Another TrustMe dive experience

[tstormdiver]

After experiencing a somewhat similar experience at Vortex Springs (underwater cave)....aka went in untrained,... I can relate. That bad judgement & near miss on my part nearly cost me my life. I went on to complete a very rigorous cave program. In that program, I learned how to judge if things are too dangerous, & to evaluate the situation from a "Better to dive another day", standpoint & call off or abort a dive, if things are beyond the scope of my training. We can't control what other divers do, but a properly trained diver should be able to ascertain if conditions are favorable. Maybe, after your (mis)adventure, You & your wife might be open to a little wreck & Adv. wreck training? In those courses, critical thinking is taught to gauge what conditions are acceptable & what is not for you & your wife's safety. Like in my case of entering the caves, it can be easy to overestimate one's ability,... until things go south. If you are already at those levels, I apologize, but then the critical thinking process should already be there. Please don't take this wrong,... I'm not trying to pile on or anything, but trying to maybe get you to see things a little differently. Safe Diving to you & your wife.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

What I also see here is the lack of reality in many Open Water and Advanced classes. While it is stated in nearly all of them to not go into overheads it's not driven home how bad it can get. Especially on seemingly benign overheads like so.called clean wrecks and swim thrus. Not until tech classes is it properly discussed that this stuff will kill you. In some very nasty and even creative ways.
Agencies don't like instructors saying that. Bad for business. But the truth is and I have taken to bringing it out in every class as one of the first things. Diving can hurt and kill you. This is how and this is what it looks like. So what this class is about is how to reduce the risk of that happening.
The other lesson that is not conveyed at all it seems is that you are responsible for yourself and do not trust a DM, AI, Guide, or Instructor to keep you safe. In fact it's quite often the opposite. I tell my students to never do anything I ask them to if they have a doubt. If they do stop and ask me why I want them to do this. Never take anything for granted. Trust me dives kill people. If one ignores those doubts and gets hurt or killed they only have themselves to blame. And they should blame themselves. Unless the guide held a gun to their head there was no reason to follow once observing what a cluster frack it was.

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[tanksforthememories]

Thank you for sharing. i am glad to see you both got out alive. My policy is simple, if a company makes an Exception for me then they likely will make an exception for someone else... Therefore they lose all credibility and are not to be trusted. Rules and safety measures are there for a reason and serve for mutual benefit, no exceptions ever. From your op it appears you talked and texted around doing a checkout dive that could have alerted you to the shops lack of pre dive instructions and unrealistic description of surroundings (IE multiple escape points) you may have even dove with the "fat German" and seen first hand his lack of skill. At the very least a red flag should have gone up that they were willing to let you dive an advanced penetration site without their required checkout dive, and so perhaps had others on the manifest. Again thank you for sharing and reminding us all not to hand our lives over to someone just because they say Trust Me.

 

[DivemasterDennis]

This thread points out something that happens in a lot of places. Pre-conditions for doing a dive are announced, and then when you go on the dive, you wonder why some of the people on the dive were allowed to go. This happened to Debbie and me on the Molokai hammerhead shark dive a few years ago. The operator required diving with them to evaluate skills on a dive prior to the excursion, which was a 2 tank dive to a maximum depth of about 100 feet in current and dicey surface conditions. 10 people did the first dive in two separate groups. 4 people did the second dive as a group. 1st dive lasted all of 25 minutes total, and we saw one animal from afar, as divers failed to follow the plan stated in the briefing as to depth and handling current. After the excursion, the operator apologized for the first dive being such a "nothing" ( this was a pretty expensive outing- $200 for two dives) and offered a free closer in dive that week as as an apology, a very nice gesture which we accepted. I think divers need to police themselves a bit on these type of dives- wreck or special conditions. They may be excellent at 50 feet in calm water looking a little fishies, but at 100 feet in current and rough seas,( or in a wreck) they are not. I have no solution. Just wanted to add our experience to the discussion.
DivemasterDennis

 

[=C=]

Holy Toledo...

It is funny how you know going in its going to be cluster...

I'll share an experience in return. :::wayyy back music::: I was in Egypt, it was the early 2000's, and I found myself on a boat moored above the wreck of the Salem Express. We had a so/so briefing and no map of the wreck was available. (((Slight alarm bells)))

The plan was to enter through the rear open cargo deck and make our way forward to the bridge where we would exit wreck. Straight back with a left turn at the end ending in the bridge. There were portals everywhere and we would be just below the common decks so it wouldn’t be a issue to swim out. Simple plan.

