Are All Diving Instructors Up to The Job?: Undercurrent 04/2022

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Scuba diving can be safe if it's taught correctly and the proper safety precautions are in place. However, in the U.S., scuba instruction standards are variable, especially when they may have been designed initially for benign tropical waters but applied where it's cold and dark.

Harry Truitt, who runs the Lighthouse Diving Center in Seattle, WA, is concerned about this. He was triggered to contact us by a tragic fatality during diving instruction in Montana Undercurrent wrote about in July 2021. He told us about a similar tragedy during instruction in the cold waters of Puget Sound.

On the first day of August 2021, the Seattle Times reported that the body of a scuba diver trainee was recovered from the water at Seacrest Park in West Seattle. The 33-year-old woman had gone missing during scuba training in the dark at 10 p.m. the day before at Seacrest Cove 2, a popular diving location. She had been accompanied by six other trainees and two diving instructors. She was last glimpsed underwater at the Honeybear boat wreck

He says, "If the death count had not been so high from one location, I wouldn't be writing to Undercurrent. (There were two other deaths there, in 2009 and 2016, respectively.)...

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