Cave annual proficiency verification

[saturation]

A C card is more like a diploma than a license.

A license is something you need to do X, is mandatory and is renewed periodically.

Licenses require an administrative body, police and judge like body to enforce expectations of licenses [skills, knowledge etc.,] and continued relationship between licenser and licensee. A license has legal implications. The licenser needs oversight against corruption and abuse.

A diploma comes from an institution primarily for education, and often is simply 'accredited' without government regulation in regards to a taught curricula. How you use your diploma, and how others accept your 'education' is fully undefined, and is left from user to user, or employer to employer.

Licenses provide some measure of protection of the licensee and public but often its proportional to the cost, usually the fee charged to the licensee. Licenses are often used if the public good is at stake, and foregone if deficiencies affects only the individual so trained. E.g. In the USA you don't need a license to off road vehicle use, but you do once on public roads.

We all experience how efficient licenses are, e.g. driver license, restaurant licenses, sanitation licenses etc., in terms of safety, road fatalities and food poisoning events. A licensee is only required to show competence between renewal dates, what happens in between? Nothing is going to stop DIC diver just recertified A++ by NSSCDS from carving his face on the Henkel if he chooses.

For C cards, if the only injured party is the C-card holder, personal responsibility requires one keep up with skills, and that is purely on the c-card holders own judgment to take a refresher course.

For preventing damage to caves or whatever cultural resource, what is needed is some form of police force to catch offenses, apprehend the offender and a body to provide punishment. Damage can be from vandalism or simply poor skills, forcing the said diver to repair his errs. This is easier said than done: consider the errant diver who chooses to sue his accusers, or the legal cost to defend an accusation even if its small claims. Regardless of the problems raised regarding this 'cave police', I do not think mandatory recerts is the answer to avoiding cave injury or preventing vandalism.

Andrew, I'm not blaming you for taking a Zero-to-Hero course. But I AM blaming your instructor for offering the course.

[aainslie]

Andrew, I'm not blaming you for taking a Zero-to-Hero course. But I AM blaming your instructor for offering the course.

I'll try not to call you an idiot (Damn, it's tempting!)

I didn't take one - I did two 4 day sessions with several months (and dives) in between. I also took a load of classes after my initial classes, in part because I felt I was still getting a lot out of the interaction with my instructor. In total, I took 14 days of instruction.

And I don't think my instructor does offer it. But I'm not sure.

And I agree that it's sad the cornflakes are in the state they are. But let's conserve GOOD parts of the caves by keeping learning and instruction to the BAD parts.

Our arguments are jumping around - but I want to keep coming back to a system that is partially in place now, that could be enlarged. Let's continue to limit sensitive places. Cow comes to mind - we ask people to "decide" if they're ready to dive it without damaging it, but no one checks, and theoretically you can dive it immediately after finishing full if a) you can find someone to show you the entrance or you can wrok it out, b) you join CDS and c) you tell Cathy with a straight face that you're a brilliant diver and ready to dive it right now. I think that it should have firmer restrictions - if I had my druthers it'd be a sidemount only cave, but that's unlikely. At the least let's make it Abe Davis - new, old, whatever.

The peanut tunnel, the first 100 ft of Little River and Ginnie, etc - these are now in such an appalling state that there's no way they'll ever recover. So let's keep the damage to those areas by only using a seriously limited number of caves for training.

Finally, I actually think an 8 day course is bad for producing safe divers. But I don't think it's bad for the caves. I think you were choosing the wrong metric on which to attack these courses. That's all.

[teqdiver]

I have absolutely no statistics to back this up - it is entirely conjecture.

I think the Zero-to-Hero 7-day Full Cave program is absolutely the worst thing in diving. All the time I read on other boards about how some northeast wreck diver went to Florida and got his cave card. What I suspect is that card is a big merit badge, and he doesn't intend on ever really being a cave diver. Instead, he spent a week trashing the first 1,000 feet of Devil's, Peacock, Little River, Telford...

Require a minimum of two months between each of the four levels and the cave card is too difficult to get, thus less attractive.

To those that disagree, IF YOU'RE NOT GOING TO INVEST THE TIME IT TAKES, YOU DON'T NEED THE STINKING CARD!

