Slow Ride

Validation feels nice, doesn't it?  Someone pats you on the head, gives you a cookie, and tells you how clever and good-looking you are.  Approval, especially when it comes from an authority figure, must tap deeply enough into some evolutionary function of our sociology to make us strive for it as much as any of our other base needs (sex, ice cream, and free wifi).  We get a little bump of endorphin with every Facebook like, we blush when someone compliments our looks, and divers just LOVE to get themselves a new C-card.

In the earliest days of diving earning your certification was enough.  We've all got that one friend that has stories of their NAUI certification in 1970 that include complete gear removal at 180 feet and at least five deliberate drownings.  People who were certified then really WANTED it.  Not long after that, though, the agencies pulled in some people who knew about educational theory.  These kind-hearted souls explained that simply yelling at people and tying all their equipment into knots isn't going to most efficiently educate future divers.  They started to implement the principles of positive feedback.

You can always spot a PADI instructor.  They're the ones who high-five or shake the hand of anyone underwater who does fucking anything that prevents their own suicide.  They're trained to do that.  PADI is the leader in tapping into the validation that makes people feel so warm and fuzzy.  I am not agency bashing here at all; it works… after a manner.  People learn… mostly.  And often they get excited to progress… now, this is where we run into a problem.

Worked into every instructor training program is the importance of pushing continuing education.  I don't know whether it started this way (I like to doubt it) but that emphasis tends to be to the shop’s benefit.  This is not a bad thing in and of itself; the shop is a business and the truth is getting divers back to take more classes, learn more, buy gear, and generally keep diving is valuable all around.  However, pushing classes in such a way that people feel qualified by each to a level of expertise in each facet of the sport empowers them to take one after another after another without any diving in between.

Regularly we encounter Advanced Open Water divers with exactly 9 dives in their logbook.  And there is nothing advanced about that.  Worse, how often have you seen a logbook of a Divemaster with exactly 60 dives?  At 60 dives one should be just about qualified to advise someone on a snorkel purchase.  Maybe. If they've really been paying attention.

These are folks who have fallen victim to the aggressive marketing pitch that once you have taken class A you are ready for class B.  B qualifies you for C.  Then D.  And so on.

I have carried instructor cards for four different recreational certifying agencies.  Never in any of my instructor training was the message to divers to simply go out and dive a lot stressed.  (Well, no, I take that back, I had a few good mentors who went “off-book” and stressed it, and I am grateful for it and absorbed the theory enough to be ranting about it now.). “Con-ed” was the push.  Continuing education.  Get them back for the next class!

I have to admit, that the business model works.  Drug dealers have been proving this since scare-ads from the 80s.  A little taste today, then they get you on the comeback.  By the time someone has bought a BC and enrolled in Underwater Navigation you've got your hooks in deep and you can sell them any manner of dumb flashlight lanyard.

Our stage is set.

Here we see a pool of divers who are now trained that to learn how to dive you take classes and get lauded by your instructor with things like, “Wow! Your buoyancy control is really spot on!” and “This is a few feet deeper than we should really go, but you’re so rock solid it won't hurt to go to 72 feet for just a minute.  We're going to put 70 feet in our logbooks though,” they playfully joke, bringing you, the diver, in on the joke.

(NOTE: They are not bringing you in on the joke.  They are covering their own ass to make it seem like they stayed within standards if this dive ever shows up in a deposition.)

Foundations are important.  And they're hard to shift under a structure once laid.  In this case our foundation is, at its very simplest:

To learn you take more classes.  As soon as you pass the class, you are certified to do those level dives for life.

This is flawed logic.  Fatally flawed.

I recently read in THIS article an interesting idea, paraphrased as:

Experience = Dive Numbers + Demonstrated Proficiency + Time in Sub-Discipline

It's that last component I've been thinking about the most.  Time.  Seems overly devalued in the dive world right now.  Everyone wants a rebreather and a scooter and to get to the end of the line or the engine room or the bottom of the pinnacle or whatever.  And they want to go now!  This season!  Doesn't matter that they only got their AOW only last year.  They've just met the course prerequisites, their instructor high-fives them and told them how awesome they are.  Obviously they're super bad-ass now and they're ready, right?

Folks have been trained to believe that certification equals qualification.  That belief is built on a foundation laid in their OW class, buttressed by every ad in every dive magazine, and mortared by the validation of every diver in their community who says how awesome they are.  This, now, rock solid foundation is what they carry over to their advanced level training, whether this is professional level, technical level, or both.

These divers don't have the patience for the called dives and the blow-outs and the equipment failures and the horrible instabuddies and the million other reasons that a dive gets scrapped over hard-won years of work towards expertise where you learn more than you think you are learning.

It isn't enough to just pass the class.  It's not enough to just squeak by the prerequisites.  You need to get your ass kicked sometimes.

