Diving sidemount on liveaboards?

[Omisson]

Operators can set whatever they like.
No need to explain.

And divers are free to find real operations interested in getting paid to accommodate their diving style …. In the post COVID WORLD…it might be nice to have a customer….

I wonder if anyone would try and turn a HSA diver away because of the onerous burden they placed on the op?

 

[Texasguy]

Operators can set whatever they like.
No need to explain.

 

[Centrals]

No one is right or wrong!!!
Make your choice! Who care.

 

[Centrals]

I wonder if anyone would try and turn a HSA diver away because of the onerous burden they placed on the op?

Charging the same as the rest?
On LoB?

 

[Wookie]

I wonder if anyone would try and turn a HSA diver away because of the onerous burden they placed on the op?

In the US, CG inspected passenger vessels are not required to make accommodations for ADA passengers. But HSA divers don’t come alone, they bring a team. So to directly answer your question, there are some boats who turn down divers who get up and yell about their rights and ADA and blah blah blah. I never turned down an HSA diver because they come with a team that is trained to support the diver and their handicap. Which the crew is not trained to do.
Any old timer to Flower Gardens diving will remember Capt Randy, who worked for us for 25 years. He lost his left leg above the knee at 7 years of age. He got along just fine.

 

[Centrals]

It is all depend on the degree of the handicap.
I have dived with HSA diver on several occasions. Some of them did not need any assistance from anyone at all. But there was one occasion when the HSA diver's father was his buddy. The diver has very poor physical strength and need assistance to put on the gear etc etc. But once submerged he was like a fish!!!!

 

[The Chairman]

Not all boats are easy to dive SM off of. I found diving SM off the Rocio del Mal and the Nautilus Belle Amie to be quite easy. They both had ribs we dove off of and you passed your tanks (BC) up before you climbed aboard. In fact, SM was easier as I kept my BC on and passed only the tanks up. I would never try to dive SM off of many dive boats like the Spree because they just weren't configured for it.

If all you own is a hammer then everything becomes a nail, right? That's why I have many tools in my box. I don't use a DVOM as a hammer or a screwdriver to cut a board in two. In the same way, I have several setups so I can easily adapt my diving to any condition. Wookie asked where my side mount was when I got on his boat with a back-mounted twinset. I found the twinset to be the right tool for this job. If all you have is sidemount, then you're not open to other solutions.

FWIW, I can be just as flat with SM as I can with BM. My skills are not dependent on the system I'm using.

 

[Omisson]

In the US, CG inspected passenger vessels are not required to make accommodations for ADA passengers. But HSA divers don’t come alone, they bring a team. So to directly answer your question, there are some boats who turn down divers who get up and yell about their rights and ADA and blah blah blah. I never turned down an HSA diver because they come with a team that is trained to support the diver and their handicap. Which the crew is not trained to do.
Any old timer to Flower Gardens diving will remember Capt Randy, who worked for us for 25 years. He lost his left leg above the knee at 7 years of age. He got along just fine.

In the US, CG inspected passenger vessels are not required to make accommodations for ADA passengers. But HSA divers don’t come alone, they bring a team. So to directly answer your question, there are some boats who turn down divers who get up and yell about their rights and ADA and blah blah blah. I never turned down an HSA diver because they come with a team that is trained to support the diver and their handicap. Which the crew is not trained to do.
Any old timer to Flower Gardens diving will remember Capt Randy, who worked for us for 25 years. He lost his left leg above the knee at 7 years of age. He got along just fine.

Except of course this statement of law isn’t accurate. HSA does apply to passenger vessels- even outside of US waters so long as you pick up or discharge passengers in the US or it’s territories-
https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/docs/PVGuidance2_3_11.pdf

 

[Omisson]

For further reading…

https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/docs/July2010final_Accessible.pdf

 

[Wookie]

Aw, oops, except small passenger vessels (which all dive boars are) which carry fewer than 50 overnight passengers (which all dive boats do) are exempt. Damn. Missed it by that much.