An Open Letter of Personal Perspective to the Diving Industry by NetDoc

[Rich Keller]

The other boy said that the victim was looking at him and had his hand out for help, and his reg was out of his mouth. That does not sound like he was dead. But why make an assumption?

If this is the case he could have been having an asthma attack but thought it was an equipment problem and wanted help from the other diver.

 

[boulderjohn]

The only reason I am interested in the "standards" is that it seems the primary criticism of the instructor is that he somehow violated them. But most of us don't know what "them" are. While most seem to accept that overweighting a student by 10 pounds is a problem, overweighting students seems to be a widely accepted norm that is practiced in many OW classes today. For some of the diving I do (working on the bottom) I normally overweight myself. I'm curious where and how the line is drawn, and by whom.

People have not been sure how much he was overweighted, because he did not do a weight check as required, and 10 pounds has been a low estimate. I do OW instruction in the same conditions frequently, and I would estimate that the student was at least 20 pounds overweighted. That means he would have need to add the volume equivalent of 2.5 gallons of air to his BCD in order to be neutrally buoyant. He ould have had to do that in a BCD that was defective and did not hold air.

Additionally, the fact that some other people do something wrong does not make it OK for this guy to do it, any more than saying it is OK to rob banks because other people do it. I do not overweight students by more than, say, 2-3 pounds under any circumstances

Similarly with instructor student ratios, I'm curious how the "standards" adjust for age and water conditions. I'm wondering how the "standards" ever go over a 1 to 1 ratio.

People have been quoting the standards that were violated, but here is one that was missed. I deliberately copied/pasted it from the instructor manual in effect the year the incident occurred, even though the standards have not changed since then:

If participants will go on an open water dive, and shallow
water for skills practice is inaccessible, an instructor
conducts the skills session from a boat, dock or other
surface support station by using a descent line, horizontal
Discover Scuba Diving Program
bar or platform that is within 2 metres/6 feet of the
surface. The ratio is 1:1 when using the descent line option.

Pages 111-112. Underlining added.

 

[Ayisha]

If this is the case he could have been having an asthma attack but thought it was an equipment problem and wanted help from the other diver.

It's possible. It's also possible that the reg was dislodged from his mouth. We don't know, do we?

So for every diver that has their reg out of their mouth and is going toward the surface, we will no longer consider panic to be a possibility, we will simply assume asthma attack? Or if it happens to someone with asthma, we will automatically assume they're having an asthma attack? Interesting.

 

[Zippsy]

Possibly panic? We don't know?



The other boy said that the victim was looking at him and had his hand out for help, and his reg was out of his mouth. That does not sound like he was dead. But why make an assumption?



That however has not been the general consensus of dive medicine doctors in decades. There are many articles on asthma and diving. The gist of them are that asthma does not necessarily contraindicate diving. The determination of whether someone with asthma is fit to dive is made on a case by case basis and involves, among other things, lung volume, severity and triggers of the asthma, how well controlled it is, etc.

My point is, why are we assuming facts not in evidence? And why are we assigning blame to the victim or his family, especially since the source of that blame has not even been confirmed? Why are we assigning blame at all?

I'd have to agree that I haven't heard a reputable or believable source that the kid had an asthma attack during the dive and that it contributed to his death. That said, by the accounts that do appear believable, he had a current asthma condition that surely should have precluded him from diving and I haven't heard of any knowledgable doctors saying that asthma that is active and under treatment is not an problem for diving. IMHO, as much as "if 1:1 was the standard, he'd be alive today" is spouted, it is equally true that "if the medical form was completed honestly and that standard followed he'd be alive today" too.

 

[redacted]

I'd have to agree that I haven't heard a reputable or believable source that the kid had an asthma attack during the dive and that it contributed to his death. That said, by the accounts that do appear believable, he had a current asthma condition that surely should have precluded him from diving and I haven't heard of any knowledgable doctors saying that asthma that is active and under treatment is not an problem for diving. IMHO, as much as "if 1:1 was the standard, he'd be alive today" is spouted, it is equally true that "if the medical form was completed honestly and that standard followed he'd be alive today" too.