So, I have some questions:

1. Zero-to Hero - pretty offensive I think. You are a fully certified cave diver right? So in your mind you are a hero right? Or are only week-long class cave divers heros? I took a week long class, but never really considered myself a hero. Just a cave diver.

2. Liberals and yankees? (taken from other posts by you in this and other threads) I am both. We should not be allowed to cave dive or to at least pass some kind of muster with you or some instructor of your choosing? F@%& you!!!!

3. If we are to checked or re-certified or whatever, who checks the checkers? How does one become a checker? Do you have to be an instructor? Or will it be like the guides that are needed to dive certain systems? Will the requirement just be to live locally and to be a cave country "insider"?

4. If people here say that having paid cave diving instructors is a bad thing and that it just creates more traffic in the caves, how does making everyone take a class every year or two solve this problem? Do you really think cave diving instructors will do this stuff for free out of the kindness of their hearts? Since they now have to have full time jobs outside of the diving industry (and it IS an industry) how do you expect them to have the time to teach all of these classes we now have to take? How do you expect them to pay insurance dues?

5. Have you ever had a career where you were required to do "continuing education requirements?" I am a trauma nurse and I can tell you as some other medical professionals here have already said - CEU's are pretty much complete bullshit. Either you are competent or you are not. Either you are into absorbing knowledge and being good at what you do or not. Again, these are requirements set up by politicians to satisfy voters and lawyers, nothing more. Usually these are a complete waste of time. A practitioner interested in advancing his or her skills reads, practices, listens, learns from mistakes and team plays on his or her own for the love of the knowledge and skill.

6. Why is it that northeastern wreck divers coming to cave country to learn skills and safety techniques that can be directly translated to wreck diving a bad thing? I would much rather them be cave certified for penetrating wrecks. It's better than progressive penetration right? Sure I think many wreck divers are CF's, but if they come to the caves and get straightened out, that's not a bad thing.

7. Pertaining to the question above - how is that these same yankee, left-coast, pinko liberals (according to you) who come down to do their cave training are "trashing the caves during their training"? Are they not with instructors during this training? Are these not the same instructors that we would be "re-certifying" with? If these instructors can't keep keep their entry level students off of the floor (which I believe they can and do very nicely) why should I believe they have anything to show me every year or two? ( I do believe they have volumes to teach actually. I believe cave instrucotrs are the finest divers in the world. I'm just not into being forced).

8. How does requiring two months between four different certifications solve anything either? All that does is kill time. Should there be some diving in there somewhere? Why should I as a yankee leftist break up my training into 4-10 trips each with 26 hours roundtrip drive time to accomplish the same results that I can accomplish in one? I am willing to put in the dive time (and I have), but geographics and logistics have to be taken into account.

9. I'm sure you've run all this by the cave instructors that will be expected to run all these re-certifications and gotten their opinions right?

10. If you are certified with the NSS-CDS or NACD or whatever, would you be expected to re-certify only with them? Will agencies be able to cross-train people? I remember something I think about GUE not recognizing certifications from other agencies. So would you have to go through all levels of training again with them requiring 4-10 trips to cave country? I'm sure you woul d have worked out all the details before pitching us on your master plan? Right?

11. I'm a proud member of the CDS, however it has proven to be a bit of a disfunctional organization. How can the CDS be expected to police all of these divers, their time intervals for re-certification and any other rediculous requirements you can come up with when they can't even get renewal notices out to its paying membership many times? I'm sure you will be volunteering your time and resources to fill man-power holes and manage the project for the cave training agencies? Or will it be "Here's what we should do. Now else should get it done." In other words, put your money where your mouth is!

12 How is it that someone with over 2000 posts between two boards has the time to go out diving with all that time spent behind the monitor speaking down the nose at the rest of us yankee leftists? Be careful when preaching this fervently that you are not really some computer geek living in his mom's basement. I, as a yankee leftist bring with me to cave country on my MANY trips not only excellent cave diving skills, but also the skillset necessary to be a qualified northern diver as well. That means water as cold as 36 degrees, depth, boats and very limited visibility. Maybe you should have to pass my test before you are allowed in the cave at the same time as me. How would you like that? Come on up to Ohio over multiple trips (because you can't very well do the test in one trip!) and we'll get that test done, but you'll have to redo it in two years!

13. How are you going to enforce your rediculous 1-2 year recert program and keep me and others out of caves when we refuse and come on down to northern Florida anyway?

