Originally posted by mrblack
I hope you don't give this advice out to you'r friends LOL.
A novice Or open water diver should never go deeper than 60 ft.
After his advanced open water course then he may proceed to 100ft given the conditions are easy!
And In a lake they seldom are the visability sux at 100ft in a lake and it's cold.
This Is another thing I'm good at folks as I am a PADI Divemaster # 190161 Been diving fer years all over the world .
Prefere wreck diving though.
MrBlack, you're a PADI trained man. I'm CMAS, and we do things a little differently. I'll try to be as fair as I can but of course I am biased towards my own organisation. However, I attended my sisters PADI OW course too - to see how things were done and keep her company.
If you're
CMAS ** trained, the depth limit recommendation is 100 feet - precisely as I stated. No need to laugh condescendingly at me - it just gets me slightly annoyed. 2 star CMAS diver can very much be novices, yet have the blessing of their agency to dive to 100 feet.
It's true that new PADI OW divers with all of four dives behind them aren't qualified for 130 feet. However after just 13 dives, PADI says "ok" for 130 feet dives. At 13 dives, the diver is definitely a novice, if even that.
PADI is shop based - dive courses are commercial. Training is limited in time so they can be profitable. They produce safe enough divers.
CMAS here is club based - takes longer, there's more training and more dives. Requirements are slightly higher. they also produce safe divers.
I'm not going to say PADI or CMAS is worse/better. Both organisations produce excellent, safe divers. They go about it differently, that's all.
I'm not sure exactly how to convert between the two systems but I've been told that the CMAS ** certification is PADI OW+AOWD. Let's look at some numbers to see when the two organisations says it's ok for their divers to do the 100 feet stuff.
A PADI diver can do 4 dives for OWD, then take AOWD (5 dives) and a deep diver specialty (another 4 dives). That's a grand total of
13 dives, after which PADI express, through certification, that the diver is qualified for diving to 130 feet.
CMAS: Minimum 5 dives for *. Once the diver has 15 dives, he/she can enroll on the ** program. To get through that the diver must complete a number of dives: all of the following types of qualifying dives must be included:
Night dive, Boat dive, Freshwater dive, Seawater dive, Low visibility dive and a 30m dive. At least 5 dives must be to a depth exceeding 18m . A decompression chamber dive does not qualify.. CMAS ** requires more dives - once yer instructor is happy and you've fulfilled the other requirements, you get yer certificate.
So we have two newbies, one with 13 dives (PADI AOWD) and one with around 25-30 (CMAS **) Both are certified by their respective agencies and have shown those entities the skills required to safely execute dives. And both are
novices, with one of them having half the dives the other has.
Diving above 100 feet is, in my opinion, something a scuba diver with 30-40 dives can do quite safely given decent conditions. The 60 feet limit PADI encourages (it's guidelines IIRC, not rules that can be enforced) was probably set because you can easily do an emergency swimming ascent (or whatever it's called in English) from that depth
.
Would it be smart for these guys to go out with their newbie friends and dive to 100-130 feet? 100 feet and a CMAS ** I am ok with, but not 130. A PADI AOWD + Deep Diver with 13 dives to 130 feet? I'm not too comfortable with this. 100 feet - would like him/her to be accompanied by someone with more dives.
Yet both PADI and CMAS say "you're good enough for it and you have the experience - have fun". I think the requirements are far too lax and need to be sharpened a *lot*. Clubs have an advantage here in that experience is built up and the people around you tend to know your skill level and match ya up - in essence, they're baby sitting you. Up the requirements somewhat and baby sitting could be reduced. Doesn't cost that much to raise requirements. For PADI it woud definitely mean loss of customers if it was too hard/took too long to get certified. Not srue what can be done there - other than baby sitting suppossedly qualified divers. That's no good either.
I think my advice, especially as it was based on my CMAS training, is sound enough or at least in line with CMAS regulations.
It may be different for completely new PADI AOWD divers, perhaps 100 feet is too deep. For a CMAS ** diver, it's within the limits and has been done before.
I should add that I looked up the PADI stuff just now. I wasn't aware before I posted that PADI's AOWD course only qualify its divers to dive to 60 feet.
Oh, and wreck diving is my passion too. Where do you usually dive? Favourite dive place? Me: Norway is definitely good. The body of water between Sweden and Finland is good for wrecks too.
