Vandit Kalia
Ok, there is going to be a bit of a rant mixed in with the point I am making in this article. But the reality of the diving world today is that there is a significant difference between what students are taught and how diving happens, atleast in the tropical world (which is also where most people dive).
A recap of what you were taught in the Open Water course as far as dive planning goes: as certified divers, you are responsible for planning and executing your own dive. In principle, a very sound philosophy and one that I believe in completely. However, if you are a warm-water/vacation diver (which most divers in the world – and certainly most divers in India) are, when was the last time you planned your own dive, or even had the opportunity to do so? Most of the time, you are told “this is the site, this is the plan, you guys are with this DM”. And that’s what we all do, and you know what? We have GREAT dives this way.
I do about 6-8 dive trips a year as part of our group tours to all parts of the world, and in virtually every place, the dive guides provide the dive plan for the divers to follow – India, Maldives, Egypt, Kenya, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, etc. Sure, there are occasional exceptions but for the most part, the dive sites and profiles are picked by the dive guides and the divers just follow.
[To be clear, I am speaking of recreational diving here, and not tech diving. Tech is different and some tech divers need to stop acting as if recreational divers need to adhere to tech standards. I must admit that I went through that stage too when I got tech certified in the 1990s, but with age has come… well, something akin to wisdom]
In this article, I want to talk about this difference between theory and reality, and the impact it has upon us as divers.
HOW DID WE GET HERE?
To understand how we got to this stage, it is good to have clarity on the role of the dive agencies, who set the standards for recreational diving.
As I have written in my article on The Great Dive Industry Misconception, dive agencies exist to provide liability protection to dive centers – not to create perfect divers. And this is done by providing divers with enough training to ensure they are able to take on the responsibility for their own safety.
Stating that you are supposed to plan your own dive is a big part of this – this way, if something goes wrong, the liability is more likely to be on you, the diver. After all, you have been training on how to dive within your limits, and to self-assess those limits. So any problem that arises has come from your failure to follow your training and its limits. And given the safety of diving in general, this approach works.
This approach had a lot of merit in the early days of diving, when diving was an independent activity done by groups of people, and still does in parts of the world where this sort of diving is still prevalent (US, Europe, UK). Eg, when I used to go diving off Boston, the dive was entirely self-supported: I picked where to dive, I had my own gear and at most, I (and some friends) would charter a boat to take us to the dive site, with the boat captain’s responsibility being just to take us there and back. My diving day was organised by me with some friends, not a commercial trip offered by a dive center.
In this scenario, this approach to training makes a lot of sense – divers are diving independently and being trained as such, and continually make incremental improvements to their knowledge and skills. But the diving industry has changed significantly these days. A vast majority of divers these days are vacation divers – ie, they go diving while on holiday, typically to tropical destinations. And here, the equation is different.
First of all, diving in colder waters pre-selects a certain level of involvement in the sport; vacation/tropical divers tend to cover a larger spectrum of personality/interest types. Some don’t dive enough to keep their skills polished. Others simply are not vested enough in the sport to try to improve – they just want to see some pretty fish and colorful coral on their holiday. In such cases, a one-size-fits-all solution doesn’t really work.
Second, the nature of vacation diving means that visiting divers, regardless of experience levels, are not familiar with the reefs, prevailing conditions and where to find highlight marine life. Seeing a map of the site does not in any way equate to the same level of familiarity that comes from doing hundreds of dives on the same site – if you show me a map or give me a verbal description of the site, I am pretty sure I can go dive it by myself – but that doesn’t mean I want to. I want the guide to show me where the pygmy seahorse is located, or the corner of the reef where I have the best chance of seeing a passing school of hammerheads.
Both the above factors have resulted in a greater reliance on dive professionals – both to provide additional in-water support to divers who may require this, and to provide the in-depth knowledge of a dive site to divers looking to maximise the quality of their dives.
IS THIS A BAD THING?
Online forums are typically full of paragons of diving virtue who wail, gnash their teeth and rend their garments anytime any mention is made of people who don’t dive to their same exacting standards. To which my only response is a rude noise and gesture involving some of my fingers (well, one of them anyway).
The current “real world” approach to diving has made the magic of the underwater world accessible to a very large number of people who otherwise would not have otherwise been able to – and that is a Good Thing. If you are reading this article, you are one on the point end of the bell curve when it comes to how much passion you have for the sport – but the thing is, people like you and me are not representative of the millions of more casual divers out there. Nor are we gatekeepers to the sport, who get to deem others unworthy of participating in the sport because their passion for diving is lesser than ours.
Second, while it is true that bad buoyancy can do a lot of damage to reefs and poorly trained divers can be hazard to themselves, tthere is a vast amount of space between “lacking the basic skills of diving” and “fully independent diver“: contrary to what forums would have you believe, those extreme cases of poor skills are fairly uncommon: most divers actually fall somewhere in between, where they do have most of the essential skills and just need a little support – which this system provides. And in any case, buoyancy issues have more to do with how that skill is taught in the Open Water course, and less to do with whether divers are simply following a divemaster or diving independently.
And lastly, this support also allows divers the pathway to gain the experience needed to move along this continuum and get to the “fully independent” stage: think about it – if you live in a city and only dive once a year, how else do you get the experience needed to improve, if the barrier is kept very high? Remember what I said – it is not our job to be gatekeepers.
Ultimately, the proof is in the pudding, so to speak. If this real-world method meant that people were getting injured more often, then sure, one could argue this dilution of How Things Should be Done (as per the Book of WRSTC) was a bad thing. But the reality is that more and more people are diving, and that safety continues to improve.
So what is the downside, exactly? More people on the reefs? Yes, that is certainly an issue, but whenever I speak to people who make that complaint – be it about reefs or wildlife parks – the implied problem is always OTHER people, not them, even though they are part of the crowds as well. Go figure.
And here’s the thing about “too many divers on the reef” – yes, that can potentially have a negative impact on the reef. But the impact of tourism also leads to an overall great conservation focus – if there were no tourists and no financial incentive to preserve the marine life, those sites would be overfished. You see this in Indonesia a lot – so many remote islands with no divers have virtually no fish left, while the locations with a healthy dive industry do a much better job (even if imperfect) at preserving the marine life. There are enough studies showing that sustainable tourism like diving (or wildlife viewing) has been proven to be a net positive for conservation, despite the issues related to excessive crowds.
IMPACT ON DIVERS
So if I just said that this status quo isn’t a big problem, then what’s the point of this article? All is well and good, right?
Not quite.
When we are constantly exposed to such a big disjoint between what we learned in theory and what we see in practice, it is natural to get sloppy when it comes to remembering our own responsibilities as a diver.
Because divers are being given the dive plan and guided along the reef on the dive by a professional, they fall into the bad habit of relying on the professional for everything – not just the dive plan, but also their air, depth, NDL, etc. etc. And because dive centers certainly don’t want the divers in their care to get hurt, they ensure the dive guides do all these checks to ensure the safety of everyone.
And thus we end up with divers who, right from the start, are used to being spoon-fed, and who do not engage their brains at all, relying passively on instructions at all parts of the dive. And THAT is where things go south.
Let me re-iterate: you are responsible for your safety at all times. Not your buddy. Not your dive guide. Not SSI. If anything goes wrong during a dive, it is YOUR fault for letting things reach that stage. That is the mindset you need to carry with you at all times.
Just because some real-world aspects of diving are different from what you were taught in the Open Water course shouldn’t cause to you to lose sight of this.
And that is the takeaway I’d like you to have from this article.
