Attention Hull Cleaners!!! Please read!!!

[fstbttms]

To: All dive service/hull cleaning companies

From: Scuba Clean, Inc

Re: OSHA diving regulations

Some of you may know OSHA has recently inspected our business. Because we all work in the water and get paid for our service, we are classified as Commercial Divers. That means we ALL fall under OSHA’s regulations for commercial diving. If you have not read the regulation, please take time to do so. Here is a link: http://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=DIRECTIVES&p_id=3449

While safety is the most important part of our business, there are many parts of the regulation that DO NOT apply to the under water hull cleaning business. A few examples are:

• All divers must be continually topside tended while in the water. An umbilical system with 2 way communication must be used.
• All divers and tenders must be commercially certified under the ANSI/ACDE standard. You can read about that certification here: http://www.acde.us/ansistd.pdf
That course includes mixed gas, welding, hyperbaric chamber, etc. This course
takes a minimum of 625 hours to complete and costs between $ 18,000 – 30,000.
• Record keeping such as depth, water temp and condition, bottom time, emergency plan, equipment inspections and maintenance must be POSTED AT ALL DIVE LOCATIONS.


You can see how crazy some of this sounds for out type of work. Clearly the regulation was written for offshore divers working in a commercial setting (like oil rigs).

OSHA has made it very clear that these regulations will be enforced on all businesses working in the water.

We are attempting to make it clear to the government that most of these regulations do not apply to our type of work. Most underwater boat cleaners will be put out of business if we are forced to adhere to these regulations. Scuba Clean Inc has a hearing scheduled in front of a judge in early October to discuss these issues. It will show a strong presence for our industry if all other underwater boat cleaning companies will write a letter explaining how your business operates, how you are safe, how complying with the regulations will impact your customers and your business, etc. We need to educate OSHA about what it is we do.

Mail the letter to:
Scuba Clean, Inc
2133 2nd Ave. S.
St. Petersburg, Fl. 33712

BUT, ADDRESS IT TO:
Stanley E. Keen, Esq.
Regional Solicitor
ATTN: Dane L. Steffenson, Esq.
U.S. Dept. of Labor
Sam Nunn Atlanta Federal Center
61 Forsyth Street, S.W., Room 7T10
Atlanta, GA 30303

We want to walk in to the court room with a stack of letters from fellow boat cleaners to show them that they can not shut our industry down by making us follow regulations that were not written for our type of work. We are an amazingly safe industry because we are divers, boaters and outdoorsmen that work smart and work safe. If you Google “underwater boat cleaner accident” or “death” you won’t find anything. Our industry is very safe with out the help of the government.

For the sake of our industry, please send a letter today. Tell all of your competitors and even customers.
If you have any questions please call me:

Tom McCollum
General Manager
Scuba Clean, Inc.
(727) 822-7005 Mon – Fri 6am – 4pm
Scuba Clean, Inc.

 

[RoyalTouchDiving]

They did shut one company down in Fl, I believe it was Ft. Lauderdale.

 

[RoyalTouchDiving]

The commercial school you are talking about is taught here in Charleston. The place is called International Dive Institute. I believe the course is 16K. I am sure they have a website.

From what I have heard through the grapevine...it is pretty much exactly as you are describing Fstbottms.

There have actually also been emails sent out stating something along the lines of this...send us your divers name and addresses. It could be one of two things...they are trying to compile a list of divers to bust....or are really wanting a list of names to defend them....

 

[fstbttms]

Understand that I merely posted the e-mail that was sent to me by Tom McCollum of Scuba Clean for everybody's perusal. Other than some e-mail communications that I have had with him, I am not involved with this situation. If you know details about OSHA shutting down a different dive service, please provide them.

 

[RoyalTouchDiving]

Here is a link...from the Scuba Clean fine.


2010 - 06/10/2010 - St. Petersburg, Fla., Scuba Clean Inc. cited by US Department of Labor's OSHA for willful and serious violations carrying nearly $201,000 in penalties

Another good link...(this one is 10 or so years old...but you get the point on what they are trying to do)

11/22/1996 - Minimum number of dive team members required to support scuba diving.

