Newly certified diver OOA at Gilboa

[The Chairman]

I guess now if you were to stand out side of the PADI's legal defense team, who really only represent the PADI corporation's interest.

Whoa. Now THERE is an assumption that I think is way off base. It's my heartfelt belief (and hope) that the legal defense teams care about the INSTRUCTOR and STUDENT as well as the certifying agency.

 

[Ken Kurtis]

Thanks, Ken, much more complicated than I could comprehend.

That's why the lawyers get the big bucks. (We experts only get mini-bucks.)



Let me see if I can further clarify/confuse you on some of the points you raised. I'm not going to bother re-quoting them.

You raise a very good question about teaching for agency A but having insurance through agency B. I believe (but I won't swear this to be 100% true - perhaps a legal beagle could weigh in here) that if you're teaching to agency B's standards, you're likely on safe ground. However, I also believe that agency A's insurance company may have the right to say that if your conduct falls outside the scope of how agency A teaches (which is what insurance A is based on), and if THAT PART of the conduct is found to be deficient, they may be off the hook as far as a judgment goes.

I know that the insurance compnay can do what's known as "reserve their rights". In simple terms, it means that if you strayed from what you were supposed to do (not to beat a dead horse but . . . say . . . a standards violation), and you are found liable because of that deviation, they don't have to pay.

Here's what I got from a legal website (http://law.freeadvice.com/insurance_law/property_insurance/reservation_right_letter.htm):

"If you are sued, the legal complaint filed against you may state several different claims, some of which may be covered by your liability insurance policy and some of which may not be covered. The insurance company is obligated to provide a defense for you if any of the claims could be covered, but the company may not be obligated to pay the damages for certain types of claims. A 'Reservation of Rights' letter from your insurer is a notice that even though the company is proceeding to handle your claim, depending on what happens, certain losses might not be covered by the terms of the policy. By such a letter, the company preserves or 'reserves' its right to deny coverage at a later date based on the terms of the policy."

So that could possibly apply when you have a cross-agency insurance/standards issue. We'll cover your defense, but we won't cover your damages. It certainly seems simpler if you teach for agency A to get agency A's insurance. And some agencies (L.A. County is one, possibly GUE as well) do not have their own in-house insurance, usually because their instructor base isn't large enough, so their instructors rely on cross-agency insurance. That may or may not be a problem if there's an accident.

And don't lose sight of the fact that this is a business for the insurance companies. I don't think it's quite as crass as only representing PADI's corporate interests (or NAUI or whomever), but at some point, this comes down to number-crunching, risk-taking (in terms of losing/winning), or cutting losses.

By the same token, there are times when you take a principled stand. I'm involved as an expert in a case right now that - IMHO - has zero merit. The insurance company is defending this with all their might since the last thing they want to do is encourage other frivolous cases. No sense in making the industry look like an inviting target.

As to your specific question about mid-water skill teaching, I don't think there's a specific standard in PADI (or NAUI) that requires you to be on the bottom. That may be the way 99% of the instructor's do it, but convention does not always qualify as a standard. If the instructor was being reasonably prudent and if your expert witness could show that being in midwater wasn't what caused the embolism and that it could just have easily happened from the bottom, I don't think there's necessarily a problem. (But again, I'm not a lawayer.)

And, to sort of go back to some previous comments I made, if there IS a standards violation, the reason behind it will come into play too.

Let's suppose you have two students underwater at a depth of 30 feet. You're doing an air-sharing exercise and Student 1 panics and bolts. You immediately spring off the bottom, follow the student up, and arrive with him/her at the surface. What's the standards violation? You just left Student #2 unattended on the bottom. But I think there's a strong argument here that the emergency of Student 1 overides that technical violation.

Different scenario. You are with a student at a depth of 30 feet. While demonstrating mask removal & replace, your mask strap breaks. You motion to the student to stay where they are while you surface, kick back to shore (it's not very far), get your replacement strap, and come back to your student. You're gone less than 5 minutes. When you arrive back, your student is dead on the bottom. What's the standards violation? Once again, you left your student unattended on the bottom. But in this case, you'll get reamed for it.

So yes, it's complicated. The way to make it more understandable is to read, listen, question, listen, ask, listen, inquire, listen, learn, listen, study, listen, etc. Also remember that very few things in diving are black-and-white, and everyone's got an opinion. Part of the trick is learning to separate the wheat from the chaff.

 

[BubblesUp]

Here are some details about the OOA incident that were relayed to me by a diver that was part of her group. Sharing here because they offer several lessons learned...something this thread doesn't often provide.

