Posted by Kendall Raine on February 08, 2002 at 15:20:53:
In Reply to: Everyone seems to want to push responsibility to others posted by Wayne on February 08, 2002 at 10:51:56:
I agree with you, Wayne, about personal responsibility. This guy knew the Doria is a strenuous dive. He knew he was low on experience. He knew he was out of shape and had preconditions. He's dead and it's his own fault regardless of how sloppy or cynical anyone else associated with this was.
That said, I personally hope the shop that booked him on this trip and the instructor who certified him on trimix take it in the head. From this guy's picture he looked in ill health. His physical dimensions would make me, were I running the shop or serving as his instructor, ask a lot of questions about his overall fitness to dive much less train for this type of diving. Whether he was fabricating his medical condition or not, a fairly basic series of pool tests would probably have revealed evidence of poor conditioning. Does that create legal liability? I'm not a lawyer. It does, in my view, create moral liability.
The problem is the Doria has become a cult dive and the incidents perpetuate the myth. I've been on two Doria trips aboard Seeker. The first, in 1995, was on a John Chatterton charter with John Yurga, Gary Gentile and a number of other Doria veterans who have at least a hundred dives a piece on the wreck. I trained with the same partner for two solid years for that trip. In 1996 I went out on a charter with Treasure Cove. These guys were generally overweight weekend barbeque warriors who simply dove to 175 to touch the deck and then back up the line. They were diving not for exploration or pillage but for bragging rights. Their training and experience was a small fraction of what I had the summer before. Most of them were at the very limit of their qualifications and abilities just to get down and back. My sense is an increasing number of Seeker charters are of the latter kind-people of minimal ability seeking a moment of glory by half-assing a dive they shoudln't be on. When you see people like Bernie Chowdury and Joel Silverstein leading Doria trips, this is the kind of diver you get.
The whole process is fraught with risk and, IMO, irresponsibility and stupidity. It all starts and ends with the individual.