Liability of Agencies for their instructors??

[diver42]

Should dive certification agencies be held liable for the actions of their instructors?

It seems to me that all ten (so far) pages of this thread point to a clear answer: This is the wrong question to ask. It’s on the right path, but it’s backwards.

Holding training agencies liable for their instructor’s actions is a tool, not an end in itself. The end is better training and better-trained divers.

Removing the ability of training agencies to shield themselves from liability by making everyone agree that the instructors are not agents—some even have something they actually call a “non-agency agreement,” as if this is something standard in U.S. law—would almost certainly make the agencies watch their instructors much-more carefully. Would this make for better training, or would it make for more-cautious training that isn’t necessarily better? My guess is the former, but I’m not sure it wouldn’t be the latter.

Or maybe agencies would be able to obtain insurance for all of that. Maybe the industry would band together and create that insurance. Maybe most of the agencies would cease to exist. I don’t think the answer is as obvious as people make it out to be.

Organizations like GUE have shown that there is a market for open-water training with higher standards. They’ve also shown that the market is pretty small.

There is a larger market for cheap, fast training. But as training has become cheaper and faster, have divers become more accident-prone? Maybe, maybe not. There some evidence that as equipment has improved, safety has not, possibly indicating that it’s the better equipment making up for worse divers. On the other hand, there’s long-standing evidence of the Peltzman Effect in most activities, which is basically that as safety measures improve, people take more risks. At the same time, divers are doing more-difficult dives. There was a time when a one- or two-mile cave penetration was a big project. Now it’s a thing you can do on a Wednesday before lunch.

It is superficially compelling to hold agencies responsible when an instructor fails. The larger agencies have pretty deep pockets, and the individual instructors may have no pockets. And where the agency may know that the instructor has a history of violating standards, or where the agency standards are insufficient, the argument becomes more compelling. I don’t think it’s obvious that this change would put everyone out of business. I also don’t think it’s obvious that it would solve the underlying problem, which is how to make divers better and diving safer.

All that said, whoever decided (early in this thread) that agencies cannot better supervise their instructors because doing so would make the agencies more likely to be held liable has probably missed the point of that issue. There are plenty of ways that training agencies can tightly supervise instructors without converting those instructors into agents. It isn’t even complicated. Some already do it. Others would rather not. The idea that you just can’t require it without decimating the industry is without evidence. We just don’t know what the industry would look like.

It seems pretty likely that the agencies would reshape themselves to solve the problem. For instance, they could split themselves in two or three, where one independent entity produces the training materials, and another certifies instructors based on those materials.

There are also impediments to this “solution” in U.S. law, which (no surprise) doesn’t revolve around scuba diving and generally allows people to decide who is an agent and who is not. If I don’t want you to be my agent, and you agree you don’t want to be my agent, why should you be able to bind me to anything?

 

[boulderjohn]

But as training has become cheaper and faster, have divers become more accident-prone?

Has training become cheaper and faster?

A thread a few years ago compared standards from 30 years ago to today's standards, and the result was that the only thing missing from the standards 30 years ago is buddy breathing, and about 15 other requirements had been added. If students are required to learn more now than 30 years ago, how is that faster?

People who make this claim often compare the days of many hours of lecture to online learning, implying that the time spent learning online does not count in the time required for training.

Others who learned in a university class point to how much time they had, but people are still learning in university classes and spending that time now.

Others point to classes (like the one that certified me) that skip standards to lower instructional time, but that has been happening since formal instruction began.

 

[diver42]

Has training become cheaper and faster?

It has certainly become cheaper. The dollar cost (in the U.S.) has remained about the same over the past 20-25 years, at least where I live and where I routinely visit, despite more than two decades of inflation.

A thread a few years ago compared standards from 30 years ago to today's standards, and the result was that the only thing missing from the standards 30 years ago is buddy breathing, and about 15 other requirements had been added. If students are required to learn more now than 30 years ago, how is that faster?

People who make this claim often compare the days of many hours of lecture to online learning, implying that the time spent learning online does not count in the time required for training.

Others who learned in a university class point to how much time they had, but people are still learning in university classes and spending that time now.

Others point to classes (like the one that certified me) that skip standards to lower instructional time, but that has been happening since formal instruction began.

I don't mean to suggest that I have run a study or a survey or anything. I have biases just like everyone else. My (admittedly anecdotal) experience is that the training can be completed in a shorter period of time than before, when I was searching for training. For instance, when one of my friends was certified a few years ago, he was required to demonstrate very little, and I know for a fact (because I was watching) that he didn't show anything close to "mastery." I think he showed that he could do it once with a little luck. Of course, I'm pretty sure that I also was "permitted" to short-cut standards. So I see your point, and I can't really be certain. Maybe it has been this way for decades, and the rest is "kids today."

Also, I do not mean to imply that the time spent online is not roughly equivalent to the old lectures, which also included watching videos (in my training, on VHS). Maybe the online materials are better than the old in-person lectures. The agencies certainly spend a lot of time and money on creating them.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

Does anyone think that training since the move to on the knees training hasn't really significantly changed in terms of skills?

