Do not ever say you are a rescue diver

[noserider]

I was surfing at Sandbridge Beach near Virginia Beach during a hurricane. I took a break and strolled into the local convenient store wearing a red lifeguard rain jacket.

"Are you a lifeguard?" a woman behind me asked. I said I was. "Are you one of the lifeguards who rescued us yesterday?" I told her I was not. She went on to tell me that she was a member of the local dive rescue team. They responded to an emergency and all four members of their team got in trouble. A few lifeguards from VBLS swam out to rescue them. The dive team had been dispatched to a surface rescue because they had a boat. In the end, lifeguards had to rescue the rescuers and the victims.

I've made three rescues of public safety divers myself (2 volunteer fire rescue divers ran OOG, panicked, and surfaced, and 1 near-drowning of a major metro SWAT officer/diver due to an overweighted drysuit).

Even the "professionals" can get into trouble. The term "rescue diver" is considered to be a misnomer in the sport by some because it implies something like lifeguard status. Lifeguard courses are also being dumbed down to the point there is something called "shallow water lifeguard."

The industry should teach buddy assist at the open water level and rescue skills expected of buddies at the AOW level without the flourish of a C-card. For a true rescue diver course, the standards should require students first pass an old-fashioned Red Cross advanced lifesaving type course combined with dive rescue skills. The dive count needs to be higher or the skills sharper than current standards. Any rescue diver who wants to stay rescue-ready should keep a current open water lifeguard certification such as Red Cross Waterfront Lifeguard, keep current DAN, PADI or NAUI (or equivalent) CPR, First Aid, AED, O2 Administration, Marine Life Injuries and Wilderness First Aid certifications, practice rescue skills bi-annually at least, and maintain a Cooper Fitness Test level of "good."

As another surfer, I have quite a few times helped rescue surfers and swimmers in the sea whilst surfing, I have towed people back to beach, pulled swimmers out of rips, used my board as a flotation device for swimmers and helped organise a search on a beach in Bali where we saw a guy doing the ladder climb and disappear - he was lucky and was pulled off the bottom and survived.

I once had to run down the beach to grab a rescue board in Lanzarote, jumped in fully clothed with wallet and phone dropped in the sand whilst groups of tourists watched and did not react, the lifeguards whose board I grabbed where smoking and chatting up girls just 20 metres away from the board and completely missed a father and son where caught in a rip screaming less than 70 or so metres from them and were just a few seconds from drowning. My wife had no idea what i was upto when she saw me sprint for the board and enter the sea.

The worst I have seen was where I helped partake in a mass rescue of maybe 20 in a the remnants of a typhoon swell, where two ended up having CPR on the beach (TV cameras arrived before the medics) and I ended up 10 mins later helping to rescue a lifeguard who had run out of energy keeping a girl afloat whilst his colleague where on the beach doing CPR and did not realise he was still in the sea, he ended up getting dragged with victim into rocks. They both survived.

Luckily I have never had anything major happen whilst underwater and am unsure how I would react but do feel surfers are probably the most competent waterman and rescuers out there, they are quite comfortable swimming in swell, can use rips, aren't scared about hold downs and holding breath, do not panic and inherently understand water safety more than most water users.

I whole heartedly agree that we all need to keep our skills and first aid certs unto date.

 

[boulderjohn]

Great - but the thread is not about you! Many folks do dive with DM’s/guides, esp. on boat dives in tropical destinations.

True that, And also where laws may require it.....

I would say that on the vast majority of the dives I have taken in exotic locations over the decades, following a DM was the only option.

 

[js1221]

My wife is a trauma nurse and she doesn’t speak up when ever the boat crew asks about any first responders onboard. She says the same thing about being a diver there on vacation. She mentioned on one trip that she was a nurse and had three separate divers go to her asking for medical advice not related to diving. Now she just says she in AOW and goes about her dives (she is a PADI RD).