Sorry about the rant everybody, but I just could not pass on this thread. I actually feel dumber and I think I've lost a few brain cells in the process for responding to it. Oh well, it's my loss I guess for stooping to the set level.

Safe and fun diving diving everyone,

J. Ryan Parkevich RN

[Mike]

Wow, I'm shocked. Please don't take this the wrong way, But this is the dumbest idea I've ever herd of.

Trying to make money by starting the dive police???? FAS

I agree!
This idea sucks & has nothing to do with preserving the caves.
Come up with something else so we can argue for another 3-4 page thread.

Mike

[BobK]

I have absolutely no statistics to back this up - it is entirely conjecture.

I think the Zero-to-Hero 7-day Full Cave program is absolutely the worst thing in diving. All the time I read on other boards about how some northeast wreck diver went to Florida and got his cave card. What I suspect is that card is a big merit badge, and he doesn't intend on ever really being a cave diver. Instead, he spent a week trashing the first 1,000 feet of Devil's, Peacock, Little River, Telford...

Require a minimum of two months between each of the four levels and the cave card is too difficult to get, thus less attractive.

To those that disagree, IF YOU'RE NOT GOING TO INVEST THE TIME IT TAKES, YOU DON'T NEED THE STINKING CARD!

So, I have some questions:

1. Zero-to Hero - pretty offensive I think. You are a fully certified cave diver right? So in your mind you are a hero right? Or are only week-long class cave divers heros? I took a week long class, but never really considered myself a hero. Just a cave diver.

2. Liberals and yankees? (taken from other posts by you in this and other threads) I am both. We should not be allowed to cave dive or to at least pass some kind of muster with you or some instructor of your choosing? F@%& you!!!!

J. Ryan Parkevich RN

Not much point in reading past #2, but I did notice you mention "liberal" or "leftist" several times. Got me to thinking about the difference between liberals and conservatives. That difference, generally speaking, is that liberals feel that others owe them stuff where conservatives understand they have to work for what they want. It's likely that this sense of entitlement to things they didn't earn translates into a looser regard for the property of others like, say, caves. So it isn't too hard to make the connection that it is liberals who are trashing the caves. That being true, I guess Sludge has a valid argument

[Daedalus]

Why is it that northeastern wreck divers coming to cave country to learn skills and safety techniques that can be directly translated to wreck diving a bad thing? I would much rather them be cave certified for penetrating wrecks. It's better than progressive penetration right? Sure I think many wreck divers are CF's, but if they come to the caves and get straightened out, that's not a bad thing.

The wreck diving community needs to come up with an analogue for cave training that does not involve getting trained in a cave. The only people who should be cave diving are people who love cave diving, if you see it as only a means to an end, you should not be there.

Liberals and yankees? (taken from other posts by you in this and other threads) I am both.

If you go back and actually read the post, you'll realize I never said I don't like either of them. I enjoy meeting people from all cultures and walks of life. I also enjoy traveling to other parts of the country and world.

What I criticized was people coming to the south and telling us how to do things.

[novadiver]

Why is it that northeastern wreck divers coming to cave country to learn skills and safety techniques that can be directly translated to wreck diving a bad thing? I would much rather them be cave certified for penetrating wrecks. It's better than progressive penetration right? Sure I think many wreck divers are CF's, but if they come to the caves and get straightened out, that's not a bad thing.

The wreck diving community needs to come up with an analogue for cave training that does not involve getting trained in a cave. The only people who should be cave diving are people who love cave diving, if you see it as only a means to an end, you should not be there.

It's only a cave!!!!! Wrecks are museums underwater.


Is it getting hot in here?? or am I on my way to hell

[cavediver256]

Why is it that northeastern wreck divers coming to cave country to learn skills and safety techniques that can be directly translated to wreck diving a bad thing? I would much rather them be cave certified for penetrating wrecks. It's better than progressive penetration right? Sure I think many wreck divers are CF's, but if they come to the caves and get straightened out, that's not a bad thing.

The wreck diving community needs to come up with an analogue for cave training that does not involve getting trained in a cave. The only people who should be cave diving are people who love cave diving, if you see it as only a means to an end, you should not be there.

It's only a cave!!!!! Wrecks are museums underwater.


Is it getting hot in here?? or am I on my way to hell

Oh I am getting the popcorn for this one !!!!