The Commercial Diving community is a relatively hidden community that provides a very important and dangerous service to us Americans. Not only oil and natural gas exploration and exploitation services so we can all have gas and heat, but also many services which make our life here in America much better.
I would challenge you to surf over to http://www.offshorediver.com/ and check in from time to time to see what the divers think of their life as divers; including their work environment and those that regulate them.
I’ve attached a file (by clicking on the title) which gives a very sad and compelling experience which I was unfortunate enough to live thru recently. I wrote the article for a few reasons: 1) to bring to light a very bad accident in a community that rarely ever gets access to findings of fact when these things happen, 2) to let these divers know that I’m not afraid to live transparently, even when it hurts. I’m trying to provide leadership (by setting an example) to an industry which thrives on secrets and back door deals. I really hope someone from that community ends up reading this, that would be cool.
For the record, the Coast Guard, which regulates this community, had a large role to play in the events that eventually cost my oldest son his life! It completely mismanaged a program, cut back door deals, and shirked its responsibility to provide professional oversight; read poor management! I’m not angry with the particular individuals in the Coast Guard who are now trying to address these shortfalls; I’ve met them and talked with them about ways we can improve the situation there and I believe they are doing good work to try and improve things for these divers that do very dangerous work daily.
For those of you in my chain of command who have the audacity to challenge my motives; understand this, you never paid the price I did for failures in CG management! You haven’t yet walked where I have. I write, not just in this blog, but in magazines, and other forms of media in an effort to save lives and make things better for a lot of people. I’m not afraid of you and if you continue your stupidness, you will just embolden me further. Welcome to my world…
I would challenge you to stop harassing me and put your efforts into how we can solve the many problems that we have in managing the many responsibilities and missions that the Coast Guard owns! I lost my oldest son and I miss him very much, yet still behave professionally and continue to seek ways to improve the way we manage our very challenging organization.
How about starting with this, get the commercial diving regulatory mission off of the back burner, I believe that the last prioritization put it at number 91 (I think that is correct, maybe its moved up since I last looked) – and grow some balls and go ask congress for the funds to properly conduct this mission.
Everytime we short change a program (especially those we have as congressional mandates) we put lives in jeopardy! It costs lives people! It breaks hearts of real people who have real feelings!
Just thought I would challenge those naysayers to come out of the darkness and engage us in real dialogue, understanding that our efforts to make things better aren’t just some hobby of throwing rocks at the CG – is there not a cause?
We have a long history of doing more with less. I’d like to rephrase that; doing too much, with inadequate resources because culturally we are afraid to go ask for what we really need to do it all right, because we are afraid they might get mad and take away our toys if we get too obnoxious… Selah.
I can assure you, that my plans include getting real obnoxious with congressfolks and senators in an effort to change the laws that govern the offshore community. You can either go with me, or get run over in the process – either way, the train has left the station…
I will add more details to this post in the future – more for education, so you folks know the tragedy that is unfolding within this community – who knows, maybe we can no kidding save some lives… MM
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