Becoming a safe diver.

By Rusty Miller

As a scuba diving instructor it is my responsibility and obligation to train my students in the open water class to recognize the dangers that they may encounter as they scuba dive in any body of water. With that being said even with my 5 decades of scuba diving I cannot give every scenario that can happen to new and experienced divers.
When I teach my students I try to give them real and practical information that will help them in their diving and to be as safe as they possibly can be. Therefore, I plan to teach them “Zero Accidents” from the first day in class. When my students want to continue their education then they will already have the Zero Accidents mentality. If a person comes to me for a refresher course, Nitrox course, and/or advanced course they will learn about the Zero Accident mentality that I have.
The next one I would like to touch on is “Reduce Common Diving Risks.”
The first step in reducing the diving risk is Self Rescue. That may seem like a selfish way to look at rescue diving but you have to know how to keep yourself from becoming a victim too. That means that if you find yourself in a situation that you need to help someone else you will need to do a few steps to calm yourself down before you do anything for someone else.

  1. Stop! Access the situation
  2. Breathe! Calm your own breathing down
  3. THINK! Look around the area that you and the diver in distress are in to make sure there are no hazards I.E. fishing lines, parts of fishing nets.
  4. Breathe! This step will help you to look more intensely at the situation to make sure you are not going beyond your training.
  5. ACT! Do what you have been trained to do for the other diver.
    In a rescue class you will be trained in greater details on each of these self rescue techniques.
    Remember that we should always have a Zero Accident goal every time we hit the water to go diving. That means that while scuba diving is a very fun and exciting sport you have to be aware of your equipment, your surroundings, and your general wellbeing.
    The final one I want to touch on is “Legal and Ethical issues.”
    I’m not going to go into a lot of details on this one but I will give you some idea of what can be involved if you find yourself having to make that rescue decision.
  6. Liability. Anyone can be sued for anything.
  7. Negligence. Issues that must be proven
  8. Standard of care and duty. NEVER exceed your training.
  9. Assumption of risks and your actions. Your actions in a rescue
  10. Insurance and the Good Samaritan law. On the insurance, unless you work for some type of agency that would have a type of liability insurance on you it probably is a moot point. The Good Samaritan law is this: *hort of dedicating yourself to achieving NAUI Worldwide membership and becoming a diving leader, as a volunteer you may be protected in your rescue actions by the legal concept of “the Good Samaritan.” Many jurisdictions recognize in their law that unselfishly helping a stranger in distress is a worthwhile activity for which one should suffer no harm.

Russell Miller #59999