Diving Safety Officer Qualifications

[Thanatos]

To clarify, the Florida Aquarium dive program defines each individual dive as commercial, scientific, etc by the task performed on that particular dive and follows the appropriate rules and regulations which apply. It's impossible to put a blanket statement such as "All diving performed at the aquarium is commercial/scientific, etc." Each dive must be evaluated individually.

 

[muddiver]

Ok, the first fly in your ointment is the ad posted by Thalassamania keeps referring to "Divemaster"s. That is a recreational SCUBA certification (and only one certification agency uses the term "divemaster"). If, as written previously, any diver performs maintenance work, and or the dive is considered commercial diving work, you are in violation of both OSHA regulations and the standards of the SCUBA certifying agency.

If you refernce the letter to the ADC ( Association of Diving Contractors International ) and read the whole OSHA regulations, you will find that recreational SCUBA certs. do not qualify a diver to do Commercial Diving work. Have your first dive accident where the diver in the water is holding a wrench, and you will find out how this is being interpeted by the insurance industry and OSHA.

 

[Thalassamania]

Or let's say that on a "scientific dive" you have a work loss injury, one as innocuous as a hurt ear-drum or a twisted ankle, and come to find out that the diver only had recreational certifications, did not have 100 hours of training with 12 open water dives, lacked a proper depth certification, did not have a diving duty medical on file, did not have a file full of logs in the DSO's office and, quite frankly, as not really performing a task the required the application of scientific training and skills.

Real bad ju-ju.

With the exception of some places like MBARI (and that's an institute, not an aquarium) I don't see aquaria doing much scientific diving, I see commercial work, I see recreational programs ... but not what I'd recognize as science diving. I don't see researchers from academic institutions requireing reciporcity to dive under aquaria auspices. I see a few aquaria divers looking to dive under the auspices of academic institutions, but that is often (as not) for collecting purposes ... and that in my mind is not science either.

This idea of mixing and matching just doesn't cut it. If the aquaria have a special problem, and are somehow a separate and distinct group, they should go and file for their own exemption. They should stop trying to be a science diver in the morning, a commercial diver in the afternoon and a recreational diving leader on the weekend. Some aquaria seem to want people qualified as all three, for either $13.50 or $8.50 an hour.

 

[Thanatos]

Ok, the first fly in your ointment is the ad posted by Thalassamania keeps referring to "Divemaster"s. That is a recreational SCUBA certification (and only one certification agency uses the term "divemaster"). If, as written previously, any diver performs maintenance work, and or the dive is considered commercial diving work, you are in violation of both OSHA regulations and the standards of the SCUBA certifying agency.

If you refernce the letter to the ADC ( Association of Diving Contractors International ) and read the whole OSHA regulations, you will find that recreational SCUBA certs. do not qualify a diver to do Commercial Diving work. Have your first dive accident where the diver in the water is holding a wrench, and you will find out how this is being interpeted by the insurance industry and OSHA.

Our HR department uses the term "Divemaster" to indicate a level of training and experience, not to the exclution of other certification agencies or real-world experience, but for simplicity of communication. We evaluate each candidate's credentials individually.

However, you bring up an excellent point. Using recreational certification terminology to describe a level of training and experience to perform scientific or commercial work does create confusion. It can blur that line between recreational, scientific and commercial if you go by c-card alone. Unfortunately, there is no easy answer to that semantic problem.

I agree 100% that having a diver trained only in recreational protocols performing commercial work is a bad idea. That's why all of our divers receive additional training before performing such work.

With the exception of some places like MBARI (and that's an institute, not an aquarium) I don't see aquaria doing much scientific diving, I see commercial work, I see recreational programs ... but not what I'd recognize as science diving. I don't see researchers from academic institutions requireing reciporcity to dive under aquaria auspices.

We frequently have academics dive under our auspices on our projects, such as coral restoration, underwater archaeology, red tide surveys, fish counts, etc. We are in the minority among aquaria, however, with the volume of scientific research projects we do. Diving in most aquaria is done in-house as dive shows, maintenance, animal moves, etc.

 

[covediver]

I think that AAUS really lost a lot when they required diving officers to have a sport diving certification as an instructor as I see little connection between the two and find it discriminatory as it does not allow for equivalent experience to be used as a substitute for a paper certification. It seems like AAUS began to greatly expand its membership in the late 1990s which is when, if memory serves correctly, they adopted the sport diver certification. I think they dropped the ball because it made "AAUS diving officers", who are something of an eclectic mixture of skills and abilities, synonomous with "NAUI", "PADI" and "NASDS".

 

[Thalassamania]

For most old line DSOs, those of us who wrote the rules, being a Diving Instructor was nothing but sprinkles on the cone, it permitted the convenience of being able to provide a credential that researchers could use at a dive shop to get a tank filled, nothing more. But as AAUS grew and we got DSOs who were uninitiated, and over impressed with recreation credentials, we moved toward a situation where the idea that a recreational instructor card was a base on top of which you would build a DSO. Being a recreational instructor is no where near a broad enough base. It is absurd as a requirement since anyone that should be seriously considered for a DSO position should be able to breeze through any instructor institute without giving it a second thought.

 

[Aquatic Eagle]

You hit the nail on the head. It really burns be up to see job offers for DSO or Operations Diving Supervisors that require recreational agency certification and insurance! This is especially a problem with the aquaria, whom I not sure should even be part of AAUS. They have a funny mix, a few of their divers are diving scientists who are performing legitimate underwater research tasks, but most, IMHO, are collections, maintenance or husbandry divers (they should be classified "commercial") or educational (they should be classified recreational leadership).

But the AAUS defines "scientific diving" to include educational activity. Shouldn't aquariums qualify under that definition since they are involved in public education?

 

[muddiver]

Educational diving is for the sole purpose of learning to do something, i.e. SCUBA instruction, not for presentations, fish feeding, display cleaning and maintenance work.

 

[Thalassamania]

But the AAUS defines "scientific diving" to include educational activity. Shouldn't aquariums qualify under that definition since they are involved in public education?

The AAUS Standards state:

Scientific Diving Definition

Scientific diving is defined (29CFR1910.402) as diving performed solely as a necessary part of a scientific, research, or educational activity by employees whose sole purpose for diving is to perform scientific research tasks.

​

As an author the AAUS standards (and if memory serves the one who wrote that particular paragraph) I'd first tell you that the intent of the word "educational" was specific to the academic educational process that goes on within colleges and universities, it was never intended to encompass the more general "education of the public" sense that you are invoking. Secondly, if once must play the "parse the language" games that seems so popular today, I'd submit that the final phrase, "... by employees whose sole purpose for diving is to perform scientific research," obviates the inclusion of aquarium divers who function in any way, shape or form in even the smallest part of their work, in animal husbandry, maintenance, public exhibtion/education/entertainment or anything else that is not a scientific reseach task.

I hope that clarifies what my memory of the founders' intent was. There are likely differences of opinion on the subject today, since we had not really given any thought to the inclusion (or exclusion) of aquaria personnel back then.

 

[Aquatic Eagle]

Educational diving is for the sole purpose of learning to do something, i.e. SCUBA instruction, not for presentations, fish feeding, display cleaning and maintenance work.

Why should educational programs that teach marine science to the public not be considered scientific?