honey_badger
Registered
This is going to be a long post, so apologies if you find the provided details to be unnecessary, I may be a bit overwhelmed by the situation and will definitely rant.
Context: I’ve recently returned from a liveaboard in a tropical location. The trip was organized by 2 local clubs, addressing technical divers only - I have been a part of one of the groups for 3 years now. The other group is quite the “commercial” organization, with a high focus on touristic diving or combo trips (land trips & diving), as well as a recreational diver factory. The group leader (let’s call him Bob) has more than 10 years of (single tank) experience in recreational diving, but has been technical diving for only 2-3 years and is already a hypoxic instructor.
Bob has switched technical instructors from level to level (and agencies, SSI XR to SDI/TDI), claiming to have lost his previous dive computer and is therefore unable to prove experience. A rough estimate of Bob’s experience (based on his very active social media profiles): maybe a total of 40 dives in a twinset configuration, less than 20 dives lower than 60 m (training dives included). His buoyancy in a tec configuration is decent at best, his trim is non existent (except for pictures), his theoretical knowledge is severely lacking (as he proudly mentions that he is uninterested in the theoretical aspects), but his ego is gigantic. Bob does not listen to advice or suggestions - everything is seen and interpreted as a personal attack.
On this trip, Bob was supposed to teach a hypoxic class to 4 students. One of the students had built progressive experience over the years in a twinset (with different clubs and instructors), has +400 dives in total, good trim, good buoyancy, mature approach to diving and life in general. Two other students have also built some basic experience over the years, but mostly single tank. The 4th student only has about 140 dives in 5 years, with perhaps less than 10 dives in a twinset. The group leader has issued technical certifications to these last 3 over the past year, helping them progress as soon as he got his own instructor certs.
Trip highlights:
The groups’ plans are to organize trips together in the future. There is some reluctance within the more senior group, but since the local community is so small, they will probably continue to try to fill boats as a shared effort. Bob will continue to push people into technical training with a lighting fast progression and he and his students will continue to dive deeper and deeper to “break records”. Bob’s plan is also to move to CCR (SF2) as soon as possible - and counts on an equally fast progression for himself (up to instructor, full trimix ccr, of course) and his students. What he is trying to do is build a stronger brand and a stronger business - and get as famous as possible locally, to bring in as much money as possible. This is why he races some of his students for training - to have a ”team” he can make more money with.
Issue at hand: I have been told that I “did my job,” trying to help, trying to advise them, trying to make suggestions, to bring constructive criticism to the table. Others have tried the same, with the same result - zero impact. Nobody seems to have any solution for improving the approach described above. Therefore the conclusion was: “mind your own damn business”.
The cult of personality is very strong when it comes to Bob and divers like me are seen as haters, dismissed and ignored consistently. Whenever I have raised a problem directly with one of the students, they seemed puzzled, talked to Bob, only to continue what they were doing beforehand.
I would hate to leave the group, because trip availability is quite limited and most of my friends don’t dive with other international groups, so I would mostly dive or travel alone.
Is there anything that I can do to try to improve safety and minimize risk? Or should I think of it as a business, as everyone is saying, and just let it go?
Context: I’ve recently returned from a liveaboard in a tropical location. The trip was organized by 2 local clubs, addressing technical divers only - I have been a part of one of the groups for 3 years now. The other group is quite the “commercial” organization, with a high focus on touristic diving or combo trips (land trips & diving), as well as a recreational diver factory. The group leader (let’s call him Bob) has more than 10 years of (single tank) experience in recreational diving, but has been technical diving for only 2-3 years and is already a hypoxic instructor.
Bob has switched technical instructors from level to level (and agencies, SSI XR to SDI/TDI), claiming to have lost his previous dive computer and is therefore unable to prove experience. A rough estimate of Bob’s experience (based on his very active social media profiles): maybe a total of 40 dives in a twinset configuration, less than 20 dives lower than 60 m (training dives included). His buoyancy in a tec configuration is decent at best, his trim is non existent (except for pictures), his theoretical knowledge is severely lacking (as he proudly mentions that he is uninterested in the theoretical aspects), but his ego is gigantic. Bob does not listen to advice or suggestions - everything is seen and interpreted as a personal attack.
