Suit filed in case of "Girl dead, boy injured at Glacier National Park

[wetb4igetinthewater]

Best suggestion I’ve ever heard.

I'd primarily like to see efforts for change/reform/improvement.

No idea is going to singlehandedly end fatalities. Many ideas will do nothing and should be ultimately discarded (otherwise things will bloat). The key is to try.

And the idea for dealing with the difference between center of mass and center of volume/displacement came from cave diving materials that I have (not yet a cave diver). That should be covered in open water courses.

 

[dlofting]

I don’t see why we are discussing other activities that have zero relevance to scuba diving, especially instruction.

The closest incident I can think of for mountain climbing to this tragedy was then the Manama clowns took a class of new climbers to Mt Hood in the late 90s (when I was a ski patroller). It was textbook avalanche conditions: significant snow in previous days, significant increase in temperature, and southern exposure to the sun. I spoke to the climbing ranger who was first to respond. One of the students had his head mostly ripped off like a pez dispenser.

The point I was trying to make by bringing up other activities that could result in death or serious injury was that SCUBA is one of the few that has mandatory instruction. The others depend on participants educating themselves...the onus is on the person who chooses to take up the activity.

@boulderjohn rightly pointed out that SCUBA divers often use third parties (dive shops,resorts) to participate in the activity who would want to ensure a level of proficiency before filling a tank, renting gear, or providing boat transport.

I think the required SCUBA certification is a double edged sword. It does, theoretically, ensure a certain knowledge level and, hopefully, proficiency. It may also give participants a false sense of security and a heightened sense of ability that is not necessarily present in those who do the other activities I talked about.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

One of the points made on a FB discussion was the fact that the instructor gave the deceased a ride. That's a long drive from Missoula County to the lodge at Lake McDonald. What was discussed during that time?

156. Instead, Snow simply advised Linnea that she would give Linnea and Nathan Dudden a ride to Lake McDonald, she would pick Linnea up in the morning, and “I also have an undergarment you can wear but bring wool undergarments also if you have them.”
157. On the morning of Sunday, November 1, 2020, Snow picked up Linnea at her apartment and drove her to Gull Dive. Once there, the Gull Dive Defendants never inspected Linnea’s dry suit. The Gull Dive Defendants also failed to reconfigure Linnea’s rental gear to be used safely with the dry suit before they departed for Lake McDonald.

 

[boulderjohn]

And the idea for dealing with the difference between center of mass and center of volume/displacement came from cave diving materials that I have (not yet a cave diver). That should be covered in open water courses.

So here is my theory.

Early scuba training was nearly 100% what we would call shallow, recreational diving today. A few hearty soles were doing deep air, and some brave and often foolish people were venturing into caves, but they were not close to the norm. Then those outliers began to be called "technical divers," and the two forms diverged. The cave divers focused on equipment and techniques that would make a decidedly unsafe activity safe. The deep divers focused on equipment and techniques that would make a decidedly unsafe activity safe. Since a lot of people (notably Sheck Exley) were doing both, there was a natural merger between the two.

Meanwhile, the overwhelming majority of people doing what we now call recreational diving were also trying to make it safer and more efficient. They made a large number of improvements to equipment and technique there as well.

The problem is that there was not a lot of overlap between the two, and it was in many ways like the evolution of hominems. Millions of years ago one common ancestor gave rise to both humans and modern apes. One common diving ancestor gave rise to the traditions of recreational and technical diving. A good example is the alternate air process. What does fine for recreational diving does not work in technical diving, especially caves, so the two systems are different. Arguably, the technical system works better in both worlds, but the recreational world see no need to change a system used by (likely) 98% of divers and equipment manufacturers because of what is perceived to be a marginal difference.

Like a lot of people, when I became a technical diver, I prefered what I was learning there to what I had long done in recreational diving. I could now list a large number of attempts to move technical techniques to the recreational world, and I have had some success. More often than not, though, the response I get from the top (and I mean the top) is "Sure, but that isn't really needed for recreational diving." (My most recent such failure was a recent push for improving recreational buoyancy, featuring the Buddha hover.) It is important to understand that the people I contact who are in charge of decisions like these are themselves technical divers. They know the difference. They have the same preferences I do for their own diving.

So they have thought it through and decided in each case whether it is a good idea to introduce the change to recreational diving or leave things the way they are. You and I may not agree with all those decisions, but those decisions were not capricious.

