Whose poor judgment?

[stevejaz]

Here's the scenerio....

We've gone on vacation and a buddy and I are certifying. My wife is not certified but had dove twice before on resort dives. My son had never dove and his friend had done a few resort dives on a previous occassion through the same outfit.

One of the days I'm doing my certs they sign up for a resort dive. They go through a horrible intro in the resort pool and dive later that day with a decent instructor and the dive goes okay.

The following day they want to dive again as do I so we go through the same outfit. Prior to the dive I approach the instructor and tell him I'm going to tag along. On the first dive we all meet at the bottom (about 35'). The instructor proceeds to lead with everyone falling in behind him so I naturally took the last position so I can keep an eye on everyone. As we're going along everyone begins to space out with my son loosing ground. He looks to be doing fine but I can tell he's a little distressed and not very comfortable. Expecting the instructor to stop and regroup we continue on. Instead the gap continues to grow and we are now 50~75' behind the instructor at which point I check my son's air. 500 PSI :shocked2: I grab him and start a slow ascent. We stop at 15' for 3 minutes, surface, and get back on the boat. During this time the instructor never stopped or turned back. On the boat I approach the instructor casually and tell him what occured. He responds that he's was aware of his remaining air and all was fine.

My wife and I dismissed that as a bad experience that we learned from and vowed to get everyone certified before any more diving.

So, fast forward 6 months to now and my wife is currently certifying. Her and an instructors assistant are talking and she tells her of this incident. To my wife's surprise the assistant tells her everything that I did wrong in surfacing with my son?????

In looking back I should have tried to signal the instructor by rapping on my tank or something but I was suprised by a couple things. First the lack of supervision and second his tank being that low. So rather than waste anymore time I chose to do a normal ascent and for the 2 of us to surface .

Wrong thing to do?

I was suprised there wasn't a second instructor/dm with them. What is the normal protocal for 3 uncertified divers?

 

[fdog]

You did the right thing. Obviously by his comments he wasn't really aware.

Since you don't state what agency he was affiliated with, it's tough to say...but...

NAUI's into program, the Passport Diver Program, states:

"The instructor or leader is to directly supervise participants at all times. Physical or eye contact are highly desirable. Close, personal attention is essential."

NAUI's standard is a 4:1 student to instructor ratio for a single instructor.


Hope this helps. Again, in my book, you did the right thing.


All the best, James

 

[adurso]

Here's the scenerio....

*SNIP*
So, fast forward 6 months to now and my wife is currently certifying. Her and an instructors assistant are talking and she tells her of this incident. To my wife's surprise the assistant tells her everything that I did wrong in surfacing with my son?????

*SNIP*

Have the assistant instructor explain what he believes you should have done, and decide for yourself if your actions were appropriate from your perspective, knowledge, and relationship to the diver running low on air.

 

[Thalassamania]

The "instructor's" poor judgment! One more burned out, incompetent, dive "pro" that has no business being in the water with a student being defended by an AI who'll quickly follow in his footsteps, they are both pimples on the arse of the industry.

 

[Katamuki]

From my understanding of what you wrote... if you were trailing the DM on the dive by 75 feet and your sons air was at 500psi then you did the right thing on ascending with a stop per your training. Trying to ring in someone heading the other direction should be done if you have a signal device but swimming faster to catch up would only burn more air and increase your sons anxiety. The fault in my mind squarely lies with the DM. At all times the DM, especially on a non-certified diver, must be in control to include both the air and position of the divers. During the brief I would assume that the DM would have also stated that at various intervals the divers must communicate at times to notify the DM of remaining air such as the halfway point. As for 3 non-certified divers, this is a bit much but not unheard of out here where I am from if the divers quality is known. The norm is 2 "taiken" divers per DM here at the resorts or boats in Japan. All in all, the situation that developed was not the best possible as I see it.

 

[stevejaz]

You did the right thing. Obviously by his comments he wasn't really aware.

Since you don't state what agency he was affiliated with, it's tough to say...but...

NAUI's into program, the Passport Diver Program, states:

NAUI's standard is a 4:1 student to instructor ratio for a single instructor.


Hope this helps. Again, in my book, you did the right thing.


All the best, James

Thanks, I thought so too and couldn't understand what they may be refering to. As for the agency, I'm assuming it was PADI as that was who I got my certification through. I don't know the business and if all the instructors for a particular outfit have to be with the same agency.

I was surprised because when my wife and I did our very first resort dive in Mexico, they were much more cautious. We had 3 adults and we had an instructor lead and an assistant follow us after about 3 hours of pool work. Thankfully it was a very good experience or with the reservations my wife had at the time I doubt she'd be certifying now. As a matter of fact she is finishing dives 3 and 4 as I write this.

