Blinded signs

[STOGEY]

Why not just go back up to the boat and retrieve your other mask, and go back down?

 

[Doc Intrepid]

I definitely didn’t mean this thread to be about losing masks only – it is just a regular example of reduced viz, for some of us more because even having to swap to non-Rx mask puts us in a bit of a blur. Also, I am not only thinking of maneuvering out of poor viz per se or just getting out of water but situations were one might be caught in an akward position for awhile - maybe with the mask dislodged too or maybe so that you just can not establish eye-contact. If you cannot see, you cannot see light communications either.

Piikki,

You've already been given one book and one definitive answer by Pickens. The answer is that cave diving has produced a wide number of signals and communications for no-vis environments. All of them (obviously) rely on touch contact.

The team assumes a linear formation on the line. Generally, but not always, the right hand is on the line, the left hand is on the other team members. The reel is handled by the last diver (e.g. furthest inside the cave), which requires a bit of dexterity on the part of the reel handler.

Signals indeed consist of pushes, pulls, squeezes, and spelling out hand signals inside the palm of the diver to whom you're communicating. It is by no means fool proof, it is extremely time consuming, and its a PITA, but it also works.

Using such a series of signals in a non-cave environment should not be impossible, but would require some baseline assumptions: foremost, that the divers maintain touch contact at all time, that they have some means of navigation (e.g. in the absence of a line to follow, someone must be able to follow a compass, etc.), and that they have a tremendous amount of practice and experience in communicating to each other using no-viz techniques.

Also, keep in mind that "no vis" isn't a matter of lights or masks: in a cave each diver has three lights minimum, and some have four. Between two divers, thats six lights minimum. The probability that all six lights fail on one dive is astronomically unlikely. Ergo, non-light situations are unlikely to occur. For reasons already explained above, no-mask situations don't exist either - one or more members of the team carry spare masks. The no-vis environment is rather a silt-out, where you're swimming in what resembles chocolate milk. You may have working lights, but they don't do much for you. Better to turn them off and avoid getting disoriented - just follow the line.

You can see why using touch communications in open water could be problematic if there was no line to follow - trying to screw with a compass in no-vis would be exciting, at best.

Still, the answer to your question is that no-vis comm is indeed possible. See NSS-CDS and NACD manuals on cavern diving and cave diving for more information.

Finally, in a short correction, just because you don't have a mask on doesn't mean you can't see - and understand - light signals. Sheck Exley relates an anecdote in his book "Caverns Measureless to Man" where a companion with no mask was getting panicky,...Sheck had no way to guide the diver out. So he turned on his light and the diver swam toward the light. Sheck kept turning off the light, swimming forward, turning on the light, diver swam to light, and repeating this behavior all the way out of the cave. Light signals are pretty basic to begin with, there is no reason why a diver without a mask couldn't see a HID light being waved in front of their eyes - assuming they are not swimming in what looks like chocolate milk!

Regards,

Doc

 

[Mark Vlahos]

Is there a good resource/list in existence for signs for situations where one or both buddies have pretty much lost ability to visually recognize communications?

What basic signs (hand to hand/bodyparts/gear?) you use when your buddy goes blind as a bat (losing mask etc) or when viz messes it all up, and you need to to collect yourselves and make a plan what next? Any consensus or well-known ones around? Or any you could share that you've agreed with your team members to use?

piikki

Piikki,

Your first line of defense against losing visibility is to carry a spare mask with you in the water on each dive, if you need a prescription mask then a second prescription mask is preferable, but a normal mask is better than nothing. If you dive at night carry two working lights. Your next best bet is to get the book in the link earlier in this thread and learn the signals. You also need to make sure that your buddy knows those signals. Cave divers need to be able to communicate even in zero viz. But you need to remember that to guard agains loosing visibility cave divers carry a spare mask, 3 lights, and learn special kicking techniques to keep from stirring up the silt... So a team of two cave divers hits the water with 4 masks, 6 lights and a thorough understanding of the signals in the book.

