ERROR CHAINS

By Mark Young

“For the want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for the want of a shoe the horse was lost; and for the want of a horse the rider was lost, being overtaken and slain by the enemy, all for the want of care about a horseshoe nail.”
–Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack
 
The cover story for this edition took me back to an article that ran in the second issue of Dive Training — December 1991. It was a Learning Experience column written by a guy who got into trouble diving from a private boat.The reason that article readily comes to mind is because I never forgot it; I’ve always been amazed that it’s so possible for intelligent people to do dumb things. More about that in a minute, but here’s a recap of the event.

So the author’s friend calls and asks if he would like to go lobster diving. The friend owns a boat, they’re in South Florida and the Gulf Stream should make it an easy drift dive; the divers will tow a float, which the boat will follow to pick them up at the end of the dive.

On this day the boat will be driven (and the float will be followed) by the guy’s new girlfriend. She’s never done this before; in fact he’ll teach her to drive on the way to the dive site. It’s just the three on board so she will also be alone on deck as the sole observer. None of this is too smart so far.

Before leaving the dock they question whether to dive. The seas are running 2 to 4 feet, expected later to become 3 to 5. They decide they can beat that, and go. The wind is picking up when they reach the site so their next good idea is that it’s a good idea to get diving and get back soon. In other words, no time for predive briefings or much of a dive plan or, for that matter, to show her how to use the boat’s radio or find her way back to an inlet if necessary. It’s also getting pretty late in the day. They continue on and make the dive.

You can see what’s coming; why couldn’t they?

We tend to think that accidents come from out of the blue, but most don’t. They are usually at the end of a series of events. In fact far too often accidents or incidents are both foreseeable and avoidable. So why do even smart people do such predictably dumb things?

The best answers come from the archives of the National Transportation Safety Board, the operation that investigates airplane accidents. After thousands of well-documented cases, here is what they’ve determined.

The chain of events leading up to an accident is often called the error chain. At the start of the chain is almost always some human factor of personality, of judgment or fault. It’s the mental mechanism that, for example, keeps the pilot flying into iffy weather eager to make his destination when he probably shouldn’t have left to begin with, or should have fixed his gyro, or taken the time to top off his fuel tanks for margin, or had the opportunity to stop at numerous airports along the way. He instead ends up a statistic.

Those same human factors in play, the author of the story hesitantly yields to the boating experience of his friend, who committed to take his buddy diving and is hesitant to back out while the girlfriend, obvious to all to be incompetent for the task, wants to appear cool, capable and willing. There were also at least six event links along the error chain when any one of the three could have said no, and broken it. The horseman is slain, the pilot is lost and the divers adrift on a dark sea, worried as much about how the girl will get back home as about how they will. Lucky for all of them it ends up OK.

Diving from a private boat is fantastic fun. The how-to-do-it article in this edition is a very good primer. What is left to consider when it comes to both your ultimate safety and enjoyment, is awareness of that chain of events. Those not tuned in to their instincts are rarely aware that an accident is forming, so if divers and boaters pay attention and accept the responsibility for safety, most links will be broken before the chains that cause accidents can even begin. And at that time when your gut does kick in, you only have to break one link in the chain of events to never know what was coming.

In the end, it’s always better to be on shore wishing you were in the water than in the water wishing you were on the shore.

FORGING FISH

By Mark Young

Perhaps the greatest art forger of the 20th century was Hungarian-born artist Elmyr de Hory (1906-1976). After studying classical painting at institutes in Germany and France, de Hory realized That his true artistic bent resided in the ability to copy the works of other artists, which he did prolifically. Picasso. Matisse. Renoir. Modigliani. De Hory claimed to have sold more than a thousand forgeries to art galleries and wealthy individuals around the world.

Elmyr was different from most art forgers in that he didn’t copy the paintings of famous artists. Instead, he painted original works in their style, which made the forgeries even harder to detect. Part of what makes the art of forgery remarkable is the different forms that it takes in the countless areas that it pervades. Forgery is basically defined as the process of making, adapting or imitating objects, statistics or documents with the intent to deceive. If there’s money in faking it, someone is making it. And the fact that someone’s buying it often adds another layer of authenticity to the hoax. After all, what does the value of a forged item become when you tell about it?

For example, it is beyond speculation that quite a bit of what you see on display in museums is not the real

deal. Museums have been suckered by forgers to the point that known forgeries remain on display, serious efforts to examine questionable objects are rare and, according to one museum whistleblower, “the system is supported by a mafia-like code of silence within museums and academe that conceals information and impedes exposure of the underlying process of plunder, forgery and smuggling.” Add that to the wonderment of your next museum visit.

