I do love it when experienced pilots put forward theories that are fine in their own little worlds but don't translate well across to another operations.
Let us think about how offshore operations are conducted. They are mostly to helidecks which are in the region of 200ft amsl. So Crabs cruising at 200ft is not a scenario that fits in with what happens offshore.
On takeoff the idea is to minimise the chance of a tailstrike should one engine fail therefore there is a SOP for each aircraft type which basically is a dynamic t/o which gives a ballistic profile should an engine stop - this clears the tail from the edge of the helideck. This profle entails high power settings which as the a/c accelerates give it a good rate of climb. The time taken for the a/c to reach 500ft is therefore very short so the SOP to reach 500ft is a good one.
Remember the SOP has to cover all weather scenarios from CAVOK to a dark and stormy night. So the non NS pilots ideas of descending to 50 - 100ft (TC) is dangerous. You are asking the HP to make a fairly major attitude/power change to start a descent towards the sea with the chance he misses his 50ft level off either through distraction - in Crab's words
(engine still burning)
or intertia because the a/c is going down too fast.
The a/c have autopilots with more and more sophistication but none has auto letdown as does the Seaking. The SOPs also have to cater for a wide variance in crew experience so that any Captain can fly with any copilot. NS operations are not like cosy SAR flights where you know the weaknesses of the 4 copilots you always fly with. On NS operations you may not have flown with a particular copilot for months but you need to know how he will react to any emergency.
We all know that having a burning airframe is potentially very dangerous but there is no point in putting a serviceable a/c in the water, endangering 19 pax who haven't a clue what is going on outside the warm cabin. They are not on intercom like a military crew who will be aware of the emergency from the very start so we also need time to brief them - remember some of the pax on the recent ETAP ditching thought they had landed normally until water started to come into the cabin.
So the climb to 500ft isn't as "dangerous" as Crab and TC try to make out
HF