A cave diver has also been put through some EXTREMELY stressful situations in their class and demonstrated that they will not panic. My cave diving course consisted of somthing like 18 dives in an overhead environment, and on several of those dives I was required to safely exit the cave system from a horizontal penetration of several hundred feet in twisting caves without the benefit of lights, masks, one fin, or my own air supply, In many cases we were required to suffer many failures at the same time on the same dive.

Having the backup mask and light is great, as well as learning the signals. I don't think you are likely to do it, but I think it is a good idea to point out at this time that any diver that has not had specific training should never enter an overhead environment such as a cave or wreck where there is no direct exit to the surface.

Mark Vlahos

 

[piikki]

Ok, I give up. I am not making myself understood. Thanks for the book reference, again. And sorry for pursuing further discussion while waiting to get my hands on it. I have no idea what NSS-CDS or NACD refer to but I can search even though I have a feeling they are something beyond me. I have no intention of becoming overhead environ diver, furthest I am planning is cavern. And I do not dive where I am not trained. I don’t generally dive with lights, and am not even savvy with light communications. If I got in trouble in dark, zero viz the main problem solving for me would be to get the heck out of there and forget about playing around. Also, I dive from shore 90% of my dives, so I do not usually have a reference/ascent line. Progressing on line is thus not my first and foremost interest.

My dives are shallow, and I’d rather have my buddy look for my blown away gear underwater for awhile, and then continue my dive without unnecessary ascend-redescent to retrieve e.g. a mask (I have back up Rx mask that I currently do not carry on me since I have very limited real estate for pockets on my waist). I do not know why this discussion keeps on running in a circle about mask and how much somebody can see without a mask. I’ve lost eye-contact with my buddy because I’ve gotten caught in her gear (yeah right, it might have been our first dive but let that serve as an example)! Nobody missed a mask but we could not see each others’ faces, and I could not even put my hands in front of her to sign. Nor could we really start a controlled ascent before figuring out a way to break loose. I’ve lost viz when clearing a mask and blowing silt into my eyeballs. No light would have made it any easier to open the eyes while they were still stinging. And, I am new enough that if we have issues with getting caught in anything (usually involves float line), we do often mess viz up.

I prefer to deal with the issue underwater if possible rather than rushing up and doing extra ascents and descents. I am not talking about digging ourselves outta a death hole. When diving between boulders, fallen trees and stuff it might be more elegant to tell buddy to hold onto a branch while going to untie a float than showing her around. Or be able to tell blind buddy that I am in bigger trouble than her and it’s time to make a move. Would have been interesting to learn a few less personal signs but I guess it’s either that I am stepping some boundaries or just being silly and nobody else ever does this. Duh. Ber when can I come play in your pool?

 

[pants!]

As Doc mentions, cave diving has produced a set of accepted, tested, and understood no-vis signals.

If you have one diver who has lost vision (no mask, burning eyes, eel bit his eyes out, whatever), the diver with vision is clearly the immediate leader. The new 'lead' diver should grip the 'blind' diver firmly by the arm and quite literally guide him around. Squeeze means stay, a tug forward means swim forward, a tug up means ascend, and so forth.

These are what I've been taught, and I suspect you will find them in any cave diving manual.

 

[lamont]

We got some no-mask experience in my RecTriox course this weekend.

Remember if you've got a maskless buddy and you're ascending that they'll need their left hand free to manipulate buoyancy. Touch communication should be right-hand-to-right-hand. The maskless buddy needs to be able to trust the person guiding them and not try to second guess things. The maskless buddy may also be able to see a bit -- I followed a line for a few hundred feet with my mask off while swimming free and neutrally buoyant and was actually able to have my HID light on the line because I could see it (or at least the average of 3 or 4 blurry images of the line...). Doing a free ascent with a maskless buddy takes a lot of trust, its probably far better to find an up-line and get the maskless buddy hanging on it if you don't have a lot of practice.

