Why ‘everyone is responsible for their own risk-based decisions’ isn’t the right approach to take to improve diving safety.
A diver qualified in the summer of 1999 while on holiday in Greece. His final dive on his PADI Open Water course was to 25m, obviously beyond the standards of this course. The instructor told him to write 18m in his logbook as they were only supposed to go to 18m. The diver didn’t know this during the dive so didn’t question the depth they dived to. Nor did they know that there was a way of providing feedback to the agency for breach of standards. In March 2005, the diver went to Cape Town with work and there was an opportunity to dive at Gansbaai so he took his OW card with him. He hadn’t dived since his OW course in 1999. There was no checking of cert cards when they got there, nor was there a skills dive to ensure everything was ok. The diver and 3 of his buddies completed a 45min 10m dive from a RHIB with no problems.
One month later the diver was in San Diego, again with work, and wanted to go diving. He had decided that one of the most important things he...