Instructor putting his students at risk?

[Osric]

I appreciate the gesture, though I doubt you fit that catagory with less then 30 dives.. Atleast you have taken that into account and understand the question being asked.

I did debate not posting at all due to my lack of experience diving.

Certainly it's true that thinking carefully about a situation and the best way to react to it is different than being in the situation and dealing with it under pressure. How easy it is to offer my opinion from the comfort of my home, rather than from the deck of a boat crowded with divers eager to be in the water. Feel free to take whatever portion, if any, that you find useful and ignore the rest.

Osric

 

[Insta-Gator]

Serious subject, serious discussion. But ...

the SOB

 

[beasleym]

Doubler, I think you're confusing boat and captain requirements with jurisdiction and legal proceedings. The Coast Guard can set regulations but they don't make law. They can and do review accidents and can affix blame. Only courts in the end determine the legal responsibility. There have been a number of new cases where even a buddy has been sued and found negligent or settled. When I checked into this with a lawyer friend he told me to keep good notes and get witness statements if ever something happened to my buddy - sobering thought, no?

When I asked about captains and divemasters his response was "When reviewing the actions of the dive master or vessel captain the seminal question becomes did the dive master or vessel captain act as an ordinarily prudent dive master or captain under the circumstances?" That's the litmus test for courts. Bottom line is that we would feel terrible if something happened to a buddy or student, but family of the buddy are the one's that initiate legal action and it's the courts that settle this, and the lawyers are the only one's that benefit.

 

[g1138]

Generally I think it's unprofessional and in poor form to berate an instructor in front of his students. Especially if there's still more dives to be conducted between said instructor and his/her students.

If the instructor had trained the students properly then none of this would have happened. The fact that he didn't should have been addressed between you and the instructor (and maybe even the captain), but in private!. Unless the instructors goes out of bounds for the class training, such as taking the Basic OW students on a penetration wreck dive, then and only then would I see a public blasting to be just.

And you're the dive guide. How much time does it take to do a one over on a student's weight? A simple one liner question is enough in my mind. Yes it isn't your duty to worry about these things, but if you're guiding a class technically I think you're the TA for the class. Help the instructor out and make sure you solve all possible problems before they can even become problems. You took a boat to the dive site right? Then you had to have had time to converse with the divers. Did any of them ever voice any apprehension? Did anyone remind the students to hold their mask on entry? These are students after all; heck I've seen regular divers forget at times.

Bottom line:
The instructor obviously needs to train his classes better, but humiliating him in front of his class is not going to change his ways.

Edit:
I did not read the entire post prior to this one. I second what Zendiver.3D. Keeping a cool head is hard during the moment. Hopefully we all can take a lesson from this and prevent situations like this (both pre-dive and post dive) from happening.

 

[discokat]

So I recently crewed on a boat that had several "out of town divers" on it, including their instructor. After giving the dive briefing for our night dive the instructor came up to me and told me that he would be jumping in with his group negative. I said something like "WTF are you talking about". He said he had cleared it with the captain and that the captain said to let me know since I was guiding for them... I clearly stated my concerns yet still agreed to guide for them since I probably would not have been welcome on the boat again if I did not... I jumped in first and waited for everyone else before I descended, though some were already half way to the bottom. On my descent I found one diver to be in distress to say the least... He lost his mask on entry and was rapidly sinking to the bottom. I grabbed his inflater and got him neutral. I must have held the power inflater for what it seemed to be 10 seconds.. I always carry a LV spare mask in my BC its small enough to fit in one of my zip pockets. So I gave it to the diver he put it on but had trouble clearing it. I used my other reg to put air in his mask by tilting it back as we normally would and purged the reg to get some air in there. It worked well enough for him to see me which is all I wanted. I was trying to calm him down, I hoped when he could see me he would relax. Finally he snapped out of it and gave me an OK sign, I signaled to him to surface with me. After getting him back on the boat, I went back to find the other divers. I did, they were not aware of what happened nor was his dive buddy or the instructor looking for him. Since I could not see any other issue with dive or its safety at this point we continued the dive. Afterwords the dive buddy asked "Hey what happened to --------? My response was "I guess if your instructor trained you properly you would know". The instructor was standing right next to me, everyone could clearly see the expression on his face, he was pretty pissed off at my statement. His response was something I don't believe should be repeated here. I walked over to the diver I assisted and picked up his weight belt. He had 26lbs on his belt. 16lbs would have been more then enough, he wasn't even wearing a wet suit. He never adjusted his weight from the cold water dives when he was taught. I gave the instructor an earful in front of his student, "your student was severely over-weighted, your negative entry BS put this student and the other freshly certified OW students lives in danger by jumping in the water with no air in their BCD's. This particular student had little or no skill in clearing a mask. (no it wasn't the mask size) He couldn't even stop himself from sinking. To me that clearly shows you are a piss poor instructor, but hey atleast you made sure his air was on before he jumped in. Good job". The captain stopped me at that point. Not much was said on the way back to the dock, I left pretty quickly. I did not want to make the situation worse. The diver never acknowledged what had happened or even said anything for that matter to me.

I'm sure there are details that I'm leaving out. I will answer as asked. Question is what would you have done differently?

I would have punched the Dive Instructor in the nose.

 

[ZenDiver.3D]

That all sounds good on paper, yet in real life they were his students. I gave the briefing, after the captain gave a 10min heads up is when I found out what the instructor was planning on doing. I voiced my concerns to the captain, instructor and all of the students heard what I said. The response was something like we know what were doing we have been trained and the captain backed the instructor not I. There was little I could do at that point.

You are right. In the situation you were in, you were effectively screwed by your captain and the instructor.

Yes I agree the aftermath got a little crazy and things did not go as well as I would have liked. Its easy for anyone to say that they would have done this or that differently when they have a clear head to think about it. Which is my conclusion, that after everything said and done, if anything I would have done differently would have been to keep a cool head to properly debrief the divers.

It is always easier to play Monday morning quarterback. I think all we can ever do is keep practicing that cool head. Life is much easier when you are looking at it from a distance. When you are smack in the middle, it has a whole different run. Stop, breathe, and think works on the surface too. You have to work hard at practicing it sometimes...........

On a side note, did you have a discussion with the captain after all this? What was his response? Did he learn anything, or is he happy with helping to set up this same type of situation again?

 

[discokat]

Originally Posted by Brendon
I appreciate the gesture, though I doubt you fit that catagory with less then 30 dives.. Atleast you have taken that into account and understand the question being asked.

I always get a kick out of the ever present "my johnson is bigger than your johnson" forum posts.

How dare you post an opinion when I asked for one without the requisite number of dives (to be determined later at my whim)?!? /sarcasm

I agree to some extent with Osric. Some decorum could have been used to turn a possibly negative experience (pun intended) to a learning experience for the entire group. As far as his number of dives, it had no bearing to your original question and besides his points were rather valid.

However, I still stick to MY original opinion that you should have punched the Instructor in the nose. I'll add to it that you could have also pulled his mask out from his face snapped it back and see if he could then clear it.