Question Near incident. What should I have done?

[LI-er]

I assume you're referring to the San Francisco (170' to the deck 200' to the sand.

That's correct. Actually now that you mention it, as you correctly stated, they only took divers to the deck although the wreck sits at 200'. I was under the impression that the divers did do a gas switch during one or more stops but I chose to do the alternate wreck rather than do a quick dive "just to go deep", and yes it was the last dive day of the trip. Another example of "Normalization of Deviance" as I posted on my Truk trip report a few months ago, they do not discourage recreational divers from going into mild DECO on most dives. Over time I got more comfortable with it, on one particular dive I had a 13 minute obligation, and I'm not tech trained.

Edited to add: After going back and re-reading my Truk Trip report in January I did in fact post there that the bounce dive to the San Francisco was to 165'.

Also from my Truk Trip report: Shinoku Maru. This was my favorite dive as it has everything. Lots of artifacts, and a long penetration through the stern where a torpedo blew a hole creating awesome damage that is easy for a diver to visualize and get a feeling for what it was like on the day of the Allied bombing of Truk Lagoon in February 1944. This penetration must be done with a dive guide, we were deep inside the wreck on multiple levels, left and right turns, U-turns, etc far beyond the reach of ambient light."

Odyssey has a rather unusual and flexible policy regarding diving. Solo diving is permitted, and recreational divers without tech certification going into DECO is not discouraged. These wrecks are deep, and interesting, with always something more to see on each dive which may be once in a lifetime. Divers will build up quite the nitrogen load which tend to turn most recreational dives into DECO dives especially with those 120cf steel cylinders. Prior to this trip I had at most, a handful of 2 minute DECO obligations over 650 dives. On this one, almost every dive was 3-5 minutes into DECO, one dive was a 13 minute obligation requiring two stops. And I am not tech certified. With those large tanks and Nitrox I was able to squeeze out some awesome 45 to 55 minute dives in depths of 80-130 feet. If I had avoided DECO I would have missed out on a lot of diving and again, this seems to be typical. Odyssey even offers recreational divers an opportunity to dive to a wreck at 165 feet with careful supervision by their guides, requiring multiple decompression stops over a 30 minute period.

 

[boulderjohn]

Seaweed Doc did a pretty good job of describing all the standards violations in this incident in post #88, so I won't repeat them.

Without quick and cheap instruction with a lot of hand holding those people would never go past the surface.

The difference between OW instruction with students who are on their knees (the traditional way) and students taught while neutrally buoyant/horizontal trim is night and day. At the end of the pool sessions, students taught while neutrally buoyant already look like experienced divers. This takes no more time than traditional instruction. The students are constantly practicing buoyancy, even while waiting for their turn to do a skill.

The first article PADI published on this appeared 14 years ago. It should be standard practice by now, but I am sure most classes are still taught on the knees.

 

[boulderjohn]

I want to bring up what I believe to be the biggest problem with scuba instruction, something I believe was very much in play in this incident.

As noted many times in this thread, the instructor violated a bunch of standards. People might be asking how he got certified as an instructor if he's that bad. The reason is that he was not violating any standards when he was certified. I am sure that if he had total freedom to do what he wanted to do, he would not have violated any standards on that dive.

The problem is he did not have total freedom to do what he wanted to do. I am sure he did not make the decisions that were made that day. He did what was required by his employer. What do you do if you need a job and your employer tells you that you have to do something that you know is a standards violation? What if you know that all the other employers in the area will require the same sort of thing? How do you feed your family if you do not agree to violate the standards and pray that nothing goes wrong?

And what if something goes wrong? If the violation was bad enough, the instructor will be expelled by the agency and likely sued. The employer will probably be fine, especially if the employer has no agency affiliation. Once the instructor who did as he was told to do is gone, a new instructor is hired and told to do the same thing. The odds are everything will be OK, but when they aren't OK, well, time to hire a new instructor.

Years ago I heard the manager of instruction for a shop in the USA say "Instructors are a dime a dozen." He said someone is coming in to drop off an instructor resumé about every two weeks. Any instructor who doesn't like the way we do things can be replaced in a heartbeat.

 

[Vicko]

Seaweed Doc did a pretty good job of describing all the standards violations in this incident in post #88, so I won't repeat them.