 

[fstbttms]

As I have said in other threads, if OSHA has their way, the regulations they'd like us to follow would destroy the hull cleaning industry, harm the environment, increase our dependance on foreign oil, raise the cost of pleasure boating and drive people from the sport. None of which anybody with an ounce of sense thinks is a good thing.

 

[Mrs. G]

Hello all. The new guy here. Royal Touch Diving, do you you know the name of the company in Ft. Lauderdale that was shut down?
Thanks,
Farley
Mrs. G Diving,Inc. Ft. Lauderdale,Fl.

 

[Wookie]

But... You are commercial divers, you do not have an exemption for the type of "special" diving you do, and you are subject to the provisions of OSHA (USCG outside of state waters).

If you think you should have an exemption, will that exemption also apply to the divers who clean hulls in the anchorage in Galveston (or any other major port)? The hulls of tankers and freighters? They are hull cleaners too. They dive to 40 feet in black water, and have to deal with suctions, rotating equipment, etc.

Just because you clean blowboat hulls in a marina does not mean you don't need to meet the safety requirements set forth by OSHA. If a regulation doesn't apply to you, request an exemption. The exemption will take about 3 years to process, and you will have to demonstrate to OSHA how you are maintaining the same level of safety without following the regulations. Good luck with that, by the way. OSHA will be unimpressed with your prior performance, and telling them that you don't need coms or tenders because you've never needed them before won't hold much water with them.

There is another option. Make all employees subcontractors. There are a few tests that the subcontractors must meet, like providing their own tools (scuba equipment, scrapers, etc.), but owners of businesses (subcontractors own their own businesses) are not subject to OSHA. You only get into trouble when you have employees.

I would hazard a guess that most hull cleaning companies are wayyyy outside the law in many other areas also. How many carry a workman's comp policy? If a diver who is employed by a hull cleaning company gets hurt on the job, your workman's comp carrier will giggle and deny the claim if the employee was diving as a part of the job, whether the employee was diving or not when he got hurt. Think worst case. The diver scrapes his hand and gets one of those really nasty staph infections, but luckily, the doctors are able to catch it by amputating at the elbow. Without a commercial dive policy, or at least longshoreman's and dock workers, that diver will take everything you own, and then more because you didn't provide him with adequate commercial dive training, didn't provide him with proper Personal Protective Equipment, and didn't insure him (her).

I would no more hire certified recreational hard dicks and call them commercial divers than I would take a guy with a drivers license and let him captain my boat. It is just not the same level of qualifications.

Last I knew, you didn't actually have to attend a commercial dive school to get an ADCI card. I thought there was an apprenticeship program to allow specific training for the job performed. For instance, it doesn't make sense for a dam inspector or bridge inspector in Idaho to know how to weld or operate a chamber. I had 2 commercial divers from the Great Lakes working off my boat in 2005 who were certified by another commercial diver after completing an apprenticeship. Maybe they were BS'ing me.

 

[fstbttms]

Hull cleaners are to hard hat divers as private pilots are to F-16 pilots. Different set of skills, different degree of danger, different equipment and therefore, different regulations. Or at least should be. Pizza delivery drivers and big rig drivers both use a motorized vehicle to do their work. But the similarity ends there. Should the pizza delivery guy be required to hold the same license that the big rig driver does?

 

[muddiver]

The OSHA regulations do allow for Apprenticed divers to be Certified by the company they work for. The ADCI card program requires 464 hours of formal training before they will even issue a Tender identification card http://adc-int.org/documents/ADCI STD10-Matrix-Errata 2.pdf That could make that route a bit difficult to run as a scuba diver certified hull scrubber.

Obama Care is growing which is expanding the federal government at the whishes of most of the low wage earners out there, and it is going to affect you as a small business so get ready now, or dump all your employees and find another way to run your show.