If you read through many of the online scuba diving forums, you’ll probably have noticed that there are a number of similar questions from new divers, or those considering becoming scuba divers. That questions is which training agency should they use? If you are a regular reader here, you’ll know my opinion on the subject. Just for the sake of argument, let’s assume that the training agency was a big factor.

There are a number of training agencies out there. I’m sure there’s more, but here’s a quick run down of a few of the biggest.

• PADI – PADI is the largest agency out there in terms of volume (i.e number of instructors, certified divers, etc.). PADI is based out of California, but originally was founded in Chicago (the real hot bed for scuba diving). PADI became the largest by doing more marketing and advertising than the other agencies.
• International Training (IT) – IT is made up of SDI, TDI & ERDI. SDI came about after a bunch of technical divers formed TDI (for tech training) and wanted to train recreational divers. SDI is strong in the northeast United States, but is gradually becoming larger though the midwest.
• NAUI – I don’t know a lot about NAUI. In the Chicago area, we had one NAUI shop, but I don’t think they are in business anymore or may have moved to another agency.
• SSI – Scuba Schools International (SSI) is slowing gaining some market share. When I first became an instructor, the shop I worked for was a SSI shop but was transitioning to PADI. Which was why they brought me in.
• GUE & UTD – These are two different training agencies. GUE is a non-profit while UTD is a for profit organization. The history between GUE and UTD is complicated, but came out of the DIR/Florida cave diving area.

With all of the agencies out there, which one should you pick? The answer really boils down to the evaluation of one aspect of the training agency. How a training agency trains it’s instructors will give you the best evaluation of the agency.

Why is this important? Because, this is what sets the culture for instructors to teach to and lays the foundation for instructor (and eventually student) performance. Most instructors will teach their classes in the same manner as how they were taught, including instructor training courses. If the classes they had as students were very easy, short cuts taken, etc; then they will most likely teach their classes in the same manner. This is one reason why I’ve rejected the micro-teaching that is taught by PADI.

The instructor training courses need to be difficult, in terms of diving performance. Instructor candidates should be pushed to their limits of diving performance and knowledge. By doing this, instructor candidates will know their limitations and can work on improvement prior to becoming certified to teach students. This also means instructor candidates will be more inclined to push their students to perform better.

If an instructor goes through a very rigorous instructor training program, they will develop more empathy for their students who may also go through a rigorous student course. I remember talking to my GUE Fundamentals instructor Brandon. I joked with him about his enjoyment of watching us fumble around during the class. He said he didn’t enjoy it at all, but he could relate to my frustrations as he went through the same thing. He probably had it even worse for his higher level GUE classes. Empathy is a critical skill for scuba diving instructors to have.

So, the 10 million dollar question is, “How can the prospective scuba diver know how well instructors are trained?” This is a very tricky thing to do and it requires a little bit of thought on the part of the prospective scuba diver. All of the training agencies I listed above put their instructor outlines on their respective web sites. By going through these high level outlines, one can gauge the culture of the training agency.

For example, when you go through these course descriptions, there should be performance requirements that instructor candidates must live up to. There should also be a grading scale and what is the minimum score that the instructor candidate must earn prior to moving onto the next level of instructor training. This will give you an idea of what an instructor must go through to finally get their teaching c-card.

It’s not an easy task when you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for. This is why people really need to slow down and think about the diving education they want to receive rather than simply jump in the water and blow bubbles. Taking your time and research the training agency and instructor (more so the instructor) will help ensure that you get a great scuba diving class and lay the foundation for years of enjoyment of the underwater world.

You found “the one” who is just right for you. All of your questions have been answered. You finally took the plunge. You found a great scuba instructor and had an awesome open water course to become a certified scuba diver. What else do you think I am talking about? Just like in our personal relationships, our relationship with scuba diving needs to have longevity. In order to have a long life of underwater enjoyment, you must first survive the “honeymoon” phase that almost every new diver goes through.

I’ve seen it many, many times before. People finish their open water class and are in love with scuba diving, but then slow down on how much they dive or worse yet, stop diving altogether. Scuba diving has brought me so much enjoyment, it ranks right up there with spending time with my kids. Everyone is capable of having the same amount of joy. To do that, we must recognize what the honeymoon phase is and how to have a long, enjoyable marriage with scuba diving.

