Category: Diving Safety
-
Decompression Sickness: Are We Teaching Divers a Theory as Though It Were a Fact? For over a century, scuba divers have been taught a deceptively simple explanation for decompression sickness (DCS): “You came up too fast. Nitrogen formed bubbles. The bubbles caused the injury.” It’s an explanation every diver recognizes. It’s easy to teach, easy…
-
Delete Your Ego Before You Descend There are countless rules in scuba diving. Monitor your gas.Plan your dive.Dive within your training.Conduct proper buddy checks.Respect depth limits.Maintain buoyancy.Never hold your breath. But after years of teaching recreational divers, I’ve become convinced that the most dangerous thing a diver can bring underwater isn’t faulty equipment, bad visibility,…
-
Children are not simply smaller adults. They possess developing cognitive judgment, variable stress responses, and limited risk assessment capacity. Accordingly, instructors who teach minors assume a heightened duty of care that exceeds minimum agency standards.
-
Scuba diving is built on trust. Parents trust instructors with their children. Students trust dive shops to provide competent supervision. Certifying agencies trust instructors to follow standards designed to keep people alive. And the public trusts the dive industry when it says, “This is safe when done properly.” When a student dies under instruction—especially a…
Motus Aquaticus 