Hiring Part-Time and possibly Full-Time divers

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Read my post, I said you can work for yourself, by yourself. It doesn't take a Kirby Morgan helmet, surface supplied air, a huge barge with crew, and lots of gear to clean hulls. Don't over complicate it. I can clean the hull of a 100 ft boat by myself in a few hours.That's doing it by hand. If you're gonna clean tankers of freighters, your gonna need some help, and a hydraulic cleaning machine. What is the origional poster cleaning? Sailboats at the local marina or big ships? Depends on what you wanna do. But, there is NO law that says that if you wanna go diving that you have to be certified. The only law would apply is the Hydrostatic test date on your air cylinders. That law only applies if the cylinders are used in "interstate commerce". With all that being said.....someone would be a real dumbass to go diving without training. We may be compairing apples to oranges........in that case we are probably both right.
 
I looked at going to a CDS, I really did. But then I realized that I'd already spent 20k+ on a "Marine Technology" degree and didn't really need that to get started as a boat mechanic. So spending 30k on another school made no sense to me. I'm a certified diver. I clean hulls. It's that simple. I don't need another certificate to clean hulls. I just need a brush and a good attitude. The belief that you can't find a job because some "unqualified" diver already has it shows that a person might very well lack one of those two requirements for the job.

Oh, and BTW...

There is currently no US government agency that regulates diving. OSHA handles safety in the workplace, not diver training. The diving industry is self-regulating and that self-regulation is working fine. If I go in to my LDS without a c-card, even though they know me very well, I don't get a fill. But I can go out and buy a compressor and never need a card again. OSHA has nothing to do with it.

I do have to wonder though, after spending the money and going through the school, do you really want to be stuck scraping hulls? Spend a year or two as a tender on a rig in the gulf and then move to diver and start making some real money.
 
I looked at going to a CDS, I really did. But then I realized that I'd already spent 20k+ on a "Marine Technology" degree and didn't really need that to get started as a boat mechanic. So spending 30k on another school made no sense to me. I'm a certified diver. I clean hulls. It's that simple. I don't need another certificate to clean hulls. I just need a brush and a good attitude. The belief that you can't find a job because some "unqualified" diver already has it shows that a person might very well lack one of those two requirements for the job.

Oh, and BTW...

There is currently no US government agency that regulates diving. OSHA handles safety in the workplace, not diver training. The diving industry is self-regulating and that self-regulation is working fine. If I go in to my LDS without a c-card, even though they know me very well, I don't get a fill. But I can go out and buy a compressor and never need a card again. OSHA has nothing to do with it.

I do have to wonder though, after spending the money and going through the school, do you really want to be stuck scraping hulls? Spend a year or two as a tender on a rig in the gulf and then move to diver and start making some real money.




Look out for OSHA

St. Petersburg boat cleaning company cited for health and safety violations - St. Petersburg Times

ST. PETERSBURG — The federal government has cited a St. Petersburg company with safety and health violations and proposed fines of $200,900.Scuba Clean Inc., a family-run boat cleaning business, was cited Thursday with three willful safety violations, which come with proposed penalties of $147,000. They are for hazards associated with divers not being trained, divers not being accompanied by another diver with continuous visual contact and using air hoses not rated for diving.
The company, at 2133 Second Ave. S, also was cited on 16 serious violations with possible penalties of $53,900.
"Management has demonstrated disregard for its employees' safety and health, and needs to take action immediately before there is a serious injury or fatality," said Les Grove, area director in Tampa of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
The company disputes the violations, and says the OSHA standards and guidelines that the company was judged by apply to commercial diving operations like deepwater oil rigs, and not a business whose divers usually don't even go past 5 feet.

It doesn't matter what the outcome is, the guy has to hire a lawyer to go against a team of govt lawyers $$$$$$$$$$$
 
Oh, and BTW...

There is currently no US government agency that regulates diving. OSHA handles safety in the workplace, not diver training. The diving industry is self-regulating and that self-regulation is working fine.

True for:
- sport divers
- instructors
- PSD (they have their own system and standards)
- Science divers (as per PSD)

and....
- sole proprietorships / one person operations

The original post was about a multiperson operation doing none of the above, therefore commercial diving. They might be trying the old "no employees here, we're all contractors who just happen to show up at the same dive site" trick, but a regulator won't buy it.

Proper training and qualification standards are part of OSHA's health and safety concerns. They don't provide training but they will definitely want to know who has what ticket and what the course covered.

http://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owa...TIVES&p_id=3449#general_inspection_procedures

The relevant part is C) 29 CFR 1910.410 Qualifications of dive team.

For the record, unlike my countryman above I'm not offended when an unticketed seventeen year old sets himself up with a diving kit and compressor to clean boat hulls. I agree that there's something wrong with requiring the "dope on a rope supported by a cast of thousands" model to scrub barnacles in water barely deep enough to keep your head wet.
 
I can agree with that. If they're paying an employee to dive I can see OSHA sticking their noses in. Of course, whether or not it really belongs is not worth discussing...lol. I respectfully bow out of this arguement.
 
As I thought, these guys were dimed to OSHA by a disgruntled employee.

I suspect that, by strict interpretation, OSHA regulations do apply to hull cleaners. But if you read them, the spirit of OSHA regs are clearly aimed at governing the hard hat commercial dive industry, not hull cleaning. The reality is that onerous OSHA regs are largely (if not entirely) ignored by hull divers and that is just the way business gets done in the marina. For instance, if hull cleaners were required to have a 3-man team simply to clean a 30' sailboat, the cost to the boat owner would likely be unpalatable. In tough economic times, we are trying to keep recreational boaters in the sport, not drive them away by increasing their costs. Following OSHA regs to the letter would likely kill our industry and would certainly increase boating pollution, fuel consumption and the movement of invasive species due to reduced hull cleaning frequencies.

Here is another thread from January where the OSHA issue as it pertains to hull cleaning is discussed at length:

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/advanced-scuba-discussions/316691-light-commercial-diving.html
 
As an update-

I contacted the Florida dive service in question, "Scuba Clean". Seems OSHA made a sloppy job of their intitial investigation and has backed off for the time being, after being shown their errors. But they are not out of the woods yet and are organizing West Florida dive services to get OSHA to change their commercial dive regulations to more accurately reflect the realities of the hull cleaning industry or maybe even create a set of regs specifically for the hull cleaning industry. Scuba Clean has promised to keep me updated, so I'll post more as events warrant.
 
... are organizing West Florida dive services to get OSHA to change their commercial dive regulations to more accurately reflect the realities of the hull cleaning industry or maybe even create a set of regs specifically for the hull cleaning industry.

A breath of fresh air if it happens. Given the types of egos and vested interests involved it will be interesting to watch if nothing else. Thanks for keeping us posted.

:popcorn:
 
Chuck,
can i be one of those workers you've been looking for?i'm a commercial lead diver for more than 5 yrs...but the problem is...i'm living in philippines

jun
 
I'm gonna guess thats a no... Check the date on the original post. It's from 2007...
 
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