We've all been wowed recently by the YouTube footage from those crazy guys who jump out of helicopters or off the tops of high mountains wearing nothing more than a wing-suit to aid their safe landing. They know the risks they take.
It's the same with lots of action sports. You can kayak over a waterfall or ride your mountain bike down an incredibly steep hill. You can even buy fishing gear and a lot of beer and go and sit at the edge of some deep water without anyone questioning whether you can swim. It's probably only the high financial outlay and the risk to the animal that people take horse-riding lessons. If it goes wrong you have no one to blame but yourself. It's down to you.
We live in a free country and there's nothing to stop you from buying a bike and riding it where others might blanche at the prospect. Neither is there anything to stop you from buying a full set of scuba gear and popping off for a dive alone in the ocean. That's your choice.
However, we also live in an age where safety has become paramount if there's any possibility of someone else getting the blame. This is why you need certification to embark on scuba diving if anyone else is involved with you.
After diving for more than thirty years, I was sent incognito by a magazine to enjoy a PADI Open Water Diver course at a dive school in the sun abroad. The object of the exercise was to write a feature about it.
None of the other would-be divers knew me and I noticed a certain level of apprehension the first morning among my wide-eyed companions. I too was a little tense since the course was to be conducted in German, a language I didn't speak. I bluffed my way through and my years of underwater experience meant that I became a star pupil once I fathomed out what was wanted of me.
Over the period of four days, my previously nervous companions visibly grew in confidence as they discovered that scuba diving was not nearly as difficult as they might have imagined. At the end of the course they were all certified.
We then spent the next few days doing some easy shallow leisure dives during which time it struck me that these people who had enrolled in the classroom on that first morning knowing nothing about diving had, in the course of a few exercises and dives, become within that short time frame, experts in their own eyes.
Assuming I too was a newly qualified open-water diver, between dives I got lots of uninvited advice about my equipment choice and where I should go diving. For example, I was told that I had the 'wrong' regulator and that I didn't need a diving computer.
Scuba diving is almost unique among leisure activities in that you need to embark on a structured course and are eventually issued with a certificate that proves your proficiency. Of course the PADI OWD certification is only the start. You can go on to obtain far greater levels of certification for more advanced levels of proficiency and whatever level you achieve there will always be someone with a higher level than you.
Scuba diving is not normally a competitive sport. Those that compete at the extreme level usually have only one destination. There are bold divers and old divers but few old bold divers. However, our human condition lends itself naturally to compete. When you learn to dive, you'll take on board everything your own instructor tells you. Inevitably, he will have his own personal take on things despite adhering to the training standards of his particular agency. Later, you will find yourself in the company of other divers who maybe learned slightly differently or with alternative training agencies. They are not wrong, neither are you.
Be warned that you will meet people who try to enforce their own opinions and points-of-view about diving technique upon you. Some will be worth adopting while some will suffice to merely aggrandise the teller. (The Internet is awash with the opinions of such keyboard warriors.) Learn to pick up new ideas but reject those that are merely a different way to skin the same cat. Don't be demoralised. You've got a certificate too.
It's the certification phenomenon in scuba diving that lends itself to those that want to prove themselves instant experts. Nobody tells the wing-suited flier he's doing it wrong. He'll know that, if he is, the moment before he hits the unforgiving hard surface.
Safe diving - John Bantin
