On September 23, 2009 a post was created in the DSAT Tec Rec Blog. In this post, the PADI / DSAT Crew started a very interesting discussion. Should supervisory staff be allowed to wear CCRs when conducting PADI courses?
Many responses have been recorded. As for now, 57% of all responses say: Yes, on some courses. 38% of the responses say: No, not on any courses and 5% say yes, on any course. I did reply to the poll and mine was yes, on some courses. I also commented that my instructor did use one in the last few dives of my tec trimix course. My approach is that, other than expensive trimix in a course, I if we use a CCR with students the reason would be to teach a CCR course.
Maybe a Discover CCR course would be a cool thing to do for recreational divers thinking of going bubbleless, then a Basic CCR course with air diluent and a way of making it an optional rig for courses therefurther in the PADI system. A DSAT decompression course with CCR would be cool as well and mixed gas courses with CCR would be in order.
As for other member of the CCR community, a very rich discussion has started on the matter. The fact that having an instructor in a CCR is reasonable for some courses and as a direct way to market CCR diving. We need to keep in mind that this involves direct participation from PADI in the CCR business.
I think the matter goes on to how deep PADI wants to go with CCR’s. As many of us agree, the value added for “allowing a CCR while supervising courses” can be questionable and there are probably as many opinions as divers in the world. In addition a lot of work will be needed to regulate that use of CCR’s and many contradictions will appear.
On the other hand, I think most of us will agree in the fact that what we need as PADI members is an innovative approach for CCR training in the recreational and technical fields and that we need it in the short term. This involves really hard work as well but PADI will have to restructure all the PADI ConEd system and teaching standards to suit the market’s needs in the future anyways…