The honeymoon phase is the short term enjoyment many people get right after trying scuba diving or getting certified. In simple terms, it’s the newness of doing/seeing something new. The keyword here is short term. For many people, this is a critical time in their diving career as diving starts to compete with other activities in ones life.

When I was going through my PADI instructor course, my course director discussed this phase. He said that this was was an important time to get in front of the student to sell the next level of classes, gear or trips. The theory was, if a person invests a significant amount of time and money into diving, they will force themselves to continue diving to maximize their return on the money they spent. By taking advantage of a persons new found passion, quickly, it will keep them diving. In my experience, it just leads to more dive gear on eBay and people upset about how many classes they took.

I’ll admit it, when I was a new scuba instructor, I bought into this concept big time. For two or three years, I did as much selling for the dive stores as I could. Until one of my former students contacted me outside of the dive store to see if he could sell me all of his gear. He didn’t want to dive anymore. His thought was that he spent about $10,000 in less than a year and wasn’t getting the same enjoyment out of diving as he did right after his open water class. It was at that time, I decided that I was no longer going to sell diving to people, but rather to bring the enjoyment of diving to people.

In order to get past the honeymoon phase and not give up diving so quickly, I came to realize that my PADI course director was wrong. People don’t need to take another class or buy gear so quickly to keep diving. I’d like to share with you a couple of things that I feel will keep a new diver diving, which buck many trends/recommendations by the diving industry.

• Don’t take classes – Don’t get me wrong, you need a solid education for safe and enjoyable scuba diving. However, you don’t need to take an Advanced Open Water class the weekend after passing your open water class. Space out your classes. Space them out by number of dives rather than a time frame. Tell yourself that you will take the Advanced Open Water class after you log 25 dives AFTER your open water class. Do this for all classes you take. By spacing out your training, you can start to appreciate what you learned in your prior classes. The biggest mistake I ever made was rushing my training. I did my open water and advanced open water classes on back to back weekends. A month later I did rescue diver. By the time I hit 20 dives (including training dives) I was already in the Divemaster program. I barely broke 100 total dives when I became an instructor. I was like a tornado inside a beer bottle.
• Don’t buy gear – Of course you need gear to dive. We can’t get around this. There isn’t anything wrong with renting quality gear for a while. You don’t need to drop $5,000 right away on shiny new gear. Just like with my advice on training, space out your equipment purchases. It doesn’t really matter which piece of gear you buy first. Even if you have the thousands of dollars to buy all new gear right away, don’t. Wait it out. Make sure you are truly enjoying your diving activities before dropping your hard earned money on gear. Don’t be afraid to buy used equipment as well. Just make sure you are aware that there will be no warranty on your scuba gear and you’ll be responsible for getting it serviced once you buy it.
• Don’t wait for people to dive with you – Join a shop-independent dive club. Many dive clubs that are sponsored by a dive shop tend to be biased towards only doing business with the sponsored dive store. This can lead to some of the problems I’ve mentioned earlier. Look around, there is always a good group of folks who just want to dive and they don’t care if they buy from one dive shop or another.
• Don’t just dive on vacation – Hey, nobody loves looking at pretty fishes and being in 85F water more than me. But you shouldn’t forget about your local diving areas. Diving locally gives you a chance to meet many new people who share your same passion for diving. Plus, if funds are tight (like in my case), local diving is a lot cheaper than trip someplace warm. Diving in colder, darker water may not be as nice as some place like Hawaii, but diving locally once or twice a month keeps your diving skills fresh and gives you more experience. Plus, it gives you a chance to hang out with your diving friends more.

Don’t get sucked into buying gear or more scuba classes to soon into your diving career. There will always be equipment to buy and classes to take in the future. That stuff will never go away. Space them out and enjoy the process. But the most important advice I can give you for a long life of enjoyable scuba diving is to dive more. A lot more.

Little did I know, day 2 was going to be the worst day of the class. I was rather pumped up coming into this day as I had a great first day in the Ballroom at Ginnie Springs. Our plan was to conduct three cave dives in the Devil’s Eye and Ear with a total bottom time around 90 minutes for the day. We met Dan at Extreme Exposure at 8:00 AM and picked up my tanks, then headed to Ginnie.

