c-card validity and diving addiction!

[ghostdiver1957]

I know an instructor or two that would have failed you for the class. Those were specific instructions and you didn't dive the plan. If it would have been me that you ditched I'd have you out of the water and looking for someone else to supervise any future dives because I wouldn't dive with you any more. May sound hardassed but until you are diving on your own you are the legal responsibility of me and the instructor. You can be dumb on your time but not mine.

Joe

Your responsbility is to make sure they return safely to the exit point. If they happen to break the dive plan (on purpose or not), your responsibility is still to get them back to the exit point. The only difference is that if they are grown adults and it is proven that they chose to violate the dive plan on their own and something happens, you my friend are off the hook.

There is a reasonable expectation of care. You did your part. You planned the dive and you briefed them. You attempted to stay within the plan, but they chose to go outside of the plan. It is unreasonable to think that a single dive master, no matter how talented, can control a group of 3 or more adult divers who have chosen to alter the plan. You can not hold their hands all at once and that is not your responsibility. As a dive leader, you do have a certain degree of responsibility to make effort to recover their body's or at least mark the area of disappearance, but even those efforts are restarined by your own safety.

 

[Ken abucs]

I know an instructor or two that would have failed you for the class. Those were specific instructions and you didn't dive the plan. If it would have been me that you ditched I'd have you out of the water and looking for someone else to supervise any future dives because I wouldn't dive with you any more. May sound hardassed but until you are diving on your own you are the legal responsibility of me and the instructor. You can be dumb on your time but not mine.

Joe

I don't think you'd abandon your students at 60 feet to go play in the wreck. If anybody was out of line in this situation, it was the instructor.

 

[Lightning Fish]

:huh:

I don't think you'd abandon your students at 60 feet to go play in the wreck. If anybody was out of line in this situation, it was the instructor.

Where does Pyro say anything about the instructor playing in the wreck?

Bill.

 

[Ken abucs]

We lost the instructor at the aft of the wreck and headed for the prop in 80'.

Sorry, I was going off my impression of the story. When I was on my open water dive, my instructor was on me like white on rice. I couldn't have lost him if I tried.

 

[Lightning Fish]

... When I was on my open water dive, my instructor was on me like white on rice. I couldn't have lost him if I tried.

That's a good point. I would also have thought a DM would be on the dive making it harder to 'lose' the instructor.

Bill.

 

[Pyrofish]

Just back from the keys, didn't know my little 4th dive story would stir up controversy. Our class was maxed out in size, 8 divers for an instructor and our ow dive master. Regardless, there was no way for either of them to watch all three of us for the entire dive. There were 5 other divers that were content to stick to the instructor's side. We all knew how to read the tables, and we had even questioned the instructor in class about the validity of 60'. He told us it was a limit, one imposed by PADI. He even told us on the boat during our SI that he thought the 60' max was silly. He went on to tell us that he had given us all we needed to dive responsibly and within the limits of the tables. After taking AOW, he was right he had given us all the info we needed.

That said, this was also low stress diving, 75 degree water, 70-80' vis, no current, we even had 1' seas on the surface. I'm sure had this been other circumstances, low vis, high current, cold water, things might have been different. They were good instructors, and we could have easily and comfortably gone to 100' that day and known what we were getting into.

Now I'm off to my LDS to buy some new gear.
Later
Jason