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I hear you, or course, but still hard to enforce anytime a dive site has a hard bottom deeper than the depth certified.

As an example, my deepest was on the Forest City in Tobermory where I went to the sand @ 150'. The wreck sits on a slope from 60' to 150'. Where the wreck sits on the upper part of the slope, it is perfectly accessible to an AOW diver certified to 100'. How do you stop them going lower? Who was to stop me from going to 150'? Would your club just not allow anyone certified to less than 150' do this wreck?

Yup, that is exactly what we are exploring now! We have the Stolt Dagali (60-130), same issue.

It's a non-trivial problem. Our safety chair is also a local charter boat captain, and he has taken a serious look at what would happen after an incident in terms of insurance and legal exposure. I think that many old time divers and captains just sort of rely on the tradition of the dive boat being a taxi service, and play the odds (even when they don't know what odds they are playing). Chances are, they aren't going to have a death. But what happens - with regard to your liability - if you take an AOW diver to a wreck with a 150 foot hard bottom and they die? Can the attorney hired by the widow make the case that you had a duty to care that you didn't fulfill?

Maybe @Wookie can chime in here - he knows this stuff better than anybody. But this has me concerned. Between the safety chair, and our president (who is an attorney), we have had some thoughtful discussions. It's not at all clear how to proceed. But the idea of "you don't know what you don't know" apparently applies here. If you take someone to a dive site where they can dive beyond their certification, apparently not all of the liability for an accident can be placed on the diver, in a court of law.

I think that lots of people here will just say that a diver is responsible for their own safety and that's it. But I think that's becoming a false assumption over time. These aren't the 90s. Not saying that I know the answer, but if you are actually running a dive operation as a club, shop or boat captain, take some time to figure this out, and speak with your insurance carrier.
 
Well what prompted me to put this up there is because as I said I have only dove Caribbean once. This was 8 years ago. I dive every weekend but do so on a budget... hence I don't have tons of cash to throw at scuba destination diving but have been seriously contemplating pulling the trigger on a dive trip. To me someone touching the bottom to take a picture here and there is far less of an issue than watching a caravan of buffoons ridiculing not only themselves but the sport in general by exposing their rear and acting like morons. As I stated I have only had one real experience and that was in Mexico and on that day the two partially drunk morons that dove on our boat pretty much ruined the day for everyone. These 2 guys, after rocketing up from 85 feet or so at the end of the dive proceeded to start an argument with one of the DM's who was asking them what had happened. The argument got pretty intense and i regretted dropping 150 bucks on the dives. So I was really just trying to figure out if I want to go sink hard earned cash and get a feel for the real probability of ending up with similar dive buddies.. I am not referring to their skills, I quite don't care about their lack of skills. I see that every weekend in the water. It's the attitude which would bother me much more.

Not sure managing to find a video of teen moron twits diving in Cozumel should be the basis on which to make your decisions. Probably could also manage to find videos of twits driving your local roads/highways, which means you should lock yourself up at home and never venture out on the roads either. My issues with Cozumel are the poor reef conditions after 'Wilma' (2005), the ongoing trend towards over development (the island continues to add more cruise ship piers/destroy pollute reefs as they cater to the cruise lines, not scuba diving), and the many reports of much illegal fishing within the 'marine park', with the authorities unwilling/unable/ or 'bought off', so fishing continues unabated.

I gravitate towards liveaboards, folks dropping $5K + on a trip helps discourage 'spring breakers' and other knuckle-dragging riff-raff, it's much more fun to be around other hard core divers in more remote/pristine sites!
 
Yup, that is exactly what we are exploring now! We have the Stolt Dagali (60-130), same issue.

It's a non-trivial problem. Our safety chair is also a local charter boat captain, and he has taken a serious look at what would happen after an incident in terms of insurance and legal exposure. I think that many old time divers and captains just sort of rely on the tradition of the dive boat being a taxi service, and play the odds (even when they don't know what odds they are playing). Chances are, they aren't going to have a death. But what happens - with regard to your liability - if you take an AOW diver to a wreck with a 150 foot hard bottom and they die? Can the attorney hired by the widow make the case that you had a duty to care that you didn't fulfill?

Maybe @Wookie can chime in here - he knows this stuff better than anybody. But this has me concerned. Between the safety chair, and our president (who is an attorney), we have had some thoughtful discussions. It's not at all clear how to proceed. But the idea of "you don't know what you don't know" apparently applies here. If you take someone to a dive site where they can dive beyond their certification, apparently not all of the liability for an accident can be placed on the diver, in a court of law.

I think that lots of people here will just say that a diver is responsible for their own safety and that's it. But I think that's becoming a false assumption over time. These aren't the 90s. Not saying that I know the answer, but if you are actually running a dive operation as a club, shop or boat captain, take some time to figure this out, and speak with your insurance carrier.

