Accepting Responsibility for Your Own Safety

[ktkt]

holoclines and underdogs were one of my key issues when I was a DM.

Haloclines I get, but what's an underdog in diving?

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And, on topic... I think many newer divers use diving with a DM to jump into more challenging dives than they are really ready for, way past the level they would be comfortable with on their own.

I know I was guilty of this on my first tropical trip. Granted, as luck had it, I usually had both a divemaster candidate as my buddy and an instructor as my guide, and my buoyancy was good, and I was comfortable in the water, and I'd had the experience of calmly dealing with a few minor issues on previous quarry dives. But on that trip, I did dives much deeper than I'd have planned on my own. I wasn't trained in deploying an SMB from depth (though I did have one I could inflate at the surface). I didn't realize that our hot drops and pickups (no anchoring were in a sense more advanced than dropping down a line and coming back up it. I didn't have the bandwidth to pay attention to navigation at all.

It all turned out fine, but I did a lot of reading after that trip, as I realized that as much fun as I had, I'd have been way better off doing another 10-20 or however many more conservative dives that I (along with my buddy) completely controlled.

Too often people get caught up in picking an exciting sounding place with little regard for the skill and experience required to do it right/safely. I haven't made it to Cozumel yet, but from various reports, I am glad I didn't start out there after OW. There are plenty of spots where you can get out and do nice conservative dives with easy navigation (e.g., out and back along a wall is fairly hard to screw up) and still see tons of cool wildlife. Why not start there?

 

[drrich2]

ktkt:

Since you had the support you needed for those dives and did fine, what's the downside to having done them? You can always go back to your local quarry and practice & build your skills afterward, if you wish, to work toward the point where you don't need the support (e.g.: DM, instructor, etc...).

Richard.

 

[diverrex]

In most situations the DM has other responsibilities than to look out for the safety of those in the group. But in some situations, particularly a private DM, or perhaps even in a small group I don't think it is completely unreasonable to push past your own limits and rely some on the additional expertise of the DM. I think there are lots of analogous situations - tandem parachuting, hanggliding, glider flights, etc.; in bunjee jumping you don't make the engineering calculations of the elasticity of the rope but rely on someone else to have done it; same with any roller coaster ride. The cenotes in Mexico are definately such dives for those not cave or cavern trained, I don't find it unreasonable to make those dives with a qualified guide. I've done above water quided cave hikes such that had the guide had a heart attack and died it would have been a real challenge finding the correct path out. Have you ever flown in an airplane with just a single pilot? The fact is there are lots of circumstances where we accept certain risks based on the reliance of others to mitigate those risks.

 

[ktkt]

ktkt:

Since you had the support you needed for those dives and did fine, what's the downside to having done them?

If something serious had gone wrong (say downcurrents, the topic of the month, which I knew nothing about at the time), I'm not sure I'd have been prepared to deal. I'm just saying a smaller gap between my training/experience and the new diving I was trying would have been more sensible.

 

[karlimmergut]

I fail to see any contradiction between (a) a diver honestly taking full responsibility for their own safety, and (b) a diver expecting their dive guide to feel personally responsible for the safety of certified divers in their group and taking a deliberate effort to make sure that everyone is safe.

If anything, this ensures that there is no single point of failure. If a dive guide fails to ensure my safety, I have my own common sense to rely on. If for some reason I screw up, the dive guide should step in and correct for the mistake. The fact that both the diver and the dive guide accept responsibility ensures that there is redundancy in the process. As far as I can tell, redundancy is a fundamental concept in diving, and in every other domain that deals with unexpected failures.

Indeed, the fact that we expect to dive with a buddy is based on the very same idea. I can take responsibility for myself and yet having a buddy is essential. If you insist that a diver should be completely free of any expectations, 100% independent of others and insist that noone except yourself should care about your well-being, you should dive solo, and this is not the forum for you...

Also, exposing oneself to risk is essential to making progress...

 

[TSandM]

kalimmergut, I actually agree with you. But the problem lies with the person who comes on here and complains, "The dive guide didn't ever check my gas. The dive guide didn't ever check my no-deco status. The dive guide didn't notice when I went too deep." A lot of people expect to hand over responsibility for their own dive monitoring to someone else.

I'm a believer in team diving. Team diving means working as a TEAM; my spare gas, for example, is on my buddy's back. But that also means it's my responsibility to do my own gas planning and gas monitoring so that I won't NEED that gas. It starts with the individual taking responsibility to have the skills and do the planning necessary not to require assistance; then it goes to the buddy assisting if that preparation fails or turns out to have been insufficient. Only in the tertiary case would a "dive guide" need to be involved to salvage a situation.

