Student Pulled from Elliott Bay in Seattle

[cerich]

The people that I have helped get trim and buoyancy, with a 1 on 1 and a whole dived dedicated to it, you get 'close'. You don't get spot on because the 'student' still had a lot to learn about being calm, not over finning and waving the hands around, and easier breathing. To do that with every student would be time consuming, therefor end up being expensive.
Unfortunately too much of the model in these parts is to almost give away the class, not an outright loss leader in some cases, and make money on the materials and equipment.

Instructors must want to teach. I don't see they can possibly make money, and I consider their exposure to risk to be not trivial. Kudos to them, I wouldn't do it. It's plenty to host dives for the club.

I completely disagree that it is too time consuming and expensive to teach the OW class so the student understands and can demonstrate buoyancy control, proper finning technique and correct weighting and trim.

Your point on the "model" is correct, however the fuse is in the box, that model is over.

 

[JackConnick]

Umm, maybe I'm out of place here in the midst of all these "rear view diving" discussions, BUT

This young woman died and the on-going revisiting of everyone's personal training, experience that has NOTHING to do with the incident from people who have never dived there seems very unseemly to me.

I just feel it shows a lack of respect to her family and the instructor who must be in unimaginable pain right now.

It all seems OT to me and should be in the training forum or somewhere else.

BTW, I've dove there hundreds of times over the years and helped improve the uw park.

 

[JackConnick]

Here's a link to the updated article:
FOLLOWUP: Student diver rescued in West Seattle has died

 

[Jack Hammer]

Umm, maybe I'm out of place here in the midst of all these "rear view diving" discussions, BUT

This young woman died and the on-going revisiting of everyone's personal training, experience that has NOTHING to do with the incident from people who have never dived there seems very unseemly to me.

I just feel it shows a lack of respect to her family and the instructor who must be in unimaginable pain right now.

It all seems OT to me and should be in the training forum or somewhere else.

BTW, I've dove there hundreds of times over the years and helped improve the uw park.

Perhaps people talking about it will help to prevent it happening to some one else so more families and instructors won't have to hold through the same pain.

 

[chillyinCanada]

Here's an excellent response from the comments section below the article ladt provided by Jack Connick.

"JPB
August 29, 2016

People should appreciate that a realistic response from the rescue team to an accident in a scuba class would most likely not be adequate to save the individual or prevent extensive, lasting brain damage.

My heart goes out to the family and friends of the unfortunate young woman who no doubt was eager to experience a world of delight and inspiration. Without knowing anything about her specifically, I ‘m inclined to think that her intent should be honored and celebrated.

I also extend my compassion to the instructors who were involved in this tragedy. While people may take the most careful measures to assure safety, there are always circumstances that will arise that confound those efforts. Scuba diving involves learning to master and rely on life support equipment. It is a serious undertaking and is fraught with potential problems no matter how careful all the participants are.

I’m so sad that this young woman is deprived of the joy she sought. Peace on her and respects to her spirit"

 

[PacNWDad]

Neurological studies have shown time and again that peoples' ability to keep track of separate items declines very rapidly beyond the number two. You can see this with the internet trope that is going around right now with dots at intersections of a matrix of lines. Keeping track of three "things" is exponentially more difficult than two, four is exponentially more difficult than three and so forth. Five is the maximum number for just about any person. In the water, we have to presume that we ourselves are one of those items. So, even having to keep track of two other divers is going to be a challenge.

What I am saying here is that the human brain, and its ability to only keep track of a small number of things, makes it much more risky for a dive instructor to have three students to keep track of than two students. In challenging environments like Puget Sound, and perhaps even in "safer" warm water environments, it is folly to have dive instructors with more than two students.

Ultimately, this is a cost issue. The drive to cut the cost of courses has led to decision-making that is not consistent with safe diving practice. As is often the case, when safety is compromised in the name of profits, litigation and the cost of obtaining insurance will step in to correct the imbalance. If this practice does not change, this will keep happening until the cost of insurance and/or carnage caused by lawsuits force a change.

I apply similar thinking to buddy teams - if you are going to have a three-person buddy team, then you'd better be much more vigilant about keeping track of both of your buddies.

Just my two cents.

 

[billt4sf]

Looking at the schedule on the Seattle Scuba website, the Confined Water portion of the class is one evening in the pool from 6:30PM to 11:00PM.

Seriously? ONE pool class and then into puget Sound with low viz?! Holy crap!

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Agreed. And as with flight training you should first be certified as visual before acquiring your instrument (low viz) rating. The potential for "silt outs" should not even be a possibility on an O/W check-out series of dives. Find another non-confined water area in which to conduct your O/W check-out dives. If memory serves, the Seattle area is surrounded by lakes as well as having access to the sea. Loss of a diver is always a tragic event, it is even more so when it is a young person with so much potential. RIP

The lakes are siltier than the Sound. The problem isn't potential silt-outs ... divers should be trained for the conditions they'll be diving in, after all. The problem is not taking sufficient time in confined water to train them how to not silt out the bottom. Some ... but very few ... instructors do it successfully.

The other problem is not maintaining control over your students. Whatever the ratios, you as an instructor MUST maintain control over OW students at all times. If this means reducing your ratios to fit the conditions, then do so.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[rjack321]

Perhaps people talking about it will help to prevent it happening to some one else so more families and instructors won't have to hold through the same pain.

Maybe if they linked threads like this to the beginner's forum more people would see concerns about "what is a safe ratio" before they signed up for classes. And ask questions about pool time and all the other things which (retrospectively) make a class worth what you paid for (or not).

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

I DM'd for an instructor that would run small independent classes. On weekends that had questionable forecasts and ultimately questionable conditions, he would still make everyone go out to the ocean to at least look at it. If it looked semi diveable he would first determine to himself if he was going to call the dive, or if he thought the students could handle it based on who they were and pool skill level. He would explain to them what they could posdibly expect, then he would take a vote. It had to be unanimous in order to proceed. The reason for this was because in Norcal the conditions change from day to day, hour to hour. So trying to wait for the perfect day might mean waiting for months.
If the vis was bad 3' or less he would take each student out one at a time to do skills. Sometimes we would go out with two students, but always had a DM watching the other student so it was essentially one on one. After the first student ran through the listed skills the instructor would give them to me and send us in on the bottom so they could get more dive time. Then after the instructor got done with the second student he would bring them in on the bottom. Sometimes this took all day but we had 100% control and uninterupted visual contact the entire time with every student. The students were a lot more relaxed too knowing they were with a superior the whole time.
The Northern California ocean can be a very intimidating place for the first time. I can only imagine what goes through a persons mind in the ocean for the first time in super bad vis suddenly finding themselves alone.