500 psi for two divers?

[captain]

Your J valve has already been tripped.. How often do you check your SPG?

Below is a 7 second video on how to correct that:

[video=youtube;KQeKQMV7gck]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQeKQMV7gck&feature=youtu.be[/video]

Good video Dale, never understood the reserve getting accidently being pushed down thing. I would check it as often as I now check an SPG.

 

[DogDiver]

Your J valve has already been tripped.. How often do you check your SPG?

Below is a 7 second video on how to correct that:

[video=youtube;KQeKQMV7gck]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQeKQMV7gck&feature=youtu.be[/video]

Oh ya, nobody had SPG's either.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Edward3c]

...

The answer therefore is a no-brainer ... do not stop. Go directly to the surface, Inflate your BCD as soon as you get there, and if for any reason you have insufficient air in your tank to inflate your BCD, DROP YOUR WEIGHTS! Remember, the person who is out of air will be unable to inflate their BCD, so if they cannot manually inflate while remaining on the surface, they should also DROP THEIR WEIGHTS!
...
... Bob (Grateful Diver)

The BSAC incident reports suggested divers where making it to the surface, then being pulled back under because their buoyancy wasn't up to the job, but if they had dropped their weight-belt they would have survived.

As a result the removal of own and buddy's weight-belts is built into all BSAC diver grades so divers are reminded it can be done:
* Ocean Diver
* Sperts Diver
* Dive Leader
* Advanced Diver

 

[EFX]

....For new divers and those divers who don't dive very often, I recommend practicing these skills in a pool or somewhere in relatively benign water ... sharing air, ascending while sharing air, manually inflating BCDs, and dropping weights while at the surface. The reason is simple ... like every other skill you use in life, they become easier with practice. And in times of stress, you WANT them to be as easy to perform as possible ... it's unlikely in the extreme that you'll have the mental bandwidth in an OOA situation to think back on what you learned in OW class if you haven't practiced it, and performing these skills in a timely and relatively calm manner is critical to ending this dive without it becoming a real emergency.

Great practical advice. Very well written. The only thing I could add to make it more complete is that once you master the skills in the pool continue practicing in open water conditions that you will be diving in.

Final thought ... a real OOA situation is nothing like what you did in class. You won't have time to mentally prepare ... it will come as a total surprise, which you must react to relatively quickly. You also will most likely not have the ability to take that last complete breath off your regulator like you did in class ... you may therefore find yourself already in an air-deficient condition at the time the OOA happens, which makes a prompt OOA response rather critical to a successful outcome. This is where personalities come into play .... how prepared are you to react calmly to a surprise, emergency situation? It's best to know the answer to that question before you ever find yourself in a position to have to find out.

Short on air -- good point. To be comfortable in any emergency practice swiming to your buddy on a half breath and getting her attention. Unlike benign training scenarios your buddy will most likely not be looking at you. You simply can't wait until your buddy casually glances your way. Fractions of a second count. It is your life! Get in the habit of testing your alternate supply at depth on every dive and abort the dive if it doesn't work. You don't want to be in an OOA emergency and find out your alternate isn't working.

 

[boulderjohn]

You don't want to be in an OOA emergency and find out your alternate isn't working.

...or is not available.

I stopped using the standard alternate air system a number of years ago after learning of a diver who drowned when she went OOA, got to her buddy, and discovered that there was no alternate in its proper position in his chest area. It had come loose during the dive and was somehow trapped behind him.

When I teach classes, which must be done with this system, I am constantly having to get students to put their alternates back in their holders before we do any exercise that includes OOA, because they they fall out so frequently. Maybe it's just me, but I see that as a flaw in the system.

 

[tursiops]

...or is not available.

I stopped using the standard alternate air system a number of years ago after learning of a diver who drowned when she went OOA, got to her buddy, and discovered that there was no alternate in its proper position in his chest area. It had come loose during the dive and was somehow trapped behind him.