Had an asthma attack been a contributing factor in this incident, would the agency have paid $800K to settle?

The "if ...., he's be alive today" has other possible interesting variations. Does anyone really believe this is the first time the instructor had violated standards in this manner? Had there been a more effective agency program to curtail such violations, that instructor may have been removed before this tragedy had a chance to happen.

 

[boulderjohn]

Had there been a more effective agency program to curtail such violations, that instructor may have been removed before this tragedy had a chance to happen.

OK, let's hear it. Pretend you are the new President and CEO of PADI. You meet with the board and make a statement. I will give you the beginning of that statement, you complete it.

Beginning of statement:
As you know, we have many, many hundreds of thousands of scuba instructors around the world. It is important that we make sure they are doing a great job. We currently send out surveys to students and then follow up whenever those surveys indicate a problem. Whenever we get a complaint, we check up on it and make decisions on what to do for each case, ranging from re-education to expulsion. That is not enough though! We need to do more. I have a proposal for a better way to to do it, one that will not be so ridiculously expensive that it will require us to raise our management fees so much that our instructors will abandon us and go to agencies that do not even send the money to do what we are doing now. Here is my proposal:

Your Proposal:

 

[KevinNM]

Had an asthma attack been a contributing factor in this incident, would the agency have paid $800K to settle?

In the Station Fire, the TV station paid $34 million IIRC to not be part of a case where 100 people died due to lots of idiocy by others and there was some reasonable argument that the TV reporter might have possibly been a bottleneck in the main exit path as the reporter was doing the whole reporter thing.

Exiting these kind of cases where you are the obvious deep pocketed party often makes financial sense.

 

[redacted]

I understand.

But once you establish a reputation for paying ransoms, where does it stop?

How is it that their pockets are deep enough to make payouts when they have no fault but they do not have the resources to effectively enforce standards?

 

[Huzzar]

Possibly panic? We don't know?



The other boy said that the victim was looking at him and had his hand out for help, and his reg was out of his mouth. That does not sound like he was dead. But why make an assumption?



That however has not been the general consensus of dive medicine doctors in decades. There are many articles on asthma and diving. The gist of them are that asthma does not necessarily contraindicate diving. The determination of whether someone with asthma is fit to dive is made on a case by case basis and involves, among other things, lung volume, severity and triggers of the asthma, how well controlled it is, etc.

My point is, why are we assuming facts not in evidence? And why are we assigning blame to the victim or his family, especially since the source of that blame has not even been confirmed? Why are we assigning blame at all?

While most of the people on this thread are interested in the PADI versus Instructor controversy, I'm actually more interested in the BSA aspect of the case. My son has been in Scouting for over 10 years and I've been an adult leader for a good part of it.

BSA is extremely safety oriented. They do all they can to provide an exciting outdoor program to young men and women while doing all that's reasonable to prevent serious accidents let alone deaths.

Part of the safety aspect is requiring a medical form for summer camps that asks about specific ailments, including asthma. If the parents had indicated that the child had asthma there's a very good chance that he would not have been allowed in the water for DSD without follow-up approval from a physician with specialist knowledge of diving and its risks.

Whether we like it or not, the instructor's lawyer is going to argue that any action that the instructor took is irrelevant since the boy would not have been in the water in the first place had the parents been honest with the camp medical form.

I think the people on this board are talking about a possible asthma attack from a lessons learned perspective, not "blaming the parents."

 

[Zippsy]

I understand.

But once you establish a reputation for paying ransoms, where does it stop?

How is it that their pockets are deep enough to make payouts when they have no fault but they do not have the resources to effectively enforce standards?

It is not that their pockets are deep. Most likely, like thousands of other companies facing similar issues, they made an economic decision figuring it was better to buy their way out of a suit than risking losing it and millions more. It happens all the time and often doesn't involve any black and white guilt or innocence.

If if they were able to save the millions that they loose to these type of shotgun suits, what would you suggest they do to to increase their current system to remove / re-educate bad instructors?

Just an aside, the instructors I know who have been kicked out of PADI just signed up with SDI or SSI and are still teaching. Removing them from one agency doesn't neccesarily fix the problem.