An example of why low PADI standards can be bad

"Dillon Pyron" <dmpyronINVALID@austin.rr.com> wrote in message
news:6uh4e259epg8577ao2hp61q1ejbfch0fv7@4ax.com...
> Thus spake "Lee Bell" <pleebell2@bellsouth.net> :
>
>>> PADI didn't kill that one.
>>
>>PADI didn't kill any of them. PADI also didn't train them well enough to
>>keep them from killing themselves.
>>
>>Lee
>>
>
> Long story here. I've been sued before.
>
> I had a class of four teens, the oldest was 17, the youngest 15. The
> 17 yo had some trouble with his ESAs, but after a few tries (oh, my
> ears) he got it right. Twice. In a row. One of the few "rules" that
> I still follow religiously is "look up, reach up, swim up". Well, try
> as I might, he couldn't get that through his head, although in the end
> he finally glommed on to it before I flunked him out.
>
> His family goes out to CA 6 months for his first OW dives since the
> class. Cut back to class. I always tell my students, multiple times,
> that the OW C-card only qualifies them to do the most basic dives and
> they should never dive beyond their training and that they should just
> do plenty of basic dives until they're ready for AOW, but dive first.
> Finally, I tell them that "you are not properly trained nor prepared
> for deep diving or night diving". I even have this penciled into my
> manual.
>
> So kid goes on a boat with his family. First dive is on a wall, 60
> foot max. DM spots him at 90 ft, goes down and gets him. By the time
> they get back to 60 feet, his tank is dry and he has to ascend on the
> (very pissed) DM's aux. Second dive is a hard bottom of 45 feet and
> nothing "seems" to go wrong. This is all in the incident report and
> depositions. Third dive is a night dive. Fifteen minutes into the
> dive, kid goes missing. He's found the next day in 35 feet of water,
> almost exactly under the boat. He has a head wound and drowned.
> Theory is that he turned his light off and ascended, hitting the boat
> with his head. Given the amount of trauma, the belief was that he
> also ascended way too fast. The blow was apparently sufficient for
> him to bite through his mouthpiece.
>
> I was sued for being negligent in my instruction. Apparently I should
> have taught him how to ascend at night. V&B told me to not sweat it,
> as long as I taught "to the book" (see above rule). About two weeks
> later I got a call from Lesser & Lesser, PADI's attornies (and mine,
> in this matter, although I do have my own trained shark). They told
> me to not sweat it and that they would "make it go away". Two months
> after that I was informed that the suit had been dropped. I did find
> out that the had sued me for $1 million, the DM for one million and
> the boat for five million, all the extents of our insurance.
>
> Did I do anything wrong? I went out of my way to make sure that he
> learned his skills, but he was, quite literally, in over his head.
> Kids forget lots of stuff in 6 months, look at what happens after
> summer vacation. We all forget skills that we don't use for 6 months
> right after we learn them. It's sad that he died, and I would have
> sent a note or something if my lawyer hadn't told me not to.
>
I'd say absolutely don't sweat it.
Darwin turned his light off.

LD.

Popeye wrote:
>
> http://www.caymannetnews.com/cgi-scr...036/003687.htm
>
> On Grand Cayman, the chamber is used in particular for diabetic wounds that
> won't heal, and also gangrene and carbon monoxide poisoning, said Mr
> Elliott.

Convenient how you neglected to mention:

"It is essential that volunteers are available around the clock because
sometimes people wait until the middle of the night to report suspected
dive related injuries, he said."

and:

"As well as treating emergency dive related illness...the chambers can
be used to treat various other medical conditions..."

The reporting entity, the CaymanNetNews, is a local newspaper written
by Caymanians for Caymanians, so it is written towards their interests.
Since the majority of Caymanians don't scuba dive, it isn't surprising
that the article gets into the "What's in it for me?" discussion and
talks about the chamber's utility for the non-tourist non-diver local
community.


> This last illness occurred fairly frequently after Hurricane Ivan, when some
> people ran generators in closed areas, he added.

Ivan was in September 2004.


> The Brac chamber will be smaller than the one in Grand Cayman, holding one
> bed rather than two. It is expected to be on the Island in September, and
> will then have to be put into operational order with all the ancillary
> equipment attached before use.
>
> Gangrene and carbon monoxide poisoning?
>
> Must be PADI Master Diver specialties.


What is kept quiet and out of the press is that there's approximately
one evacuation flight per month from the Cayman Sister Islands (Cayman
Brac/Little Cayman) over to Grand Cayman to put a bent diver through
their chamber.

