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Comment by meowfly | Hacker News Reader

I'm an avid diver and I completely agree. My Open Water took place in a hot spring with extremely low visibility. The goal was the cert it wasn't skill mastery. My next dive was the Great Barrier reef where boats just drop you off and you can get a guide or dive yourself. We irresponsibly dove by ourselves, exhausted all our air, and came up (skipping a safety stop) realizing we were a considerable distance from the boat. It's obviously our fault for not being safe but we definitely didn't have the necessary fear in us for our skill level.

I think PADI should be emphasizing that your first 20 dives or so should be with a guide never exceeding 60ft. IIRC, a lot of the course material for Open Water is about shore diving with a buddy by yourselves.

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> As a PADI Open Water Diver, you'll be trained to a maximum depth of 18 metres/60 feet, and are qualified to dive in conditions as good as, or better than, those in which you trained

ref: https://www.padi.com/courses/open-water-diver

PADI does emphasize that with an open water cert you must absolutely always remain above 60ft.

That’s what’s shocking to me the most about the article and some of the conversation here—many folks are talking about diving to crazy depths as if that’s normal.

I don’t know why that is, but I will agree with your general point as a result. Folks need to understand this is a dangerous sport and one that can easily kill you (though not by barracuda).

I'm just learning that I don't actually know PADI Open Water guidelines despite > 100 dives. I guess that syncs with my experience that Open Water cert doesn't necessarily actually train you.

I'm like genuinely confused at this point. I've had so many guides, even in places like Hawaii, not follow their own guidelines. It would be trivial for PADI to see Open Water divers are diving the thresher sharks at Malapascua, for example, and that would necessitate they go past 60ft.

The thing is, it's actually extremely easy to get an Advanced Open Water cert. I did it in a few days in Dahab, on the Sinai. We actually dove the Blue Hole as our last dive.

Yeah, that's crazy too. Maybe I have rose colored lenses because I did my advanced open water through my university and we did tons of dives to the same spot with I guess more academically focused exams and whatnot.

Still, that was circa 1997 so, um, I forgot pretty much all the detail :).

It's obviously our fault for not being safe but we definitely didn't have the necessary fear in us for our skill level.

I think fear is what has kept me safe this long. I've got at least 100 dives under my belt but I was quite careful to slowly ramp up the difficulty, and even now, I'm very cautious of really strong currents.

I must have done over 20 easy shore dives just getting navigation experience (and I'm still not super confident with it) before jumping on a boat to go deeper. And even then there were a couple of potentially close calls. I must have had over 40 dives before I even went on a dive holiday, and many of the scenic places are not super difficult to dive.

> I was quite careful to slowly ramp up the difficulty, and even now, I'm very cautious of really strong currents.

This is most definitely how it should go.

It seems like an inevitability you will eventually have something go wrong (maybe you lose your group, your mask is a problem, you burn through air too quickly, etc). In this scenario the most important skill is to not panic and control your breathing but I think that mostly comes with experience.

While you develop experience, diving conservatively hedges against some of the worst case scenarios. Something as simple as a mask coming off can lead to panic which leads to hyperventilating. Someone hyperventilating will feel like they just can't get enough air and the immediate reaction will be to exit as quickly as possible.

Guides, as OP points out, should be far more sensitive to the experience a person has.

I was sixteen when I first started diving. It was only after I first (briefly) lost track of the dive group, at night, that I realized I had absolutely no plan for what to do if I was disconnected from the guide. (At night.) This possibility hadn’t been discussed, at all.

I remember my padi instructor (British, in Malaysia) as being completely paranoid, which was a good thing.

He essentially told us that any missteps would have very nasty consequences, and spent most of his time badgering us with safety precautions. He also encouraged us to dive with a guide, do refresher dives, etc.

The only downside is that I don't dive anymore now that I have kids, since I believe it's dangerous, and I'm worried I will make a mistake...

Interesting, I also got my open water in Malaysia. My South African instructor spent a lot of time drilling safe decent / safe ascent practices into us, making us practice individual and buddy drills etc. I will always be grateful to him for instilling good practices from the get-go.

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