Thanks, seemed quite odd that I saw and responded to the post and then it was gone.
It happens.
It appears the contentious issue is leaving someone on the boat. Under other circumstances such as brisk current and/or wind and no back up boat, the outcome could be different.
Agreed. It clearly is contentious in the context of the bylaws of the Cayman Island Tourism Watersports Committe (CITA), which officially doesn't condone commercial dive operations from a dead boat.
And deleting a post that reported on an occurrance doesn't magically mean that the event never happened.
There have been some fairly recent media reports within Cayman regarding this rule being not necessarily faithfully followed, which when enforcement was increased last year, resulted in some dialog regarding the policy, and if to change it or not.
Here's the URL:
Cayman Islands - Cay Compass News Online - CITA queries look–out policy
IIRC, the unwritten part of the story was that small 6-pack operations were effectively where most of the "No Lookout" situation existed, and the scuttlebutt was that enforcement was giving them the blind eye, in pragmatic recognition of the size limitations (adding a bubblewatcher could very well make it a 5-pack...a 17% cut). The problem came about as this unofficial accomodation spread to larger operations as a simple (if IMO shortsighted) cost-cutting measure.
Ignoring all of the goodness of a topside overwatch in terms of dive safety and looking at it strictly from the perspective of protecting a businesses's capital investments, the question of the value of a topside watcher does have to also consider that there's a big difference between risking the loss of a $40K small sixpack and risking a $300K Pro48.
At a staff direct labor rate of $10/hour, a 3 hour AM dive conducted 200 times/year means that the cost of a second staffmember onboard is roughly $6K/year ... that's 2% of the value of the "big boat" investment. YMMV, but I'd consider that to be cheap insurance, particularly since its not really $6K - - its a lot less because it gets distributed across multiple value metrics, such as affording a higher level of customer service, as well as attending to the far-more-likely dive emergencies.
-hh