On this trip, Bob was supposed to teach a hypoxic class to 4 students. One of the students had built progressive experience over the years in a twinset (with different clubs and instructors), has +400 dives in total, good trim, good buoyancy, mature approach to diving and life in general. Two other students have also built some basic experience over the years, but mostly single tank. The 4th student only has about 140 dives in 5 years, with perhaps less than 10 dives in a twinset. The group leader has issued technical certifications to these last 3 over the past year, helping them progress as soon as he got his own instructor certs.
Trip highlights:
- Although Bob initially mentioned that he is going to train all 4 by himself, he ended up hiring a local guide and tec instructor to support with the class above and below water and with the gas blending and calculations. This has indeed immensely improved safety, in my opinion.
- Out of 2 instructors and 4 students, only the local guy and two of the students were in drysuits or had alternative buoyancy methods, the rest were wetsuit only, no lift bags, no redundant bladders.
- The local guide/tec instructor and one student had good trim and buoyancy, the rest (including the group leader/instructor), were all vertical in the water, more or less unable to maintain trim, buoyancy or position in the water column, constant finning.
- One of the students is quite short and therefore dived with a smaller aluminum twinset and 5.7 l stages. Gas availability was low and estimated SAC rates were lower than half of what most divers use. On one of the dives, this student ran out of travel gas and received gas from the local tec instructor. This student was also carried around by their first stage by the same tec instructor on some of the training dives, at around -90m.
- After completing their class with one dive between 90 to 100m, they have dived again to 100+. Planned depth was ±110m. Some reached it, some didn’t. Bob missed the dive site together with 2 (newly certified) students and one of the students had to call the dive for Bob, because his buddy was running out of bottom gas (70 bar left when lower than 90m, with no other gas to switch to at that depth).
- A team of another 2 students plus the local guide were encouraged to plan a dive to ±120 m, without DPVs, in a current. Target depth was not reached due to high consumption.
- For dives lower than 90m, their travel gas was a 30/30. For the ±120m dive, the divers had 2 travel gases, both in the range of 30-35 % O2, with only their twinset back gas available from depth to -40m. Bob’s justification was that the chosen gases accelerate decompression.
- Rule of thirds was broken for all divers on all dives, including training dives and dives done after the class was finished.
- Configurations were chaotic for most of the students and for Bob, stages improperly clipped, hanging around, no back up computers, one of the student divers had no computer at all because it had locked him out the previous days when violating his deco obligations.
- After each dive, Bob repeatedly said that “what’s important is that everyone is now safe”, completely disregarding any feedback, including feedback from a very senior technical instructor or cold water CCR cave explorers, who were present on the boat.
- Bob came back from the trip and, together with one of the students, raised “social media hell” about their certifications and the personal and national ”records” they broke on this specific trip.
The groups’ plans are to organize trips together in the future. There is some reluctance within the more senior group, but since the local community is so small, they will probably continue to try to fill boats as a shared effort. Bob will continue to push people into technical training with a lighting fast progression and he and his students will continue to dive deeper and deeper to “break records”. Bob’s plan is also to move to CCR (SF2) as soon as possible - and counts on an equally fast progression for himself (up to instructor, full trimix ccr, of course) and his students. What he is trying to do is build a stronger brand and a stronger business - and get as famous as possible locally, to bring in as much money as possible. This is why he races some of his students for training - to have a ”team” he can make more money with.
Issue at hand: I have been told that I “did my job,” trying to help, trying to advise them, trying to make suggestions, to bring constructive criticism to the table. Others have tried the same, with the same result - zero impact. Nobody seems to have any solution for improving the approach described above. Therefore the conclusion was: “mind your own damn business”.
The cult of personality is very strong when it comes to Bob and divers like me are seen as haters, dismissed and ignored consistently. Whenever I have raised a problem directly with one of the students, they seemed puzzled, talked to Bob, only to continue what they were doing beforehand.
I would hate to leave the group, because trip availability is quite limited and most of my friends don’t dive with other international groups, so I would mostly dive or travel alone.
Is there anything that I can do to try to improve safety and minimize risk? Or should I think of it as a business, as everyone is saying, and just let it go?
