Catalina Diver died today w/ Instructor

[Bubbletrubble]

When it comes to slowing a diver's ascent, it's not like you're carrying a spare anchor that you can attach to them. Assuming proper weighting on the part of both diver and instructor, what can you do beside trying to gain control of the runaway diver's BC valves while managing your own? At this location, might you grab the chain with one hand and the diver with the other? You can try to get in a position to communicate and get the diver to voluntarily slow the ascent. Without cooperation, the available negative bouyancy from even fully deflated BCs decreases as you approach the surface making it that much harder to slow the diver, especially in thicker wetsuits. So, what's the textbook procedure for dealing with a situation like this?

I'd like to pull the discussion back to a series of questions posed by bsee65 that have gone unanswered despite numerous actively-posting instructors viewing this thread. I'm not sure if the questions were just overlooked...or if some instructors feel that participation in an open forum such as this could be perceived as engaging in "uninformed speculation" and perhaps criticizing the actions of another instructor. I hope that the questions were simply overlooked.

For the scuba instructors out there:

• What is taught during instructor training with respect to the recommended procedure for positioning oneself relative to students on descent/ascent?
• Is a buoy line recommended (or required) to aid ascent/descent for class dives?
• Given the allowable instructor-to-student ratio, how can instructors be expected to help head-off these kinds of uncontrolled ascents? (In this incident, the instructor appears to have been in very close proximity to the student diver. This might not be possible with more students to watch over.)

I want to be clear that I am making no speculations as to what actually occurred in this particular dive accident. And I ask these questions not to imply any wrongdoing on the part of the instructor involved.

I can see benefits to using a buoy line as a visual reference and to halt/slow an uncontrolled ascent in the case that a student loses a weight belt, for instance. I can see the benefit of having the instructor and student descend at the same level, whenever possible, so that any buoyancy issues can be addressed quickly. I could also imagine a recommendation to be positioned to allow easy access to the student's power inflater and/or dump valve. Furthermore, I think we can all agree that if a student really wants to ascend to the surface it might not be possible for the instructor to prevent it.

FWIW, I think it was a good decision on the part of the instructor in this incident to utilize the buoy chain for the descent.

 

[drbill]

Personally, I think your questions are valid ones but should be placed in a separate thread rather than discussed here. Of course I'll leave it to the mods to make that decision. If broken off into a separate thread I'll be interested in following the discussion.

 

[bsee65]

Personally, I think your questions are valid ones but should be placed in a separate thread rather than discussed here. Of course I'll leave it to the mods to make that decision. If broken off into a separate thread I'll be interested in following the discussion.

Sounds like you're too close to this and being defensive/protective as a result. No one is asking you to betray a trust and explain exactly what techniques were used by this instructor. One of the few facts we know about this incident is that the instructor went up with the victim while trying to "slow the ascent" and then lost contact along the way. It's a very valid and connected question to wonder if there's a textbook method for slowing or halting a diver's ascent, and whether the proximate presence of the chain line in this environment would be useful for the purpose.

Based upon the facts of this incident, I don't see us learning how to prevent a diver from wishing to surface urgently. We all know that breath holding during ascent is likely to have serious consequences. Among the other important lessons we can learn is if there is a way to prevent a rapid ascent from occurring. In opposite scenarios where a DM or instructor has lost a diver going deeper, people have weighed in saying that should never happen. That a pro should be able to get in position to force an uncooperative diver to ascend. The physics of diving suggests that stopping a diver from surfacing rapidly would be much harder, if at all possible.

 

[drbill]

Bsee65... understand your position. We just have different opinions on whether a discussion of a general instructional technique should be spawned off into a separate thread or retained in the discussion of a specific incident. As I said, I'll let the mods decide that.

My recollection of the way the instructor "lost contact along the way" is that the student bolted to the surface, possibly due to rapid inflation of her BCD. Obviously an instructor should not follow the student to the surface in a rapid ascent, but ascend slowly to avoid a double incident and to be able to render assistance at the surface (as this instructor did).

No question that I'm close to this and perhaps less than objective. However, I think I'd feel the same way with respect to any incident I had more direct knowledge of whether I knew the instructor or not.

