Is there an instructor crisis?

[Eric Sedletzky]

Nobody gets sued when things go wrong with surfing and freediving.

When things go wrong with scuba, the dive operation, the owner of the dive site (If appliable), the DM who was on the boat at the time, the captain who did not do a good enough job training the crew for rescue, and the agency that certified anyone involved in the story all get sued.

Ok, if there is no dive operation, the dive site is a public beach, there is no DM and no boat, and there is no agency, who gets sued?

If they drown how is that any different from surfing or freediving?
Remember, we used to have an average if 8 fatalities a year from abalone diving.
Surfers get bit by sharks around here.

 

[runsongas]

@Lorenzoid most will also rent SUPs, kites, and now wings

 

[MichaelMc]

Ok, if there is no dive operation, the dive site is a public beach, there is no DM and no boat, and there is no agency, who gets sued?

Your study, gear, compressor and shore or boat, no one else is involved or cares, aside from friends, rescue teams and health care.

If your friends can't teach you, you likely need to hire someone. But if you die they might be sued, so they formed a team, agreed on common (written...) standards and got insurance based on that. But sometimes most people ignore the standards, and the insurance goes way up.

 

[Cthippo]

On the insurance side i wonder if there is an actual change in the number of accidents, or whether the same number of accidents are creating more expensive claims, or if there is something else going in here. Does anyone have solid number showing that there are more fatalities now than a decade ago?

Part of me wonders if we would be having this conversation if the Conception had been a fishing charter.

 

[Wookie]

Part of me wonders if we would be having this conversation if the Conception had been a fishing charter.

I don't *think* Conception has gone to trial yet.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

On the insurance side i wonder if there is an actual change in the number of accidents, or whether the same number of accidents are creating more expensive claims, or if there is something else going in here. Does anyone have solid number showing that there are more fatalities now than a decade ago?

Part of me wonders if we would be having this conversation if the Conception had been a fishing charter.

The Conception fire really didn’t have anything to do with being a scuba accident, it was a boat accident. It could have been a boatload of whale watchers and the same thing could have happened.

 

[Lorenzoid]

Ok, if there is no dive operation, the dive site is a public beach, there is no DM and no boat, and there is no agency, who gets sued?

If they drown how is that any different from surfing or freediving?

I have been following this thread and your posts but I just don't understand the point you're making here. Nobody gets sued, as I suspect you know. If scuba were practiced only this way, then like surfing and freediving in the ocean, scuba would not be impacted by liability issues except maybe in a rare instance of an equipment manufacturing defect. We would probably not have certifications as such, anyone could learn scuba via any route they wanted, and we wouldn't be having this conversation.

But the reality is that the way most divers do their scuba diving there are a number of players actively involved in getting divers prepared and into and out of the water. It's a complicated dance. Many dive ops refer to customers as "guests" for a reason. And with that comes potential liability.

 

[Wookie]

The Conception fire really didn’t have anything to do with being a scuba accident, it was a boat accident. It could have been a boatload of whale watchers and the same thing could have happened.

But it is insured by a scuba insurance company, in the same insurance pool as dive instructors.

A whale watching boat is in a different pool.

 

[tomfcrist]

It doesn't really seem work great for driving either. AFAIK, the US has double or triple the amount of fatal traffic accidents per capita than European countries that require people to take lessons from an actual driving instructor.

Instructors might put too much lead in you pocket and maybe are not that great a lot of the time... but I'm not sure a random dad or uncle would to a better job. A PADI instructor has at least a 100 dives, uncle Bob might have 8 dives when he starts teaching.

My grandfather had about 30 years of dive experience when he taught me. He was not an instructor. I dove for the next 20 something years without being certified. I only got certified because the insurance companies convinced the dove shops that they needed to see Ccards in order to fill tanks. I eventually started teaching, got certified through CCR mix and Cave…quit teaching, bought my own compressor, and rarely see the inside of a dive shop now. In all that time since becoming certified, I don’t think I’ve learned anything in a class that I didn’t already know, or couldn’t read in a book. I’d say Gramps did a bang up job.

 

[JonnieB]

by self study?

I completely agree...but the formal agency instruction sets (or should) the foundation for this future knowledge. IMO, those saying formal training by a SCUBA instructor isn't necessary to dive are off their rocker.