We started off with a brief lecture about diving in a high flow system. Dan went over how to “read” the flow and places to swim at in order to minimize fighting the flow. We also discussed the pull and glide technique for moving through the cave with high flow. The days were were at Ginnie, the flow was average. Let’s say if that is average, then I’d really hate to see above average or really high.

The plan for the first dive was to enter the cave system at the Ear and head to Keyhole. Dan give me some good pointers about how to run the line and conduct safety stops. For some reason, I wasn’t worried too much, but Dan was going into some great detail. I’d soon learn why I should have focused more.

We swam out to the Ear and it was clear of divers, so we descended. If you have never seen the opening at the Ear, it’s not very big and you don’t have the luxury to descend in the standard horizontal position I’ve grown accustomed to. Instead, we descended in a head first position.

In order to do the primary tie off, I was in a head down position with my legs spread against the cave wall in order to brace myself to do the tie off. Otherwise, the flow would spit you out before getting your reel unclipped. This was very odd for me. I’m not used to being in a head down, vertical position, let alone doing a tie off in the position, but I made it work.

I was able to get the primary and secondary tie offs set and then did my best to to perform tie offs and wraps till we got to the main line. It was a good thing that Dan took up the rear. Trying to do a pull and glide, hold onto the reel, then do tie offs was extremely challenging in the flow. With Dan in the rear, he was able to correct my screw ups with line placement and tie off such that I didn’t create problems for other divers entering and exiting the system. Good thing he did that. On our exit, Dan pointed out the tie offs that I screwed up so I knew what I did wrong and how to correct it.

Once I got us tied into the main line, Dan took over as the leader and I followed. Little did I know that Dan had a plan to put even more stress on me. Once we were on the main line, Dan took off and headed towards the Lips restriction. He really took off and I found it difficult to keep up with him. Once we got to the Lips, he squeezed through there and waited for me on the other side.

Sitting at the entrance side of the Lips, the flow was just beating the crap out of me. I could feel it vibrating my mask. Dan was on the other side and was signaling me to come through. The Lips was almost as bad as getting into the Ear. It was, as Dan called it, “tits to tanks” type diving. Forget buoyancy control and swimming, we had to pull our way through and I could feel my tanks rubbing against the ceiling with my chest rubbing the floor at the same time. Coming into contact with things is something that makes me very uncomfortable and easily gets me very frustrated.

With visions of getting permanently stuck inside the Lips, I was eventually able to make it through. Once through the restriction, headed up towards the ceiling where the flow wasn’t as bad. I’m always reluctant to swim near the ceiling of anything. As a wreck diver, if we come into contact the the ceiling, it could come down on us. So I ended up swimming lower than Dan did. Of course I paid for it by getting the crap beat out of me by the flow.

We made it to the area called the Keyhole. This was a really cool looking area. The Keyhole looks just like a keyhole in a door. Except it was huge. Very nice to look at. At this point, I thumbed the dive as I was starting to breathe a little faster than normal due to fighting the flow.

You’d think the trip back out would go easier, not really. In Dan’s classes, he doesn’t have you perform skills during the swim into the cave. He waits until the students turn around and are on the exit before conducting failures and skills. We get back to the Lips. At this point, I’m looking forward to getting back through there, but was reassured that the flow was strong enough to push my ass out.

Before we went through the Lips, Dan signaled a lost buddy. This is where the flow can really force you to loose your situational awareness. Knowing that I had to place an arrow on the line to conduct my search, I turn to look for the line and didn’t see it. I was so focused on keeping up with Dan, finding hand holds and fighting the flow that my line awareness went to shit and I didn’t know where it was. Dan was kind enough to spin my dumb ass around and sure enough, there was the main line. The lesson that got reminded of, was to never lose awareness of the line.

Once I got on the line, I placed my line arrow on it (in the right direction even), tied off my spool to the arrow and started off looking for my buddy. After a short search, Dan cut the drill and we returned back to the main line. While I was removing my spool off the line, Dan kills my primary light and covers up his primary light. I quickly deployed my backup light and stow my spool in my dry suit pocket. However, in my rush, I left my line arrow on the main line. So, if you see a yellow line arrow with Precision Diving on it, feel free to remove it. At least it was pointing the right way.

More about dives two and three in a bit.