I've *personally* known three such individuals. IIRC, their dive
accidents occured on Rock Monster, Greenhouse Reef and the 356 Wreck,
and I've specifically searched for published media reports on each;
they're not to be easily found, if found at all.

Just because you don't see any reports on them from 1,000 miles and a
country away, doesn't change the ground truth. Doesn't matter if we're
talking the Caribbean or the Sandbox.



-hh

dechucka wrote

> Well IF you do know the origin you know it is very innocent

Yeah, but a nickname that ends up as something that is full of shit isn't
attractive no matter how innocent the path that led to it.

> sensitive aren't we what would you prefer to be called Yanks or citizens
> of the USA

Yanks would seem better to me, at least from those living in Oz.

> you may have got the incidents mixed up because this is exactly what
> happened in FNQ.

Not mixed up. Except for how far they were from shore, the events were very
similar.

Lee

"Lee Bell" <pleebell2@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:5SDEg.15333$0k4.7762@bignews1.bellsouth.net.. .
> Popeye wrote
>
>> They were still left, and I didn't know PADI taught seamanship.
>
> Knowing you have all your divers aboard before you leave the dive site is
> not seamanship.

Neither is it basic dive training.

> Aren't you the one that first named "Captain PADI?" 8^)

In reference to his diving rules, of course...

>> Near as I can tell, they produce about 200,000 rule exceptions every
>> year.
>
> Near as you can tell, there's never a problem. Your inability to see what
> every one else seems to see clearly is well established.

You're casting a broad net with that "everyone else", and still don't have
a scrap of non-circumstantial evidence to indicate what you consider that
everyone sees is "well established".

"Lee Bell" <pleebell2@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:BiEEg.15346$0k4.3652@bignews1.bellsouth.net.. .
> dechucka wrote
>
>> Well IF you do know the origin you know it is very innocent
>
> Yeah, but a nickname that ends up as something that is full of shit isn't
> attractive no matter how innocent the path that led to it.
>
>> sensitive aren't we what would you prefer to be called Yanks or citizens
>> of the USA
>
> Yanks would seem better to me, at least from those living in Oz.

Sorry mate septic will do or seppo if you really are so sensistive, come on
a bit of cultural sensitivity you don't want to be a drop kick do you

>
>> you may have got the incidents mixed up because this is exactly what
>> happened in FNQ.
>
> Not mixed up. Except for how far they were from shore, the events were
> very similar.

Happens all over the world with these PADI trained boat operators

"Dillon Pyron" <dmpyronINVALID@austin.rr.com> wrote in message
news:knu6e2h3q9ks4nsmqho0t9c2ivnq1on0go@4ax.com...
> Thus spake "Lee Bell" <pleebell2@bellsouth.net> :
>
>
> >
> >>> Did I do anything wrong?
> >
> >Depends on what you mean by wrong. The easy answer is yes, but that's
not
> >entirely fair. The more important question is whether you knowingly did
> >something wrong. You'll have to answer that one for yourself.

He's a dive instructor, not a child psychologist. Ultimately, the teen had
parents that took him diving 6 months after his training and let him run
wild.

What if Dillon had been the kid's driving instructor and then the kid didn't
drive for 6 months and then his parents gave him the keys to a Beamer and
let him do whatever he wanted? The result may well have been the same.

>> not seamanship.
>
> Neither is it basic dive training.

So if the skipper is trained in seamanship and the divers in diving skills,
leaving someone behind is due to...? Poor logistics training? Unadequate
math skills? Unsatisfactory engineering skills not to recognise an abacus'
values change with waves?

General stupidity isn't a lack of training but a minimal brain defect. And
you shouldn't run a boat with that!

Popeye wrote:
>
> Nothing you've presented indicates any increase in DCI's or any relevant
> numbers to show how many dives are done annually in a vacation diving arena.

I've never claimed that the numbers have changed.

What has changed, however, is how air evacuation service is being
provided.

Politically, Island Air was driven out of service by backers of the
Government-owned Cayman Airways, so air service to Little Cayman and
Cayman Brac is now a monopoly (again).

Island Air had to return their Twin Otter awhile ago, but had been
holding on as a private charter service, but within the past ~4 months,
just sold off the last two of their aircraft.

This means that Island Air is no longer around to risk night flights
out of Little Cayman's non-illuminated grass airstrip. It also means
that no one leaves aircraft overnight on Little Cayman anymore, which
means that a night evacuation flight from there would have to incur an
even higher risk unlit night landing there first.

