I would like to play devil's advocate for a moment regarding the primary incident about a dive computer and whether or not it is acceptable for a DM to tell a diver whose computer has failed that it is acceptable to continue diving.
Consider this analogy: My friend and I are planning a long-distance trip on our motorcycles. I'm a really experienced biker, s/he is not. We know we will have to refuel at some point. The bikes are not identical, but they are both inline-4 cylinder fuel-injected engines made by 2 different Japanese firms. Engine capacity is the same. Half way through the first stage of the journey, my biker-buddy indicates that they are having a problem. We pull over and see the fuel gauge has failed. We know there's plenty of gas in the tank, but the fuel gauge isn't working. There is no gas station nearby, so we continue riding at a slightly more conservative pace, and we pull into the first gas station after my gauge reads 1/4 full, refuel, and try to fix the problem. Given my knowledge of motorcycles, the likelihood is that everything will be okay. Granted, I could be wrong and my friend runs out of gas - but we will be closer to the exit point, and maybe we're out of cell-phone range in the middle of the desert - which means aborting the journey because of a faulty fuel gauge, knowing there is plenty of gas in the tank, might actually prove more dangerous.
There are dive sites here where aborting a dive in certain locations would be very dangerous indeed. Thistlegorm is one of them, if you read my blog. If a diver's computer failed, I would indeed ask them to continue diving, I would shallow up, and bring them to the ascent line. That might take some time. But no way, no-how, am I surfacing a dive in an area with constant boat traffic in close proximity. Even ascending on your own shot line can get a bit hairy when it's busy.
If I was way out over the plateau at Jackfish Alley, I would do the same thing. Yes, I would shoot an SMB, but in some locations, that just seems to magnetically attract other boats (and back in Thailand, Jetski slalom competitions!).
On the other hand, if I was diving on our house reef (max 18m/60ft) and a customer's computer failed half-way through the dive, I would indeed tell them not to worry about it, because there is no way, not possible, that any functioning dive computer, even set to super-ultra-conservative mode, could ever even come close to deco given our default profiles and 60-minute planned time.
The OP mentions that their dive was way off the PADI tables, which I have to say is pretty much 90% of the dives I do - even on the house reef - max depth 18m/60ft, 56 min. NDL on PADI table, 60 minute planned time (for non-training courses). Thomas Reef here in Tiran - max depth 30m (maybe up to 40), NDL for 30m is 20 mins, planned dive time 60 minutes... 40 minutes over-budget.
If a dive computer fails, the recommended advice is, indeed, to surface safely and not dive for 24 hours - or whatever is stipulated by the manufacturer of the computer - however even PADI say that if you have a backup (dive watch, depth gauge and table or wheel) and know where you've been and what you've done, then you can re-calculate on the fly and continue to enjoy the dive based on the new limits. If you're not sure, surface.
So - was the OP's DM right or wrong. Were they an incompetent numpty or did they have a valid reason for continuing the dive beyond the mere accumulation of cash money? As some of you know I am full-time instructor but work mainly as a dive guide - call it Divemaster if you will - and in my current job, it's really not going to affect my income if I abort a dive or not due to a failed computer, but there is a sensible part of me that says - we need to abort, but not
here, or - there is no need to abort, because I know the dive profiles of every single diver on this boat for the last week, and if my computer says 30 mins to NDL, it's highly, highly unlikely that anybody else is in dire need of a deco-stop. This is because we conduct dives to ensure the safety of all persons on the dive -
including ourselves!
Yes, there are dive "professionals" out there who will sacrifice safety for money, but they really are in the minority. It happens; it happens in all walks of life from your local restaurant to your local doctor, but speaking from my own personal perspective, if I told somebody that it was okay to continue diving with a broken computer, I'm pretty certain that it is okay to do so. I might shallow up to 12m/40ft instead of the planned 15m/60ft, but as long as the diver behind me is at approximately the same depth, I am not going to be too concerned - why? - because I make three dives a day for a living, and my computer is always set to air mode, even though I am am diving on 32% nitrox, and it is in my own personal interest to conduct safe dives, because otherwise I would be broke in a heartbeat.