When I teach classes, which must be done with this system, I am constantly having to get students to put their alternates back in their holders before we do any exercise that includes OOA, because they they fall out so frequently. Maybe it's just me, but I see that as a flaw in the system.

Or a flaw in the holder! Some work much better than others.

 

[DaleC]

Or failure to do a proper pre dive check.
On several occasions, when I've insisted on doing so with newer divers, they have had the octo trapped by their rig and would have gone on to dive otherwise.

 

[doctormike]

Or a flaw in the holder! Some work much better than others.

Octo on a bungee necklace, donate the primary. Works SO well. Single tank, short hose, no problem. Not just a "tech" thing.

 

[boulderjohn]

Or failure to do a proper pre dive check.
On several occasions, when I've insisted on doing so with newer divers, they have had the octo trapped by their rig and would have gone on to dive otherwise.

They are always on during the predive check. They come off during the diving.

When I still used that system, using several different holders over those years, I learned to find the alternate and put it back into place almost as a standard part of the giant stride entry procedure--t would come out that frequently.

---------- Post added August 25th, 2014 at 08:58 AM ----------

Octo on a bungee necklace, donate the primary. Works SO well. Single tank, short hose, no problem. Not just a "tech" thing.

Such a simple solution that does not cost a dime more than the traditional octo method. Always there. Always available. Easier to donate.

When the idea of an alternate air system was first created, divers had to find a good way to do it. The recreational community figured out the "golden triangle" method, and that because a standard. The cave diving (and other tech) community embraced the alternate air idea, too, but they realized they would have to do it differently because of the problems of their diving environment. The two systems became standards for two different diving environments.

When I was purely a recreational diver, I used to resent the heck out of the people on ScubaBoard who would push the idea of the bungeed alternate by completely overselling it with the "you're gong to die" approach to discussion. They made some ridiculous, even ludicrous, statements about the inferiority of the traditional octo system. When I went into tech diving and had to use the bungeed system, I thought it was just fine for that, but I continued to use the traditional octo for my recreational diving, in large part because I did not want my fellow recreational divers to associate me with those jerks who were making those ridiculous claims. Then I heard about the drowning woman I mentioned earlier, and I decided that even if the bungeed system is only marginally better than the traditional system, why not embrace that extra margin of safety? So I use that system in all diving--I just try not to be a jerk about it.

 

[doctormike]

When I was purely a recreational diver, I used to resent the heck out of the people on ScubaBoard who would push the idea of the bungeed alternate by completely overselling it with the "you're gong to die" approach to discussion. They made some ridiculous, even ludicrous, statements about the inferiority of the traditional octo system. When I went into tech diving and had to use the bungeed system, I thought it was just fine for that, but I continued to use the traditional octo for my recreational diving, in large part because I did not want my fellow recreational divers to associate me with those jerks who were making those ridiculous claims. Then I heard about the drowning woman I mentioned earlier, and I decided that even if the bungeed system is only marginally better than the traditional system, why not embrace that extra margin of safety? So I use that system in all diving--I just try not to be a jerk about it.

I think that you have uncovered an interesting scubaboard phenomenon...

If I could sum up in one concept the difference between a tech diver and a recreational diver, it's not just the presence or absence of obligatory deco stops. It would be that the tech diver obsesses over every bit of his gear to make sure that it is as optimized as possible, spends a lot of time thinking about the dive plan ahead of time, and plans for reasonably foreseeable failure points.

So there are a lot of things that come out of the tech diving community that are totally appropriate for recreational diving (e.g. BP/W, shears instead of BFKs, SMBs, bungeed octo, primary donation, long hose, etc...) but lots of people just freeze up and say "I'm not interested in tech diving" and reject them out of hand. Most of these gear optimizations are the result of a lot of very experienced divers spending a lot of time looking at a lot of dive accidents and figuring out how to prevent them (as opposed to equipment manufacturers looking to maximize profits).