On Wed, 25 Jun 2003 15:52:45 +1000, David Strike
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>On Wednesday, June 25, 2003 2:13 PM, Reef Fish wrote:
>
>(snip)
>> He was just telling it like it is.  You can make the same sarcastic
>> remarks about me, but in my case, nobody say I am protecting my
>> own ass.  I am just a disinterested observer giving my opinion,
>> having heard BOTH sides their versions!
>
>Mate!  I'd just finished a lengthy response when my mail server crashed.
>Here's the abridged version of what I said:  :-)))

Thank goodness!  :-)   But enough for each of us to express our
different views that we feel strongly about.

>
>My sarcasm was borne out of frustration with dive operators who, in many
>instances, become their own worst enemies when, following an incident,
they
>feed the media lines that only cause harm to their own image - and that of
>diving in general.  :-)
>
>> What was Hasson supposed to do other than refuting the false
>> allegations and put blame where blame belong?
>
>Stick rigidly to the facts.  It's not his place - particularly when he
>wasn't on board the boat and present at the incident - to put the blame on
>anyone!

Ah, but as CEO of the Fleet, he is the SPOKESMAN for the boat, after
having been briefed by the crew members and passengers.

I find your position untenable.  If it were, you could have said
Bush and Powell were not in the Iraq war, how could they present
any facts and blame it on Saddam?


>(snip)
>> >I don't know about anybody else, but that's not my definition of a Dive
>> >Master.
>
>> These Dive Masters are nothing more then Dive GUIDES.
>
>Hasson claimed that they weren't even that!  In which case why go to the
>expense of having a dive master at all?  Let the cook read the dive
briefing
>from a previously prepared sheet and save the company money! :-)

You snipped the Florida DMs.  They aren't even in the water!  On
liveaboards such as Cocos, there are TWO DMs and 19 divers.  They
give the briefing.  They are in the water to guide and shoot
photos of divers.  But DON'T expect them to be baby sitters for
incompetent divers!

There's no way around it.  They CAN'T babysit all 19 divers.
Each one of those divers should be responsible for THEMSELVES.

When I pay my money, I didn't pay it for any DM to hold my hand.
Neither do you, or anybody else with whom I have dived in this
group.


>To my way of thinking, paying customers exposed to a new environment
deserve
>more respect than that.  (That's not to suggest that dive masters should
be
>irritatiing sheep herders, but rather that they should anticipate all that
>could go wrong during a dive and then - should a wheel fall off - resolve
>the situation quickly before it gets out of hand.  Something that, to me,
>would seem to be in the company's best interests?)

They may work around some easy, non-current dive sites, but it just
doesn't work that way at all at Cocos, or the Tahiti Passes, or
a few other sites of rapid current!  The divers can spread over
a MILE during the course of a dive.  You want 19 DMs wating 19
divers?   Don't be ridiculous.
>
>(snip)
>> I find no fault with Hasson in putting blame where blame belongs.
>> Blaming human errors of incompetent and irresponsible divers on
>> the DM or a liveaboard boat, and always blame EVERYONE ELSE,
>> is something that should be looked upon with distaste.
>
>If there's a fault in the system, (training or other) rather than with the
>operator, then it might carry more weight if it didn't follow in the wake
of
>an incident.  :-)
>
>Strike

That's why I said in the wake of the incident, it's time for everyone
to WAKE UP to the fact that a certified diver is supposed to be a
RESPONSIBLE diver, and not a whiny baby blaming a DM or a crew
for his own incompetence!

Condoning such "always blame someone else" syndrone, with no self
soul searching on the ills of the system and society, is the WORST
thing that can happen before, during, and after any such incident.

My 20 French Polynesian dollars (about $.02).  :-)

-- Bob.