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Dan: A better analogy for ocean tech diving is mountaineering. That's something I know about here in Alaska. With the few exceptions of the National Parks like Mt. Rainier and Denali, pretty much anyone can go mountaineering any time and any place they want with little or no regulation. Juneau is surrounded by peaks and glaciers and we have visiting tourists (and sometimes locals) who kill themselves out there in the mountains every year. They get lost and die, get killed by moose or bears, fall into crevasses, or get buried in avalanches. Aside from the immediate families and the SAR teams who have to go search for them, no one much cares if you go kill yourself on a mountain. If you're on your own, you can use any crappy gear you want and do any stupid things you want. And if you're extremely stupid, you might even get a best selling book written about you just like that kid who drove a bus out in the bush near Denali without a compass or map, starved to death, and became the subject of John Krakauer's book "Into the Wild." However, if you chose to hire a guide or join a guided expedition to some place like Denali the situation changes entirely. I have friends who guide on Denali. Before they would dream of taking someone up on the mountain they require a fitness assessment (probably a recent physical), they provide the client with a list of required gear and/or provide required gear themselves, they go through a gear checklist and inspection with the client to make sure all the required gear is present and in good working order, they do skills assessments and practice safety techniques like self arrest at lower elevations. And, they don't even think about leaving base camp unless they are confident that the client has the fitness, skills, equipment, and mentality to do the climb. In fact, I can remember back in the 70s when even the Rainier Park rangers would screen for gear. Those guys used to inspect your ropes, carabiners, boots, crampons, and they would even jump up and down on your ice axe to test it before letting you out the door of the lodge. To the extent that serious tech diving requires the same level of fitness, skills, equipment, and mentality as mountaineering, I would suggest that the guided mountaineering model might be the appropriate model for tech diving expeditions. I guess dive boat operations need to decide whether they are acting in a similar role as a mountaineering guide, or perhaps whether they are operating more like the bush pilot who drops off a group for a mountaineering expedition but takes no responsibility to lead or supervise the climb. Now, I'm probably not the person to comment on this because I've never actually ridden on a tech diving boat. No such thing even exists up here in Alaska. The nearest full-time dive boats are probably 500 miles away in British Columbia. I've dove on the Starfire in Anacortes WA, and at various tropical resorts but that was all sport diving not tech diving. All the wreck diving I do in Alaska is off my own boat and with my own buddies. Now we follow DIR quite religiously and no one I don't trust with my life even sets foot on my boat. You can do all the "personal preference" you want but you won't do it with me on my boat. But I view diving just like mountaineering. If you want to go off on your own boat with our own crappy gear and kill yourself, go ahead. People do it all the time. That's your God given right as an American and and Alaskan. But if you're going to run a competent technical diving expeditions for hire then you have the same responsibilities as climbing guides to screen for fitness, gear, skills, and to supervise the activity that goes on on your boat. Kent Lind Juneau, Alaska Dan Volker wrote: > > In Skiing you have a Ski or Safety Patrol. If they see a skier with bear > trap bindings on, his "ski pass" is removed, he is NOT allowed to ski. If a > skier attempts to ski down avalanche slopes or other dangerous areas, they > get ejected from the slope. And skiing has no where near the danger > potential of tech diving. > In tech diving, when a diver gears up and places his weight belt under his > harness, stuffs his hose, mixes steel doubles with a wet suit, essentially > tries to ski with "bear traps", the dive master and captain tend to allow > this personal preference. If the boat was sitting in 600 feet of water and a > moron decided to bounce the bottom on deep air, many tech boats would allow > it. Brains and tech diving are often unrelated. For tech diving to have a > future, this has to change. > > In adventure sports attempting to cater to large chunks of the general > population ( rock climbing & mountain climbing, skiing, whitewater kayaking, > skydiving, acrobatic flying, etc.) absence of a person to prevent terminal > stupidity in each outing is equivalent to assisted suicide. The dive boat > that thinks they can be no more than a taxi service for a tech diving crowd, > is destined to kill. The captains and crew that think these deaths are OK, > need to viewed in this light ( as Kevorkians ) > I'm not talking about handholding on tech dives, I'm talking VERY BASIC > common sense issues like the examples above. Examples we hear about all to > often. > > Dan Volker > > -- > Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. > Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'. -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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