Browsing Category GUE
How is the GUE Fundamentals course different from the PADI Advanced course?
The difference between the Fundamentals course and the Advanced course is really about the curriculum and comprehensiveness of the courses.
The Advanced course offers the new diver a chance to experience 5 other types of diving environments and covers those in a relatively quick format.
The Fundamentals course instead focuses on an individual and team’s dive skills, in order to manage these new environments effectively.
Diving and Driving, an analogy that keeps on going
The Open Water course is like the basic driving course that everybody does in order to get a driving license. It covers basic techniques, such as accelerating smoothly (propulsion kicks), parking (hovering), braking (ascending smoothly to the surface) and signaling (communication).
The Advanced course would be like getting experience driving on real roads, in real conditions. For example, driving at night (night dives), at high speed on expressways (drift dives), tight car parking spaces (peak performance buoyancy), and trying to navigate while driving in another country (navigation dives).
The Fundamentals course would be more like a defensive driving course, where you’d learn how to minimize your risk (awareness and teamwork), perform pre-trip inspections (gas management, dive planning, decompression management), and handling skids, accidents, and hazards (emergency drills).
Investing in yourself is never a bad decision
While the Fundamentals course and the PADI OW and AOW are different in terms of how they approach diver training, both are absolutely necessary for any serious diver’s training log.
Only after the basics are learned, can a higher level of skill be developed.
Personally, I would always recommend investing in yourself by taking the Fundamentals course, as it takes a more detailed and focused instruction in order to attain a higher level of skill.
I do believe that both types of courses serve their purpose well, but if you truly want to be a serious diver, then the Fundamentals course is the best place to get started.
Do GUE people only dive with other GUE people?
A lot of GUE divers, upon getting certified, will want to plan a trip with other GUE divers and go diving. Whilst diving more is always a good thing, what happens when GUE divers only want to dive with other GUE divers?
The Natural Attrition rate of GUE Divers
For me, this situation is not unsurprising. Who wouldn’t want to dive with a team that has the same training, protocols and thinking as you? Why wouldn’t you want to dive with someone whom you know has your back, and can keep you safe? This is in contrast to the ‘instabuddy’, who first meets you on the boat before the dive. You have no idea the level or experience that this person has, and no way of knowing what he’s like underwater. Generally, this doesn’t inspire confidence…
If we all think that way, then what next?
However, I don’t think this is good for the industry and for GUE in general. Firstly, there’s an impression that GUE divers are elitist, making them seem unfriendly and uptight when it comes to dive parameters. Keeping to oneself and not interacting with other divers definitely doesn’t help that impression, but this sticks even though some GUE divers are well meaning and not elitist by nature.
I say help if you can!
Secondly, I feel that as more skilled divers, we have a moral obligation to help and assist others. After all, can we stand by while the environment and other divers get injured and do nothing to teach and educate them about a better way of doing things?
Most diving incidents and environmental damage are entirely preventable, through better training and an increased awareness. By seeing GUE divers lead by example, my hope is that this thinking slowly permeates through the industry, regardless of agency or affiliation. Our greatest obligation is ultimately to the environment that we’ve all grown to love as divers.
So get out there and let other divers have the benefit of your presence in the water! Let them have a safer dive, just by being there. Wouldn’t you want to do this for all your friends who dive?
Let’s lead by example!
GUE vs PADI: What’s the difference?
GUE and PADI are two different organizations, right? Whose certification is more recognized internationally? Which is better?
At Living Seas, we’re often asked these questions when newcomers dive with us.
Yes, GUE and PADI are two different organizations that are unrelated to each other. GUE stands for Global Underwater Explorers, and PADI stands for Professional Association of Diving Instructors.
As a certification body, PADI is more well known internationally because it has been around for a longer time. It also spends a lot on marketing. GUE is a non-profit organization with the primary goals of advancing aquatic education, conservation and exploration. That being said, GUE is widely recognized as being the best in the industry because of its emphasis on quality control and stringent standards. Increasingly more people are beginning to know about GUE, too.
The PADI certification will allow you to dive around the world (within the limits of what you’re certified for, of course). You could think of PADI as a key that grants you access to the underwater world.
Once you walk (or more literally, swim) through that door, your dive education should continue. Going through a GUE course, in my opinion, is more about the skills and the knowledge that you acquire in the process. The certification that comes with it is secondary.
That’s why Living Seas offers both PADI and GUE courses. We believe in being qualified for the diving that we do, beyond being certified to do those dives. (If you’re curious about our diving philosophy, read our earlier reflections on what it means to be an “advanced” diver and the fundamental skills all divers should have.)
For those who believe in challenging themselves to dive better, I urge you to think in terms of qualification instead of certification. Forget chasing certificates, and instead focus on being more competent and comfortable at the dives you want to do!
True competency isn’t measured by the number of certificates you have or the equipment you own. It’s gained through time spent in the water, practicing and improving.
How is the GUE Fundamentals course relevant to recreational divers?
You might have heard about the Global Underwater Explorers (GUE) Fundamentals course through your “hard-core” diving friends who love exploring caves and wrecks.