When the only challenges you have faced have been in a benign, controlled setting under the direct supervision of an instructor (who may or may not even know what the hell they’re doing, or may be an excellent instructor who is having an off day and not be paying attention just now) then how can you trust you will respond to an actual emergency in the real underwater world?  Often it's what you don't even know you don't know, the unknown-unknowns, which are going to lash the fastest and the most dangerously.

Without slowly pushing your boundaries over many dives and many hours how do you know you have safely expanded them?  Or perhaps you have just wandered haplessly into the dangerous, haunted forest full of goblins and werewolves and simply, luckily, escaped their notice?  How long do you expect that luck to hold out?

Certification does not equal qualification.

I have, by some measures, all the certifications one can.  I have CCR cave and trimix.  That's just about it, the golden tickets.  I am also a technical dive instructor.  Yeah, I'm pretty proud of that; it's pretty cool.  By profession I am a Dive Safety Officer, I spend my days running through every scenario I can think of about stuff that could go wrong underwater and try to design preventative or recovery measures. 

None of those things automatically qualify me for every dive on the planet.  Many dives, yes, but mostly because AFTER I earned those certifications I spent a LOT of time diving on the bunny-slope version of each level.  Even now I'm on a new bunny slope trying to take my time and push, slowly, a little closer to some of my ultimate destinations.  And I enjoy it!

Would I like to be doing the highest level exploration dives on earth and be told I'm just a special, little snowflake who is clever and handsome and interesting?  Of course I would!  But in the meantime I'm going to do some cool stuff and enjoy myself listening to people who are way better than I am and getting as much advice from them as I possibly can.

I suppose all I mean to say is: don't believe the hype.

Just go diving.

Do Your Research

For the last few days I've been going back and forth with a fella on Rebreatherworld.

Here's the shortest possible version of the initial post: a diver curious about rebreathers got taken by a known con man, consequently got ripped off and insufficiently trained.  Now he's having a giant temper tantrum which included spending a likely not-insignificant amount of time making this sign.

At first glance it's laughable but I'm reminded of that last scene of The Graduate.  After the giggles wear off reality sets in... and this sign is right.  Not just in the rebreather world, but in the dive world at large.

I personally have known at least a dozen instructors who shouldn't have been allowed to teach anyone to tie their shoes, much less how to dive at any level.  But the industry allows it for a variety of reasons, some of them based in their own immobility and greed... but mostly the industry responds to customer demands.

Students don't really know enough yet to know what they're looking for, so they default to things they're familiar with: cost-effectiveness, time constraints, and Yelp/Trip Advisor savviness.  But what they are really looking for, without knowing it, is shitty training.  Even in the case of the guy who made this sign, he doesn't really recognize that he has been insufficiently trained, he's more pissed that he got ripped off.

It is a shame that we don't serve our customer base better.  Instead of retreating behind QAs and only responding when students (who, again, barely know what they're talking about) accidentally notice something is amiss and complain, why aren't we more prophylactic?

At the instructor level, sadly, there are forces we have to deal with such as needing to comply with shop or local norms to work or not wanting to get friends or coworkers in trouble.

At the shop level it's keeping up with the competition (and not really being taken seriously if you report the competition).

At the agency level... well, there, I admit, I lose focus.  That's where I tend to want to place the blame.  This is the level where the marketing for better, longer, more expensive training could be decided and where the rules are carved in stone.  But I'm not certain,I have never operated at the agency level, so I don't know the challenges there.

I do know that I, personally, have been guilty of letting the system grind on at the instructor and the shop level, though.  I'll always feel bad about those past actions and spend a lot of my energy these days trying to undo that karma by sending the best divers possible out into the world.

I hope it helps move the mountain.

In the meantime, we might as well post this sign in every dive shop window.

Are You a Diver or a Cert?

There are two types of people in this world...

It makes life easier that way, doesn't it?  Make sure everything is nicely divided up into "us" and "them."  Things are more easily understandable and controllable that way and you know who stands with you in the world and who doesn't.

But things aren't really that black and white.  The whole world is actually grey, and purple, and bright azure and orange and yellow.  I'm a nihilist vegan who works at a zoo and has gun-toting, right-wing friends.  And that's cool, because the real world is prettier and more exciting than the inside of some goddamn bubble.

So don't mistake that I am about to say, "There are two types of divers in this world..." for some t-shirt-worthy, distillation of the reality of the thing.  There are dozens... hundreds of types of divers!  Techies, photographers, course directors, 80s divers, wreck, cave, and reef divers, depth junkies, adrenaline junkies, liveaboard addicts, exotic local travelers, muck divers, scientists, wannabes, quarriors, blowhards, bimblers, gear geeks, shop-rats... the list goes on and on.