First off, the diver is fine. She underwent precautionary chamber treatment and was released, suffering no ill effects of the OOA incident or a successful CESA.

The diver was doing her second dive of the day, having just completed her OW cert. She was buddied with a more experienced diver and diving as part of a group. The divers were ascending to their safety stop. She paused to take a picture, had buoyancy issues, hit the bottom (likely 25-35') and got confused in the cloud of silt. She saw a fin swim by and started following. Seeing a cylinder with the right graphics from her LDS, she continued to follow the group, unaware that she had joined a second group from her shop that was also diving that day. She followed the group through the plane and down toward the tubes. At that point, a couple of divers in the group asked if she was okay, and she signaled yes. They continued swimming; she went OOA and surfaced via CESA.

In the meantime, the original buddy/group had initiated a lost buddy procedure. Unable to find her within a minute or so and not seeing her surface looking for her own lost buddy, they were doing all the right things by initiating a search.

Here are just a few of the lessons that jump out at me. I'm sure there are more...

- Check your gauges regularly to avoid OOA situations (obvious, yes, but key to this incident)

- Cameras can add significantly to task loading, especially to newer divers with fledgling buoyancy.

- Take the time to get to know your insta-buddy, so you can recognize them under water. It's not enough to just recognize the herd - or think you recognize the herd - you're diving with. A stronger 1:1 buddy connection should have raised the flag that she was with the wrong group. She didn't initiate the lost buddy procedure because she failed to recognize that she had lost her buddy.

- Know your plan; don't just follow the herd. It's unlikely the plan for a newbie's second dive of the day would have included a swim through the plane and down toward 60' at the tubes. Had she known how long, how deep and had some idea of where the dive was going, this should have provided another flag that something was awry.

Hopefully she will learn from this experience and enjoy a long, SAFE dive career.

 

[TSandM]

A recent DAN magazine article on OOAs made the observation that a major cause of OOA situations is distraction and failure to check gauges. It's hard for me to believe, because I was so nervous on my first few dives that I checked my pressure constantly, but I guess others are much relaxed and fail to do so.

If it were up to me, nobody would carry a camera underwater for their first 25 dives or so. There's enough to cope with, with buoyancy control and navigation and buddy skills and underwater communication and gas monitoring. Adding a camera is all too often the straw.

 

[rakkis]

that to me would be violating PADI standard, as it is usually done on the bottom on a platform - would he still be covered?

... I don't think there's a specific standard in PADI (or NAUI) that requires you to be on the bottom. That may be the way 99% of the instructor's do it, but convention does not always qualify as a standard.

Ken is right. PADI standards state things like "in water too deep to stand in". That does not mean leaded down to the bottom. Is it easier to control students that way? Yeah... but then you're teaching them monkey tricks, not necessarily diving skills.

For certain skills, I will first have students get comfortable with a skill once or twice on the bottom, then have them doing it again a few more times during the course while swimming. Some students need to do this in order to develop mastery. I've found taking this baby-steps approach works well for things like mask clearing, no mask breathing, OOA skills, etc.

 

[fisherdvm]

Thanks, Bubblesup, for the news. I am glad she's OK. Maybe the chamber was wise, as I recall the tubes are at about 60 plus feet. But I know little about decompression medicine.

The second thing about Gilboa is, it might be 20 ft of visibility when you dive; but 3 minutes later it is 2 ft. It is amazing how poorly newly certified divers are at controlling buoyancy at this level. I think it took me about 30 dives (a slow learner) before I stop yo yoing. I really appreciate the frog kicks here more, as I see divers keeping 4 to 5 foot off the silt, and skill kick them up with the flutter kick.

I don't know why people like to lead new divers under the plane's tail. I see a few of them get caught, or simply goes low, and kick up so much muck, you can't even see the group.

 

[The Chairman]

A recent DAN magazine article on OOAs made the observation that a major cause of OOA situations is distraction and failure to check gauges.

That and breathing.

 

[ScubaSteve]

That and breathing.

We are our own worst enemies....

 

[BubblesUp]

If it were up to me, nobody would carry a camera underwater for their first 25 dives or so. There's enough to cope with, with buoyancy control and navigation and buddy skills and underwater communication and gas monitoring. Adding a camera is all too often the straw.

I wholeheartedly agree!

 

[albacorela]

cesa isn't taught with the reg out? mine was, so i thought they all were. hmm.

I am in the process of completing OW cert. We were taught to do CESA w/ reg in, for the reason that as you ascend the air in the lines expands and will likely give you a couple breaths on the way up.

[EDIT: They may not have said lines, but the message was that as you ascend more air may be available.]