Scary or what?

[1st Ade]

The over-egging of the pudding seems to me to be the bullshit idea that the DO must agree a dive profile of what are (as you rightly say) autonomous divers any more than a shop owner agrees the customer's profiles. Divers under training maybe.

100% agree with the major part of what you say and don't have an issue - it's the bit I've quoted above that did concern me.

Two examples - one can be dealt with reasonably easily (if not making friends) the other less so. And I'm not suggesting vetting the "dive profile", just two or three numbers.

* A Dive Leader takes his (Ocean Diver) Partner regularly to 28-29 metres. It's on a boat booked and paid for by the club - the members on the trip have reimbursed the club. It's been advertised as a Club Trip. It's clearly not training. It happens often but is treated as a joke "Sorry mate, wasn't paying attention", "Sorry, the reef was a bit bare at 18 metres". Who carries the can when things go wrong?; I'm not taking that risk. Serious words that said member is not taking his partner in again anywhere the sea bed is deeper than 20 metres. Am I over reacting?

* A group of six re-breather divers are doing a deepish wreck dive, as a club dive. They give me a planned max depth, run time and the size and mix of their bailout tins. As a FCD / AI I haven't a clue if that's an appropriate bailout - I wish them luck and let them get on with it.

[Edward3c]

100% agree with the major part of what you say and don't have an issue - it's the bit I've quoted above that did concern me.

Two examples - one can be dealt with reasonably easily (if not making friends) the other less so. And I'm not suggesting vetting the "dive profile", just two or three numbers.

* A Dive Leader takes his (Ocean Diver) Partner regularly to 28-29 metres. It's on a boat booked and paid for by the club - the members on the trip have reimbursed the club. It's been advertised as a Club Trip. It's clearly not training. It happens often but is treated as a joke "Sorry mate, wasn't paying attention", "Sorry, the reef was a bit bare at 18 metres". Who carries the can when things go wrong?; I'm not taking that risk. Serious words that said member is not taking his partner in again anywhere the sea bed is deeper than 20 metres. Am I over reacting?

* A group of six re-breather divers are doing a deepish wreck dive, as a club dive. They give me a planned max depth, run time and the size and mix of their bailout tins. As a FCD / AI I haven't a clue if that's an appropriate bailout - I wish them luck and let them get on with it.

I had a situation where a ScotSAC Sports Diver was diving regularly to 35m+ with a ScotSAC instructor, but these were on a BSAC club dives. A ScotSAC Master Diver under training is permitted to dive to 40m under instruction, after 12 such dives I couldn’t justify the training bit, so I wrote to both the diver and instructor explaining the potential liability aspect and recommended the individual get their ScotSAC Master diver signed-off or finish the BSAC Dive Leader course. They stopped the 3Om+ (ScotSAC’s SD limit) diving until Dive Leader was finished 2 months later. Then depth progression was done.

[Chrisch]

* A Dive Leader takes his (Ocean Diver) Partner regularly to 28-29 metres. It's on a boat booked and paid for by the club - the members on the trip have reimbursed the club. It's been advertised as a Club Trip. It's clearly not training. It happens often but is treated as a joke "Sorry mate, wasn't paying attention", "Sorry, the reef was a bit bare at 18 metres". Who carries the can when things go wrong?; I'm not taking that risk. Serious words that said member is not taking his partner in again anywhere the sea bed is deeper than 20 metres. Am I over reacting?

The DL is outside the SDP and in violation of their agreement with BSAC as a member. Seems to me one takes the view you either have words at risk of both divers leaving the club or you have by default given permission. As you say "not making friends" - particularly if the DL is a long standing member. For me this is the problem with clubs as most people are too nice to really want to handle this kind of conflict. First time it is the DL that is in the wrong, second time the DO. Only one course of action therefore is possible if you want to avoid the risk.

* A group of six re-breather divers are doing a deepish wreck dive, as a club dive. They give me a planned max depth, run time and the size and mix of their bailout tins. As a FCD / AI I haven't a clue if that's an appropriate bailout - I wish them luck and let them get on with it.

They are at a point in their diving where they really are in a position to do the risk analysis. I agree let them get on with it.

I will defend my view about dive profiles - the first example you give is one of a clear breach of SDP and as such not about people chosing a run time or venue within their agreed limits under the BSAC system. What I think is OTT is each and every dive must get "clearance". Once in the water people can do as they like pretty much and the example No 1 might be forgiven first time but not "regularly".

[Energy58]

* A group of six re-breather divers are doing a deepish wreck dive, as a club dive. They give me a planned max depth, run time and the size and mix of their bailout tins. As a FCD / AI I haven't a clue if that's an appropriate bailout - I wish them luck and let them get on with it.

That's pretty much how I did it - checking that it has been planned - but I wasn't going to try and second guess people who knew more about it than me!