Scuba Diving Industry Editorial | Dive Professional Career
A Prop Gun. A Power Bar. A Dead Diver. What do they have in common?
The role of standards & procedures, quality assurance, and dive instructors in keeping scuba divers alive.
Darcy Kieran is the author of the handbook “Your Career and/or Life as a Scuba Diving Instructor: How to Make a Good Living Out of Your Passion for Scuba Diving” and a unique advanced logbook & checklists for scuba divers, divemasters & instructors.
You’re at a dive site with student divers. At the beginning of your dive, you notice that another dive instructor left a student unattended at the bottom of the ocean. You know it’s the first certification dive for that diver because you heard their briefing on the boat. You keep looking at that diver from the corner of your eye, just in case. Eventually, the other instructor comes down. You proceed with doing skills with your group.
Later on, in the tour portion of your training dive, you see the other instructor with his six entry-level student-divers down the wall in 90 feet (27 meters) of water, way below your group. At the end of the dive, these divers and their instructor ascend straight to the surface, with no safety stop. The instructor is quickly back aboard the boat, chatting with the captain, while three of his students remain unsupervised in the water.
Back on the dive charter boat, you wonder what to do. And you do nothing! You feel that the other instructor will probably tell you to go “f” yourself and mind your own business. You proceed with your debriefing and signing logbooks. You soon forget the whole incident.
Sounds unrealistic? Well… It’s a true story! I doubt there is a dive instructor out there who hasn’t been witness to standard violations. There is a lack of consistency in the quality of the experience in the dive industry.
In theory, if we witness a standard violation, we must report it to our training agency. But… Do we always do it? We live in a society where “live and let live” and “mind your own business” are mottos.
And there are many impediments to you filing a report. What if that instructor is teaching with another dive training agency? How can you be sure it’s a standard violation? Sometimes you don’t know what class the instructor is teaching–or even if he is teaching. What if you don’t know the name of that instructor? Should you approach him and ask? “Hi! What is your name and instructor number? I would like to report you!”
It’s more “natural” to shrug it off and move on. After all… No harm, no fool.
Well… We need to shake this hands-off attitude. Because harm is done!
Let’s take an example outside the dive industry.
A Non-Cold “Cold Gun” Used as a Prop Gun
You’ve probably heard of last week’s deadly incident on the stage of the movie “Rust” with Alec Baldwin.
Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins died after Baldwin shot a prop firearm while rehearsing a scene on the New Mexico set of the movie Rust. Director Joel Souza was also injured in the incident. It seems Baldwin was told it was a “cold gun,” meaning that no real bullets were supposed to be in the gun.
Allegedly, the assistant director, David Halls, who handed Alec Baldwin the prop firearm, did not check all the rounds inside the revolver and yet, declared it a “cold gun.” Furthermore, it was reported that Halls had been terminated from a previous film after a situation involving a firearm that injured a crew member.
“Dave Halls was fired from the set of Freedom’s Path in 2019 after a crew member incurred a minor and temporary injury when a gun was unexpectedly discharged. Halls was removed from set immediately after the prop gun discharged. Production did not resume filming until Dave was off-site. An incident report was taken and filed at that time” (source: Deadline).
So… It appears the guy had already been caught cutting corners, and yet, he was doing it again. Sounds familiar?
Back to the scuba diving industry. There are three issues at play here.
- Standards violations must be reported.
- Proper procedures are as relevant as standards.
- Violations of standards and unsafe procedures must be dealt with appropriately.
A slap on the wrist and back to work is not enough anymore.
Tec Clark covered these topics quite well in his most recent podcast titled Reporting Standards Violations.
“You not only have a voice, but you have a professional ethical duty — to report standards violations when you see them” (source: Tec Clark). Would you mind taking a few minutes to listen?
I believe there’s a compounded positive impact of being more adamant about respecting standards and using appropriate procedures. It can force us, collectively, to be more diligent with ourselves. I am no angel. I have done my fair share of cutting corners in my early years as a dive instructor. I was lucky nothing too bad happened. I would have had benefitted from a working environment with a more stringent focus on everyday quality with no compromise.