The difference between OW instruction with students who are on their knees (the traditional way) and students taught while neutrally buoyant/horizontal trim is night and day. At the end of the pool sessions, students taught while neutrally buoyant already look like experienced divers. This takes no more time than traditional instruction. The students are constantly practicing buoyancy, even while waiting for their turn to do a skill.

The first article PADI published on this appeared 14 years ago. It should be standard practice by now, but I am sure most classes are still taught on the knees.

Absolutely agree, teaching people the right way, even by minimum agency standards, makes them better divers but you can't honestly say that it takes the same time or effort from the staff working in card printing factories.

I was offered to be a part owner/manager of a dive centre in the Philippines last year, they average 40 OWD cards a week with 2 instructors employed part time and a boat that would make a pasta strainer look sea worthy in comparison. It's a well respected 5* idc facility.
Have you ever seen a neutrally buoyant class with 6-8 or up to 12 students, one underpaid instructor and at best a skip year zero to hero 1 month old DM (with a hangover)?
I politely declined, not just because of the soul sucking nature of dive centres like those, but I believe that their business model is more likely to sink than said boat.

My point is that those 40 OWD a week hold the big agencies profitable, which in turn makes it possible for the rest of us to enjoy the sport that we love and teach other people that will continue to improve the current methods. Hopefully one day the bubble will pop and stories like the OPs will become less frequent.

 

[Kendall Raine]

The first article PADI published on this appeared 14 years ago. It should be standard practice by now, but I am sure most classes are still taught on the knees.

If I recall correctly you literally wrote the case for teaching while neutrally buoyant (v. on the knees). I accept you're right that a lot of classes are still taught on the knees. This must be a bit frustrating for someone who tried for so long to positively influence the paradigm. My question is why does on the knees persist?

I understand that teaching on the knees is easier with a large student teacher ratio (8:1?), allows for fewer training dives (no need to master buoyancy), and (speculating here) some instructors may not have very good buoyancy skills themselves, but is this just dive instruction economics? That is, a symptom of speeding more students through the cash register faster? Bringing more (low skilled) instructors into the network? Push back from dive shops who's economic goals are aligned with the more faster cheaper model since that (presumably) drives more gear sales. Is there a positive case (other side of the coin) for teaching on the knees (aside from faster cheaper)?

Sorry if this comes across as cynical, but if something looks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

 

[boulderjohn]

I understand that teaching on the knees is easier with a large student teacher ratio (8:1?),

Teaching the OW class (meeting the standards) while the students are neutrally buoyant takes no more time than teaching it on the knees. I did it on the knees for years, transitioned experimentally for about a year, and then taught neutrally buoyant for years.

 

[Kendall Raine]

Teaching the OW class (meeting the standards) while the students are neutrally buoyant takes no more time than teaching it on the knees. I did it on the knees for years, transitioned experimentally for about a year, and then taught neutrally buoyant for years.

OK. I believe you. Why would anyone still teach on the knees?

 

[boulderjohn]

OK. I believe you. Why would anyone still teach on the knees?

Because they refuse to believe it will make a difference, or they assume it will take much longer. Finally, they prefer to stick with what they know rather than learn something new.

For several years my primary job in public education was staff development--trying to teach existing teachers the instructional methods that research had shown were the most effective, most of which are very different from what most people have experienced growing up. I saw that same resistance to change there. The only way that such a change can occur is if it is required.

I experimented with it in the first shop where I worked, and a couple other instructors saw what I was doing and tried it as well. We were enthusiastic. I checked with our Course Director along the way, and he was sold on it, too. As Director of Instruction, he required everyone to do it that way, and that was that.

I later moved to a different shop, and the owner said it was not his place to tell the instructors how to instruct, so he left it all up to them if they wanted to change. None of them did at first, but when I left one or two had switched.

 

[The Chairman]

It is a bit harder to teach while buoyant... it takes a bit more care and a bit more time. If you actually care about your students it's not a big deal. No, I've never taught a class larger than 6 either. But then, it's my opinion that 8 is way too many.

However, the lie, myth, whatever you want to call it has been so ingrained to justify lazy instructors, that it's going to take a long, long time to get instructors to commit to the change. That's what it really takes, too.

 

[The Chairman]

No, I've never taught a class larger than 6 either.

While neutrally buoyant, that is.