I spent several months this year drafting a new Code of Conduct for
Divers and Guidelines for Marine Tourism Operators in Komodo National
Park - before now, there were no written rules for divers or operators.
 I met with the head of the park yesterday, and these rules will
probably be enacted as park regulations sometime in June.  (When that
happens, I'll put the rules up on a website, and we'll be sending
information out to dive magazines and some of the websites too.)

There were a lot of opportunities for input from liveaboard and dayboat
operators during the drafting process.  We did get some comments and
suggestions (many were useful, though some seemed motivated by an
impulses to impose high costs of compliance on competitors, and a few
operators who closely follow the PADI system wondered why we just
didn't adopt PADI's guidelines and rules in toto.  But most of the
operators welcomed the idea of having a set of basic rules that will
be, at least in theory, enforced on everyone.  In general, most of the
operators have very high standards of practice, but there are
exceptions.

One thing we tried to do throughout was to stress that the both divers
and operators have to take responsibility for making diving in Komodo
safe and minimizing damage and impact on corals and other wildlife.
The park is not going to  put underwater policemen on the dive sites,
some sites in the park can be challenging, the park's search and rescue
capabilities will remain limited, and the closest hyperbaric chamber is
on Bali.  At a minimum, it's important that divers understand clearly
that diving in Komodo can be dangerous and that the safety net is thin.


While it is assumed that most dives in the park will be guided, we
believe that it is the operators' responsibility to determine the ratio
of DMs to customers, whether safety divers are needed, and whether to
allow "solo" diving - taking into consideration the site, the
conditions, and most of all the training, experience, fitness - in
short the capabilities - of the divers.  Operators also must tailor the
site selection and dive plans to the least qualified, least
experienced, and least fit divers in the group, or else divide the
group and arrange alternative dives suited to the capabilities of both
more and less experienced divers.

Similarly, there are no specific depth limits in the park - that also
up to the operators and the divers to judge responsibly themselves.
There is no park requirement for buddy diving either - it's up to the
operators to decide whether to enforce a strict buddy system, allow
"same ocean same day" buddy diving, or whatever.

(The idea that pairing the two least experienced and least skilled
divers on a boat together and expecting one of them to be able to
assist or rescue the other in an emergency has never seemed
particularly persuasive to me.  Nor, however, do I particularly want to
work as an unpaid DM in charge of a beginning diver when I'm paying for
my dives - unless the beginner is someone I chose to do the trip with
and accepted that role from the outset.)

There are some rigid rules that will be strictly enforced.  Every diver
will have to carry an inflatable SMB, a light or flashing emergency
strobe, and a sound signal device ON EVERY DIVE in the park, without
exception.  (On night dives, a minimum of two lights per diver are
required.)  All boats will have to carry oxygen sets and radios, and
the rules for tender operations are quite detailed.  In principle, any
diver exhibiting DCS symptoms (other than headache in isolation) is
going to be treated as a DCS victim until cleared by a competent
medical person - no easy thing, but in the past there have been too
many people with likely DCS hits in the park who went untreated because
dealing with a DCS victim seemed too hard.

The new rules are intended to be a fairly liberal approach which allows
maximum freedom  operators to adopt the rules that make the most sense
for the sites they are diving and the divers on board.  Of course, if
these don't work, and if the operators don't take on the sense of
responsibility that a system like this requires to make diving safe,
then I'll be the first to argue for replacing this with a much more
restrictive and rigid set of rules.

It can be difficult getting understanding by email with an operator
with whom one has not have a prior relationship on what their rules
really are.  Operators tend to believe that the new (to them) divers
who are most insistent in their emails on having maximum freedom to
dive their own dives are often the last divers they would want to have
in the water without supervision, and often they're right.

