I'd love to become a diver, but ... SEVEN most common cop-outs

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Gill added 2011-01-28

Great article Tim - now my friends have NO excuse not to join me on my next dive!

FrejaW added 2011-01-30

Well I'm sorry but I obtained my PADI in America as a teenager with the navy and it required a lot more than 10 minutes treading water and a 200 metre swim!

First of all you could not be a smoker, secondly you had to be able to swim the entire length of a 50 metre pool underwater on one breath and still have enough in your lungs at the end to clear the regulator of water! We had to do a free ascent by first jumping off 20 metre diving board into deep end. Those were the hardest physical tests and there there was the exam where you had to know about Archimedes principle and diving tables etc IT WAS HARD! So please don't tell people getting your certification is easy- if it is you are getting the wrong certificate and you will be ill prepared and that is why it becomes HIGH RISK!

good luck but do it properly.

Tim Hochgrebe added 2011-01-30

@FrejaW - you are certainly correct that an Open Water dive course these days only prepares you for easy diving, but there are a lot more courses you can do after that which will prepare you for the more advanced types of diving such as deep, cave, wreck, navigation etc. - and with practice also comes experience, even if you don't do all the courses in the book.

I certainly have never heard of anyone having to jump from a 20m diving board (I didn't even think such high platforms exist). But of course in the Navy this might be different.

We are trying to encourage people to take the plunge and get off their facebook and enjoy the other 7/10th off the planet ... and that is quite possible without having to be able to jump from a 20m platform ... I don't think I would be a diver myself if I would have had to do this to be honest.

RobM added 2011-01-30

Hello Freja W Your comments are so obviously dated and particularly unhelpful.The era when Scuba Diving was a "gung-ho" male dominated domain are back beyond when I can still recall with any accuracy. Certainly if I am going to prepare to run a full marathon my preparation will be a little different to taking up jogging for health and recreation! About the best preparation for Scuba is to be trained to know what you are doing and be cool and calm if EVER anything does go wrong. In all my years I cannot recall any individual who wasn't able to completely comprehend all the theory content of the various courses. The only person I can recall who didn't pass a course was a very fashionable young woman who couldn't clear her mask because of her most noticeable manicured nails and her choice was the "nails" instead of Scuba Diving. In my 1000's of dives in honesty the only people who do cause problems are those that do behave in a macho fashion and do silly things. Some of the best divers I have been with are females who are usually neat and skilled and rely upon their techniques rather than brute force and swimming power. Each of the Dive Agencies have specific courses to prepare Divers for the specialties that people will usually want to advance to but until you aspire to a Rescue Diver qualification, or Divemaster, there is no physical tests that are needed to qualify. As to smoking ! What rubbish. Us smokers can scavange far more Air of of a tank than non-smokers can do. It is certainly not a skill I would ever recommend to anyone - but remember once among a group of professional Divers where we added up and found that more better qualified Divers smoked that what was the societal norm. Maybe that was a reaction to the stresses caused by the ill-informed "twaddle' peddled by the un-intelligent - and YOU!

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