Should OW certified divers be taken into a deep wreck? Overhead? Thread split

[Bob DBF]

I would not have a problem with the dive, depending on my dive buddy, but I would not take an inexperienced diver, for their safety and mine.



Bob
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I may be old, but I'm not dead yet.

 

[KevinNM]

You are really equating a dozen people being led into a cave with this incident?? Other than the swim through possibly separating the victim from a dive buddy he never really had, what did the overhead have to do with it? Seems like you're using this incident to soap box about a completely different topic. Bad things can happen. People lie. Sure, but let's not extrapolate that to "the dollar rules all, come what may" where all dive OPs are concerned. The individual makes the call. My point is it's YOUR life. Diving is a risky endevor. That risk can be mitigated by following your training and most importantly sound self-survial based judgement. Use your head. If you decide to do the dive, then REALLY use your head. Any death is a tragedy, but for every accident & incident there are thousands if not tens of thousand or more dives that go off as planned, happy endings, wonderful experiences. IMHO, we should stick to figuring out how to make more of the latter and fewer of the former.

Most of the many people who went into that cave had a great dive. Until one group didn't. I don't remember much training in hard overheads being provided in my open water class. Other than the part where they say never ever enter a hard overhead. Is wreck penetration commonly taught in modern open water classes?

This was was considered a 'safe cave' by the tour companies. The areas that the tourists were supposed to go into were non-silting and the dangerous passage was clearly blocked off. Until one day it wasn't blocked off and the guide turned into it.

 

[Basking Ridge Diver]

I'm all for individual responsibility and use it liberally in my diving however, new divers who are trained to see dive professionals as gods...
Bob
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I may be old, but I'm not dead yet.

Why is that? Are they abdicating their responsibility? Because it seems like it to me... Every adult should be able to question and reason for themselves or pick a different sport... A child or child like adult sure - but they should not be doing that dive...

When I was certified it was very clear I was responsible for my dive - there were no DMs or Instructor diving with me... We were on our own to dive or not dive...

 

[AdivingBel]

---------- Post added March 3rd, 2015 at 07:00 PM --------

This was was considered a 'safe cave' by the tour companies.

Ummm...might be my self-preservation judgement kicking in, but what is a 'safe cave'?

Is wreck penetration commonly taught in modern open water classes?

No, it's not that I know of. Have you done a swim through in Cozumel, or Bloody Bay Wall in Little Cayman, or Christmas tree cave (not really a cave) on French Reef in Key Largo? I'm just trying to think of comparable types of swim throughs. I wasn't there when the witness did the swim through, but I have been on that dive and I would bet "dollars to doughnuts" that the penetration he did was much closer akin to those I listed (actually less complex) than what the average SB reader is going to picture when you say "wreck penetration dive." We can discuss semantics. Yes, it is a wreck. Yes, in going through the swim through the wreck was penetrated. If you are going to equate that with cave diving, and laying out line into the engine room of the Spiegel Grove (overly dramatized example, but you get my point), you're being disingenuous or you're not familiar with the situation.

 

[Saltyhawg]

This thread has given me lot's of food for thought. As a new diver (certified a year ago) I'm pretty sure I've done some dives I shouldn't have done because DM's told me I was qualified to do them (140' in Blue Hole, multiple swim throughs in Cozumel).

This is a swim through I did as probably my 10th ocean dive. Looking at my logbook maximum depth was 66' and was probably near the entrance. Is this dive appropriate for an OW diver?

[video=youtube;vUdXCwwYzz0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUdXCwwYzz0[/video]

The thing that keeps sticking with me on the original intent of the thread is the lack of a buddy. If the lost diver had a definitive buddy that followed training this might have turned out differently.

 

[boulderjohn]

This was was considered a 'safe cave' by the tour companies. The areas that the tourists were supposed to go into were non-silting and the dangerous passage was clearly blocked off. Until one day it wasn't blocked off and the guide turned into it.

