Oz Dive Co fined $200K

[seasnake]

At least here in Canada, if you accept money to act as the "Divemaster" or leader of the activity, that puts responsibility on you to exercise due diligence in providing a safe experience for the customer according to your training and the standards in the industry, and if there is an emergency to act to the best of your ability according to your training and the standards. Anything else and you are liable. But a lot of DM's and instructors get away with terrible practices because thankfully, nothing ever went wrong yet. So they churn out equally unskilled and unsafe certified divers. I know the few of us who really try to keep our skills and training up, stay in shape (... try ), and who tell students, "why don't you come back for a couple extra sessions first?" get a lot of flack from the obese, cigarette smoking DM's and instructors.

I can def. see the point though, that was made: imagine gearing up on a boat for a dive you paid for and the DM coming over and telling you she/he doesn't think you are ready for this dive and they are not going to allow you in the water? Wow, bravo for them, but who here would just quietly accept that? So what do we do? I think stricter certification requirements is a good idea, but the unscrupulous instructors already ignore the standards we have. It's an issue too large to be policed by the training agencies ... they don't have the man power ... And putting the instructors on the honour system doesn't seem to be working ...

[hbh2oguard]

Pinay Diver well that's good to hear because any class I've taken it seems like the main goal of the instructor is to make money. In my OW course one guy who was terrible passed, the instructor told him to always dive with a DM untill he get some dives under his belt. How safe can that be?

[PinayDiver]

I’m sure there’s no shortage of instructors churning out unprepared divers in these parts either. (The aspirant just has to do his homework. It can be as simple as asking an instructor’s former students and benefiting from their hindsight.) Failing or past that, cut the umbilical cord and find a group to grow with.

A trio of divers who joined us on a dive a month or two after their certification gushed over how our DM was so “thorough” in his briefing (drawing the terrain on a slate, explaining the dive plan, asking us what we wanted to see and what we could expect to see, refreshing us on hand signals and buddy separation, etc.) and -- all that being accustomed procedure -- only got me wondering how it possibly was with their own instructor.

Apparently, their instructor kept bringing them to the same sites (soon dampening their excitement) and, being the jealous type (guarding his business?), didn’t actively link them up with other groups. At that point, our DM was the only other dive professional that they had gotten into the water with, but that one time made them see the difference. They're with us now