When we arrived in High Springs, we stopped by Extreme Exposure during our tourist activities of High Springs. Dan is an instructor and employee for EE and was helping some of the WKPP team members fill tanks for the weekend’s work at Turner Sink. Having never met Dan in person, it was good to put a face to the name and chat for a few minutes. We decided that we would do our lectures at the dive site as the classrooms at EE were full with JJ’s Cave 2 class and a Fundamentals class being taught by Mark Messersmith. Dan decided that the first day would be at Ginnie Springs. We were to meet him at EE at 8:00 AM, then head to the dive site.

We arrived at EE to meet up with Dan, then headed over to Ginnie Springs. The plan for day one was to do some open water and cavern work at the Ballroom at Ginnie Springs. Once we got there, I setup my rig and we went over it. Dan also teaches and dives a Hogarthian rig, so our setup was similar. We reviewed pocket contents and briefly reviewed the benefits of standardization for team diving.

The equipment discussion went pretty quickly as expected. We then did some brief lecture where Dan talked about the differences between the NACD and NSS-CDS, the different types of caves and hydrology. The thing I learned most about this part of the lecture was how the Florida caves were formed and differed from the Mexican caves. Pretty cool stuff.

After a couple hours of lecture, we decided it was time to tie up some trees and go over land drills. Doing tie offs and wraps wasn’t anything new to me, so we spent a bit of time covering line arrows and non-directional markers (cookies). Things we covered the most were how to recognize areas where jumps can be done (i.e. with the two line arrows). At the basic cave level, performing jumps is forbidden. However, it is important to know how to recognize this. Dan covered quite a bit of information about stuff like this.

After tying up some trees and going over arrows and cookie placement, we went into some diving skills while on land. First up was air sharing while on the line. Dan gave me a few new tips that I haven’t done. Like holding on to the long hose while holding onto the line. Dan also stressed having a heightened sense of situational awareness. For example, while on the line, if you feel the line being pulled up, that means you may be getting slightly positive. You then correct it. Same thing when moving side to side. If you feel the line pulling in one direction, swim to straighten it out. I would find this out on day three.

Now it was time to get into the water. We entered the basin and discussed what we would be doing for the next three hours. Dan didn’t have the luxury to see me in the water before putting together this custom class for me. So he really had to take my word that I knew what I was talking about. He wanted to use this time at the Ballroom to make sure I just wasn’t full of shit.

Dan ran line around the perimeter of the basin. Once completed, he wanted to test me with something difficult. As we were standing in about four feet of water, he wanted me to drop down and do a valve drill while hovering, in four feet of water. This wasn’t anything new to me and I banged out the valve drill without hitting the bottom or surface. Upon completion, Dan complemented me “Yeah, you’ve got your shit together.” He noted that not many people he’s had through the course could do that.

Once my “test” was out of the way, Dan wanted to see my propulsion kicks. So I swam around the basin, following the line, while doing many different kicks. After everything went well, we did some no mask work on the line. This is where I got a taste of scraped up hands. Dan had me take my mask off and follow the line. Because it is so important not to lose touch with the line, you really need to take your time and feel around all of the wraps and placements to follow the line. After the no mask work on the line, we did air sharing on the line.

After the open water work was completed, Dan and I ran line through the Ballroom. During this time, Dan showed me the best practices for doing tie offs and placements on rocks. In my shipwreck diving experience, I’ve grown accustom to doing my tie offs and placements on man-made objects. Doing them on slippery rocks is another thing completely. This is where Dan’s knowledge about shipwreck and cave diving really helped me. He was able to show me how to make my tie offs stronger and what to look for on the rock to really hold the line.

Day one went off without a hitch and was very enjoyable. We finished up around 5:00 PM and headed back to EE for some quick video review and to fill the tanks. We decided to meet the next day at 8:00 AM at EE. The next day’s diving would all be in the overhead doing real cave dives. Stay tuned for how day two went, it certainly stretched my stress levels.

I’ve always been interested in underwater caves. The formations, geology and excitement have keep my interest level high in regards to cave diving. The problem, though, is that there are no caves in the Chicago area. So my ability to dive and get training locally is significant limited. After much thought, I decided it was time to take the plunge and start my training process to become a full cave diver.

