Originally Posted by
TGS
The traditional answer is Global Underwater Explorers (GUE). They'll start you off right from the beginning, and you won't get a c-card unless you're actually demonstrating competency in the right ways. PADI/NAUI/SSI/etc are all the same, and won't really ever get you there. The alternative method is to do PADI/SSI/NAUI whatevs to start out, but then take the GUE Diver Fundamentals course asap. It's open to everyone, and as opposed to being a "c-card" to let you do something, is basically entirely skills development. PADI et al have courses that are aimed at the same thing (I think PADI has one called "Buoyancy Perfection" or something), but they're really weak sauce.
GUE was the enterprise that really standardized on best practices early in the cave diving/technical diving scene. GUE divers had a reputation of being extremely snobby and their protocols are a bit strict and unnecessary in some regards. For instance, their protocols prohibit breathing air below 100fsw due to the effects of nitrogen narcosis, whereas the industry standard for recreational divers was 130fsw and my training with IANTD for normoxic trimix actually had us go to 180fsw under strict protocols to perform tests to measure our nitrogen narcosis effects at various depths. I was comfortable going to 140fsw on air, would "bounce" to 160, but in general was taking the IANTD triox course to use for below 140fsw. GUE, however, would mandate you use trimix/triox for anything below 100fsw, which frankly is fucking ludicrously conservative....and also crazy expensive, and would cut you out of a lot of recreational dive sites.
As cringe-worthy as I found GUE as a culture (it's almost a collective, like Crossfit drones), they'll get you the right training. In the recreational diving industry I'm not sure how you'll be able to guarantee you get the quality of training that GUE offers without going to GUE or getting into technical diving where you tend to select your instructor on a much more personal level. The skills they teach today are pretty standard throughout technical diving, but still not the recreational community, and GUE was the first and still the only agency I'd trust based on name to deliver that quality outside of technical diving. It's not just skills, either....it's an entirely different type of gear setup that 1) is actually more comfortable, and 2) is tenfold more efficient. The typical buoyancy compensator devices used in recreational diving are built as vests, and they force you into an upright or inclined position, which basically forces you to dive in bad technique/form. The average recreational diver has no awareness of how destructive they are, how over-weighted they are, and how out of balance they are. In addition, the equipment is set up in a way that actually makes it needlessly dangerous in numerous ways, with the length of the hoses, how the regulator is configured, etc. It doesn't work out well under pressure testing. The way we have our stuff configured in technical diving is because people kept dying using "conventional" gear and skills, and we decided (or, I should say our forefathers) found a better mousetrap. Everything from fins, masks, regulator setups, BCDs, lights etc in typical recreational diving are basically working against you.
Not to pick on RJ, but I'll just use his number as an example: I'd trust a GUE diver with 30 dives infinitesimally more than I'd ever trust a PADI/NAUI/SSI master diver with 400+ dives. There's a difference between doing something excellent 30 times over, versus doing something poorly 400 times over and basically getting a "Master Diver" c-card in exchange for giving them money and not much else of substance. That whole conscious competence vs unconscious incompetence thing. Just to make sure that ya'll understand I'm not picking on RJ......he likely has excellent in-water competence given when he started diving. The recreational diving industry was still holding people to standards back then, unlike the last 15 years where diving exploded as a tourist "attraction" and standards were thrown to the wayside in order to make a quick buck.
I agree with RJ, but at the same time one of the reasons I refrained from diving in places like Indonesia, Thailand, etc is due to the surprising amount of people who are left at sea when the boat doesn't check they have all their passengers before pulling the hook and heading back to shore.
Diving is relatively safe when conducted properly. You need to take active ownership in your safety, however, and most recreational divers are more like cattle. I felt more safe doing solo-dives on my own in poor visibility, cold water, etc than being part of a recreational "herd".