Yesterday I was talking with one the liveaboard operators (who I
consider to be quite good), and was ragging him (intentionally) about
seeing him and some divers from his boat at Castle Rock a couple of
months ago.  As is often the case at Castle Rock (sort of a broad
seamount), there was a reasonably strong current, but it wasn't by any
means impossible to negotiate.  We were making headway upcurrent when
we ran into the divers from the other boat, all of whom were wearing
gloves, and they were all over the corals, really bad.

"What we saw your divers doing is the reason we wanted to ban gloves in
the park," I said to this operator.  He winced when I reminded of the
incident, but explained:  "I had no idea this would happen.  Those
divers were all from Germany, they told us they were all very
experienced. I checked their log books, all of them had at least 250
dives, some many more.  We won't even take anyone with less than 50
dives on our boat.  And they were all fine on the first two dives at
Banta Island.  How could I know that would happen?"

It's hard to say, but my first assumption is that while it may be true
that all those divers all had at least 250 logged dives, none of them
had ever dived in even a moderately strong current before.  (Lakes?)
There are rarely any currents at Banta Is. where the check-out dives
with these divers took place.  So we talked about how we might
encourage operators, in addition to doing check-out dives in a
sheltered place,  before taking new divers to a fragile and unique site
like Castle Rock, might do at least one dive on a less fragile and
special high current site where there are rocks and  dead coral to grab
onto if needed, and where the operator can assess the divers' abilities
to handle currents without the reef paying such a high price.

(Under the new rules, those divers could be barred from further diving
in the park and the operator could be subject to a fine or other
sanctions, but it's unclear at present what the real level of
enforcement in practice will be.)

Robert Delfs

On Fri, 20 May 2005 18:33:08 +1000, Christian Gerzner wrote:

>Viv/KK wrote:
>
>> So as not to rock the boat I waited a day just so that both DMs could get
>> use to how I dive and realise I did not require babysitting. I tried
>> option B on the 2nd day and got the dirtiest of looks by both DMs when I
>> came back on to the boat. They switched to talking in Italian at this
>> stage, shooting pointed looks in my direction throughout the conversation
>> and later on I got the lecture from the one that spoke English that diving
>> alone (they call diving without a DM as 'alone' not 'solo' as most people
>> would think) was not on and that we dived as a group or not at all.
>
>This type of thing, AIUI, is now the rule in the Red Sea. You dive with
>a guide, as a group, buddied, or not at all:
>
>> a) Is it Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to always dive with a guide?
>>
>> Yes, in fact it may be the law. You can however get some flexibility from some dive centres/guides depending on your experience.
>>
>> b) is it SOP to always dive with a buddy?
>>
>> Yes. You can however get some flexibility from some dive centres/guides depending on your experience.
>>
>> If (a) above:
>>
>> * Is there a maximum number of divers in that guide's control?
>> * If so, how many?
>> * Does the count depend on conditions?
>> * What kind of qualification does a guide require?
>> * Including experience?
>>
>> See this link for guide to diver ratios.
>> http://www.divernet.com/news/stories/240205redsea.shtml
>>
>> Guides in Egypt, particularly with the big dive centres tend to be very experienced and are usually instructors rather than divemasters. The centre's have plenty of people wanting to work for them so they can be choosy. The centres also prefer more highly qualified staff as they have more flexibility to teach different courses or guide as required.
>>
>> If (b) above:
>>
>> * Who allocates buddies?
>> * Do divers get a choice as to buddies?
>>
>> Divers choose their own buddies and the guide assists with that if required. If you don't want to dive with another customer you can usually buddy with the guide.
>
>Thank goodness we live in the (still - but for how much longer?) wild
>and lawless Pacific.
>
>Dumbing down to the Lowest Common Denominator Level continues apace. The
>way it's going I can sense that I will actually give up diving before I
>have to "follow the leader" simply because I am arrogant enough to never
>do that. And there I was hoping to be able to break Leni Riefenstahl's
>record as to oldest ever conventional (not that she could _ever_ be
>called conventional) diver. ;-)
>
>Cheers,
>
>Christian
>


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