so just publish them. Plus you still need to get certified so you still need to pay the school either way if you want to scuba right?
I have done many courses with Naui and SSI and never I really mean never has anyone asked me if I know how to swim or checked how good of a swimmer I am 🤣🤣🤣
My #1 favorite dive channel watching my #2 favorite dive channel? It's getting meta up in here.
I would put a caveat on the shop (ie company that employs the teacher) share in responsibilities. If you look at the incident with tragedy with Mills incident. In my $0.02 wisdom multi-level failure was due to not implementing a feedback and quality check / follow up loop. Aaand, in my opinion, would have been easily caught. Especially when that teach was reported by other students!
You guys are right for ow people may not know what standards are important but what if you are looking at more advanced courses and have an idea of what you’re talking about? For example if I want to do wreck, shouldn’t I know how those courses differ between agencies?
My ow was done with ssi and never had to do the swim all we had was 1 day in pool mask remove flood and clear how to set up then and paperwork then 2 ow dives
Non diver here - in fact, I have a bit of a fear of water - but I love your show and thought this was an interesting video. Jussayin', it's not all dive nerds getting something out of your content!
I think what you said, the people who watch this channel (and Diver's Ready) are dedicated scuba divers. I DO appreciate SDI/TDI making it DEAD EASY to know what you are going to accomplish in the course.
Coming from SSI, even now, having completed 12 SSI courses, I don't know where I could go to find out what I was tested on for each of those courses.
TDI: I am prepping for a Trimix course right now, and have read the requirements and what I will be tested on, so I feel a lot more prepared to enter the water with my instructor.
I kind of think it is a little tongue in cheek at the end 29:09 "we're making a bigger deal out of standards being available publicly than what really is" - Diver's Ready video was ½ the length of what this reaction video is. Dive Talk is making it even a bigger deal.
I appreciated Diver's Ready video because it encouraged me to look up the deliverables to my upcoming class, which gave me more confidence in what I am going to be doing.
I think Gus is wrong here (James should have reported the instructor). Maybe he did, or maybe it felt unsafe to speak up (like Gareth Lock's discussions on psychological safety says). Honestly, I'm not sure if the dive industry welcomes criticism because it regulates itself. I totally agree that certification agencies act more like publishers and run a strange system that doesn't prioritize safety or quality. Many instructors want to break away from these agencies. With better regulation, more instructor accountability, and a fairer business model, instructors could earn a living without pushing lots of training at low prices and paying hefty fees to agencies. Also why would someone start DiveTalk Academy if agencies were doing such a great job? Clearly there is something missing out there...imho it is in part, the transparency James speaks of.
Fair comment.
Excellent video DT
Your standards should be made available by the governing body. How can you give someone a certificate after a “test” ?
How long does it last tho, checking they are still good years later
I disagree with your comment, Gus about whether I as a student will know what I want in a course. It might be true for an OW student but what if I want to take a Cavern or Cave certification course. I certainly am capable of assessing the course standard and contrast and compare.
Yeah, it seems like this dude is on a mission, BUT...
It's the principle of the thing if the maj training organizations are not transparent with their standards. It makes them seem sketch, as kids say. Standards shouldn't be the same as secret proprietary material whose releasal without receiving payment would injure a capitalistic system?
And, you don't have to be a lawyer or certified diver to do a side by side comparison of standards to see differences between agencies. BUT, since they are all based on the same documents, they're probably basically the same anyway!
AND YES, they can write what they want and have the best standards, but if you get the Town A-hole of Instructors, the class is crap anyway. But that is a completely different issue. Picking a good instructor is another challenge that has to happen whichever agency you go with. Actually, the instructor is so important if you could find a good one-highly recommended, etc. who cares which of the major agencies they are with??? as long as it's one of the accepted legit agencies. Rant over... old person on coffee!
I got my open water cert a little over a year ago. When i was training i felt as though I was being rushed through. I felt like it was more of a cert "mill" than it was a place for proper training. It left me feeling like having a open water certification is kinda of a joke and just a way for someone or organization to pocket some cash. The fact that the learning is all online is a little scary. There should be a class you have to attend. When your in a class with other people you can ask questions and toss around ideas. When you take the online class you just read a bunch of material, can't ask questions, or discuss real scenarios, leading me to believe the whole cert process is a joke. I want to be in a classroom with a real instructor thats not ready to pass me because I paid the money and he has other obligations later that day! Bottom line is I don't feel like I was properly trained, I think there should only be classroom and field training and do think most of these places are certificate mills more than anything. All motorcycle training classes are classroom and field only they don't allow online learning because they know ultimately it will lead to disaster!
Which agency?
@@Navy1977 Padi
@@cobra5088 It sounded like them. Sorry you had such a bad experience. I personally like NAUI, SSI and SDI/TDI. Your mileage may differ. 👍👌🤙🤙🤙
@@Navy1977 Does padi have a reputation for those things that I stated? The whole online learning I think is a mistake. Scuba diving is a activity that can be deadly if things go wrong and that should not be taken lightly.
@@cobra5088 That's been the case in my experience. They seem to be a certification mill. Plenty of discussions on various scuba boards. They are consistently ranked last on both customer and instructor surveys, even by their own instructors.
You dont know if he reported it or not, and you dont know in which capacity he witnessed it. So I dont get the criticism at this point
Everyone always says the same thing when they quarterback from their gaming chairs. I wonder how many these two reported. I'm willing to bet none. If you do report nothing happens anyways the agency just barys it, that is something else James spoke about in another video.