Minimum training for urchin collecting?

[rx7diver]

Division of labor? Is it possible that newish divers can be tasked only with receiving the lift bags at the surface and ferrying full urchin bags back to shore, while leaving the hunting and gathering to the experienced urchin divers who might be assisted by "intermediate" divers who are learning the craft from the experienced urchin divers?

rx7diver

 

[BoltSnap]

Anyone mentoring a clearly unqualified diver must consider liability issues and the potential loss of their house. In this context, mentoring should show the diver how to perform the "job," not teach them how to qualify to dive.

 

[ofg-1]

I would think spine removal techniques would be a required skill.

 

[Ukmc]

I don’t know that all of the mentioned certs would be helpful to be required or applicable - however, it appears what you are describing is a separate course . There are pre-requisites, above the water learning, 3-4 training open water dives. If structured as a separate course/cert it would be more standardized, safer, would help more or less experienced divers, weed out the ones that are not ready and liability insurance would cover the efforts .

 

[halocline]

I recently got into a discussion with a person about the minimum requirement needed for our urchin collecting operations.
We are removing overrun purple urchins in a cove in Northern California to do kelp restoration.
Anyway, we get a lot of fresh open water divers who are interested in taking part which brings up some concerns for me. I love the fact that they are interested, but in many cases I don't know if they are ready to handle what it takes to do the job.
The job requires filling large game bags, critter ID, using rakes and tools, using lift bags, and using float lines and or tow ropes. Most of the work is shallow between 5 feet and 15 feet deep, and many times we find ourselves alone, essentially solo diving.
My thought was that prospective divers should have at least advanced open water, rescue, navigation, and peak performance buoyancy. I also think they should have at least 25 Northern California shore dives before they are eligible.
Some in our group are saying this is too excessive and we would lose too many people. My argument is that I need some insurance that people know what they're doing and gave the comfort level to do that job. Learning to dive right out of OW should not be part of doing the job of urchin collecting.
One problem is that in our area we do not have a large population of prospective participants.
What are your thoughts?
This post is more aimed at instructors and advanced or veteran divers.
If you are a beginner diver and disagree with my opinion I would like to know why.

I’m curious what problems are you having with the new divers? Are they not doing the job, are they causing environmental damage, are you concerned for their safety, are you worried about getting sued?

Is this an organized project with some status and leadership? Is there any liability, and do you have any authority to keep outside divers from simply collecting urchins on their own? Sorry for all the questions, I’m just curious about the nature of the relationship between you and these newer divers.

As an example, when I used to live in TX, there was a spring that needed constant removal of invasive species, and the land was owned by a university. So they had an organized course that anyone who wanted to dive and do maintenance needed to take. That way they evaluated every diver regardless of background or experience. They were able to do this because they had the authority to restrict access to the spring. It actually worked out pretty well. And it sounds somewhat similar in task type, this was all very shallow diving and required decent buoyancy control while working.

I don’t understand the somewhat arbitrary requirement of AOW or number of dives. There are good new divers and bad ones, and there are good experienced divers and bad ones. When I used to DM in the Caribbean, the worst and most dangerous diver I ever guided was an OW instructor. Go figure!

 

[Edward3c]

I recently got into a discussion with a person about the minimum requirement needed for our urchin collecting operations.
We are removing overrun purple urchins in a cove in Northern California to do kelp restoration.
Anyway, we get a lot of fresh open water divers who are interested in taking part which brings up some concerns for me. I love the fact that they are interested, but in many cases I don't know if they are ready to handle what it takes to do the job.
The job requires filling large game bags, critter ID, using rakes and tools, using lift bags, and using float lines and or tow ropes. Most of the work is shallow between 5 feet and 15 feet deep, and many times we find ourselves alone, essentially solo diving.
My thought was that prospective divers should have at least advanced open water, rescue, navigation, and peak performance buoyancy. I also think they should have at least 25 Northern California shore dives before they are eligible.
Some in our group are saying this is too excessive and we would lose too many people. My argument is that I need some insurance that people know what they're doing and gave the comfort level to do that job. Learning to dive right out of OW should not be part of doing the job of urchin collecting.
One problem is that in our area we do not have a large population of prospective participants.
What are your thoughts?
This post is more aimed at instructors and advanced or veteran divers.
If you are a beginner diver and disagree with my opinion I would like to know why.

This is quite simple, what’s the risk assessment.

If one of these new divers was injured / killed what’s your liability?

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

We have two Reef Check divers that join us on select Sundays and both were there yesterday.
I learned that in order to be a Reef Check diver you have to be certified up through rescue and have at least 30 Northern California shore dives to qualify.
Then they have courses that you have to pay to take. All of their work involves fish, invertibtates, kelps/seaweeds, crustaceans, corals, etc. It's actually very complex.
You qualify in each category and then that's the job you do, and each category is a different course.
Reef Check is a volunteer citizens scientist group that gets hired by governments to do counts which are then used to officially set policy.
I'm modeling PURP after RC to some degree as we professionalize and it's possible that if we become effective enough as a citizen volunteer group that we may be hired to go in and clear certain areas under the command of the state or a federal program. And those areas cleared would be by recommendation of Reef Check which has taken a lot of interest in us and what we do. Seatrees.org is also involved with this and is funding us with staples like air fills and may provide more at some point.
In fact Seatrees and Reef Check will there next Sunday to join us and discuss further progress.