I am reminded of the case of the newlyweds diving in Australia where the wife died and the husband was charged. IIRC, the operator that took them out got into trouble for not putting them through a checkout dive as was the operations published standard. It was not required by law, but by saying that they did this they increased their own liability for standard of care. Is this not a concern of creating these restrictions by your club? Possibly converting potential and arguable duty into certain duty?
 
I am reminded of the case of the newlyweds diving in Australia where the wife died and the husband was charged. IIRC, the operator that took them out got into trouble for not putting them through a checkout dive as was the operations published standard. It was not required by law, but by saying that they did this they increased their own liability for standard of care. Is this not a concern of creating these restrictions by your club? Possibly converting potential and arguable duty into certain duty?

Yes, exactly! This is one of the things we are discussing. In the past, we never vetted divers for that reason, we thought it actually increased our liability, and we deferred to the captains. But the latest take is that sticking to certification agency standards isn’t the same as vetting.

It has been a long and complex discussion, hard to type it all up on a phone. But we are learning...
 
The Chairman said:
There's never ever a good reason to kneel, sit or lie on the bottom. No, not even when spear fishing. At least, not for me. I've got a rep to protect! :D :D :D

How about when you need to drag a larger bug (with claws) from under a rock, and both your arms are in the hole all the way to the shoulders?

Here's the thing..... A diver that recognizes that marine ecology is important would never ever lay or sit on the floor bed , nor kneel. As stated by the
@The Chairman a diver can touch the bottom with one finger and balance perfectly. If you are in an area that has a large amount of marine life then a diver should take into consideration that kneeling, laying or sitting is never a good thing. I can't stand to see divers do these thing and never ever think about marine ecology. Same thing goes for corals. I can't tell you how many times I see divers grab onto corals to either balance or move into a different position. We as divers need to consider marine life more than we do now.
 
Not necessarily, I've seen that happen more than twice, one female, one male, different locales, and neither panicked a bit though the male did go to his knees on the bottom. I got him fixed up and we had a chat top side. He'd been trained for an unexpected eventuality. The female, I can't recall her exact response but she was cool about it too. Must have been some ok training involved, just no tank checking.

Yes I have seen tanks come loose many times, dozens probably, but THAT diver was giving all the signals that she was VERY uncomfortable. She was clutching her console the whole time and looking at it every 10 seconds on the swim up the wall. In my opinion, one more significant stress factor could have put her over the edge. Of course that is simply an assumption based on a video I saw on the internet.

It was incredible to me that her tank was falling out for a long time and nobody did nothing. If I saw a diver like that clutching her console, I would probably swim over and check the air pressure and I would like to think that I would have immediately noticed the tank coming loose.
 
That chart about agencies and limitations should include BSAC and CMAS.
If I remember correctly BSAC is 20/35/50 meters. CMAS is 20/40/56 meters.
 
If I remember correctly BSAC is 20/35/50 meters. CMAS is 20/40/56 meters.
There isn't one universal CMAS certification. The national federations affiliated with CMAS are free to restrict their cert levels beyond CMAS' requirements, and up here it's 20/30/40 meters for the 1*/2*/3* cert, respectively.

So while another national federation's 3* cert may certify the diver to 56m (which, not incidentally, is the depth where you reach 1.4 bar pPO2 on air), if I take a 3* cert at home I'm only certified to 40m. Which is just fine with me, since I think that depths beyond that ought to be done on mix.

Any CMAS cert is required to fulfill CMAS' minimum standards, but the national federations who give those certs are free to impose additional demands or stricter restrictions.

Edit: fixed typo
 
That chart about agencies and limitations should include BSAC and CMAS.
If I remember correctly BSAC is 20/35/50 meters. CMAS is 20/40/56 meters.

Hah! Well, our poor overworked safety chair probably had to call it a day at some point, since he was doing this for our club executive board discussion. We don't have many European or British divers in NYC. :)
 
There isn't one universal CMAS certification. The national federations affiliated with CMAS are free to restrict their cert levels beyond CMAS' requirements, and up here it's 20/30/40 meters for the 1*/2*/3* cert, respectively.

So while another national federation's 3* cert may certify the diver to 56m (which, not incidentally, is the depth where you reach 1.6 bar pPO2 on air), if I take a 3* cert at home I'm only certified to 40m. Which is just fine with me, since I think that depths beyond that ought to be done on mix.

Any CMAS cert is required to fulfill CMAS' minimum standards, but the national federations who give those certs are free to impose additional demands or stricter restrictions.


I'm not sure that your math works 56m = 1.6 ATM?
 
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