THE WHY AND HOW OF THE NEW FFESSM CARDS…

19 / 06 / 2013: REDEPLOYMENT AND INTERNATIONAL VALIDITY OF DIVING CARDS ISSUED BY THE FFESSM

For level 1, Level 2, Level 3 and Nitrox divers cards.

Cards conform to Cmas standards and with a quality control label.

Letter from Jean-Louis BLANCHARD - President of the FFESSM

“Announced more than a year ago by our federation, a new line of diving cards will gradually replace the previous series.

Our thinking focused on the international face of cards, previously only reserved for CMAS. This is a theme we are familiar with since I have been elected 16 for the CMAS Technical Committee and our CTN President Jo Vrijens is now a member. This uninterrupted French presence is the pledge of our analysis and our concern to increase the international readability of our cards.

The new line of cards refers to compliance with CMAS standards. On the other hand the use of a certain number of stars (1 * to 3 *) to locate our divers in the air is perennial. The pair FFESSM / CMAS is all the more obvious that it is registered in the Sport Code and that it thus imposes itself on the FFESSM and the CMAS.

The weakness of CMAS international diving cards is the lack of quality control; this leads to the fact that CMAS cards, depending on where they are distributed and by whom, do not allow a universal reading of the announced level and the credit that can be given to it; a height for international standards! The newly distributed cards thus offer a Plus compared to the old editions.

By mastering our database, with formal registration of any patent issued by the FFESSM, we announce without complex a real and opposable Quality control. When we know how many countries in Europe or elsewhere are fond of this type of control, we understand the importance of putting forward this argument in the interests of our divers.

Moreover, the CMAS standards do not decline the aptitudes and competences expected with as much precision as we do it with the French regulation.
Is it not a progress to announce explicitly on the new international face cards that, for example, a level 2 FFESSM is able to dive framed up to 40 meters, and autonomous up to 20 meters?

In addition to the use of the stars, the use of a general language (level 1, level 2, etc.) positions the diver in an international grid of reading even more transversal.

The choice of English as the language of drafting of the international face, with expressions of the type "world wide recognized", or "quality certified", or "international certificate", obeys obvious contingencies of international readability.
Finally, for years, non-CMAS FFESSM cards exist: initiator, level 5 DP, PA, PE, bronze plunger, etc. In the reform that we are putting in place, these cards will, too, gradually show an international face written in English, with a global graphic charter. It is therefore a Plus in relation to the existing.

We are committed to keeping the selling price constant, while taking into account the cost of production, card management and the growing power of the database. Our reform has resulted in a drop in the number of cards purchased in Rome (CMAS headquarters); it allows us to be less subject to the price increases that the CMAS would have asked us and especially to the excessive price of specialty cards (example: Nitrox) for which we were going to be led to sell at a loss, except to increase the price. of sale. ”