SeaStar Adventures’ Weblog

NAUI (the National Association of Underwater Instructors) changed its policy on age requirements for scuba this week.

From Jed Livingstone(NAUI Vice President):
“On October 30, 2007 the NAUI Board of Directors changed NAUI Diving Course Standards and Policies applying to scuba diver training courses/programs allowing conditional junior diver certifications to be issued to graduates who are at least ten years of age. This change may be implemented immediately.”

Some certification agencies (PADI and SSI) have been offering courses to children as young as 10 yrs old for quite some time. NAUI’s policy has always accepted children as Junior Scuba Divers between the ages of 12-14, then graduating to Scuba Divers at age 15.

While SeaStar Adventures (a NAUI Gold Training Facility), supports this change in policy, there are several issues that we would like our clients to be aware of;

- It has been our experience that most 10 year olds lack the maturity, concentration skills, and knowledge to understand the concepts associated with being a competent and effectively ’safe’ dive buddy. While it is a great feeling to introduce children to the wonders of the ocean environ, could you expect to receive the same response to a stressful situation from a 10 year old, as opposed to a 12 or 13 year old?

– It has never been determined what the medical affects due to diving are, pertaining to bone and structural growth on preteens.

An email to Jed Livingston regarding these issues received this reply;
“The medical community is split regarding the theoretical risks you list. There have never been any studies conducted for a variety of reasons. In the absence of any hard data the board initially refused to change the age limit just to compete for market share – a courageous stance than none of the other agencies made, at least none that had anything to lose. Since then we have had to consider the reality of more and more ten year olds being trained and certified while our only option was to turn them away. It has become a “training and safety” issue rather than a “market share” issue, that is, if they are going to be trained anyway why deny them access to the best training available. Our position was becoming a head-in-the-sand approach and was no longer working because we were ignoring community practice rather than codifying it which is more consistent with our origins.

Also, the change does not require you to teach ten year olds, it does however give you the opportunity to provide the best training available, and if they fail to meet requirements, a convincing evaluation that they should wait until they have matured instead of just going down the street to be certified by someone who doesn’t care, can’t train them or evaluate them to the professional level of a NAUI instructor.

I see this as an opportunity to train more people and certify only those who earn it and thereby put more competent, self-sufficient NAUI divers into the sport and convince those who shouldn’t be certified to get further training, wait or take up another sport. That’s not a bad thing in my opinion.”

The training and touring policy of SeaStar Adventures will remain the same as it has been, to train students and guests to be competent, confident and safe divers in a variety of situations and dive sites throughout San Diego. Our only change will be that now our Junior Scuba Diver students and clients can now be as young as 10 years old. SeaStar Adventures has never taken junior divers (from ANY certification agency) beyond 60 ft and this policy will not change. We still recommend that students be given time to mature and grow before enrolling in our scuba courses. An introduction to the beauty and diversity of the marine environment (as well as introductory skills) can just as easily be accomplished through snorkeling and skin diving. If they do well, we can discuss getting them into a scuba course.