Posted by digibum on April 30, 2004 at 07:10:49:
In Reply to: RESPONSIBILITY aka why did THEY leave floating in the sea... posted by Doug Williams on April 29, 2004 at 21:41:46:
First off, I was not on this dive but I do know Dan and I know Ray and I know the Ocean Adventures Staff (though, not the DM in question -- he's relatively new to the store). In fact, as a dive instructor, I've done training dives with Dan while working for Ocean Adventures. Dan is a novice level diver. He's been certified for a few years and goes on several local dives a year but like many divers, he has a job and other interests so he's not in the water every weekend or even every month. I would even go so far to say that if I had been the DM he would have been one of the people in the back of my mind that I paid a small bit of extra attention to. And based on my previous diving experiences with him, I remember him having equalization problems.
Now, all of this is to say that I think Dan did what was technically correct. Again, I wasn't there, I haven't spoken to him, any of the other divers on the boat, or the shop but he probably made an effort to descend, had difficulty, tried to work out the problem, and then aborted the dive. As Ken points out, 15 minutes seems like a long time but for someone who has slow clearing ears it's possible. I think it'll be interesting when they pull the computer and get his profile.
So what about Ray and the SunDiver? I think Ray runs a pretty good boat. I also know that Ray doesn't supply a DM and that the chartering dive shop is responsible for that. Whenever I have DM'd on Ray's boat he ALWAYS comes back and asks if we have a good head count before leaving a site. In that regard, I have no reason to believe that Ray acted differently than the norm and I can't see him being at fault here.
What about Ocean Adventures? I also don't work there any longer so I'm going to refrain from making any comments as I don't want to appear to be some bitter former instructor bent on making the shop look bad. You can read the story and make up your own mind about whether or not the DM made a mistake.
Bottom line is that this was something that could have easily been avoided. Someone pissed and moaned that Dan was going to sue Ocean Adventures and that he should take responsibility for his own actions. I don't think I ever saw him say that he was suing anybody. He did say he was going to have a conversation with certain people but I didn't see him mention anything about his lawyer. But even if he does decide to sue, I'm not sure I can blame him. And this is coming from a guy who had he still been an instructor at Ocean Adventures would have likely been on that boat and would at a minimum would be named as a defendent in any lawsuit he files.