The $17 million dollar dive

[dotyj]

Okay, it was the wrong dive site. Go figure.

But 170 feet and people went down that deep anyway?

I sure as hell would not dive that deep. I have my first OW dives
next month so I'm not experienced at all, but come on.

This person (and others) went ahead and dived to 160 to 170 feet and blamed the DM of wrong doing by taking them that deep.

What ever happened to taking responsibility for your own actions? Guided dive or not, I would have aborted before going that deep without proper training and gear.

I have no sympathy for the guy who was paralyzed. He (and the others) should have known better.

AFAIK all training organizations tell people not to dive beyond their training level and not to do any dive that makes you uncomfortable.

This is sort of like suing Ford because even though the speed limit on the freeway near your home is 55mph you traveled at 120mph because the car could do so. Then you colided(sp?) with the rear of a tractor-trailer doing enough bodily injury to paralyze you for life.

Speaking of lost future income. This jerk isn't a charity case. There's no reason at all why he can't go back to work. Heck, with a doctor's permission and some retraining, he can even continue to dive.

Okay, I'll stop ranting now. Yes the charter screwed up by taking divers to the wrong dive site, but nobody held a gun to anyone's head and forced them to dive way beyond their limits.

 

[hcs3]

I'm sure they where, but, you don't think a little thing like I'm a trained, certified, adult stop a lawyer from arguing that somebody should of been holding his hand and reading his gauges for him do you?

i'm not argueing one way or another. just pointing out to the members that felt he may have been only resort certified that i suspect he was at least OW certified.

i don't think enough details are available to the public for us to determine one way or another who was at fault. i do know, however, with or without my certification, that i would never follow any DM to 170 feet.

henry

 

[WillAbbott]

hcs3 once bubbled...

i don't think enough details are available to the public for us to determine one way or another who was at fault. i do know, however, with or without my certification, that i would never follow any DM to 170 feet.

henry

Agreed. There is not enough info to know exactly what happened. But regardless, any OW or higher cert. person should know better and know to be watching thier gauge on descent and realize. hey we just hit out 60-70' mark (which is kinda weird, were going to dive to 60 or 70? they didnt' know? kinda makes dive planning more complex, plan your dive for both, and find out where you end up? do a plan to 60 and a plan to 70 whatever the actual depth is go with the plan?) The divers should have noticed when they hit 60-70 or even 100' And signaled the DM, or just aborted.

It just seems out there that however many divers there were none of them noticed they had passed the limits and just kept on diving. Not sure at what depth the alarm goes off on your computer indicating you are too deep, but it either wasn't early enough or they head it and kept following the DM down anyways (another huge mistake)

I guess a good lesson to all of us, newbies, experienced, vetrans, all divers. Don't forget to check you gauges on descent, ESPECIALLY your DEPTH gauge, so that you don't wind up doing the same thing, whether you're following someone or not.

Only you can be truely responsible for yourself and going beyond you and your gears limits.

 

[ericfine50]

Sounds like a resort course, but I know a few DMs that have said people will ask to go deep and they would take them. So maybe, this was a case of "can we do something cool" or a resort course gone wrong.
Eric

 

[nicodaemos]

Okay I found a link that has more information.

http://www.ktul.com/news/stories/1102/62829.html

A quick summary is that the divers did not seem to be supervised, that Schiner was a "certified scuba diver" and all the divers descended down a rope attached to a buoy.

So the genius Schiner is leading the pack down the rope and doesn't realize he's descended too far until he hits 160'?!? Next upon realizing his mistake he quickly ascended. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant!

I think the Ritz-Carlton lawyers screwed up on this one. They settled the case too quickly. Had this gone to trial, even a poor jury should have found Schiner to be partly to blame for the incident. A more reasonable jury would have put the blame squarely on Schiner's shoulders for so grossly violating the rules of his own certification.

 

[TCDiver1]

Several years ago i certified a good friend for a group trip we were taking to Hawaii. Other than him, the group as a whole were very experienced divers.

We hooked up with a dive operator and i explained the situation to the DM who would be leading our first dive. No one else in our group had a problem with making our first dive 60' or less and the DM said no problem, the wall off Molikini crater should be fine.

Now he seemed like a great, consciencious guy, answered all the right questions correctly and was a fellow instructor, so i had no reason to doubt what he was saying. This was my first time to Maui so i had little idea of the site he was taking us to. Cool!

