Specialties in Diving: Rip-off, Card Sales, or Meaningful Further Education?
You can arrange your entire diving life so that you never just go diving, but complete one course after another. Boat diving. An SMB specialty. An ecology specialty per fish species. An extra course for a minimally different equipment configuration. A completely new training for every new rebreather. Theoretically, diving can be completely divided into brevets.
From the basic chatter, however, there is usually a fairly clear verdict: such “card collectors” are generally not highly regarded. You should just gain experience at every level, go diving, just like that. And “you learn to dive by diving” – that’s also true.
So the question is not new, but justified: Who actually benefits from all the specialties? Except for those who sell these cards?
Where does the bad reputation come from?
Specialties are suspected, not entirely without justification, of serving primarily one purpose: to rip off customers, preferably in such a way that they perceive the resulting frictional heat as a warm nest.
This accusation is harsh, but it doesn’t come from nowhere. Further education sounds good, a new brevet feels like progress, and somewhere there is always the feeling that you might be missing something important without this card. That works – unfortunately, even where the added value in terms of content remains limited.
And yes: Some specialties are actually pretty pointless. Boat diving, for example. That requires a clean briefing, not a whole course. And inflating an SMB belongs in a reasonable basic training and not in a separate special brevet…
When a course isn’t really a course at all
It becomes really problematic where a specialty no longer represents real training. If there is no added value, no time in the water, no repetitions, no learning – but just another box to tick.
If “Perfect Buoyancy” is quickly sold in addition to the OWD, without even a single skill being consistently performed in neutral buoyancy, then that is not training, but a rip-off. If the boat brevet is simply added to the boat dive for an extra charge, you can smile about it. But if only those with this specialty are allowed on the boat, and you have to pay dearly for it, then a line has been crossed.
Nobody really needs such specialties. If you’re already taking courses, you want to learn something in the process, right?
No “Deff-Scheine” for a Leisure Activity
What specialties are not: They don’t allow anyone to do anything new, they are not necessary to further educate themselves and undertake more demanding dives. I am fundamentally not a fan of the increasing regulation of a leisure activity. Specialties are not “Deff-Scheine” – i.e. no permits in the sense of “he is now allowed to do that.”
You don’t need a night specialty to dive at night. No navi specialty to find your way. And no deep specialty to dive to 40 meters.
If individual dive centers decide to link participation in an activity to a specific brevet, then they are of course allowed to do so – their base, their domiciliary right. But there is no legal necessity beyond that to always take a new course for new equipment or new activities.
You don’t learn to dive with plastic cards. What you really need for that is experience and training.
Training, not cards
To dive better, you need training. And for this training, specialties can certainly be a sensible way. Not automatically, not by their name, not by the card – but by the way they are taught.
It always depends on how a course is done.
You can make useful training out of almost anything
You can even build a course from the most absurd specialty that is worthwhile for the participants. Let’s take a deliberately extreme example like Underwater Pumpkin Carving. Sounds silly, and it is a bit. Nevertheless, useful training can be developed from it. Anyone who performs a task underwater learns a lot about buoyancy without support, about breath control under distraction, about fine work with tools, about stress, concentration and teamwork.
The title of the course doesn’t matter at all. What matters is what you make of it.
The same applies to many specialties in the SSI universe. The added value does not arise from the curriculum alone, but through focus, methodology, time in the water and through instructors who contribute their own competence and pick people up where they are.
Small special trainings are actually quite clever
Short, clearly focused training units with two or three dives are surprisingly useful as a further education concept. They can be easily integrated into everyday life or into vacations and fit in perfectly with the idea of lifelong learning.
The same applies from an instructor’s point of view. You can make a course that offers real added value out of any topic. However, it is not enough to have the theory read and run through the minimum from the course program. Good training takes time, repetition, feedback and the will to think outside the box. The SSI flexibility rule allows you to supplement each course with your own meaningful exercises and adapt it to your training environment. It is your content, your experience and your dives from which your students learn, not the manual!
Courses are not a must – but they work
Specialties are not a must. Divers can further educate themselves in many ways, they don’t have to be able to prove everything. Too much regulation can do more harm than help. But training makes sense.
We consciously sell training dives and SSI material separately from each other at Punkfish Diving. You can take courses or just book training. Nevertheless, most people opt for courses. Not because of the card, but because of structure, motivation and orientation.
The goal should never be to do or sell as many specialties as possible. My interest as an instructor is different: I want to train the best possible divers. And for that they need training. Whether this training takes place in course form or not is secondary. The courses help – and they work.
Nobody HAS to do or teach specialties…
And maybe one last sigh at the end. If you think specialties are a rip-off, then don’t do them. Or don’t sell them as a diving instructor. That’s perfectly okay. Nobody is forced to use this format.
But if you also claim that you don’t need them in training at all, then please also show how your training works instead. And make it really good. Just moaning is not enough. Making it better is. Only then will criticism become really valid.
It is precisely for this reason that I myself am intensively involved in how specialties can be designed in such a way that they meet this requirement. Not as a sales product, but as a structured training format with real added value. If you as an instructor are also interested in this, you will find a corresponding specialty instructor training with me. No must, no miracle solution – rather an honest look at what you can make of this tool if you take training seriously.