Overloaded Power Bars & No Night Rover
This discussion reminds me of the deadly fire aboard the MV Conception dive liveaboard in 2019.
A fire aboard the MV Conception, a 75-foot (23-meter) scuba diving liveaboard, broke out during the night off the coast of California, killing 33 passengers and one crew member. The captain and four crew members barely escaped.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigated the incident. It determined that the probable cause of the accident was the failure of Truth Aquatics (the owner of the boat) to provide adequate oversight of its vessel and crew member operations, including requirements to ensure that a roving patrol was maintained, which allowed a fire of unknown cause to grow, undetected. Because of the fire’s location, it was believed that overloaded power bars (with everybody charging their smartphones at night) were the culprits.
Let’s re-read that. Yes, a fire caused these scuba divers to die. But the real issue was a lack of effective oversight. A roving patrol is required at night, and there was none.
“I hate the term accident in this case because, in my opinion, it is not an accident if you fail to operate your company safely” ~Jennifer Homendy, NTSB Board Member.
Why am I bringing this up? Because ensuring safety goes beyond respecting standards. In their review of the MV Conception incident, the NTSB extensively referred to “normalization of deviance.” In our case, this expression would refer to a situation in which “certified and qualified scuba divers may have become so accustomed to a conscious deviation from standard diving and safety procedures that they no longer consider them as being a departure from the norm” (source: Dan Orr).
We may readily notice wrongdoings by other dive instructors, divemasters, and divers, but are we sure we are doing everything safely?
Dan Orr explained the importance of this topic in an article titled The Normalization Of Deviance Aka The “Short Cut Mentality.” It is one of the best articles I have read as a dive instructor.
The Buck Stops Here & SPF
When we teach a scuba class, we are like the captain of the boat. We are
in charge. And we are responsible even if we simply obey orders. It’s up to us to say “no” to the boss or to do it properly.
Dive centers are often owned by dive instructors. Therefore, other instructors may implicitly consider that whatever the owner-instructor is asking is OK. It is especially true when the owner is an instructor trainer, and the staff members are instructors he/she trained. In such a case, it is even more critical that we carefully look at everything being asked of us. Our instructor trainer is not the one in charge of the safety of the divers in our course. We are.
With one of the dive center teams I’ve managed, we established a policy called SPF. We were in South Florida, and therefore, sunscreen protection was common. It is measured by a Sun Protection Factor (SPF). We used the same acronym but as a reminder of:
- Safety
- Performance
- Fun
Safety comes first, all the time. Then, we can look at performance, which includes everything that must come together to deliver consistency in the quality of the experience while simultaneously ensuring the organization's financial survival. Once these two steps are covered, everybody can have fun–our clients and ourselves.
Easier said than done. It always is. Let’s encourage one another. Let’s do better!
Also from Darcy Kieran:
- Handbook: Your Career and/or Life as a Scuba Diving Instructor: How to Make a Good Living Out of Your Passion for Scuba Diving.
- Logbook: Advanced Scuba Diving Logbook with Checklists for certified scuba divers, divemasters & dive instructors.
- Handbook: Advanced Guide to SPF Scuba Diving for Scuba Divers, Divemasters & Dive Instructors: Develop Better Scuba Diving Skills, Dive Safer, Save Money & Have More Fun!
- Handbook: The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide To Scuba Diving: How to Increase Safety, Save Money & Have More Fun!
- Logbook: STARTER Scuba Diving Logbook with Checklists while getting your open water diver certification!
- Reference book: Scuba Diving Industry Market Reports, Data & Statistics.
Side note: During your surface intervals, have a look at my novels with a scuba diving twist, starting with “Mystery of The Blue Dragon” and “Shadows on Ocean Drive.”
You could help the dive industry by taking part in ongoing dive industry surveys. You will also find results from our past scuba diving market studies here.
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