Student lost - Seattle, Washington

[Bob DBF]

You can still follow standards and still be unsafe.

That's why I mentioned both standards and safety, as they, on occation, are not necessarily the same.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

I really don't wanna get into it in this thread because this isnt the place, but from personal experience, 4:1 DSDs can absolutely be done safely with the right conditions.

But to your point of staying within standards and being unsafe.... Thats sort of an oxymoron.
At least in PADI in reference to ratios, under general standards and procedures, you must "use sound judgement and conduct a risk assessment before determining ratios. Unless otherwise noted, ratios are absolute maximums". So a 4:1 DSD in your example might be breaking standards depending on the risk assessment.

I could continue to site references where falling under the maximums would still be breaking standards if you'd like.


But again, thats not the purpose of this thread.

So what is the purpose of this thread/forum? This is a learning zone.

You quote standards but there is the the cop out from agencies to not provide guidelines. So many unaware dive pros get lucky most of the time. No one does DSD/try scuba in the Puget Sound but in many places they are conducted in open water. Now some agencies allow a safe 2:1 ratio. Hmmm....

I really don't care to read how you would reduce ratios. I do care what agencies say. But doing so might introduce them to liability. Might be the reason we don't have them.

Again telling instructors to use judgment to reduce ratios is a cop out. Know any dive pros who work full time at dive destinations? Ask them if they've ever had an employer that didn't allow for that.

 

[lamont]

I've participated in that conversation a number of times over the last few years, including as recently as last week.

My opinion is that the way things are currently done is fine - as long as they are done to standards, of course. The statistics seem to support my opinion. The industry does not have (as far as I know) a significant problem with new OW divers - trained to current RSTC standards - that are going out and getting hurt because modern training is producing unsafe divers.

We may be producing relatively unskilled divers, but that is a different issue. They are (generally) skilled enough and have been instilled with sufficient knowledge that they can go diving without getting hurt (generally). I suppose the knowledge that they come away from OW training with includes enough to sway them towards diving with operations that by-and-large take them to benign dive sites and keep them safe as they get their sea legs (so to speak) and then (hopefully) go on to more advanced training and more advanced diving.

If the statistics show that modern OW training is not turning out divers that are going out and getting hurt (in any significant numbers), then why "should" OW training be changed to take longer and be more expensive?

If someone can point me at information that shows we do have a legitimate safety problem with training done to modern standards, I would sincerely like to see it. Training standards are a balancing act between safety and accessibility. Of course we COULD make standards tougher, requiring a higher level of diver skill before getting an OW card - which would, in theory, mean we produce safer divers. But, if that makes an insignificant impact on actual safety/accident stats and at the same time it DOES result in a negative impact on participation because it makes diving less accessible, then I would not be in favor of that approach.

The existence of this thread is the indication that the industry has legitimate safety problem.

Most of the divers who have died at this site over the years has been due to inexperience and really basic mistakes. There seems to be one about every 4 years or so. You might view that as acceptable losses, but I don't like those "statistics".

I've been through two of the recoveries, and I'd have preferred to have gone through none.

And now since the cops couldn't find her the night before we've probably got another pair of OW divers who found the body who need to deal with that.

I'd really appreciate it if your industry would stop giving me the opportunity to go out and find dead divers at this site.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

If the statistics show that modern OW training is not turning out divers that are going out and getting hurt (in any significant numbers), then why "should" OW training be changed to take longer and be more expensive?

If someone can point me at information that shows we do have a legitimate safety problem with training done to modern standards, I would sincerely like to see it. Training standards are a balancing act between safety and accessibility. Of course we COULD make standards tougher, requiring a higher level of diver skill before getting an OW card - which would, in theory, mean we produce safer divers. But, if that makes an insignificant impact on actual safety/accident stats and at the same time it DOES result in a negative impact on participation because it makes diving less accessible, then I would not be in favor of that approach.

Please read the DAN reports particularly 2016.

 

[Gandalf-the-Diver]

The SDI standards for Night/Low Viz training require a light and a backup light. I would think that other agencies would require the same thing. This is not a comment to start an agency fight. I have only trained with SDI/TDI, so I'm naming the agency simply to say that it is the only agency standards that I know.

I have taught some Night/Low Viz dives. It is not a required skill to make the students handle a "failed light". This thread does make me give some thought to whether I should incorporate that into the start of every Night/Low Viz dive #1 from now on. In other words, at the start of the first Night Diver class dive, make sure each student can successfully deploy and use their backup light before proceeding any further with their dive.

I did my AOW last November, in a PADI course. We had to have two lights, and a tank light, for our night dive.

 

[Gandalf-the-Diver]

PADI Standards checking in.
This is probably a PADI class given the shops around here, so I hope these standards are helpful to the discussion.

For the night specialty, a light and a backup light are required, but there is no performance requirement for switching to a backup light.
For the AOW night adventure dive, only a primary light is required. A backup and marker/chem light are only recommended (page 92, 2021 instructor manual).

It is suspected that the class in question was an AOW class, in which case if that was true, the students would only require one light.

Backup lights and the use of them are discussed both in the AOW adventure dive manual and KRs, along with the night specialty guide and KRs.

On my PADI AOW, last Nov., my instructors required us to have two lights, plus a marker.

 

[NothingClever]

To many unknown variables to make any conclusions at this time as to what happened and why. I have done several recoveries over the years that you thought would go a certain way and it turned out to be entirely different by the time the final investigation was concluded. All we know for sure is that a young lady has lost her life. Plenty of time for finger pointing and playing the blame game later after all those outside of this incident have had a chance to arm-chair quarterback this thing once the facts, or in some cases assumptions, have been made public. If nothing else, it serves as a stark reminder to take what you do in the water seriously and complacency can rear its ugly head and bite the best of us in the ass when we least expect it if we’re not careful.

This.

I just can’t wrap my brain around why we as a virtual community don’t adopt this mature, prudent outlook rather than the speculation and conjecture ditch we invariably slide into.

 

[boulderjohn]

I just can’t wrap my brain around why we as a virtual community don’t adopt this mature, prudent outlook rather than the speculation and conjecture ditch we invariably slide into.

...because some people have a hobby horse they like to ride, and they ride it at every opportunity.

 

[NothingClever]

...because some people have a hobby horse they like to ride, and they ride it at every opportunity.

Nah.

I think this is bigger than the rift between you and @wetb4igetinthewater.

 

[DandyDon]

To many unknown variables to make any conclusions at this time as to what happened and why.

This.

I just can’t wrap my brain around why we as a virtual community don’t adopt this mature, prudent outlook rather than the speculation and conjecture ditch we invariably slide into.

It's certainly true that we can't make any conclusions this early with the little information we have been given, still - speculation and conjecture is how we learn to avoid similar risks.
Excerpts from a couple of stickies at the top of the forum.

• There will be speculation
• Facts rarely come out, so why wait

Accident analysis is the business of identifying mishap causes and recommending actions to prevent a repeat mishap.