Local Law and Regulatory Compliance
FlowState Divers operates across many countries, waters, and legal systems, and this document does not attempt to enumerate all of them. What it states plainly is the principle underneath: no standard in this document, and no instruction from a mentor, ever overrides the law of the place a dive is actually taking place in.
The Standard Sets a Floor, Not a Ceiling Above the Law
Where this document requires something stricter than local law - a lower maximum depth, a more conservative ppO₂ limit, additional equipment, a smaller team size - that FlowState Divers requirement still applies in full. Our standards are a floor beneath which we do not train, regardless of what local regulation would otherwise permit. Meeting the legal minimum of a jurisdiction has never been sufficient justification for meeting nothing more than that minimum.
Where local law requires something this document does not mention, or requires something stricter than what we ask for, the local requirement governs. A mentor operating in a jurisdiction with additional legal obligations - specific certifications for site access, marine park permits, protected species protocols, mandatory local guiding, additional insurance, or equipment mandates beyond our own - is responsible for knowing those obligations and folding them into training without exception. This document cannot anticipate every regulation in every country we operate in, and it does not try to. It relies on the mentor on the ground to know the water they are actually diving in.
Mentor Responsibility
Ignorance of a local requirement is not a defence available to a FlowState Divers mentor. If a mentor is uncertain whether a legal requirement applies to a given site or activity, the responsible action is to confirm it before proceeding, not to proceed and assume compliance.
Diver Responsibility
Divers training with FlowState Divers are likewise expected to comply with the law of the place they are diving, independent of what their mentor tells them. Where a diver is aware of a local legal requirement - a permit they personally need, a restriction tied to their nationality or residency, an obligation specific to their own circumstances - that awareness is theirs to act on. A mentor's silence on a point of local law is not permission to disregard it.
When Local Law and FlowState Divers Standards Appear to Conflict
Genuine conflict between a legal requirement and a FlowState Divers standard is rare, but where it does occur, the resolution is straightforward: the training does not proceed until the conflict is resolved, either by adapting the session to satisfy both, or by not conducting that specific training at that specific site. We do not train around a legal restriction by treating our own standard as sufficient justification to ignore it, and we do not train around one of our own standards by treating local permissiveness as sufficient justification to relax it. Both apply, in full, at once.
This Section Does Not Replace Local Knowledge
Nothing written here is a substitute for a mentor's or diver's actual, current knowledge of the regulatory environment they are operating in. Laws change, permitting regimes shift, and what was true of a dive site last season may not be true today. This section states the principle. Knowing what that principle actually requires, in a specific place, at a specific time, remains the ongoing responsibility of everyone training and diving under the FlowState Divers name.