Out of Air on Descent

[dumpsterDiver]

Wow, good post..What was the max depth?.. 30 feet ? .... and it scared the hell out of you... A good lesson about how quickly a dive accident can develop.

I had a friend diving solo with a heavy steel tank, no ditchable lead, minimal wetsuit and little body fat, jumped in, kicked down hard and found he had zero air at 30 feet, heavy and sinking fast.... He opted to kick as hard as possible and made it to the surface.. barely.. A guy with many hundreds of solo dives.. Said he almost blacked out from the exertion and low oxygen....

I've jumped in with my air turned off way too many times.. i've seen it happen many times....it is generally inexperienced divers.. or very experienced divers who become complacent, it is much more common than you would think.

I now dive a pony bottle for pretty much any dive, although they don't work either if you don't turn them on.

As for the guilt trip of inflating the BC and running for the surface..... That is pretty much what I would be doing too, especialy if it was on the descent.

My only real, underwater rescue was on a diver who made it to 70 feet with her tank turned off. When I got to her she was too panicked to even take a regulator from me. I shot both of us to the surface as fast as possible. 20 minutes later I was so shook up I was nearly in tears... I was more upset than the women I saved.

if you keep diving, you will collect more "dive stories" and hopefully they will all end as well.

 

[lowviz]

If you look at your air gauge and take 3 good breaths after geared up but just before you get in the water, you will find that things go a lot more smoothly.

Good advice.

The SPG needle better not move the smallest amount, this is what you are watching while you take those three deep breaths.

Next a quick puff of air into your BC. This insures that you can reach your inflator (isn't jammed behind you somewhere) and/or the hose is connected to the BC.

---> Face-to-face watching your own SPG's:"HUFF HUFF HUFF, puff" (sounds a bit stupid, but it works for me)

OP: Nice job! There won't be a next time.

 

[ferris213]

Thanks for posting this, and it reinforces the need to make sure your air is one before you get in the water. Like the others have posted, three or four big breaths while you look at the needle will show if it is opened up all the way.

I'm curious about your reg set up. You have a bungeed backup around your neck, do you use a long hose on your primary? Or are you using 'standard' length hoses with your octo on a 40' hose? I would have thought it would bow out a long way if it was bungeed round your neck then?

I'm really glad it worked out for you both. It sounds like a really scary situation that was handled quite well.

 

[mdax]

before EVERY single dive, breathe from your reg while watching your pressure gauge. My buddy and I do this on every dive before getting in the water, or walking to the back of a boat.

 

[LoonDiver]

Completely ignoring entendres here, I don't think that's reasonable.

His equipment is vital to your safety. You aren't (just) checking for his benefit. If the best check involves touching, you touch.

Or maybe I'm violating some diver code that wasn't explained in my OW class. Either way I wouldn't hesitate to touch a buddy's gear as park of the pre-dive check, whether I had just met them or was married to them.

I guess I should have been more specific that he doesn't like me touching his DIVE equipment. I don't have any problem respecting that. As other posters have mentioned, I check to make sure his air is on by watching his pressure gauge while he breathes from his regs.

---------- Post Merged at 10:55 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 10:43 PM ----------

What about dropping the weight belt once he had air? Given that all that was holding them together was her grip, and assuming one thought about it, would it be a good procedure to do so? That would at least solve the negative buoyancy problem and bring them to the surface together without her keeping a death grip on his BCD.

- Bill

I actually have this question myself. In our debriefing of this situation, my husband and I have discussed whether it would have made sense to drop SOME of his weights. I'm not sure I would have been able to manually inflate his BCD -- because I only had one free hand for one thing. Coincidentally earlier in the week he and I had a discussion of when, if ever, it would be appropriate to drop weights at depth and concluded there was never good time to do that. I'm sure I'm missing something.

---------- Post Merged at 10:58 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 10:43 PM ----------

Wow, good post..What was the max depth?.. 30 feet ? .... and it scared the hell out of you... A good lesson about how quickly a dive accident can develop.

I bet we didn't get any deeper than 25 feet and yeah, it was a good lesson.

[/QUOTE]if you keep diving, you will collect more "dive stories" and hopefully they will all end as well.[/QUOTE]

I hope so! I've enjoyed reading many of your dive stories, Dumpster!