 

[SlugLife]

There has been a lot of threads about how a diver should introduce herself or himself to a new DS. I have a DM C- Card but I never claim I am a DM as I have never worked as such. I always say I am a Rescue Diver. 90% of the time, I dive with my wife as a buddy. I jump first, tell her I am ok and watch her jumping. I am more experienced than her and I want to be there if she has a problem (overweighted, valve problem,…).
Last week, diving in the Philippines, the DS decided that we would be three in a group. Two groups of 2 including the guide or DM and our group at the back. To make a long story short, the third « buddy » jumped without inflating his BCD and was probably overweighted. He immediately sunk. He was AOW, and should have been able to correct that rapidly but he was not. I saw it, went down in a rush but I could not equalize fast enough so had to slow down.
Eventually, the diver managed to to inflate his BCD and get back to the surface. A bit too fast though so we aborted the dive. Then, one Dive Director blamed me for not helping him and said I thought you were a rescue diver. I think he will never say that again after the sh*** I gave him but the point is:
1- If it was my wife, I would have risked rupturing my inner ear. I won’t do it for an insta-buddy.
2- I was a customer and not a guardian. Of course, you care for your buddy (even in a 3 guys team) but there are limits.
3- I should never have said that I am a rescue diver. Those folks believe that I would help them protecting their customers. From now on, I am just AOW with a 40 meters clearance.

Holy crap, that Dive Director is just asking dive with double-black-eyes. I've read numerous stories on SB, where a diver sharing their training/credentials, has resulted in the dive-charter trying to use that diver as free labor.

From an ethics perspective: Taking a rescue course cannot obligate someone to rescue. To attach such a liability or responsibility to someone, who went out of their way and spent money for such a course, would thereby make it absolutely against a person's best interest to ever take that course. (If anyone wants to argue that, just enjoy a world without fire-fighters, doctors, rescue-divers, etc).

When your take a dive-charter, you're the customer. Your "job" is to enjoy yourself, not act as free-labor, or a backup rescue diver. The dive-charter's job is to provide that service. And implicitly, to do so safely. And from a liability perspective their guides or DMs should also have rescue training and look out for customer safety.

re: 1) Your own safety is always #1. Dying or injury for your wife is one thing, the same for a stranger is not.
re 2) Precisely, you were a customer. Not free labor.
re 3) Correct. Same with any other credentials, like DM, Instructor, Technical Diver, etc. If it's a 60ft dive, you're just a certified diver. Not even AOW, unless it's a deep dive.

 

[azstinger11]

DAN just did talked about this in their last YouTube episdoe (well admitting you are an instructor),

 

[SlugLife]

The Dive Director was an A$$H***.
Don't let someone else -- especially an A$$H*** -- decide if you were having a good day or a bad day.
You ARE a RD. Suck it up. Be proud of it.
If, in checking into a DS, they comment something like, "Hey! You are a RD! You can help if we have a problem!" Just tell them your fee is $100 per dive to be on duty, and free diving and gas.

$100 is way too inexpensive. You would be a contractor, not covered by any insurance or liability. You would also make yourself liable if an incident occurred. Worse, the fact that a charter would even ask a customer to do that role, suggests the dive-charter cuts corners which significantly increases the likelyhood that such a liability could occur.

So you traveled to the Philippines to dive with your wife, but from the get-go, you followed someone else.

The problem I see has nothing to do with anything you said to the DS. Heroes don't get to complain about being heroes.

Unless you are getting paid, your wife has an issue, or something real happens you're supposed to mind your own business. You can't fix stupid. Besides, maybe he never meant to be on the surface when he jumped in, I never do.

Strongly Disagree. He acted to potentially save a life. I might run into a burning building to save a 12-year old, but I'm still within my right to complain about the lack of following building codes, why the fire-department was late, who started the fire, etc.

The OP never asked to be a hero. **** happened and he responded in the moment. That's very, very, very, very different from someone who seeks out the role of a hero.

When I have been asked the US$2500 fee kills any further investment.

That's better.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

$100 is way too inexpensive. You would be a contractor, not covered by any insurance or liability. You would also make yourself liable if an incident occurred. Worse, the fact that a charter would even ask a customer to do that role, suggests the dive-charter cuts corners which significantly increases the likelyhood that such a liability could occur.

Agreed. I ask for far more, plus perks. I get carried on and off the boat. I am hand fed grapes by the boat captain, you get the idea.