I don't really understand a lot of the suggestions about 'okay' and 'not-okay' signals. By definition things are not okay and you need to scoot. The useful things to communicate are going to be 'stop', 'go', 'ascend', 'descend', 'level off', and then emergencies like 'OOA' or 'entanglement'.

Practicing backup mask deployment is also a good idea.

 

[JRScuba]

Personally' i have a honker that connects in between my QD hose and my inflator. it is basicly a underwater air wistle. it is called a hammerhead.

For want of a better word honker will do.

I also have a hammerhead and tell my dive buddies that when they hear a certain number of honks it will mesome thing.
Ex: 1 honk = look see. 2 honks can't see you I'm going to go to the surface.

hitting it multiople times MEANS HELP I"M IN TROUBLE.

Get the drift. You can make up you own signal as you go along.

 

[do it easy]

I think I get your point. After diving with a buddy for a while, you get a feel about how they react and will be able to understand their signals- some of my buddies like to tell me "I'm #1" by using their middle finger. Using the dropped mask example, if my buddy kicks my mask off, then he would be the leader. We would go straight to touch contact, which in open water, would probably be a squeeze OK on the shoulder- this would tell me that my buddy realizes I have a problem and will assess the situation for me. If the mask were nearby, then we could us the push/pull-stop/go to get to the mask. The constant contact would help me maintain my bouyancy. If for some reason, my buddy had to leave me to get the mask, then I would expect that he would lead my hand to something I could hold onto and then give a squeeze over my hand to signal "hold" while he retrieved the mask (at this point I would expect that he would be "nearby" and relatively safe, i.e. not trying to untangle my mask from a gill net). I then wait until he returns with my mask. If he decided that my mask was unretrieveable, then he could signal an ascent- make the thumb and put my hand over it, then I would thumb back, or he could just maintain touch contact and ascend; I should follow.

In your entanglement situtation, if you were stuck on another diver and couldn't face each other, your touch contact will probably be odd- elbow to leg, back of hand to neck- you were stuck together oddly. Hopefully your buddy will realize this isn't the standard shoulder/leg squeeze and be able to figure out that you're both stuck and no one is the leader. At this point it becomes a series of squeezes and wiggles to figure who is stuck the least and has the best advantage- think of it like full body thumb wrestling combined with the stop/go squeezes.

Every situation is different, but essentially, it boils down to trusting your buddy and talking over various situations to that you're on the same page. On the way to the dive site, you can play the "what if" games to come up with solutions to "standard" problems. don't get to crazy- what if a giant octopus suckers my mask off and starts to turn my air off at the same time? Of course, the answer is to take pictures, then establish an airsource, then take more pictures- breathing is important, but the mask is not- the buddy can see what happened after the fact as long as you get good pictures. Hope that helps.

 

[WaterDawg]

If my buddy kicks my mask off, I first and formost give him the "your #1" singnal w/ my middle finger like DoitEasy described.

 

[Doc Intrepid]

Ok, I give up. I am not making myself understood...

NACD = National Association for Cave Diving, find them here (books are under NACD Store – they have a brand new student workbook that was just released):

http://www.safecavediving.com/default.asp

NSS-CDS = National Speleological Society – Cave Diving Section, find them here:

http://www.nsscds.com/

http://www.nsscdstraining.com/

They also have a recently new student workbook and Cave Diving Manual.


I’m sorry I misunderstood what you were looking for, or the situation you were thinking of, I wasn’t trying to be obtuse.

If you’re discussing temporary open water no-line situations where eye to eye contact or light signals are not available, touch-contact or audible signals must work – and you and your buddy should work these out between yourselves.

Whatever you use, it might require frequent practice to ensure that, under the anxiety of an actual entanglement (to continue with your example) you both were able to calmly communicate your intentions.

Best of luck, and dive safe.

Doc