Brian Carney & SDI Just Admitted Industry Standards Are Defective

2026 is a year of sea change in the dive industry.

Full disclosure before anyone reads another word.

Brian Carney and Sean Harrison are friends of mine. They have been friends for many years. I am also hardly a neutral observer. My TDI instructor number is #17. TDI launched in late 1994, and I was an active TDI instructor by early 1995. I hold ratings as an Instructor Trainer and Evaluator within the SDI family. Later, while serving as Director of North America for SNSI, I sat alongside Brian and Sean on the Recreational Scuba Training Council (RSTC), where we frequently found ourselves allied in efforts to make the industry more proactive on safety and training issues.

So yes, I know the people involved. I respect them. I often agree with them — and if you ask them, they will also tell you that I will disagree with them and make my position known when I see things differently.

That is precisely why what happened this week matters.

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What SDI Announced

SDI, through President and Owner Brian Carney alongside Sean Harrison, released a video announcing significant reductions to student-to-instructor ratios for entry-level training. Open Water ratios will be reduced from the long-standing industry standard of 8:1 to 6:1 under defined ideal conditions. Where junior divers are present in the class, ratios will be reduced further to 4:1.

Most people will focus on the numbers.

They are missing the real story.

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The Real Story: An Admission, Not an Adjustment

The real story is that Brian Carney publicly admitted that existing industry standards are defective. That the standards bodies — including the RSTC — have not done the job adequately.

Not illegal.
Not reckless.
Not malicious.

Defective.

That word makes people uncomfortable. Good. Because if a standard is insufficient to accomplish its intended purpose, it is defective.

Brian effectively said as much — multiple times throughout the video. He stated that existing industry standards are “not good enough,” that “the industry needs to do better,” and that SDI does not agree with the standards it helped develop through its participation in those very organizations.

Consider that for a moment.

The president of one of the largest training agencies in diving looked directly into a camera on his company’s official channel and stated that the standards the industry has relied upon for decades are inadequate.

That is not a minor adjustment. That is a fundamental admission.

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The Significance Is Not 8:1 Versus 6:1

The difference between eight students and six students is meaningful. But it is not the most important thing that happened here.

The most important thing is that a major agency finally said publicly what many instructors have been saying privately for years:

Meeting the minimum standard does not necessarily produce the best outcome.

For decades, agencies, instructors, insurers, lawyers, and courts have all deferred to the phrase “industry standards” as though it carried the weight of absolute authority. If a standard existed, it was assumed to be adequate. If everyone followed it, it was assumed to be reasonable.

But standards are not handed down from a mountain. They are created by people. And people can be wrong. People can be influenced by economics, by tradition, by institutional comfort. Sometimes standards simply fail to keep pace with reality.

Brian Carney just acknowledged that possibility — publicly and on the record.

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The Lana Mills Effect

The video makes clear that the documentary How to Kill a Mermaid and the death of Lana Mills had a profound impact on Brian personally.

Whether one agrees with every conclusion drawn from that tragedy is almost beside the point. What matters is that someone in a position of authority was willing to ask an uncomfortable question:

“Can we do better?”

After reviewing standards, consulting with professionals, and examining current practices — including input from approximately 1,000 SDI instructors — his answer was yes.

That matters. Leadership means making decisions before everyone agrees with you. Not after.

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A Good First Step — But Not Enough

I applaud SDI for making this change. Genuinely.

It would have been far easier to do nothing. It would have been far easier to point at existing standards and say: “Everyone else does it this way.” Instead, they accepted that stricter standards may carry a business cost. Brian explicitly acknowledged that. That deserves recognition.

But I would be dishonest if I did not also say that I believe the industry’s problems run much deeper than student-to-instructor ratios.

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The Bigger Problem Nobody Wants to Discuss

The most significant challenge facing recreational diver training in 2026 is not whether the ratio is 8:1 or 6:1.

The most significant challenge is that too much of the industry has quietly shifted toward treating confined water training as an inconvenience rather than the foundation of diver development.

Confined water is where divers should learn to dive. Open water is where those skills should be evaluated, refined, and introduced to real-world conditions.

Instead, much of the industry has drifted toward a model that looks something like this:

• Complete e-learning.
• Spend a few hours in a pool or confined water environment.
• Demonstrate required skills.
• Complete four open-water checkout dives.
• Receive certification.

That may satisfy minimum standards. It does not produce mastery.

Diving is not a written examination or a checklist. Diving is a physical skill that requires repetition, time, failure, correction, and repetition again. There is no shortcut. Teaching in a neutrally buoyant environment is a genuine force multiplier — and the industry has been far too slow to recognize and mandate it.

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The Ratio Debate Misses Another Reality

One observation Brian made that I found worth noting: experienced instructors often choose to teach below maximum ratios anyway.

This is not new information. What is new is that it is now being discussed openly and publicly, rather than in the margins of industry gatherings.

The deeper problem is that standards tend to become targets rather than limits.

A strong instructor looks at a maximum ratio and asks: “What ratio will produce the best outcome for these students?”

A weaker instructor asks: “What is the maximum number of students I am permitted to take?”

And a dive shop operating on thin margins may pressure its instructors to fill every available slot the standard permits — because the standard allows it, so the expectation becomes that it should be done.

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The RSTC Problem

Some readers may reasonably ask: if the standards were defective, why were they not changed earlier?

Having sat at RSTC tables myself, I can tell you that change within that structure is not straightforward.

The RSTC operates by consensus — and meaningful change requires a unanimous vote among members. That single requirement has, for fourteen years, prevented the majority from raising standards when they tried, while also preventing a determined minority from lowering them when they tried repeatedly.

It is a structure that protects against the worst outcomes while also frustrating the best ones.

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What Comes Next

Reducing ratios alone will not solve the industry’s deeper challenges. It is a meaningful and positive step — but it is one step.

Personally, I would have preferred to see even lower ratios in certain circumstances. I would have preferred stronger and more explicit language clarifying that the new ratios apply only under ideal conditions. I would like to see far greater emphasis on confined-water proficiency and genuine skill mastery before certification is granted.

I would like to see training agencies formally acknowledge that different students learn at different rates and require different levels of supervision — and that standards should reflect that reality.

But those debates can happen. Today deserves recognition for what it is.

A major training agency publicly acknowledged that industry standards are not automatically synonymous with best practices.

That is a significant moment.

Whether other agencies follow remains to be seen. Whether regulators, insurers, and instructors respond remains to be seen. This announcement invites scrutiny from all of the above — and that will make many in the industry deeply uncomfortable.

But after more than three decades in this industry, I can say this with confidence:

Meaningful change rarely starts with everyone agreeing. It starts when someone is willing to stand up and say: “We can do better.”

This week, Brian Carney and Sean Harrison did exactly that.

And for that, they deserve credit.

Editorial Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author, Christopher E. Richardson, and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Diventures Magazine.