What I am going to break down here is a line, across which there is an obvious divide.  The delineation is between those who really want to be good at our sport and those who don't. Those who are willing to put in the time, energy, effort, and (to be sure) the money, and those who just wanted the card for whatever reason.

This is the difference between Divers and Certs.

From an outside perspective it's nearly impossible to determine.  Certs and Divers alike will tell friends, neighbors, and family, "I'm a diver."  The chiefest difference will be that in the case of a Cert it will come as a surprise to most around them.  It will come up as an afterthought in casual conversation about some vacation story or anecdote if it comes up at all.  Typically it will be a lead in or a supporting fact in the actually interesting part of the story.

The people around a Diver... they already know they are a diver.  They know because almost every story about every vacation starts with, "I was on this dive vacation to..." and most stories happened either right before, during, or after a dive.  A dive which features very heavily in the story.  A story the people around them have trouble differentiating from the LAST 20 stories about a dive they have heard.

The people around a Diver have invariably also noticed the dive flag or generally dive-themed hats, t-shirts, bags, and possibly jewelry that feature into their wardrobe.  If they'd ever been to that Diver's house they would also have seen the dive magazines, books, textbooks, and various resort destination mementos that punctuate their personality as a diver all around the place.

Around a Cert's house... frankly, I don't know what you'd find there.  I try not to affiliate with those people and certainly don't want to go in their house.  Some magazines about golf, perhaps?  I really don't know, they could be conducting orgiastic sun-god rituals that culminate in human sacrifice for all I care.  But more likely it's golf.  Or X-box.  I often hear people talk about something called X-box, so whatever that is, it's probably that.

"Why, Roger," you ask, "Why do you go to lengths to avoid these people you call Certs?  And why does it sound like you spit that word?"

The depth of my disdain is likely born of years of dealing with a near-constant parade of them.  I lived in a place with world-class diving, but not known for its diving.  Oahu is an island that people travel to for a medical equipment sales convention, have a tropical adventure close enough to a Cheesecake Factory that they don't panic from lack of cholesterol, or visit their nephew who is stationed there.  Almost no one travels there specifically to dive.  And so every boat I crewed was full of people who were in town for their college roomate's wedding and thought they'd get in a dive while they were there.

These are people who had dived maybe a handful of times after they got certified, but just as often not, having gotten their card and never been in the water since.  They apologize that "it's been a while" without ever realizing that diving is NOTHING WHATHEFUCKSOEVER like riding a bike. They certainly didn't have any of their own gear... rarely ever even owning their own masks or fins, much less flying with them to the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

A Diver wouldn't dream of going on any vacation to anywhere up to and including a ski town in a landlocked state in the middle of winter without, at least, their mask.  This is assuming they're going on a trip, for some unusual set of circumstances, to someplace other than a dive destination.  No a Diver knows exactly what the overage charges for their airline are before they get to the airport, own a luggage scale, and have a small, crushable bag stowed somewhere just in case a slightly still-damp wetsuit on the way home would make their luggage just too heavy and second checked bag cheaper.

What it comes down to is a very different mindset.  While there are a great many kinds of divers, that differentiation comes after the person has started to learn their way around the sport and crossed a line. On one side there is not thinking of diving as much more than a bucket list activity, something you saw in a movie once and thought you'd try out.  Training is seen as more of something to get through as fast and a cheaply as possible without a second thought about how being poorly trained in an activity leaves you shitty at said activity.

The temptation here is strong to point the blame at the industry, the marketing, and the training agencies for catering to Certs, but while there is a valid point there, the truth is that we live in a capitalist society.  The industry is catering to its consumers.  These are consumers who you could probably try to browbeat into caring more about the sport or the environment, but you'd be more likely sending them right out of your classroom to someone else's who would deliver them what they want.  The industry could do better, but they have no impetus to (and that's a whole other conversation.

So while Certs might see diving as something to do on occasional vacation if they can remember to wake up on time and if they're not too hung-over... Divers see the sport as a defining characteristic.  They care.  They train.  They try to be better at it.  They talk to other divers and concentrate, while they're diving, on swimming better, trimming better, and avoiding contact with marine life or the bottom.  They become at peace with the sea and learn how to move effectively and calmly.  Many will go on to formalize their further training to become capable buddies or even capable of effecting a rescue, should the situation require it.  Most will learn how to avoid situations where the threat of it becoming a rescue exists.

No, Certs have no one to blame but themselves when they have no idea what they're doing in the water.  They stand on the coral, killing life all around them, demolishing the reef, and getting buffeted by the full force of the sea around them.  They are narrowly snatched from the jaws of death 1/2 dozen times over the course of a dive, without even knowing, by a DM harried by trying to keep an entire flail of Certs (yes, the group name for Certs is "a flail") from hurting them or themselves.

But at least they could tip.

(Which they usually don't.)