 

[wnissen]

With no disagreement about this entire post, and accepting ALL the lapses that were allowed by the direct participants in this disaster, I still have one question.
In what universe is it acceptable (read: within standards) to take a student on for "Advanced Open Water" certification with five or six dives, the fifth being a year ago? This diver was certified as an OWD, but did not have the awareness to call her own dive
- with impending darkness
- with no light
- in a drysuit with no inflator hose (had she read nothing?)
- with apparently little or no dive briefing
- without the wherewithal to release her weight pockets (assuming that what was zipped was actually her weight pockets with half her weight)
- grossly overweighted

So even assuming that we completely overlook the Instructor's clear culpability in this scenario, if this poor diver wasn't incredibly stupid, she was too inexperienced to undertake this certification. And that's on the organization that allows this sort of thing.
Yes, you can point to the dive shop and Instructor who appear to clearly be at fault. But (even assuming a light, a briefing, a hose on your new drysuit, a quick pool checkout in advance, and 44# of ditchable weight) would YOU go get AOW certified in a cold lake in a new drysuit for the first time as an OWD at night with five or six dives, most of which were a year ago? Who allows naive divers to think this is okay, even WITH all the boxes being checked!?

Yeah, I'm on a dive organization rant, and I think it should be harder to earn your credentials, if that wasn't already apparent. The pressure Instructors are under is a direct result of dive shops trying to stay alive, actively abetted by training organizations who make the public believe you can become a scuba diver over a three day weekend. That is wrong.

I know what you're saying. I will freely admit that I was completely focused on passing my open water course, due to ear issues that delayed it by about 6 months. Once I got it I immediately signed up for a two-tank dive in Hawai'i. It did not even occur to me that I might be in any way unprepared for that dive. After all, I was certifimacated! I had a literal shiny card with an ISO specification of "autonomous diver" on it. Nothing untoward happened, but when our buddy trio split up at the anchor line when I was low on air (because it was dive 5, of course I was low on air!), suddenly there was no one around to make sure I made it up the anchor line. It was a shock. I had never been outside of a few meters away from an instructor. You hear the words in Open Water that you are responsible for your own safety and have to plan your dive, but at least for me it never got through until I took on that responsibility and saw that no one else was going to do it for me.

But that all goes back to the requirement for pool-like conditions in this situation. It's assumed that during your drysuit class you will screw up. The instructor is supposed to be able to see you easily so that they can watch for signs of error and distress. Heck, I would expect anyone who has gone through rescue to be able to do that. There shouldn't be a steep slope into the abyss in a pool, and even if there were, your instructor should be able to prevent the worst from happening. There's so many failures that you can't pin it on just one, but for me that's the fundamental one. If the instructor had chosen even minimally appropriate conditions for this class, or paid even minimal attention, there would have been no issue.

To me it's not that relevant that there are safety issues in other sports. No one can stop you from bouldering, I've gone out and climbed big rock piles using zero gear and that was probably at least as dangerous as any dive I've ever done. The world has dangerous activities, to be sure! But in the scuba world we agree to deny equipment to those without appropriate training. The manufacturers and dealers and agencies in fact do have the power to make sure that people aren't going off into situations that they are obviously grossly underprepared for.

Now, anything that would shrink the industry just isn't going to happen for financial reasons. So there's a limit to what will get done.

 

[Wookie]

Most dive instructors work for a dive operation.

You think? I would assume that the vast vast majority are contractors.

 

[boulderjohn]

You think? I would assume that the vast vast majority are contractors.

Are you getting technical with your definition? Contractor v. Employee? In both cases, they are working for the business.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

the response I get from the top (and I mean the top) is "Sure, but that isn't really needed for recreational diving."

I'd argue that the 2016 DAN report states otherwise.

Edit: I would like to add, ever notice what students out of trim do when navigating in open water? They gradually head to the surface.

It is completely appropriate to teach students NB and trimmed in open water and a little bit of background info for them to understand the why

 

[kelemvor]

Are you getting technical with your definition? Contractor v. Employee? In both cases, they are working for the business.

Indeed, it's well established now days that for purposes other than semantics employees and contractors are one in the same. You can't legally screw your workers by labeling them contractors these days. I know for sure that's the deal in FL. I assumed it was a federal thing but I could be wrong.

 

[Wookie]

Are you getting technical with your definition? Contractor v. Employee? In both cases, they are working for the business.

I’m not trying to. Maybe I don’t get your point.