To be technically correct, it was considered a safe cavern. There are no caves that are considered safe for untrained divers.

In this case, the guide was untrained and did not know that the area he entered was not safe. When he made the mistake and entered, though, he should have known that it was not a good move as soon as he looked in. But he went in. After that, everyone of the people following him should have known as soon as they looked in that it was not safe. But none of them knew that. Why? Because no one had trained them on the difference between a safe cavern or swim through and an unsafe cave. Thousands of divers make perfectly safe transits through short swim throughs every day around the world, but they don't know where to draw the line. Why is one safe and the other unsafe?

If you enter the side passage ways in the upper area of the Spiegel Grove, you can pause in the door and look into the room. You see a doorway to another room, but you also see a big square hole in the hull through which you can exit easily to open water. So you have the exit you are currently coming through and another spacious one about 15 feet away. OK, then. You go into the room and check the next one. Same thing. Two easy exits in plain view. No real silt. No entanglements. If you look into another passage and see darkness, entanglements, silt, and no other exit, you should immediately think that you need special training to go there and stay out.

In the Italian situation mentioned above, everyone who went in there should have immediately seen darkness, no exit, and silt. That should have said stay out! to them, with or without a sign.

But up until recently, there was no training of that kind available. Now there is at least a simple academic class called Understanding Overhead Environments that can illustrate the signs that help you make the decisions as to whether or not you have the ability to enter the environment you are considering. Take a course like that, and you can hopefully make better decisions.

 

[Abdullah]

Why is that? Are they abdicating their responsibility? Because it seems like it to me... Every adult should be able to question and reason for themselves or pick a different sport... A child or child like adult sure - but they should not be doing that dive...

When I was certified it was very clear I was responsible for my dive - there were no DMs or Instructor diving with me... We were on our own to dive or not dive...

I see a wide difference in the level of understanding in new divers. Some are acutely aware of hazards and ask questions about the dive site, current, and how their instabuddy will respond to various events (my kind of instabuddy). Others are oblivious and splash without any intellectual preparation at all (solo diver by default). It can't all be attributed to the personality of the new diver, the personality of the dive instructor that taught them plays a large role.

Teaching people to operate in hazardous environments is a little more tricky than teaching them to play golf. On the one hand, you want people to remain alert to all the potential failures that can lead to a catastrophic event. On the other, you don't want them so focused on the potential failures that they can't enjoy the dive. We want the new diver to enjoy the dive, and for dive professionals, we want them to keep diving, buying gear, going on trips, etc. Effectively training risk management without scaring the crap out of people is an art that good instructors master early on.

I've watched a lot of OW instructors, and there is a significant difference in the level of risk management and hazard focus between instructors. I've seen instructors reinforce personal responsibility (willingness to call a dive), preparation, and a questioning attitude on every dive. I've also heard instructors say that modern dive equipment is so high tech and diving so safe that a disaster is a very remote possibility (one of these instructors and his OW student followed my line into a wreck penetration).

I don't think that new dive students revere instructors as scuba gods, but in absence of their own body of experience, they do trust whatever the instructor is preaching. If their instructor preaches responsibility, preparation, and good buddy skills the diver will have the basic tools to grow a long and safe dive career. If the instructor preaches fun, sun, and it's always a happy ending the new diver will be less likely to make good decisions when presented with high risk situations (like swimming into overheads).

In this event the witness may or may not been on a dive too advanced for his skill set. We don't know whether the victim was beyond his skill set. We do know that the most basic dive risk management tool - real buddy pairs - was not in use on this dive.

 

[Lorenzoid]

This thread has given me lot's of food for thought. As a new diver (certified a year ago) I'm pretty sure I've done some dives I shouldn't have done because DM's told me I was qualified to do them (140' in Blue Hole, multiple swim throughs in Cozumel).