Or perhaps you came across it while googling for information on how to improve your scuba diving and buoyancy control.
Either way, you’re probably wondering: Is this course relevant to me, if I’m simply into recreational diving?
We get this question a lot. Contrary to popular belief, the GUE Fundamentals course is ultimately a recreational course. It doesn’t have to lead to technical or cave diving, although the course is also a gateway to GUE’s more advanced diver training options.
The skills taught in the course are relevant to any diver regardless of certification level and where you dive. It doesn’t matter whether you’re diving over a reef, in a cave, on a wreck or 50m deep—the importance of being able to handle yourself well in any type of underwater location simply can’t be understated.
One of the objectives of the Fundamentals course is to allow you to become better at the basics of diving, that is, to improve your awareness, buoyancy and communication underwater. Coupled with a focus of diving in a team, the GUE Fundamentals course makes you a much better dive partner. You’ll emerge from the course with a better knowledge and understanding of how to interact with others while diving, and how to deal with situations that arise.
Some might also ask: Shouldn’t I have already acquired these skills at the Open Water courses? Well, the short answer is no.
The GUE Fundamentals course doesn’t just hone your skills of buoyancy, trim, balance and propulsion, but it also teaches you to streamline your equipment configuration, plan a dive, manage your gas, and master a number of drills, including how to deploy a surface marker safely and effectively. More details here.
A useful analogy likens regular recreational diving to amateur dance classes, while the GUE methodology is more akin to ballet, where the strict focus on form and technique produces a dancer with a much higher skill level.
Whether you progress to more advanced diving after the GUE Fundamentals course is completely up to you. Even on a recreational dive, having solid underwater skills is useful. After all, having fun on a reef is an objective in itself.
Plus, if everyone has better skills, we’ll enjoy the underwater environment without causing damage to the reef—or to ourselves!
A simple comparison between GUE and other recreational agencies
It’s pretty common to get a blank stare whenever we mention Global Underwater Explorers (GUE). Many divers have not and would not hear about GUE unless they were curious about technical diving. Partly because GUE is a non-profit organization, there’s not a lot of marketing money going into promoting GUE among the diving public. Most existing instructors and dive centres are affiliated to PADI, so that’s what usually comes to mind when people think of diving.
With GUE, I consider differences between them and other recreational agencies as starting from the basic philosophies of how one views diving and what its role is within the world. In other words, the very soul of the organization.
Primarily, the other agencies are focused on recreational diving, but GUE was rooted in the exploration and conservation fields. In these types of diving, skill and good procedures are a must, because such dives have specific objectives. The organization focuses on building divers with the adequate capacity to accomplish tasks in the water, rather than to simply survive in the water.
The primary course in GUE’s curriculum is the Fundamentals course. Its main objective is to get the student diver stable underwater. My students joke that we spend a week in the pool just to be able to do nothing! It’s not that simple to stay perfectly still in a specific position while doing a specific drill underwater, but that’s exactly what we work on – to build buoyancy and propulsion skills to a point where it is possible to do that, and to also be completely relaxed while at it.
The importance of being relaxed and yet in control of one’s position in the water cannot be overstated, because if you are totally focused on the diving skills, then you won’t have the capacity to appreciate the environment, much less actually accomplish a task.
I personally see this as an enabling skill, because with it, all other things that you might like to do in the water – taking a photo, stopping to look at a nudibranch, posing for the camera, taking a closer look at a fish, etc – become a lot easier when you are stable in the water, and in full control of yourself and your position. You also become a nicer diver to dive with, because you are more aware of your surroundings and are better able to assist your friends if they have trouble with anything.
Lastly, you’ll also learn more about the different risks that diving creates, such as decompression, gas limits, and accident prevention. It’s really quite a comprehensive course!
In contrast, the recreational agencies promote courses that were developed by the World Recreational Scuba Training Council (WRSTC), with a focus on minimum training standards that all recreational scuba training agencies have to follow. (GUE is not a member of the WRSTC, by the way.) The primary training goal of these courses is to teach emergency procedures to student divers, rather than build the comfort and stability of the diver.
Teaching emergency procedures is, in my opinion, a more reactive way to approach diving education. Rather than just focusing on what to do after something has gone wrong, why not adopt a more proactive style, which involves teaching the prevention of accidents? I truly believe that if a diver is comfortable and stable in the water, then more often than not, that diver will have an awareness of the environment, and thus be better able to react and make a good judgement call on what to do to rectify a situation if it presents itself.
Of course, I’m not advocating that we don’t teach emergency procedures, but these procedures shouldn’t be all that the course curriculum focuses on. The “softer” skills of “how to be” in the water should be balanced with the “harder” skills of “what to do”.
There are many other differences between GUE as a training organization and the recreational agencies, most notably the GUE’s strict adherence to standards with 100% quality control forms for all students, stricter instructor requirements, and stringent fitness prerequisites.
The key difference between GUE and other dive training agencies is, essentially, a philosophical one: What defines a good diver?
Personally, I think GUE answers it best. In its efforts to build and accurately assess diver competency, GUE’s stringent standards make sense, even if such indicators as stability and awareness are harder to measure.