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

[The Chairman]

It would be interesting to know how many instructors have been expelled by the various agencies.

 

[Hawkwood]

PADI provides the Quality Management Statistics to members on a quarterly basis.

 

[knotical]

The info is available to the public for at least some agencies.

for PADI:
Unauthorized scuba diving instructors, divemasters, dive centers and resorts. | PADI

for NAUI:
NAUI Quality Assurance

 

[Storker]

I wouldnt wear 30# with a drysuit and wintergarments...

I would, with my 10L 300bar steel tank. With a 15L 200bar, I'd even carry more in my trilam DS and winter undergarments.

In a 5 mil WS? Somewhere between half and one third, with a 15x200 steel. And I've got enough bioprene to need weight to sink in the buff, after exhaling, in fresh water. So yes, the boy was grossly overweighted. But we all know that...



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[redacted]

First, There is no standard for weighting a student because:
A) salt or fresh
B) no suit, 2,3,4,5, 7 mill wet, Semidry,Drysuit, Drysuit with thermals
C) fat, muscle, height, weight

There is a guideline 10% body weight +/- 4-5 pounds...

At 120lbs/30lbs the boy was well over 25% weighted -not a good start....

When 10 or more pounds of overweighting contributes to a death, perhaps there should be. None of those variables are insurmountable if the problem needs to be addressed.

I believe C could be done in an early pool session with the student wearing mask and snorkel and an array of weights that could be hand held.

A is simple. Collect body weight on medical questionaire. Trainer can determine weight of equipment provided to student. 3%.

B is manageable for wetsuits but may take a littlem time for industry to make it easy. I measure and log the buoyancy of each piece of neoprene I use as a basis for adjusting my weighting. There is really no reason wetsuit manufacturers could not provide such data for each of their products just as BCD manufacturers provide buoyancy data.

With the shop/trainer providing almost all gear, there is no reason they can not know and record necessary weight and buoyancy data.

10% body weight +/- 4-5 pounds can produce the same overweighting situation seen in this incident.

 

[Ongrade]

Good to know!

I suspected this, but since I am not a PADI instructor, I did not know for sure. I imagine that since there is no card issued, the DSDs don't get these questionnaires. That might be something PADI and the other agencies need to address.

DSD students do get questionnaires. My wife and I did the DSD in Puerta Vallarta last winter and we received the questionaire by mail 2 weeks after the event.

Also for those of you who say the DSD should be done as a pool only event, I wouldn't have bothered with it if this was the case. But because we did a pool session with a thoroughly professional instructor who spent as much time as we needed to feel comfortable and show that we had learned the skills he was teaching us followed by an enjoyable dive on a reef, we both are now open water certified and have 30+ dives in the last year each.

Just for reference, we were taught how to gear up, check regulators, how to share air in an OOA emergency, how to ditch our weight belts(and remove them for the return to the boat), mask clearing, several reminders to never hold your breath and BC inflator use. Once on the dive boat the two DMs who took 4 of us on the dive went over every skill again, gave us a dive briefing and what to do in emergency briefing. The DMs had a PADI checklist they went over with us to make sure we understood everything.

If all dive operations were this thorough a lot of accidents could be prevented, based on my experience with DSD and the comments made here about problems with DSD I believe the problems have more to do with standards violations than flaws in the program.

 

[redacted]

how do we eliminate risk from skydiving?.

Risk is never eliminated. But it can be managed,

 

[tursiops]

I would, with my 10L 300bar steel tank. With a 15L 200bar, I'd even carry more in my trilam DS and winter undergarments.

In a 5 mil WS? Somewhere between half and one third, with a 15x200 steel. And I've got enough bioprene to need weight to sink in the buff, after exhaling, in fresh water. So yes, the boy was grossly overweighted. But we all know that...



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In fresh water?

 

[cerich]

There is a guideline 10% body weight +/- 4-5 pounds...

Can you direct me to where that guideline is published by PADI or another training agency?

Thanks!

---------- Post added December 18th, 2014 at 12:17 PM ----------

100% of open water certified divers plus a substantial percentage of other certifications receive the QA questionnaire.

That is impossible. The intent may be for 100% of OW students to get the QA questionnaire but they don't reach 100%. More important than how many they reach is how many reply, what is that percent? It is a much more meaningful metric.

 

[Storker]

In fresh water?

In a suit, saltwater.

In the buff, freshwater.


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