This is a swim through I did as probably my 10th ocean dive. Looking at my logbook maximum depth was 66' and was probably near the entrance. Is this dive appropriate for an OW diver? . . . .

This is the age-old conundrum. On one hand, if you remember your OW training course, they told you "never" enter an overhead environment. I don't know about you, but when I took that course I had never heard of the term "swim-through" and wasn't aware that such a thing existed. I think my first swim-through was in Cozumel, and I recall not having been briefed about it beforehand and being caught off guard with the dilemma of following the DM and doing what PADI had taught me NOT to do, or risk getting separated from the group. And around the same time period, I too did the infamous Belize Blue Hole dive.

But to address your question, the best a diver can do is seek additional education and experience and come to his own conclusion as to whether he has the training and experience to do that dive (or any other given dive). It's reasonable to rigidly adhere to PADI's (or other agency's) guidelines and refuse to enter ANY overhead environment. But as new divers soon discover, "everyone" seem to be doing swim-throughs. I've learned a lot just by reading SB threads like this one, and I've taken some more classes and have a few hundred dives under my belt. At this point, I feel I have a very good understanding of my own capabilities, what to ask well-meaning DMs during the dive briefing so that I understand what the dive entails, what kinds of things pose risks on any given dive, and things that might be possible (given my training, experience, available equipment and other constraints) to do to mitigate some of those risks. Armed with this knowledge, I believe I can fairly gauge the risk to ME. I absolutely could NOT have done that when I was a new diver.

I never forget the saying "You don't know what you don't know."

 

[boulderjohn]

But to address your question, the best a diver can do is seek additional education and experience and come to his own conclusion as to whether he has the training and experience to do that dive (or any other given dive). It's reasonable to rigidly adhere to PADI's (or other agency's) guidelines and refuse to enter ANY overhead environment. But as new divers soon discover, "everyone" seem to be doing swim-throughs. ... Armed with this knowledge, I believe I can fairly gauge the risk to ME.

I never forget the saying "You don't know what you don't know."

Most people are surprised to learn that PADI does not say in any of its materials that divers are not supposed to enter ANY over head environment. Individual instructors may well say that, and I am sure many do, but PADI does not. PADI's Tec 40 curriculum, which I just reviewed for the first time, specifically contrasts recreational level overhead environments to technical level overhead environments. We had a thread on ScubaBoard in which people who insisted that such a rule exists were challenged to find it, and they could not.

The belief that such a "rule" exists creates exactly the problem that Lorenzoid highlights. When divers realize that "everyone seems to be doing swim-throughs," in direct contradiction to what they believe to be a rule, they are left with no guidance whatsoever in making those decisions.

That is the reason that the PADI approved curriculum for Understanding Overhead Environments was created. The course talks about different levels of difficulty of different overhead environments, and it distinguishes between those that are pretty safe for just about everyone, those that require more recreational training and different equipment, and those absolutely requiring technical training. Just to repeat, the course states that some overhead environments are safe for some recreational divers, and it is approved by PADI.

 

[Lorenzoid]

John, maybe not a "rule," but are you sure it was never something like an official guideline or recommendation? Never anything official from PADI? If so, then VERY interesting. I don't recall many specifics from OW class, but one thing I remember taking away was that "overhead environments" were strictly a no-go for us. This is why when first confronted with a so-called "swim-through" I was totally thrown for a loop--and the middle of a dive is not the best time for that. My instructor had never so much as mentioned their existence. (And this was when the Internet was young, so it's not like I had seen any videos from Cozumel.) In hindsight, it would have been helpful if my instructor had explained that these things exist and here is a checklist of things you might take into consideration in deciding whether to do a given swim-through. But I have long assumed PADI didn't want instructors to do that for liability reasons.

---------- Post added March 4th, 2015 at 10:19 AM ----------

That is the reason that the PADI approved curriculum for Understanding Overhead Environments was created. . . .

It is inconceivable that this is not part of the standard OW class.