Just the experience level of instructors and the physical abilities of students?

This is a question for long term (over 30 years) instructors, how often did you get students who didn't know how to swim back then versus today?

How much of the problem is also the push for mass market that "anyone can dive"?

 

[Nick_Radov]

I don't know of any outdoor sport that is growing.

Trail running and mountain biking seem to still be growing, at least by some metrics. Those don't require any formal training to participate so perhaps not directly comparable to scuba. But a good mountain bike plus accessories costs as much as a good set of dive gear so money doesn't seem to be the limiting factor.

In California I think a lot of the retail dive shops have tied themselves to a dying business model. I've met so many people who got OW certified here but then dropped out of diving, or only do it occasionally on vacation in warmer areas. If you ask them why they say the water is too cold, they lack confidence, and they think there's nothing to see. The typical weekend OW course involves 4 short, shallow dives at a site like San Carlos Beach (Breakwater) which has mediocre visibility and a limited amount of marine life, all while wearing an ill-fitting rental wetsuit. This allows for running courses fast and cheap. But it's no surprise that only the most masochistic and determined divers persist with local diving. As more of the active divers age out of the sport I expect some local diving businesses to fail in a slow-motion death spiral.

There might be an opportunity for forward-thinking shop owners and instructors to offer a more comprehensive OW course aimed at developing lifetime customers (recurring revenue) rather than just maximizing certification counts. Put students in drysuits and good-quality gear (including a bright primary light) from the start. Teach neutral buoyancy and failure management. Take them to a variety of shore dive sites. Add at least one boat charter so they can see more exciting stuff. Have an assistant constantly shooting pictures and video that students can share on social media. Of course this will take longer and cost more so fewer students would sign up, but if they have a good experience then I expect many of them would stick as loyal customers. I don't know if this would actually work as a business model but it would be nice to see someone at least try to keep the industry alive.

"We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas."

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Trail running and mountain biking seem to still be growing, at least by some metrics. Those don't require any formal training to participate so perhaps not directly comparable to scuba. But a good mountain bike plus accessories costs as much as a good set of dive gear so money doesn't seem to be the limiting factor.

In California I think a lot of the retail dive shops have tied themselves to a dying business model. I've met so many people who got OW certified here but then dropped out of diving, or only do it occasionally on vacation in warmer areas. If you ask them why they say the water is too cold, they lack confidence, and they think there's nothing to see. The typical weekend OW course involves 4 short, shallow dives at a site like San Carlos Beach (Breakwater) which has mediocre visibility and a limited amount of marine life, all while wearing an ill-fitting rental wetsuit. This allows for running courses fast and cheap. But it's no surprise that only the most masochistic and determined divers persist with local diving. As more of the active divers age out of the sport I expect some local diving businesses to fail in a slow-motion death spiral.

There might be an opportunity for forward-thinking shop owners and instructors to offer a more comprehensive OW course aimed at developing lifetime customers (recurring revenue) rather than just maximizing certification counts. Put students in drysuits and good-quality gear (including a bright primary light) from the start. Teach neutral buoyancy and failure management. Take them to a variety of shore dive sites. Add at least one boat charter so they can see more exciting stuff. Have an assistant constantly shooting pictures and video that students can share on social media. Of course this will take longer and cost more so fewer students would sign up, but if they have a good experience then I expect many of them would stick as loyal customers. I don't know if this would actually work as a business model but it would be nice to see someone at least try to keep the industry alive.

"We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas."

I think what’s lacking in today’s local dive scene is a sense of community.
You mention Monterey Breakwater and I know you’re local. I don’t know how long you’ve been diving around here, but back in 1998 when I got certified there were a lot more active local divers. There was an abalone diving scene (north of the gate) and a healthy scuba scene. Most of our open water check out dives were conducted up at Gerstle Cove State Park. In the winter our local shops would go to Breakwater. Our shop used to charter boats all the time in Monterey and we’d get on Phil Sammet’s boats the Cypress Point and Cypress Sea. There were a lot of boats then and they all stayed busy. How many are there now?
Even up here in Sonoma County we had quite a local scene happening. Several dive clubs, I always ran into people I knew at local dive sites.

I think a couple good recessions and a pandemic had a lot to do with beating down the sport, along with stagnant wages and the cost of living constantly increasing. Combine that with dive shops dying and no more talks around the fill stations and you have a dying dive community.
Dive clubs dry up, people aging out, the loss of abalone diving, no new people getting into diving, and you have a perfect storm.

I’m actually working very hard to build back a dive community up here again with our purple urchin removal efforts. We’re getting a lot of new divers and they are really enjoying it because they get to dive with a purpose. The dive shop has seen an increase in traffic and there is excitement.
So it can be rebuilt, but it’s a hands on job and it’s not easy. Complaining doesn’t do any good, I tried.

The downturn in scuba diving (at least locally) has absolutely nothing to do with this whole imagined ill of the industry and supposed disastrous training climate. Maybe that’s true somewhere else but not here.