---------- Post Merged at 11:07 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 10:43 PM ----------

I'm curious about your reg set up. You have a bungeed backup around your neck, do you use a long hose on your primary? Or are you using 'standard' length hoses with your octo on a 40' hose? I would have thought it would bow out a long way if it was bungeed round your neck then?

To clarify the reg set up, I don't have a bungeed backup around my neck. (I'm actually not sure what that is). What I have a separate rubber "necklace" with a rectangular mouthpiece holder for my backup reg. The mouthpiece pulls out easily when it is needed. I don't have a long hose for either my primary or backup reg, although the hose is a little longer on the backup reg, so it probably is 40 inches.

 

[DevonDiver]

Sooner or later, most divers experience a 'wake up call' as to the necessity for applying the BASIC Open Water skills and drills. Those experiences tend to ground us about our 'real' capabilities - it's all too easy to make an assumption about our reactions during a hypothetical incident, but reality tends to prove otherwise. We learn from them - and they make us better divers.

There was a lot done right during this incident - some good procedures were applied (descent awareness), that prevented an early human error (equipment setup/buddy checks) from becoming a potentially fatal incident.

Few of us are beyond the capacity to make human errors - which is why the application of safety procedures and protocols are vital. I'm often flabbergasted when I see divers neglect these things, most due to the (erroneous) assumption that they are sufficiently experienced to 'not need them'.

Luckily, in an open-water diving context, the proper application of just one effective procedure is sufficient to resolve an incident chain before it reaches a terminal consequence. Obviously, with more diligent application of procedures, such events would be arrested at an earlier stage - for instance, in the OP's scenario, a surface buddy check would have resolved this incident before it even became an 'incident'.

The other major issue highlighted by this case study is our psychology. Divers who have not experienced a 'wake up call', often under-estimate the impact of stress upon their performance to resolve issues. This often results in a diver assuming that their hypothetical/notional understanding of problem resolution would equate accurately to their performance in a real incident. I see this failing demonstrated with frightening regularity on Scubaboard, mostly in debates about advanced diving activities - specifically where relatively inexperienced divers debate why they "would be safe" to solo/deco/overhead dive etc.

When we talk about a diver's "experience", we shouldn't be obsessed with a simple dive count, or even the conditions and activities undertaken - but rather, the limits of their familiarity dealing with incidents, the factors that contribute towards them...and the resolutions that solved them.

In that respect, the OP and their buddy gained some major 'experience' during the incident outlined in this thread. They should be assured that such events happen to most of us, sooner or later. What we learn from them - especially what they teach us about our strengths and weaknesses - makes them a very positive step in our diving progression.

 

[billt4sf]

To clarify the reg set up, I don't have a bungeed backup around my neck. (I'm actually not sure what that is). What I have a separate rubber "necklace" with a rectangular mouthpiece holder for my backup reg. The mouthpiece pulls out easily when it is needed. I don't have a long hose for either my primary or backup reg, although the hose is a little longer on the backup reg, so it probably is 40 inches.

I'd love to see a picture or something of what that "necklace with a rectangular mouthpiece holder" is.

- Bill

 

[LoonDiver]

About the necklace thing -- Someone posted recently that if your "octo" (that's your secondary reg, right?) is bungeed, the hose isn't long enough for your buddy to use it comfortably unless you change to a longer hose. Doesn't that create an issue for them since he was negatively buoyant and she was positively buoyant? Would it work better if they were both used to where the secondary reg is on each other's BCDs?

As I noted above, my backup reg isn't bungeed. Both my husband and I have our backup regs in the same place, on the necklace just below our chin, so we know exactly where to find it! It is very easy to locate whether we are reaching for it ourselves to donate it or the buddy needs to grab it, as he did the other day.

 

[lowviz]

...//...In that respect, the OP and their buddy gained some major 'experience' during the incident outlined in this thread. ...//...

All rescues are ugly. But that isn't how they get graded, now, is it?

 

[LoonDiver]

I'd love to see a picture or something of what that "necklace with a rectangular mouthpiece holder" is.

- Bill

Here's a link to one at LeisurePro: Manta Regulator Necklace

The mouthpiece holder is actually an oval.