Feel free to ask Grumman how large of a set of brass ones it would take
to do this once. Then how much harder the brass has to be, to be
expected to do this repeatedly - ie, once per month.


> > Just because you don't see any reports on them from 1,000 miles and a
> > country away, doesn't change the ground truth. Doesn't matter if we're
> > talking the Caribbean or the Sandbox.
>
> The national numbers are what they are.
>
> In the absence of a scrap of evidence, one would have to assume that the
> Caymans falls into line with them.

No disagreement. The statistics for the non-fatal accidents that
result in DCS Chamber rides is generally reported at around 1 in 10K
dives.

In the Sister Islands, there's reportedly 196 hotel rooms + 190 other
guest rooms available...

As per a link from:
<http://www.caymanislands.ky/statistics/occupancy_reports.asp>

Being conservative, I'm only going to count only the traditional resort
tourist hotels (196). The dive ops do get customers from the house
rentals, etc, but for the most part, its under 5%.


For hotel occupancy rates (same source as above, different link), its
not broken out for the Sisters. For last year, it says they averaged
(annualized) a 55.8% occupancy rate. The 10-year annual minimum for
all of the islands combined for hotels only is just 50.6% (for others,
the 10 year low was 37.7%). I'll use the latter and that for each
non-diver, there's a triple or quad occupancy, so I'll round down to
just double occupancy on average. Similarly, because of down days
before flying home, etc, I'm going to assume that afternoon dives and
hardcore divers will offset this to the point where we can KISS assume
that everyone does an average of only 2 dives per day.

Thus:

196 rooms @ .506 occupancy @ 2 each = 198 divers --> 396 dives/day -->
11,880 dives per 30 day month.

11,880 / 10K = 1.2 incidences expected per month.

FWIW, I've cross-checked this vs the number of local op diveboats,
their capacity, and typically the rates/capacities that I've seen them
run - - this is within my expected range:


12 (Caymaniac) @ McCoys
20 Newton (Yellow Rose III) @ Pirate's Point
15 (Coral Star) @ Southern Cross Club
15 Seahawk (Lucky Star) @ Southern Cross Club
20 Newton (Holiday Diver?) @ Neptune's Berth
15 Newton (SeaEsta) @ Paradise Villas/Conch Club

20 Newton (Island Sister) @ LCBR
20 Newton (Cayman Sister) @ LCBR
20 Newton (Reef Fanta Seas) @ LCBR

20 Newton (Big Sister) @ BRBR
20 Newton (Little Sister) @ BRBR
20 Newton (Twin Sister) @ BRBR

20 Newton (Brac Fever II) @ Divi
18 PH (Ocean Fever) @ Divi
18 PH (Island Fever II) @ Divi
14 putt-putt (Ocean Fever) @ Divi
18 (seasonal rental) @ Divi
18 (seasonal rental) @ Divi

---------------------
287 - 323 capacity


20 Nekton Liveaboard
20 Aggressor Liveaboard

--------------------
363 total capacity


For 198 divers, this would be a "diveboat occupancy" rate of
69%-61%-55%, depending on how you want to count. There's also two
Pro42's not listed that used to be part of the Reef Divers fleet (one
at LCBR and one at BRBR); I'm not sure if they're still around anymore
or not. If included, these would add another 30-36 to capacity, which
would drop this average down to 50%. However, considering how crappy
they performed in bluewater, I believe that they were written off/sold
circa Hurricane Ivan/2004. I've not included the old Brac Aquatics
Outrunner, Reef Runner or Little Cayman Diver, as they're all long
since gone, nor have I included a private fishing boat that is known to
occasionally take out divers, particularly since they lack the licence
to do this.


AFAIC, the math is consistant to the 1x/month rate I reported. Feel
free to poke holes in it.



-hh

chilly wrote

> Ultimately, the teen had parents that took him diving 6 months after his
> training and let him run wild.

Excellent point. I've already suggested Dillon sue the parents for the
impact on him, and his work, of their failure to exercise proper restraint
of their child.

Lee

"Lee Bell" <pleebell2@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:rlZEg.20148$q96.2231@bignews4.bellsouth.net.. .
> dechucka wrote
>
>>> Not mixed up. Except for how far they were from shore, the events were
>>> very similar.
>
>> Happens all over the world with these PADI trained boat operators
>
> Actually, that's one of the few things I don't blame on PADI. They don't
> train the boat operators, but they damned sure do impose restrictions on
> them. I'd bet anything that the rules are quite specific regarding head
> counts.

How can PADI put restrictions on boat operators?