Diver missing in Ontario

[CDNScubaMoose]

I've been following this thread since day one. Does anyone yet know (factually) what really happened to this diver? Did he die because of a health issue, narcosis, equipment failure, physical injury, etc?

AFAIK, the autopsy results haven't been released and I have not heard anything about the status of the equipment. Narcosis is highly unlikely due to the depth (maximum depth at this location is 60' at most). There is some information starting to come out from the local community but in my opinion it is at best described as hearsay. Nothing that I've been told would suggest there was evidence of health or equipment issues prior to the diver disappearing. We probably will never know exactly what happened after the diver disappeared.

 

[Dead_eye]

To add to the situation - one of the experienced buddies was apparently the deceased's OW instructor. So is there a case to be made that the point of "diving within your limits in conditions similar to what you've been trained in" wasn't made, or wasn't made clear enough? I also wonder how many new divers who have heard the comment of diving within your limits and in conditions similar to what you've been trained in would suddenly question the instructor who said that when they are willing to buddy up on that dive? I am also curious if an argument could be made that there was a duty of care in this case even though the contract for training had expired at the completion of the training a few hours earlier?

If indeed the instructor was present, then yes he does carry some of the blame.

As an instructor, do you think that at this point in time that courses are being rushed? Are students properly trained?

My course was 14 weeks long not including my open water, a long time, but before we were certified the instructor made sure we were proficient.

To answer a question posed.... yes I will have your back if you are my buddy, but before we go under we will have a talk as I have been burned a couple of times.

If I know going out that you have little experience, I will be extra aware. Assumptions can be deadly.

I was buddied up on one dive with a fellow I found out later, (after he had sucked his tank dry in 10 min.) was not certified, but was brought to the dive event by his instructor because he thought it would be fun for the student to go. The conversation later with the instructor was not pleasnt and was quite heated.

Instructors ... comments

 

[CDNScubaMoose]

If indeed the instructor was present, then yes he does carry some of the blame.

Even if he was no longer in the role of an instructor? From what I've been told, the course was completed prior to this dive so I am curious why you feel there would still exist a "standard of care". I'm not a lawyer but I do regularly dive with people who I have trained so I'm wondering if (and if so, for how long) that duty of care exists?

As an instructor, do you think that at this point in time that courses are being rushed? Are students properly trained?

My course was 14 weeks long not including my open water, a long time, but before we were certified the instructor made sure we were proficient.

Personally, no I don't think the courses offered today are rushed assuming all the standards are met. A lot of research has gone into understanding what the ideal educational model is. Perhaps 14 weeks plus OW was the ideal model for you but I have also had considerable success using some of the more common models that we see today. To say that one is better then other is a very subjective argument and like I said - personally I don't think the training model was a significant factor in this incident.

I have no idea what was (or wasn't) covered in the deceased's course but I can speak to my own experiences where I have, IMHO, been successful in certifying divers that can understand the risks and rewards of local diving. How these diver's approach diving after their course's is up to them and I have had some heart to heart conversations after I witnessed (or heard through the grapevine)some questionable decision making but I believe that is more of a reflection of personalities

 

[Ayisha]

Even if he was no longer in the role of an instructor? From what I've been told, the course was completed prior to this dive so I am curious why you feel there would still exist a "standard of care". I'm not a lawyer but I do regularly dive with people who I have trained so I'm wondering if (and if so, for how long) that duty of care exists?

If I were on a jury and heard that the instructor had a duty of care on September 12th and the death occurred on a dive in the early afternoon of the same day, I would be inclined to believe the instructor breached the standard of care.

Even if the OW course had just ended, he went with the brand new diver on a dive that was far worse than the conditions the new diver had been trained in. In fact, experienced divers had chosen to not dive the river that weekend because of the extremely high current and turbidity. Then, the new OW diver was left at depth while the other two ascended.

I can see the questions:

Crown Attorney: Did you have a duty of care to the deceased on September 12th, 2011?
Instructor: Yes.
CA: Did you leave the deceased alone at depth on September 12th?
Instructor: Yes.

If the instructor could not make the judgement call that the dive was inappropriate for the brand new diver certified that day let alone many experienced divers, how could the brand new diver make that judgement call? It also calls into question whether the student was taught appropriately to only make dives within his training and to never leave or be left by your buddy.

So many fatal accidents have occurred when divers separate intentionally and one is ascending alone or one is at depth alone. We tend to think that it will be ok for a minute or two, but it isn't always. If one goes up (or down), everyone should go up (or down) together from the beginning to end of the dive.

 

[TSandM]

I was actually thinking about this yesterday. I went on a fun dive with two of my husband's AOW students. We had done a pool session with them a couple of days earlier, and I had acted as DM/CA during that pool session.

I don't know what the law would say, but I certainly felt a much higher burden of responsibility for these two people than I would for an "ordinary" dive buddy. I took it upon myself to outline what I thought would be a safe dive plan, and to monitor both of them and adjust the plan underwater as things unfolded. I was watching both (who were both in new dry suits) for any indication of loss of buoyancy control, and I was prepared to go up into the water column and try to stop them.

If anything had happened to them during the dive, and despite the fact that I was not operating as a professional in any way on the dive, I would still have felt it reasonable to hold me to professional standards. If you're an instructor or DM and diving as part of a buddy team, I think you just have to be held to a higher standard than one would hold an average OW diver.