 

[Cave Diver]

Precisely (in response to deco martini, you "snuck" in between us Mike)... and that's why I feel such speculation belongs in a separate thread discussing possible causes of panic rather than a specific incident thread where it may have no relevance at all. The mods have done a good job of keeping these separate.

Bsee65... understand your position. We just have different opinions on whether a discussion of a general instructional technique should be spawned off into a separate thread or retained in the discussion of a specific incident. As I said, I'll let the mods decide that.

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A ScubaBoard Staff Message...

Please use the following thread for the discussion on dealing with a panicked buddy: http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/ba...-stop-panicked-diver-bolting.html#post4853517.

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[Cave Diver]

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[Garth]

Ultimately, we all die from cardiac arrest.

The fact that his/her heart stopped says nothing unless the autopsy indicates that this was preciptating factor.

Speaking from experience (don't ask) a heart issue doesn't necessarily lead to panic. Panic and pain in the heart are about as related as peanut butter and the man on the moon.

R..

In fact no not all of us die from cardiac arrest. We no longer use the cardiac method to determine death it is now the brain that determines death. If your heart stops it can be restarted, if your brain is compremised then your are dead. I work in a trauma unit and we have people that get declared brain dead due to either apnea studies, or perfusion studies and their hearts are still beating and the ventilators are still breathing for them.
ie this is how we get most of our organs for donation now adays.

it is possible that we we go into cardiac arrest and later get declared dead.

 

[stedel]

Speaking as an instructor with over 30 years of diving experience I can state quite firmly from personal experience that you cannot always control everything even if you can see it happening and take immediate steps to remedy a situation. Fortunately for me the event I could not control took place in the pool. I am 6'3" 220 lbs., I had a student who was a football player, 6' 5" 250 lbs. (at least) and all muscle. We were doing a mask flood exercise, he could not clear his mask, I had a hand on his BC, I saw his eyes go wide and grabbed him before he even started moving, he got his legs under him and we were on the surface of the pool in very short order. There are things beyond ANYONE'S ability to control. I am NOT speculating on what occurred in the incident but I must take offense at anyone's statements implying "guilty until proven innocent," or that the instructor must have done something wrong or that an instructor just "should" have been able to deal with any situation or that instructor just isn't a "good" instructor. Notwithstanding anyone's long experience, to make such sweeping statements is not reasonable.

 

[Thalassamania]

I, for one, have no complaint with the instructors inability to stop to bolt once it has begun. I have never had a student bolt on me so I really have no experience with the real problems involved in that situation so my suggestions there would be really quite meaningless. My concerns, however, are twofold: the training that the diver received prior to the dive and the Instructor's SA during the dive.

Something caused the student to panic, and in my experience, those "somethings" are most often identifiable, either during training, so that the student can be desensitized and trained in how to deal with it, or during the dive and headed off before the Instructor before it turns into a bolt.

I've studied the details of over 2,000 diving fatalities, about 20% of which were training fatalities which break down into, more or less, two situations: rather unknown circumstances in which the student and instructor were separated and the student died unwitnessed, and situations where the student bolted from the instructor for the surface. In the latter situations the reason for the bolt was not always determinable, but it most often was (as in the situation that you describe) a flooded mask.

In my opinion, a student who can not handle a flooded mask has not been properly trained in the first place, and does not belong in open water, a student (like the football player that you describe) who has a failure during a mask flood exercise, similarly, has been pushed along too quickly without gaining sufficient skill and confidence in each step of the process, it was a good thing that it did not occur in open water or a deeper part of the pool.

 

[Leejnd]

Stedel - that is the point I was trying to make some pages back in this thread, when I "got into it" with Thalassamania. With all due respect to his many more years of experience than I have, I simply cannot sit back and accept this statement:

It may seem heartless and callous but I find it hard to believe, at the core, that an instructor who has a student die during a class did, "everything right." I'd have to be persuaded of that, and it would be a very, very hard sell.

You hit the nail on the head when you mentioned the "guilty until proven innocent" implication. That's what disturbed me about it (and still does). I tried to debate it, but I just couldn't seem to articulate my point.

Thanks for doing so much better than I did (and in far fewer words too!).