Posted by Ken Kurtis on January 21, 2003 at 15:26:14:
In Reply to: Re: Proactive/liability posted by tleemay on January 20, 2003 at 16:43:56:
I'll start off by saying that I appreciate Terry's comments (and thanks for the "editorial Clarification" - no problem) because the critical examination of how we ("we" meaning all of us who dive) make choices about our diving, even when you get down to nit-picking, is a good thing if it causes you to think. As many of you know, blind acceptence of monolithical dogma (" . . . because that's the way we do it!!") is simply not my cup of tea.
That being said, some quick thouights:
1. Anyone can construct a hypothetical scenario that seems to shoot down the original contention.
2. Part of the trick of doing escorts is making sure you're NOT loading yourself up with too many people. (But what is "too many" is the $64K question.)
3. A good, thorough, and complete pre-dive briefing - which will include what to do if the escorter has to help someone - might avoid your scenario.
4. Specific buddy assignments (don't get lulled into thinking the escorter's the buddy for everyone) might also avoid your scenario, since the buddy will hopefully stop the departing diver from leaving the group.
5. Any DM/escorter, when having to focus on a problem child, should have his annetnna go up about monitoring the others as well, which means he'll (hopefully) see the departing diver and stop him. (Personally, if I wasn't sure of the gorup, I'd park the rest of them on the reef wall right next to me so I could keep a better eye on them while I was fixing the other problem, and I would motion for them to stay close.)
6. Any DM/escorter who's waiting 3-4 minutes to check on others, regardless of what he's doing, isn't doing a very good job (IMHO) of monitoring the group.
7. Sure, you could just prohibit anyone from doing the dive but part of the goal of a store like ours is not to just automatically say "No," but to see if there's a way for us to make it work, even within limited experience, that makes it safe for the diver and comfortable for us and the boat operator. But sometiems that's not possible and you do, indeed, say, "No." (I'm not too nuts about using the old "Well, you're not qualified for this dive so you'll need to take another claass from us," as it smacks a bit of to heavy-handed.)
Ken Kurtis
NAUI Instr. #5936
Co-owner, Reef Seekers Dive Co.
Beverly Hills, CA