 

[boulderjohn]

Does anyone think that training since the move to on the knees training hasn't really significantly changed in terms of skills?

Is it your opinion that there has been a recent movement to teach skills on the knees, a movement that has made things worse than it used to be?

When we wrote the 2011 article for PADI calling for instruction to be done while neutrally buoyant and off the knees, our writing team included dive historian Dr. Sam Miller. His job was to identify how and when teaching students on the knees began. Dr. Miller, whose NAUI instructor number was something like #27 (meaning he was certified as an instructor about 1960), found that instruction was done while anchored to the floor of the pool from the very beginning. The first known scuba instruction was in 1951 at the Scripps Institute, and that was before any means of buoyancy existed--not even a wet suit. Scuba tanks were strapped to the back with a simple harness. Early videos of instruction in the 1950s show students kneeling or sitting on the bottom of the pool while being instructed.

Our earliest drafts included our opinion that instruction began before neutrally buoyant instruction was possible, and once it became possible, the old habits were so deeply ingrained that no one had thought of doing things differently.

Unfortunately, all of the history stuff got cut out before publication--our original length was several times longer than the published version.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

Is it your opinion that there has been a recent movement to teach skills on the knees, a movement that has made things worse than it used to be?

When we wrote the 2011 article for PADI calling for instruction to be done while neutrally buoyant and off the knees, our writing team included dive historian Dr. Sam Miller. His job was to identify how and when teaching students on the knees began. Dr. Miller, whose NAUI instructor number was something like #27 (meaning he as certified as an instructor about 1960), found that instruction was done while anchored to the floor of the pool from the very beginning. The first known scuba instruction was in 1951 at the Scripps Institute, and that was before any means of buoyancy existed--not even a wet suit. Scuba tanks were strapped to the back with a simple harness. Early videos of instruction in the 1950s show students kneeling or sitting on the bottom of the pool while being instructed.

Our earliest drafts included our opinion that instruction began before neutrally buoyant instruction was possible, and once it became possible, the old habits were so deeply ingrained that no one had thought of doing things differently.

Unfortunately, all of the history stuff got cut out before publication--our original length was several times longer than the published version.

I can't speak to the entire history of instruction and unfortunately Dr. Miller isn't with us to chime in. If you could post that entire publication of what you submitted, that would be sincerely awesome.

I don't think this led to on the knees instruction: PADI Through the Decades: the 1980s. There is a certain amount of practicality of grathering students in a group on their knees. This is where I'd like to see the history as I question my own understanding of how early instruction was like before the BCD and before the horse collar. The first students had to dive a balanced rig, yes?

So PADI's move in 1981 was absolute marketing genius, as it provided gratification that most customers want. That's not a criticism, but an acknowledgement of (my?) reality. And the industry followed as PADI basically kicked everyone's butt when it came to marketshare and growth.

But it has implications. With the invention of the BCD, that allowed for overweighting that I hope we all agree is a problem today.

 

[Nick_Radov]

You mention Monterey Breakwater and I know you’re local. I don’t know how long you’ve been diving around here, but back in 1998 when I got certified there were a lot more active local divers.

I got certified around the same period in 1999.

In the winter our local shops would go to Breakwater. Our shop used to charter boats all the time in Monterey and we’d get on Phil Sammet’s boats the Cypress Point and Cypress Sea.

I'm not sure what the exact ownership structure was but my understanding is that Frank Barry was the main owner of the Cypress Charters boats with Phil Sammet as one of several regular captains. (Frank also used to own Any Water Dive Center in San Jose, and still helps the new owners.) Those charters were fun, but honestly the boats themselves weren't ideal for California sport diving. They had originally been designed as crew boats for use in the Gulf of Mexico so the hulls weren't shaped for local sea conditions. This made them slow, and nausea-inducing for many passengers. I think it was tough for them to compete once faster and more stable competition like the Monterey Express and Escapade arrived. Frank sold his boats and got out of the charter business many years ago. I think at least one of those boats might still be used for bridge maintenance work in SF Bay.

There were a lot of boats then and they all stayed busy. How many are there now?

That depends how you count. In terms of boats running regular scheduled dive charters I am aware of the Escapade, Beach Hopper II, and Double Down. Phil Sammet has a large RIB available for private dive charters when he's not busy with other projects. There are a few other private boats that will also sometimes take customers out. The Monterey Express, Xanadu, Silver Prince, and Sanctuary seem to be gone or at least inactive.

I think a couple good recessions and a pandemic had a lot to do with beating down the sport, along with stagnant wages and the cost of living constantly increasing.

The cost of living in Northern California is high but there are a lot of affluent people. I see them buying fancy toys (like carbon mountain bikes) and taking luxury vacations. The dive industry's woes can't really be blamed on local economic conditions.

 

[Landau]

The first students had to dive a balanced rig, yes?

Nope, they were in general negative and had to keep moving and kicking to stay off the bottom.

I took my original training in 1979. We worked very little on buoyancy. Skills were on our knees.