Everyone onboard had been diving together all week and my buddy and I had been diving together for 4 years at that point. I'm good with my buddy but the other 12 folks on this tour were new to me and appeared to be low time divers.

We drop into the wreck:

Where did all the portals go?

So now I'm in the bowls of a gigantic ship... no line... on AL80's... about 8 divers who had never been in an overhead environment before.

Then a baby carriage appears out our the darkness.

Signal my buddy and the guide then we head for the portal.

I'm out. I learned my lesson on that dive.

 

[TSandM]

I have a pretty solid rule that, if I can't SEE the exit from where I enter, I run a line.

Although the tourist divers should not have been taken into the wreck, and you should not have made the decision to follow them into it (which I think is your big learning experience from the dive), you DID make the decision to enter a silty wreck with nothing more than the word of a guide that you would have "lots of exits". Had the siltout been a bit worse, this could have been a dive from which someone didn't come back.

I've passed up a lot of opportunities to go into dark spaces (which have an almost irresistible lure) because I didn't have the right equipment to do it in what I thought would be a safe manner. There is always another day to dive, assuming you come back from this one.

 

[TONY CHANEY]

Tony, did you read the post? The OP did do the check-out dive.

No he did not. Please go back and read the op again.

 

[PsyWulf]

At minimum I do _every_ dive with a Reel,SMB,and 2 Lights and with a thorough Map of the wreck/site studied beforehand,always prepare for the worst possible outcome with an escape plan

 

[Griffo]

So I thought I should wrap up the thread.

Just to be clear, NO we did not do the check-out dive. However the requirement lead us to believe that the other people we would be diving with would be half decent diving. To make a broad generalization, the quality of divers we have been diving with in the Philippines to that point (and mostly after that also) was actually very very high. I'd never before dived with so many random divers with good trim and proper kicks.

No we shouldn't have gone in the wreck once we saw the other divers underwater. I justified it to myself at the time that although I expected the 40m long prop shaft to be a world of silt, that it would all be OK after that. I also felt (as arrogant as this sounds now) that the three most competent divers on this dive were the guide, and my wife and I. I thought it best to book-end the group to avoid a real cluster. I stayed close enough to the wife to physically grab her at any time if required, which was part of my risk management plan made up on the spot. And despite the fact that we had reels, we didn't use them. Why? I guess because the dive was somewhat of a "swim through" by plan (although I hate that term) where we would start at the deepest point, make our way through the ship, and exit at around 20m or so. If it went to hell in a handbasket during the prop-shaft, then it's not that hard to follow a straight tube backwards. After that point we had been promised lots of exits. Running a line would have meant leaving it in place. Not that I care about the line, but if every diver every day did that, the wreck would be a spiders web within days.

TSandM is right about it being a dive from which someone might have not returned. I agree with that completely. Since the original post my wife and I have spoken about this dive a lot, and we have agreed that neither of us was worried that we ourselves could not have gotten out, despite the silt. At worst case would push ourselves to the front of the pack to some clear water. We were slightly concerned for each other, but we were really really crapping ourselves about the other divers. I can't imagine someone who has to crawl or walk through a wreck would be very comfortable in zero vis. I think I was most worried about some dealing with some novice panicked diver .

What was almost more disturbing though was that we had a sit-down with the dive-shop owner the next day after we made a small comment to the resort we were staying at. Long story short, he didn't seem to give a damn. The biggest concession he made was that maybe they need to take a little more care in which divers they allow in. I only wish I had a go-pro video of the dive to show him, but I abandoned that 10seconds in when I realised I couldn't afford to split my concentration. I've since spoken to other very experienced local divers who also love that dive, but say they only ever do it with divers they know and trust. The fact that a shop took in divers who didn't have basic buoyancy control makes me shake my head.

The fact that I trusted them not only to vet divers, but also to provide accurate instructions all on the first dive I'd ever done with them? Lesson learnt. I feel very stupid now. They say familiarity breeds contempt. In this case, I transferred professionalism and trust from one dive op to another based on a recommendation. Stupid.
I failed to thumb a dive that was obviously a cluster-F due to a desire to do a certain wreck. Stupid.
I dived with dangerous divers in a dangerous environment. Stupid.
I ignored my training because I felt comfortable. Stupid.

 

[elan]

Going into an overhead - run a line, going into a silty overhead without a line? thats just asking for a trouble