Mostly we think of forgery in terms of money and art, but it’s rife in archaeology, literature, music, documents, history, perfumes, designer clothing, stamps, relics, religion, baseball trading cards, and even wine. So should it come as a surprise that forgeries are rampant among fish? One company in Florida, aided by export- exporta - mong export ers in Asia, imported thousands of pounds of catfish into the United States labeled and sold as grouper, just to avoid paying duties that the Department of Commerce had imposed on Vietnamese catfish.

That example is just one small act on the grand stage of seafood fraud that includes a multitude of illegal activities, undertaken by countless characters in countless places along the international supply chain. The fraud typically involves mislabeling (forging) seafood through the substitution of one species of fish — usually of inferior quality — for another, mostly for economic gain. The feature story that begins on Page 30 provides an interesting look into fish fraud; it’s a disturbing and informative article.

You can imagine that Elmyr de Hory’s career makes for good reading, and indeed he is the subject of a few books. The best was written by then-respected author Clifford Irving after extensive interviews with the subject. (“Fake! The Story of Elmyr de Hory, the Greatest Art Forger of Our Time” was published in 1969.)

So does the name Clifford Irving ring a bell? Just two years after publishing “Fake,” Irving pulled his own

“de Hory” using forged letters that he said were from Howard Hughes, to trick McGraw-Hill into buying a fake autobiography of the reclusive billionaire. However, while the subject of his previous book worked to

make his forgeries hard to detect, Irving had the brass to perpetrate his fraud and write the autobiography

with much fanfare, and dumber yet while Hughes was still alive. Irving went to prison for the scam, as did the owner of the Florida fish company, mere footnotes to the ever-growing market in fakes and forgeries where not everything is what it appears; perhaps not even that salmon fillet on the plate before you.

Enjoy this edition of Dive Training as you dine on

— whatever that is.

OCEAN'S DAUGHTER

Written by Mark Young

Midnight on the water

I saw the oceans daughter

Walkn'on a wave she came

Staring as she called my name

And I can't get it out of my head

No, I can't get it out of my head

Now my old world is gone for dead

'Cos I can't get it out of my head

-Electric Light Orchestra

Benchley called his brother to tell what had happened to him and to ask a favor. The story is that Bench’s friends were going to the Caribbean and asked if he wanted to come along. He had to get certified, though, because they were going there to dive. Bench kind of always wanted to do that so he took lessons and a month later was with his buddies in the sun having a great time. He did his checkout dives at the resort and told George how he spent the rest of the week doing the most incredible stuff.

The question for George was more like a plea.“I’m going back. You have to get certified and come. I promise you’ll love it because you’re like me. You can’t say no. Leesy too.”

It’s George’s wife Lisa telling me this on the phone. She and George had talked about diving. They like outdoors stuff but the conversations about taking up diving usually stopped with her and a halfhearted, “Yes we should.” The conversation wasn’t going to end there this time. Bench had dragged Lisa and George off on other adventures and they were always fun, especially when he brought along his eternal fiancée (of seven years) who they all loved and rounded out the foursome. She had agreed to be certified too. There was no saying no.

Lisa went on. “I don’t know why I always managed to put it off, whether it was the money or maybe I was a little chicken about doing it — it was easier to shine it on. But we did it. We found a dive store that we didn’t know was here and our class had two other couples and two other guys. There were eight of us and by the second class we were comfortable with each other, and by the end we were at the bars and having a great time together. We became good friends. Diving was our common bond. But that’s not why I’m calling.”

She was calling to say they went off on their adventure with Bench, and that her life hasn’t been the same. She fell in love with the sea. She hasn’t been able get that phrase out of her head from the song by the Electric Light Orchestra. “They were singing about me, the ocean’s daughter. And how odd the title of the song, “Can’t Get It Out of My Head,” because that’s how I’ve been; profoundly changed. I asked her if George became the same way and she said no, that would be impossible. He loves it too but she’s gone nuts.

Most people come into diving pretty unaware. Blank slates, if you will. They know little about the equipment they will be using, are certainly unfamiliar with the skills and knowledge, and I contend that most new divers have never heard of the island of Bonaire. From the minute they first walk in, diving becomes a total learning experience.

The education goes past the bookwork and skills, to way beyond what they think this will be. New divers are soon to find out more than they know about the world’s history, geography and its people. They will learn some oceanography and lots about marine life and diving’s environments. But when they swim alongside of something alive and the size of a bus, or a wall that descends thousands of feet beyond unlimited visibility, they learn quite a lot about themselves. Prior personal experience and their very familiar world expand past something that they have imagined, to discover that it’s more. For many the observance and appreciation of nature on the scale where divers are privileged to be will become deeply personal. What is really coming in the way of learning, for the new diver, is often unexpected. Sometimes quite unexpected.

She called not just to tell me all that, but to ask if we could write something powerful that would entice other Lisas who are on the fence to give this a try. I believe she just did.