When it comes to personal responsibility and that of the Dive professional - first let me make a point. Recreational Agency-trained divers are trained to dive in the the environment in which they learned. This kind of absolves all responsibility from the agency: you learned to dive in still, calm, tropical water with no current. If your next dive was under an iceberg in the mid-Atlantic, that's your problem. Secondly, there are no PADI "dive guides" - divemasters, yes, but insurance liability for agency-based professionals is limited only to training, and in the case of PADI, certain Junior and remedial certifications. If I thought a diver was capable of doing so, I could take a freshly-certified Open Water diver to 40 metres - which would be stupid, but if I was reported to PADI, all I would have to say is "They were a certified diver, they understood the risk, they chose to do it." - case closed.
In reality, doing that would get me fired - for a start - and if any kind of accident happened, I'd be nailed to a tree and flayed alive with hot coals by a lawyer, before the trial even started, because even one lawsuit would end my career, even if I was cleared of all charges. I don't do stupid things like this - ever - at all - ever, but I would tell somebody to keep diving if their computer broke underwater and I thought it was okay to do so, for various different reasons of either safety or enjoyment of the dive, because I'm pretty sure I would be right.
The PADI QA Process works very well, actually, because I have seen it in action. A former flamate had a QA against him I helped to translate his first response to PADI, and they were all over it. Both my friend and the student were contacted, and each reply from PADI was swift and direct. Yes, the end result was a written warning but he had to sign a form promising never to do it again - and all the guy had done was send an OW student back to her hotel room to complete her exam over dinner, because he had to conduct a night dive.... Ja - a crappy shop, but this was a minor incident. For serious violations of safety, regardless of what a person might think about PADI itself, the QA process is, actually, at least in my experience (and I have never been QAd by the way!!), pretty merciless.
The thing is - speaking from the perspective of a PADI MI-but-really-a-dive-bum - it's just not in our/my interest/s to do stupid stuff when we're/I'm working. so without detailed information in terms of depths and time and surface intervals, it's difficult to say who exactly is at fault here. I also think that definitively trying to blame one party or the other becomes meaningless when there are so many variables. Going back to my motorcycling analogy: Should I sue Suzuki or Kawasaki if the fuel gauge breaks on my friend's motorcycle, because actually, they are made by the same supplier, or should the customer take the blame for not ensuring all the electronics were wired up correctly? Should I sue my friend, my buddy, because they told me that everything would be okay and they looked up to my experience and wisdom? Can you want to follow somebody to the Abyss and then sue them afterwards if it wasn't exactly what you imagined?
I am not advocating blind trust in dive professionals, and I do remember Jim Lapenta's quote - and I have a huge amount of respect for him - from an earlier post which was something like:
1. A good DM will give you a good dive briefing and point out cool things
2. A really great DM will give you a good dive briefing and tell you where to find cool things and leave you alone and not even get in the water
Which is fine, but there is no way, now how, no chance, whatsoever, that the dive centre I work for is going to let anybody make their first dive on Jackson Reef, because it you don't know where to abort when the current starts pumping then the best you can experience is serious discomfort and inconvenience and at the worst - well - death. Quite simple, really - if you are not intimately familiar with Jackson Reef (or Thomas, or Shark and Yolanda, or Ras Umm Sid or whatever) on a bad day then sorry, don't care who you are, you're not going without a guide.
The OP had to pay chamber fees. Insurance companies are like sharks around anything edible. The only difference is that sharks are honest. If there was some form of negligence or culpability involved then the sharks would have taken that money in heartbeat. Going back to Jim's criteria, the good guides do number 1, the great guides do number 2; but the best guides will know you are a number 2, without ever letting you know that you're a number 1....!
This post is sponsored by Al-Ahram breweries, the manufacturer of Sakara Beer and Omar Khayyam's white wine.
Cheers,
Crowley