We head out to the site, see several humpbacks on the way out, now i'm really distracted and hop into the water. Good 100 foot plus vis. Hmmm, i can't see the bottom, yellow caution lights start to blink in my head. I had buddied up with my newly certified friend since this was his first post certification dive, lucky bugger huh?, and watched the rest of our group follow the DM down. As we followed them down it seemed to me they were getting pretty deep, i was just getting ready to check my computer again when my buddy grabbed me & pointed at his depth gauge. He was showing me he was almost at 60', this is the new guy remember. When i looked we were at 60', so i signalled him to level off with me and looked down to the DM lead group at least 50 to 60' below us. WTF SQUARED was all i could think of.

After several minutes the DM noticed us and signalled if we were okay, i gave him my best, yes we are okay dumba$$ signal in return. He went along on his merry way at that depth and we completed the dive following them from above.

My point with all this is that DM's can & will break profile. This DM was not a screw up by any means. The good stuff on the site he took us to was at 120' so he blew off my original request in attempt to make the others happy. Sure he should not have done it or taken us to that site but i was madder at the others in our group that followed him. Not breaking profile is a big part of the concept of situational awareness that you hear Uncle Pug talking about all the time.

IMO any resort or dive operator is required to show "due diligence" to protect their customers but to think the diver is without blame in many situations is ridiculous.

I don't know all the facts but unless the DM or resort bodily forced this guy to 160', and held him there, IMO he is just as culpable for being in a chair today, if not more. I feel for the guy but would not have felt 17 million reasons sorry

 

[hcs3]

if i was one of those other divers that followed his lead (i would have been smart enough to stop...) he would be about to lose a good chunck of that 17 million. i think he is responsible for the DCS of all the other divers. thoughts?

BTW, i agree. RC settled to quickly...if those are in fact all the details.

henry

 

[TCDiver1]

nicodaemos once bubbled...


I think the Ritz-Carlton lawyers screwed up on this one. They settled the case too quickly. Had this gone to trial, even a poor jury should have found Schiner to be partly to blame for the incident. A more reasonable jury would have put the blame squarely on Schiner's shoulders for so grossly violating the rules of his own certification.

Yup, same thing i was trying to say.

I have one more question, using simple math, no present value, inflation, etc for wages, he asked for 70 million? If he lived to around 80 thats about 1.8 million a year. Not a bad haul!

 

[DaveO]

I heard a story about a resort course- in Mexico, taught by a Mexican instructor, which is salient to the story because the instructor did not speak English, and taught via hand gestures. Later that afternoon the guy is walking off the back of the boat, looks at his guage and suddenly he's at 80 ft. Lucky he didn't get bent or worse.

In the lawsuit story you can almost see it happening: resort divers (maybe "scuba gear wearers" is a better term), totally unexperienced, go on a "70 ft reef dive". Jump in the water, and ignore guages, alarms, common sense, and self preservation instincts. Stop at the reef because you're on a "70 foot reef dive" and you'll be at 70 feet, right? Can't get deeper without a shovel, right?

 

[Zagnut]

Never mind that my computer is screaming at me, "YOUR TOO DAMN DEEP!!!..", I'll just follow my DM (or other divers) into the bowels of hell because they probably know what their doing...after all they are certified aren't they?!?...

Come on...If the guy, or the whole group for that matter, was an experienced diver they should have known better. If they were newly certified, then the rules should have been fresh in their minds. Even if they were diving with guages only, they should have known better.

I remember back when I was newly certified, I probably spent as much time looking at my guages as I did looking around at other stuff. With me (and I would assume with most folks), my inexperience had me checking my guages like every 10 seconds or so... and that was in lakes and quarries.

My first blue water dive (which was also my sixth logged dive) was just the same way. I mean when you see the bottom is so far away from you at the surface, or you see the vis trail off into that "deep blue" color, or you look back up at the surface (even from a depth of 60 ft.) and see just how far away those waves are at the surface, nothing sobers an inexperienced diver up like that. The term "abyss" does come into your mind as soon as you see it upon descent. How that scenario could not smack an inexperienced diver in the face and tell them,"better check your guage" is beyond me.
I can remember thinking, " I'm really not supposed to go beyond 60 ft. (and I did go past it) so I better pay damn close attention to just what the heck I'm doing.. I don't wanna get the bends!...How deep am I?..REMEMBER.. don't ascend too fast..how am I doing on air?..don't ascend too fast...how deep am I?..how am I doing on air?...don't ascend to fast" that's literally what I kept thinking...and I've always felt comfortable in deeper water. For someone who is nervous at depth, I would think those thoughts would be even more recurring.

If they were all experienced divers... I mean come on..after about 100ft. I'd be clicking my knife on my tank and waving my console around to anyone and everyone that would look at me...It seems like at least one of the group would have noticed what was happening.

With that said, (and I know I'm ramblinng on), I will say it sounded like a pretty half-ass dive op, but not to the tune of 17 million dollars...sheesh!..lawyers are mucking up the whole system!