June 2004

Author: Yvan Marston

Doug Elsey remembers the day he got the call: one of his divers was trapped underwater. It was in the early '70s, when the accepted industry practice was to send out two-person crews made up of a diver and a tender to manage the air compressor. Elsey's diver had been out 50 feet from the Hamilton harbour shoreline cutting a large steel pipe when it fell and pinned his breathing hose.

Without a stand-by diver on site, the tender could only call for help and monitor the air compressor. Meanwhile, the diver, determined to get out, radioed for more line and pulled the "umbilical" - a combination breathing hose, depth gauge hose and communication cable - through the muddy bottom until there was enough slack for him to surface. Once topside, he snapped his helmet off and swam the 50 feet back to shore.

"That's when we started on the CSA committees," says Elsey. "We knew there had to be a better way." A larger crew for surface-supplied diving was proposed to include a stand-by diver whose sole role is to remain suited-up and ready to dive in the event of an emergency.

While three-person dive crews are now the standard, thanks to the combined efforts of private industry and government, the notion to move to four-person crews surfaced officially late in 2002 (though it was much discussed for years). Industry leaders expect to settle the matter in April at the CSA's meeting of commercial diving subcommittees in Calgary, Alta., but for now the debate rages on.

The CSA Subcommittee on Diving Operations began the first phase of implementing the four-man crew into the new CSA Diving Operations Standard in October of 2002. Once it is in the standard, the hope is that the various provinces will adopt it and put it into law.

Distilled to its essence, the three-person/four-person debate comes down to a matter of money versus safety. Adding another person to a crew, while making it safer, will raise the cost and, consequently, the price of a contract. Many commercial dive contractors feel confident the three-people crew is adequate and they don't want to be perceived as padding their crews, explains Elsey, who has served as chairman of the CSA's subcommittee on diver safety for 20 years. Divers, on the other hand, stand to benefit financially from a four-person standard, as it will create more work in the industry.

The problem with a three-person crew is that it is fundamentally flawed. If something happens to your diver and you have to jump the stand-by diver, your tender (often the least experienced crew-member) is left to manage two umbilicals in what is effectively one of the worst-case diving scenarios.

It's a situation that has proved deadly in the past, according to Dave Geddes, program coordinator of Seneca College's commercial diving school. He recalls one incident a dozen years ago in the Welland canal where both the diver and the stand-by diver were caught in a pressure differential by a gate (when the water being drawn out of a structure such as a lock creates a dangerous drain-like suction that can trap and hold a diver). The situation resulted in a double fatality.

No one debates that four is safer than three, but rather which number should be the standard, with allowable deviations from there. Elsey is a proponent of the three-plus-one solution, wherein three qualified divers make up the team and a fourth person onsite is determined able and competent to help or contact help should an emergency arise.

Geddes doesn't buy it. "In an emergency, you've got a tender who may or may not have any experience who's now tending two divers, one of whom is in trouble. And you're talking about having a construction guy or an engineer help out in an emergency situation?" he asks rhetorically.

The April CSA meetings will likely see a recommendation to adopt a four-person crew with notable exceptions where a three-plus-one solution is acceptable.

"In other words," explains Geddes, "it's a situation where there's no risk of entrapment, clear water, and no risk to the diver." Such scenarios could include swimming pool repairs, aqua culture, research (where divers are collecting samples) and police diving situations.

Four-person crews have been an operational standard for years in the Canadian military. The fact that the commercial diving industry is moving toward four is seen, for the most part, as a good thing. Developing this standard through CSA committees is designed to find consensus among the industry players so that safety measures become practice before they turn into policy.

While he's glad to back initiatives that protect the "guys in the water," Doug Elsey remains cautious about over-regulating. "Seems to me we've had a four-man dive crew for years," he jokes: "a diver, tender, stand-by diver, and a lawyer."

Yvan Marston is a freelance journalist based in Toronto.

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