Safety Stop Dillema....???

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Grendel

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OOPS,
On a recent dive I ran into a question for which I have no answer. Four of us went diving in two pairs to spear fish ant hunt for lobster off of a fifth friend's boat (the fifth remained on board during the dive). I was not hunting but wanted to observe since I am a new diver and the plan was to have the other buddy team (who was more experienced than my buddy and I) free the anchor upon completion of their dive.

We were completing the dive which went to 100 feet for approximately 25 minutes and I was at 15 feet doing my safety stop with my buddy when about one minute into my safety stop, one diver from the other pair of buddies ascended up the anchor line rapidly, pointing to his regulator. I deduced correctly that he was out of air (despite the incorrect signal) and descended to meet him, giving him my primary reg and replacing it with my air2 (secondary air source). When we began sharing air my guages showed me with 1100 lbs (my buddy had been down to 900 when we began our ascent). At this point the big question in my mind was "Where is his buddy?".

Attempts to communicate proved futile leaving me only with the knowledge that he had become separated from his buddy and did not know where he was. Not good. After approximately two minutes of sharing air, I saw movement below me and to my dismay, realized that it was MY buddy descending rapidly down the anchor line. For the record, my buddy is an instructor with fifteen years of diving experience and the others are both open water certified with many hundreds of dives. I was by far the least experienced with only about 25 dives and three months of diving since being certified.

At this point I had no idea what to do. I could not go after my buddy (nor did I want to since it seemed completely reckless) since I was currently sharing air with the third diver (who I assumed would stay with me as long as possible to decompress after his rapid out of air ascent). This also proved to not be the case as I realized that diver #3 (the one I was sharing with) had now departed for the surface after only 2 minutes of safety stop. At this point I really thought we were screwed.

My only thought was to watch diver #3 board the boat, which he did, and stay under as long as I could to assist my buddy as much as I could or look for bodies of him or the missing diver number four. Needless to say I was more than a little freaked out at this point. Shortly thereafter I saw my buddy surfacing rapidly about fifty feet away. I attempted to join him but only reached him when he had made it to the surface. We both boarded the boat and found that diver number four was already aboard and diver number three was apparently doing fine.

The miraculous part of this story is that everyone was fine. Thank god, but no one got bent or drowned although I'm still not sure how. On the boat we pieced together what actually happened and it goes something like this: divers #3 and #4 had become separated while looking for fish and contrary to our pre-dive brief did not surface, but stuck around to look for each other. Diver #4 ran short on air and surfaced with no sign of anybody else. He boarded the boat and waited.

Diver #3 continued to look for diver four and then returned to the anchor line where he waited some more, began to experience difficulty breathing and surfaced after realizing that he was out of air. He was met by me at 15 feet as previously mentioned. My buddy, thinking that we had a missing diver decided to descend again to search briefly for the missing diver #4 and to free the anchor from the bottom to insure that the boat could be moved if it was necessary to effect a rescue.

He said later that he was not overly concerned with getting bent since he had already performed a full safety stop and he had been within NDL's when we had surfaced originally. He said he intended to go down only momentarily for a quick look and to possibly free the anchor. He said later that geting bent was unlikely in his opinion since he had already done one normal ascent and safety stop and that he would only be down the second time for under 2 minutes. Regardless, upon reaching the anchor, he too ran out of air and was forced to make an emergency swimming ascent which is when I saw him come up.

Needless to say, this situation was completely pathetic. We were extraordinarily lucky that no one was bent or killed. Any input board members might have for what I could have done better would be appreciated.



 

in MY opinion.

find new buddies.

seems you, the "least experienced", demonstrated the best
judgement.
 
WOOOOHHHH I agree find new buddies or give them your manuals to reread. That is freaky enough to make one quit diving (not really, but still). Good job
 
Being even less experienced than Grendel, I am very quick to concur with G_M.

As I count...
1) Failure to follow agreed upon dive briefing
2) Failure to monitor air supply
3) "bounce diving" to 100 ft
4) Ignoring/loosing buddy
5) Failure to use proper signals
6) Failure to indicate intentions/Poor Communication
7)"Cowboy" mentality

*sigh*
 
Wow!
What a rush. It is amazing that you guys made it through the dive without losing one or more of your group. You scared me just with your description of such a screwed up dive.

You already know what all went wrong and realize that you dodged the bullet.
Just be thankful someone was watching over you.

DSAO
 
Grendel,

You did absolutely nothing wrong. There is nothing you could have done and for you to do nothing was absolutely correct. Good job helping the diver you could help for as long as he would let you and for holding your own when other people look a leave of absence from their brains.

You can join me diving any day. Your "friends" can stay home.

Tom
 
Scotty,

You have been sent a warning by the Gods of Scuba--and they usually do not warn twice!

How many times have you heard, "If you become separated from the group, look around for one minute and, if you see no one, do a normal ascent and wait on the surface."? You need to take charge of your buddies--even though you are the rookie--and make sure everyone knows what to do in an emergency.

There is one inviolable rule for me: stick with my buddy; there is just no excuse for not doing that. And there is a lot of danger in not doing that. If nothing else your buddy is your Pony tank!

Scuba is a lot like flying: can you imagine taking off without a preflight? Scuba is the same: you need to discuss dive site, dive plan, emergency proceedures, etc. And you need to do it everytime. Do not assume things: Assumption is the mother of all f...ups!

Not that I am the paragon diver on this planet, but Barbara and I even go through a little check list when we do a shore dive! Just so we do not have to make frantic signals underwater. It is amazing how fast your vocab goes away when you can only signal "okay", "shark", "eel", "out of air", and "follow me"!

And, hey, we wanted to dive with you guys again on Saba!

Glad you brought 'em back alive!

Joewr
 
Hello,

I would say the same as those before me :wink: Time to learn the fine art of self sufficiency. I'm not advocating diving solo but being able to depend on YOU and only you in an emergency like this. Thing is if you rely on your buddy and when the chips are down and your buddy is gone then who are you going to depend on? Also this leads to panic attacks. (relying on an external object and that object of support isn't there at the time of need)

some would say that you were wrong for diving with people like this but personaly I see nothing wrong with it, it wasn't like you knew they did things like this. Live and learn. I've been in similar situations before and a one of them I barely managed to pull thru. After that one you really take a second look at how things are being done and re-evaluate the buddy system to it's fullest. Then you critique and fix.

Ed
 
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