 

[Dead_eye]

I don't know what the law would say, but I certainly felt a much higher burden of responsibility for these two people than I would for an "ordinary" dive buddy. I took it upon myself to outline what I thought would be a safe dive plan, and to monitor both of them and adjust the plan underwater as things unfolded. I was watching both (who were both in new dry suits) for any indication of loss of buoyancy control, and I was prepared to go up into the water column and try to stop them.

If anything had happened to them during the dive, and despite the fact that I was not operating as a professional in any way on the dive, I would still have felt it reasonable to hold me to professional standards. If you're an instructor or DM and diving as part of a buddy team, I think you just have to be held to a higher standard than one would hold an average OW diver.

I can agree with you 100% on this. If you take on a particular duty, then this goes back to what was said before. If I am taking on this responsibility then we play by my rules and mine is the final word.

When I was in the Bahamas, the dive shop near the resort that I was using while diving there, asked me if I would consider being the buddy of a young lady who had just completed a resort course.

I agreed, but said I needed to talk to her and lay out some ground rules. We spoke and I went over the safety rules and told her that this dive was for her and that my dive was to keep her safe. We went over my equipment and what it was for, and I told her that I would monitor her air and that we would surface when she got down to 500 PSI.

Out on the boat we went. We slowly went down ~ 20ft to the reef and she gave me the OK when asked. At 500 PSI we surfaced and I don't think anything would have removed her grin.

Very stressful to me, because of the standard I felt I had to live up to but I would do it again if asked.

 

[ScubaSteve]

I can agree with you 100% on this. If you take on a particular duty, then this goes back to what was said before. If I am taking on this responsibility then we play by my rules and mine is the final word.

How do you know the deceased did not perceive this to be the case even if it was not. Many people believe the role of a DM / Instructor is to make sure they surface safely and will follow whatever they say because they believe they are "in charge". We do not know why the decisions that were made, were made. To say it is 100% the fault of the deceased is to do a great injustice because there seems to have been bad decisions elsewhere as well. The fact that an instructor would ask that a brand new diver sit on the bottom of a fast moving river alone is unfathomable. When diving with a new diver, I believe the "senior diver" should go out of their way to make decisions that fit the new diver's knowledge and experience even if they are supposed to be capable of doing it for themselves. Caution and careful dive planning and execution should never be frowned upon.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Jan Kruger]

I agree with everyone believing that a newly qualified OW diver should not be left alone underwater, while the DM or senior diver sort out some problems at the surface or even in shallower water- we did some advanced qualifying dives one day and noticed a female diver a around 20 m underwater on her own , freaking out- one of our buddies went to her ,calmed her down after a while and surfaced with her. It turned out she was no qualified yet - her instructor left her at 20 m depth on a down line in Komati Springs -an old flooded asbestos mine -to decend with another student to 56 m - she had to wait for them to return and then surface with them !
Can you believe that such pathetic choices are made by some instructors ? Had we not been there she would probably never dive again- if she made it to surface at all !

I think diving should be taken very seriously by all participating , carefully planned and to stick to the plan whilst diving.A person should also dive within your limits of training & experience with buddies that you know and can rely on to cover your back.

 

[abnfrog]

well there 2 things for sure these days 1 ow water students are not being trained as well as years gone by and 2 instrutors are not as good either .the reason i say this is 25 years ago there were not many instructors with 1-3 years diving exsperience ....i see instructors with a lack of exsperience all the time now (i say this as an exspert witness in diving activies/accidents in the general divsion court system) think stoo said in another thread about the physical condition of divers today and i would agree with him . some of the instructors ive seen are not just obese they are morbidly obese .HOW did they pass the course ? who knows but as the instructors get worse the students will too.i dont know who was at fault in this incident (i have stayed out of the battle ) but we will see more and more accidents over the next few years (unfortunatly) no instructor has been successfully sued here in canada , but that is going to change i would bet money on it .in 25 plus years of teaching i have always had my students best interest at heart. .......................my 2 cent rage at the machine fwiw

 

[Groundhog246]

Even if he was no longer in the role of an instructor? From what I've been told, the course was completed prior to this dive so I am curious why you feel there would still exist a "standard of care". I'm not a lawyer but I do regularly dive with people who I have trained so I'm wondering if (and if so, for how long) that duty of care exists?

According to my Instructor, his boss and course director, any instructor on any dive has a professional duty of care. As long as anyone maintains their status as a qualified, they had better keep their insurance up to date.

Personally, no I don't think the courses offered today are rushed assuming all the standards are met. A lot of research has gone into understanding what the ideal educational model is. Perhaps 14 weeks plus OW was the ideal model for you but I have also had considerable success using some of the more common models that we see today. To say that one is better then other is a very subjective argument and like I said - personally I don't think the training model was a significant factor in this incident.

Could not disagree more strongly, at least as concerns PADI. The courses are designed to make it easy for as many people as possible to pass and take additional courses, while minimizing the risk them injuring themselves. I hope this instructor, who took an newly certified OW diver with presumably no experience or training in current diving, which isn't covered in basic OW course, on this dive, is never allowed to teach again.