I don't completely reject that argument. In my view once you become a qualified diver (ie OW or higher) then only you are ultimately responsible for your own safety. The responsibility to check air and surface if needed is down to you.
The entry level qualification says you're safe to dive. If you sign that bit of paper agreeing the OW standards were met then you agree to take on that responsibility.
Doesn't excuse anything this particular instructor or DM did as it looks like a complete mess but i don't agree that already qualified divers should rely completely on someone else to stop them breathing all their air down!
Dude, I think you're a good instructor with his brain engaged ... so am I.
Would you accept a student swimming away from one of your groups because they decided to? ... regardless of *why* they decided to?
Would you accept a group splitting itself up of it's own initiative in the middle of a training dive? Would you accept that when you knew it was happening because some of the divers were low-on-air and making emergency ascents? Would you accept not knowing where some of your students were.... especially when you knew that some of them were low on air?
Niether would I.
What I told the public prosecutor is that students under my charge, whether certified or not, are *my* responsibility from the moment their flippers hit the water to the moment they are completely out of the water.
That *IS* the responsibity I feel. To me a training dives lasts from the moment I tell them to enter the water to the time they are out of the water......
The instructor in the case I'm describing said in a court of law that a training dive (he even said that this is how PADI defines it and got away with that because PADI did not bother to send an expert witness and the court accepted his statement at face value) ... that a training dive lasts from the deepest point in the dive and ends when all "excercises" are complete.....what he said is that what a student does before or after the point that they are operating outside of their previous training parameters is not part of a training dive and therefore, since the student in question had his accident at 18m (which is within OW parameters) he was neither required to be there, nor required to respond, nor responsible for the fact that his student drowned during his training dive.
And he got away with that.
What really happened, of course, is that this "instructor" (and I use the term losely to describe a so-called dive PRO who lacks all ability to perform his function adequately and is a danger to everyone who takes lessons from him) f*kd up his dive to the 9th degree and left several of his students twisting in the wind and at least 2 or 3 of them OOA and fighting for their lives..... and all of this with no apparent notion whatsoever that this happened because of his incompetence or with any idea at all that he was even in the least responsible for the series of events that resulted in a very serious accident and very nearly cost more people their lives.
The worst thing about this to me is that PADI (a) did nothing (b) seem to implicitly condone his actions by being completely passive and withdrawn during the law-suit and (c) continues to allow him to give lessons despite multiple clear standards violations and his severe -- DANGEROUS -- and demonstrable incompetence.
To me, as a PADI instructor, I would have expected --and appreciated-- at the very least a strong response to the series of severe standards violations and the lies he told during the court case. The fact that PADI did not do that--did NOTHING--convinces me... much to my *severe* disappointment... that they are not interested in weeding out the severely incompetent instructors, even if their incompetence has been demonstrated in a court of law in a case where they have been charged and convicted with attempted manslaughter and given a court sanctioned penalty.
It has, however, made me feel much more comfortable about anything *I* happen to do with the goal of training divers better..... F@k 30 seconds of hovering.... I'll have students perfect their buoyancy control to *my* expectations from now on. If you can nearly drown a student and leave them behind in 18 metres of water for dead when they run out of air without consequences then I'm sure that actually teaching them to dive with skill and competence isn't going to raise any official eyebrows.
R..