The state/feds are hiring commercial urchin divers now but there aren't enough of them and they are expensive. So it's very possible we could be used if we set this up right. Depending if we form a 501c3 and begin accepting funding from donors and the amount, these may become payed positions and divers would actually get payed, maybe something like $200 day or something? Right now that is way off and a future thought.
There is a butt load of money in the Bay Area and in the tech world especially. They love environmental causes. Kelp restoration right now is probably one of the biggest environmental collapses that is severely under reported. Nobody cares because it's not a destination dive place and nobody sees it.

As far as liability, yes, that is my biggest concern.
I think some of your recommendations of mentorship is very good. We need some sort of insurance that divers aren't a train wreck underwater. There are also gear concerns with how some people are outfitted that I have seen.
-Continued in a minute...

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Some of the getups I've seen are not conducive to urchin collecting and working close or on the bottom.
What we need to do to start, is at least have scheduled seminars, which the dive shop has agreed to sponsor. It's my personal view that any diver wanting to take part must attend the seminar to get briefed and fill out the waiver. The seminars for now will be free.
This is just at the fun dive level that we are at now.
If it goes further then there will need to be a lot more training specific to urchin collecting an a more rigorous training.
I'm finding out that part of the training is thenability to follow directions. We're still kind of in the free-for-all the cat herding stage and as it get more involved with more people and more official we're going to have to clean that up.

 

[johndiver999]

Sounds like you are making significant progress; congratulations.

If it were me, I would see if I could work with someone who can shoot decent video, and start getting a good archive of best practices for the various aspects of the process. A Gopro is so cheap and such good quality, that almost anyone can shoot usable video. I think you are also dancing around a fine line with aggregating volunteers versus taking on liability/responsibility for safety - you are brave.

Putting together some instructional/information video would be useful as a reference before/when a person thinks about volunteering. Eventually, and with enough video, I bet you (or a volunteer) could pull together a promotional video that could be shown to prospective (rich) donors. Get some pretty college girls in the video and everyone will watch!

Your idea of getting the government to pay private citizens who are NOT professionals to collect invasive species underwater in a completely uncontrolled environment sounds a little impractical and far fetched, but look at the state of FLorida - that is EXACTLY what the state did with respect to lionfish - for YEARS now.

They have sponsored bounties, rewards, contests, prizes and more. I'm not so sure their efforts are that effective from an ecological perspective, but they have made a considerable long term commitment toward it.

If anything, you might be looking there for inspiration and ideas and also objective evidence that this sort of idea is workable from a governmental perspective.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

I especially like the "ride along" comment.

One thing about training.
Some people wonder if OW/AOW and Rescue plus specialties is necessary and if any of those courses target specifically what we're doing. What we do is very specific and the only class that would pinpoint urchin collection would be an urchin collection specialty which we have discussed developing.
The reason I mentioned AOW and rescue is because they are added dives beyond OW and added experience. Hopefully the instructor was good and did a good job.
That added training also means more of a commitment to diving and an added level of seriousness and comfort in the water. Any training dives are better than no dives. I've had people contact me that want to help and when asked where they have dived and what training level, they say they got certified in Cozumel or Mexico, Florida, Hawaii, or somehwere and did OW/AOW, all their dives are boat dives in warm water. I tell them to go get at least 25 cold water California shore dives then come see me. I never hear back.
As far as a blanket statement that anyone with AOW/rescue/Nav/PBB training is ready for urchin collection, not so fast.
They would still have to go on a ride along and still have to be evaluated.
We do have some just OW divers and they do very well. In fact they have been there from the beginning and have contributed a lot to the current best practices protocols we have developed. Most of their total dive count has come from urchin diving. But they are the 1%, I can't count on that with every OW diver that contacts me that want's to help. They are also grandfathered in.

As we grow, all of this is becoming more of a concern. We have to have a standard to go by as we accept new divers.
For now we are still considered an extension of Seal's Watersports fun dives and working under that umbrella. That's where it's started. This was fine as we were still figuring it out and seeing how things go. But as word spreads and more people that I don't know show up so does the probability of something going wrong.
The other proposal I'm running by my board is that every participant must own their own gear and be fluent in its use. We are willing to have a lot of latitude with the gear types. My only mandate is no danglies and no entanglement hazards. The owner of the dive shop has expressed concerns about using shop rental gear for urchin collection, and I can't blame him.

Anyway, I need to mitigate risk and think of ways to protect myself and the participants.
I hate it when everything boils down to liability and litigation but yes that is my biggest worry and my biggest motivator for setting policy.