My progress towards cave diving has been very slow. As many of you know, I am a diabetic. Overhead diving with diabetes puts people in significant risk. Not just to themselves, but to their team members who may have to provide assistance to safely exit the overhead. My decision to undertake this type of diving was one that I didn’t rush into. As a matter of fact, I thought long and hard about this for a number of years. I’ll get more into how my diabetes went during my cave training at a later date. But, suffice to say, I felt I was ready to take on this very aggressive form of diving.

The first thing I had to do was find a cave instructor. I didn’t want an instructor who would just show me how to do the skills. I wanted my brain to work in addition. I looked at all of the big name cave instructors in the industry, but I’ve had poor classes from people with great reputations in the past. So I didn’t put much stock into reputation. My friend Ed Gabe recommend that I take a look at a Dan Patterson. Dan works for Extreme Exposure and is a team diver for the WKPP. He is well versed in team diving concepts, like myself. With Dan’s extensive experience in diving with the WKPP, he is more than capable of teaching the “thinking diver”. After a few long phone calls with him, I knew that this was the type of instruction I wanted. That being, 1) difficult, 2) critical thinking focus and 3) forcing me to perform at a higher level than what I’m accustomed.

Dan put together a course for me that was centered around my strengths as a diver. Because of this, I was in a class to myself. By doing this, we just needed to focus on the cave specific skills for the class. For example, we didn’t cover buoyancy, trim and propulsion as I already have mastered those skills. This shaved off quite a bit of time of the class and allowed us to spend more time in the overhead. Oh, I should mention the specific classes I was signed up for was cavern and basic cave diver (Intro to Cave in double cylinders).

Since I was in a class by myself, I needed to get from Chicago to Florida. I thought about doing the drive solo, but the idea of driving for 18 hours alone didn’t sound like much fun. My buddies Dan and Samer volunteered to go down with me and share in the driving duties. Both Dan and Samer are already full cave certified. So they would get to do a few fun dives, while I was in my class.

Dan and Samer live in Indianapolis. Our plan was to drive, over night, leaving for Florida on a Wednesday night. We would then drive back home over night on Sunday, so Dan and Samer could get in a partial day of work.

I arrived at Dan’s house about an hour late. Traffic wasn’t the greatest and my wife didn’t let me leave until I did a few more “honey do” things. We quickly loaded up Dan’s trailer with my dive gear and hit the road. We left Indianapolis around 6:30 PM for the 14 hour drive to High Springs, FL.

We arrived in High Springs, FL around 9:00 AM on Thursday. This worked out very well for us. We were able to take in the typical diving tourist stuff, like hit the dive shops. Shortly after lunch, we headed over to Ginnie Springs for some time in the basin and Ballroom cavern. I certainly needed this time in the water as it had been about two months since I was last diving. Hey, that’s what happens when winter arrives in Chicago.

The Ballroom cavern is pretty cool. If you’ve never been to Ginnie Springs, the Ballroom is a place dedicated to open water and cavern only divers. The basin of the Ballroom is about 15 feet deep before the entrance to the cavern. The thing that really gave me the cool feeling was the visibility. Visibility was only limited to how far your lights could go. I rarely get a chance to dive in fresh water with visibility like that. Not to mention the water temps stayed a constant 73F degrees. There is a very thick line anchored across the Ballroom. This permanent line allows for cavern divers to easily find the exit. Located at the bottom of the Ballroom, with a maximum depth around 50 feet, is a welded metal grate. This prevents divers from entering the complex cave system within. The flow coming out of the cave is very strong. Strong enough to blow divers all over the cavern. It reminded me of being on a scooter.

We did two fun dives in and around the Ballroom. Logging about 120 minutes of bottom time. We did a few valve drills, modified s-drills, running line, etc. The first dive, we entered the cavern and swam to the left side. The first thing I noticed was the flow. Moving around the left side of the cavern, I didn’t find much relief from the flow. After peeking into all of the nooks and crannies, we thumbed the dive to play around in the basin.

The second fun dive we entered the cavern on the right and stayed to that side of the cavern. The flow was very minimal on that side. Exploring around the right side, we were able to get right next to the metal grate before getting into the flow. Then let the flow push us toward the exit.

Our first day in High Springs winded down with dinner and grocery shopping. Then back to the hotel to get to bed early to get plenty of rest before my class started the next day.

Enough playing around. The next day it’s time to pull the big girl panties up for class. Stay tuned to read more about each day.