From my understanding of what you wrote... if you were trailing the DM on the dive by 75 feet and your sons air was at 500psi then you did the right thing on ascending with a stop per your training. Trying to ring in someone heading the other direction should be done if you have a signal device but swimming faster to catch up would only burn more air and increase your sons anxiety. The fault in my mind squarely lies with the DM. At all times the DM, especially on a non-certified diver, must be in control to include both the air and position of the divers. During the brief I would assume that the DM would have also stated that at various intervals the divers must communicate at times to notify the DM of remaining air such as the halfway point. As for 3 non-certified divers, this is a bit much but not unheard of out here where I am from if the divers quality is known. The norm is 2 "taiken" divers per DM here at the resorts or boats in Japan. All in all, the situation that developed was not the best possible as I see it.

There actually was no briefing for them...more like "follow me". I think you're right though, the last thing I wanted to do was heighten his anxiety by trying to catch the instructor or hastily get their attention. As a matter of fact, my son never knew what his air was or that there was any cause for concern until we returned to the resort as I didn't want to sour his experience.

Have the assistant instructor explain what he believes you should have done, and decide for yourself if your actions were appropriate from your perspective, knowledge, and relationship to the diver running low on air.

I had already decided my actions were appropriate and never gave it a second thought until the conversation I spoke of. Doubt I'll ever speak with the assistant in question more just wanting to know if there was something I overlooked or didn't handle correctly.

The "instructor's" poor judgment! One more burned out, incompetent, dive "pro" that has no business being in the water with a student being defended by an AI who'll quickly follow in his footsteps, they are both pimples on the arse of the industry.

That's unfortunate and hard for a working stiff like me to understand for what seems like a great job but I'm sure there are aspects of that job that are less than desireable as well.

 

[adurso]

*SNIP*
I had already decided my actions were appropriate and never gave it a second thought until the conversation I spoke of. Doubt I'll ever speak with the assistant in question more just wanting to know if there was something I overlooked or didn't handle correctly.



*SNIP*.

Your actions were appropriate and correct, I only suggested you find out what this AI thought you should have done as an exercise in what NOT to do, as I am sure his response would have been an exercise in wankerism.

 

[Thalassamania]

...
That's unfortunate and hard for a working stiff like me to understand for what seems like a great job but I'm sure there are aspects of that job that are less than desireable as well.

Start with pay at a fast food level with no benefits, holidays, vacation, etc. Add to that the same dive, after day ... I'm sure it gets old. I did it for two weeks to help out a friend once, I enjoyed the people, but the diving was about as boring as could be.

 

[Diver0001]

So, fast forward 6 months to now and my wife is currently certifying. Her and an instructors assistant are talking and she tells her of this incident. To my wife's surprise the assistant tells her everything that I did wrong in surfacing with my son?????

In looking back I should have tried to signal the instructor by rapping on my tank or something but I was suprised by a couple things. First the lack of supervision and second his tank being that low. So rather than waste anymore time I chose to do a normal ascent and for the 2 of us to surface .

Wrong thing to do?

Well.... Given what you said in your post I think you did the right thing. You surfaced when you saw that your son's air was low and you judged (correctly from the sounds of it) that the instructor was not in control. It sounds to me like you made the right decision, you did the right thing and nobody got hurt. So how can that be wrong?

I doubt if you could have gotten the instructors attention by tapping on your tank. The sound proably wouldn't have been loud enough to register on him if he was so far ahead of you and not paying attention.

As an aside to this, if I'm running a class that requires direct supervision I don't want students surfacing on their own initiative. I mean, how can I give direct supervision to all students if the group splits up...? ... but then again, when I'm applying direct supervision I'm never more than a couple of fin-kicks away from my students either .... It's possible that your AI friend was refering to something like this. However, his comment would be based on the assumption that the instructor was in control, which it doesn't sound like he was.

R..

 

[stevejaz]

Thanks you guys, I think I made the right decision as well.

The only thing I can figure is that the AI either misinterpreted part of the story or is an elitist and was defending the instructor purely because he was an instructor.

Thanks for the feedback all and..

Diver0001, the example you describe is how our first dive was and I was very surprised when this one wasn't conducted in the same manner so my guard was definitely up.

Thanks again,
Steve

One other point, you said he wouldn't hear a tank rap at that distance, is there an effective means for getting someone's attention from say 50'? I was going to get a small steel pipe and cap both ends with a ball bearing in it...good, bad??????