 

[karlimmergut]

As a compromise, I propose that both parties feel fully responsible when something bad happens ;-). I should know my own gas at all times, and yet I do grow suspicious when the dive guide does not ask for my gas every once in a while, or when they did not seem to realize where everyone was at all times. I realize this is probably more difficult than it sounds... one probably gains a different perspective after taking the DM course!

 

[cbm32]

kalimmergut, I actually agree with you. But the problem lies with the person who comes on here and complains, "The dive guide didn't ever check my gas. The dive guide didn't ever check my no-deco status. The dive guide didn't notice when I went to deep." A lot of people expect to hand over responsibility for their own dive monitoring to someone else.

I'm a believer in team diving. Team diving means working as a TEAM; my spare gas, for example, is on my buddy's back. But that also means it's my responsibility to do my own gas planning and gas monitoring so that I won't NEED that gas. It starts with the individual taking responsibility to have the skills and do the planning necessary not to require assistance; then it goes to the buddy assisting if that preparation fails or turns out to have been insufficient. Only in the tertiary case would a "dive guide" need to be involved to salvage a situation.

It seems like if you agree that redundancy is the goal, one would think you also would agree that the dive guide should be attending to those things. If he isnt, there is no redundancy.

I am a lowly OW diver but I do pay attention to all of those things for myself. That doesnt mean that I dont appreciate the concern of a buddy or dive guide or both checking on me as well. I have found that nearly all of the dives I have been on to date (all in HI, the Caribbean, or Fiji) the dive guides did indeed check on those things and did so fairly frequently the first couple of dives I was on with them. After that they must have figured out I was on top of stuff and they spent their time doing more checks on other divers that were new to the boat. What I have just described is exactly what I would expect of my DM's if I were running a dive op. Safety first means checking on divers you are not sure of, at least in my opinion, and then doing less and less of that with the divers that appear to be on top of their game and comfortable with being more on their own.

I wouldnt give a crap if a DM's training told him he wasnt responsible for any of this stuff and that it was somehow beneath him to cater to divers to this extent. If he wanted to work for me he would do all of these things and do them with a good attitude or he would be looking for a new job. It is a service industry more than anything else and only by providing exceptional service can a dive op separate themselves from the pack. Not to mention the fact that taking these steps just might prevent a mishap which could result in damage to the dive op's reputation at the least and a costly if not debilitating law suit at the other end of the spectrum.

People can get on their high horses all they want about how people coming out of OW classes should be able to dive safely with another diver of the same training. The fact is, that is often not true. I have seen scores of OW certified divers that, at least in my opinion, had no business diving without someone more experienced then they had. Heck, I have seen AOW certified people and at least one diver that claimed to have his DM cert that I had no business blowing bubbles without the supervision of someone far better underwater than he was. No matter what ones cert level is, part of taking responsibility for their own safety is recognizing and admitting their own shortcomings and not exceeding what they are actually capable of or comfortable with, even if their cert says they should be.

 

[drrich2]

It's worth noting that with the decreased peripheral vision of a mask, the 3-dimensional scattering of a loose group of divers in the water column (e.g.: above you, below you, off to both sides), the decreased distinctiveness of divers making individuals hard to recognize (e.g.: divers of similar build in wet suits looking alike), perhaps the need to pay inordinate attention to a single 'poor quality appearing' diver, and the need to switch attention amongst different focal points (e.g.: group count, navigation, finding interesting critters to point out, monitoring one's own depth and time), it may not be realistic for a Dive Guide/Dive Master to keep up with everybody's remaining air, depth, etc...

Now add to that the variation in diver capabilities (newbie OW vs. seasoned diver) and preference (some people want mollycoddling, some want you to let them alone unless they ask for something).

When I dive in tourist groups, I can recognize my 2 dive buddies (wife & friend or brother-in-law), but the other divers mostly run together. I make it a point to try to recognize the Dive Guide.

Seems to me there are limits to what we ought to task load guides with, expectations wise.

Richard.

 

[cbm32]

Some good points drrich2. But, a DM working for me would be able to keep me happy if he were to just make a point of getting the groups attention and pointing at his air gauge/computer and then getting an ok from everyone. I have seen it done this way many times and it only takes seconds.

This comment, as well as those in my previous post, dont apply of course to CA diving and places like that. Totally different animal from the tropical resort diving that I am familiar with and have geared my comments to.