Tigerman
Contributor
If you look more closely the article says that in SIXTY PERCENT of the cardiac events there was recognized cardiac symptoms in the divers involved. Id say when you have recognized cariac issues while on the boat it is VERY MUCH a human error to jump into an enviroment where you cant breathe anything but whats in your tank and any form of emergency response is severely inhibited..Yeah, it's kind of a nothing story. The sea wasn't at fault...no surprise there
Don't have a heart attack and don't run out of air. Accidents could be reduced if you don't do those things
About all you can conclude from almost any dive accident report IMO is that you should dive more frequently (have more recent experience) and be more self-aware.
I also cant see how running out of gas is NOT a human error.
The only way I can find this article to be a "nothing story" is if you already have knowledge of these things and if you do, its not targeted towards you in the first place.
Yet theres a lot of people on scubaboard frowning upon checkout dives because they feel its an insult to have to prove they can dive..It's easy to dismiss what Mr. Orr is saying, but I found a couple of very interesting statistics in the talk.
Although it's very intuitive that the first dive of a trip would be higher risk, 88% is an extremely high number. This immediately suggests to me that we might be able to reduce fatalities by ensuring that first dive is done under very controlled circumstances, and I wonder if the numbers are different at resorts that require a "checkout dive" before taking people to the "real" dive sites. Or if the number would be different if we looked at folks who either had recent (say, within a month) dive experience, or a recent refresher.
(as has been seen in threads discussing the topic before)