Amazingly enough, not one boat has met my perfectly reasonable demands.

 

[boulderjohn]

I've read numerous stories on SB, where a diver sharing their training/credentials, has resulted in the dive-charter trying to use that diver as free labor.

I have read many, many posts in which people assert that this could happen. I don't ever remember reading a post in which it did happen.

It has never happened to me. I have been a professional for 18 years, and I have always shown an instructor card for diving. Not only has no one ever asked me to do that, it has been quite the opposite. Believe it or not, the shop is generally looking for repeat customers, and they especially want instructors to be happy. They want them to send other divers their way.

The only time I did anything like work for a dive operation was when I was in Ste. Maarten, and I was hanging around the shop waiting for a very popular afternoon shark dive. I had been diving with that operator all week, and they knew me. They got a phone call from someone on their staff who could not come, and they had a problem. They did not have enough professionals on hand for their number of customers, according to their insurance policy. I had my insurance card with me, so I ended up counting as one of their professionals. My duties were minimal, mostly being there in case of a problem. I did pretty much the same thing I would have done anyway, and I got a discount on the dive.

 

[SlugLife]

I have read many, many posts in which people assert that this could happen. I don't ever remember reading a post in which it did happen.

I think the most common story I've seen is where a dive-charter will effectively ask a diver to act as a dive-guide or similar.

That said, it's anecdotal of course. It's normal for people to only share the interesting stories. For example, "today for lunch I microwaved some leftovers." Yeah, nobody cares. However, something like "a scuba-shop condemned my tanks without even inspecting it" is a story worth telling. It only takes a few dive-charters doing this, for numerous such stories to pop up.

 

[SlugLife]

As a former Fire Dept. rescue diver for 30 years, we were always told to never mention our certification level when recreational diving due to legal repercussions, (thank you lawyers). Better to dig out the old AOW card keep your mouth shut and smile. You better believe that if someone dies on the boat the lawyers will investigate everyone's cert level and you will be grilled on why you didn't save their life since you had the training, (again, thank you lawyers ).

That has been discussed countless times on ScubaBoard during the 18 years I have been a participant. I have yet to see anyone cite any example in which someone got in any legal trouble simply because they happened to be on the boat when an incident happened, regardless of their certification status. Besides, if an attorney were so inclined, it would not be hard to find your true certification status.

In my previous post, I was differentiating between what card you show to the operator and what you announce to the people on the boat. Most people don't say a word on the boat. I wonder about those who feel a need to do so.

An example I have cited often is the time I was on a very large boat, about 25 people, on the main island of Hawai'i. We had been divided into three groups before we got onto the boat. Before we left harbor, a man pulled my group together and told us we had been selected to dive together because we all had more dives than the DM trainee who would lead the dive. We were told the DM was mostly just learning the site, and we could pretty much do what we wanted, as long as we stayed near. Our group splashed first and got back on the boat last, having had a great dive. I wondered how many highly certified divers had been in the beginner groups because they had fooled the operator by showing a low level card.

I dived in Cozumel this past June with a couple of friends. The dive operator had a number of boats. The three of us spent that week on a boat with highly experienced divers, and we did some great sites not normally dived by the madding crowd. In fact, we only saw other dive groups on a couple of dives. Again, that is because they knew we were not run of the mill divers.

So, if you want to be sure to do all your dives with the beginner groups, by all means show a beginner C-card.

Unfortunately, this is an artifact of the US legal system. You can have absolutely nothing to do with an incident, but be sued anyway. Even if you win, that's a bunch of legal fees out of pocket that you're unlikely to recover.

It's practically a daily story that an accident of some sort occurs (perhaps not-dive related) and then the family ends up suing everyone from (for example) the gas station that allowed a drunk-driver to fill up their car, to the car-manufacturer, to the bar, etc. I'm going to avoid getting too controversial, but there are a couple such recent high-profile cases which had multi-million dollar judgements and settlements. It doesn't matter that the defendant had little to nothing to do with the incident itself that caused the accident, injury, pain, etc.

I think I've also seen a couple threads in the accidents-and-incidents section where the family goes on a "sue everybody" spree.