I figured I'd beat this to the punch...

One thing I found conspicuously absent from captkeywest's article (See
Which Diver Are You parts I & II) was the failure to mention the roles
and responsibilities of the professionals who are providing dive
services to the general public....

...you know, that "public" of which "Scott" wants to have annual
recertifications for...

True, OW divers have no annual testing requirements.  However, is this
not also the case for the DM's and Instructors too?

Since they have a professional duty of care, it would seem to me that
"Scott" has focused on...well, I won't say the "wrong group", but at
least the "Least Important Group"....for his idea of requiring periodic
quality control testing from.

So if we're going to examine the claim of "A yearly checkout dive
shouldn't put a burr in anybodies swimsuit!", then let's start with
those paid dive professionals to set a good example.  To assure customer
safety, what should their renewable standards be?

Well, an annual medical physical is a good starting point.

  It should probably also screen for drug and alcohol abuse,
  since these staffers often also the boat drivers too, and
  these problems are unfortunately too common in some areas.

Next, we want to make sure that there's a performance swim test and an
actual teaching skills test of some sort.  

  The challenge here is that since these skills/fitness is
  needed most at the beginning of the dive season, so a mere
  annual requirement will be insufficient, since it will be
  human nature to slip its scheduling to when the season is
  winding down and they're in the best shape to pass the test.

  Hence, to make sure that the standards are being met when
  they're needed and since dive seasons vary from region to
  region, the simplest way to address this is to simply make
  this a requirement that has to be renewed every 6 months.
  Yup, it must be done more often than the OW customer, since
  they're being paid to have a duty of care over said customers.

What else?  Well, since the surface is one of the most dangerous parts
of a dive, some sort of commercial boat driver performance test would be
appropriate to require.

Ditto for safety inspections of the boat for required safety equipment
and so forth, and since diving is international, we can't rely on
individual governments to set these standards, so it must come from the
private industry - - - EG, the Dive Agencies  - - - and be part of the
definition for "PADI 5 STAR", etc.  Again, since there's the seasonal
influence again, these should again probably be required every 6 months.

Which also means an annual Red Cross First Aid refresher class, which
was a prerequisite to get Rescue Diver and DM.  Got to wonder how many
people have these cards, but haven't maintained their Red Cross card.

This all sounds like a lot, but there's clearly more that should be
added.  And the good news regarding all of this is that these recurring
testing requirements are all legit business expenses, so their costs can
be passed along to the consumer.  And if they're standardized across the
dive industry, no one outfit will be at a competitive disadvantage over
the others.

Which then brings us finally to "Scott's" idea of requiring annual
recerts for their customers.   Well, if the dive industry adopts all of
the above, then I'll *begin* to consider the idea.  

Personally, I see problems with it in that its very easy for an "Annual
Dive Vacation" to not hit 12 months on the nose year after year...it
could be 11 months this year and 13 months next, which illustrates the
arbitrary nature of the "annual" criteria.  

Similarly, I do not generally enjoy having to jump through some new
administrative hoops to demonstrate to some DM who was born after I was
certified that I'm not going to promptly drown the moment that I drop
off the back end of the boat.  

Finally, when I'm rusty, I go down to my local diveshop's pool and get
wet ... but this is free and it results in no sort of documentation to
satisfy a ticket-puncher.  As far as I'm concerned, there is no problem.

FWIW, I personally think it would be much simpler for a dive shop to
just use the existing data that they collect from their customers - -
eg, their Agency & C-Card number - - and mail a quarterly report back to
said Agency's Quality Assurance Department.  The QA department then does
some statistical aggregation to find out which of their instructors are
producing the students who are gathering the most complaints about poor
diving skills.  Congratulations!  We've now identified our worst
Instructors who are the root cause of our problem.

Before taking the dramatic steps that will only disrupt and alienate
their customer base, the industry should try the easy stuff that they
can do on their own at very low cost and 'zero' customer involvement.

-hh