Instructor bent after running out of air at 40m

[KenGordon]

Why does this story have to be anything other than it claims?

Four young people who dive everyday with tourists have a day out and cock it up?

Partly it sounds just like the final dive on my AN/DP course. A diver was given ‘you are out of gas’ and him and his buddy did the whole donate thing and then just waited. The other two of us just stared at them until the instructor gave us a failure to deal with. Later when asked nobody could say why they did what they did.

People above are quoting 18m/minute ascents. Have you ever managed an 18m/minute ascent? I’d put money against it. Have you done it while sharing air? When did you last conduct a deep air share ascent?

Here is what I take from this:

Don’t trust holiday destination ‘instructors’. Especially young ones.
40m is properly deep and needs to be treated with respect.
Narcosis is a proper threat.
Don’t piss about at depth
Fast ascents are very risky.
FB posters in particular and internet posters in general are happier blaming or disbelieving than they are taking on learning points.

 

[hsinhai]

As they were instructors/dm it is also possible DCS was exacerbated due to nitrogen loading from previous dives with guests? especially if they are leading dives daily or earlier that same day.

Then add to that a relatively long deep dive (to empty a tank) putting them into deco and then a fast ascent missing any obligation

 

[soggybadger]

Why does this story have to be anything other than it claims?

Four young people who dive everyday with tourists have a day out and cock it up?

Partly it sounds just like the final dive on my AN/DP course. A diver was given ‘you are out of gas’ and him and his buddy did the whole donate thing and then just waited. The other two of us just stared at them until the instructor gave us a failure to deal with. Later when asked nobody could say why they did what they did.

People above are quoting 18m/minute ascents. Have you ever managed an 18m/minute ascent? I’d put money against it. Have you done it while sharing air? When did you last conduct a deep air share ascent?

Here is what I take from this:

Don’t trust holiday destination ‘instructors’. Especially young ones.
40m is properly deep and needs to be treated with respect.
Narcosis is a proper threat.
Don’t piss about at depth
Fast ascents are very risky.
FB poster size in particular and internet posters in general are happier blaming or disbelieving than they are taking on learning points.

I see what you mean but all four oog at the same time? I'm not an instructor and very inexperienced but I have never run out of gas or seen anyone do it. Many times in training i have been well in the red on my spg at the safety stop but but I have always been aware of this this and watch the guage like a hawk. To me OOG means one of two things either equipment failure or brain failure. I really would like to believe that this is a terrible accident that could happen to anyone but I'm finding that difficult to do.

 

[soggybadger]

How often do professional scuba instructors get bent on recreational dives within ndl and the scope of their training? Has anyone had any experience of this? I know it can happen to anyone in theory at any depth but clearly this was caused by rapid surfacing due to oog.

 

[Saniflush]

This story stinks more than the one guy i roomed with on a liveaboard who didn't shower for a week

Dang you would think he would have been getting washed off three or four times a day.

 

[CT-Rich]

I haven’t read every post and the article is pretty light on details, but here is my take:

It really only takes on diver to cock it up. Two pairs diving together, one diver gets narc’d or distracted at depth and doesn’t pay attention to his Gas/depth/deco obligation. Who gets hit and how bad depend not on this dive but on their repetitive dives. The other divers stay with the diver that is over stayed his welcome bringing them all lower on gas. The rest is a cascade of one goes OOG stress and depth wipes out the safety margin for all of them.

The article isn’t really about a dive accident. It’s about the disability and recovery, so I would expect it to gloss over how the DCI hit came about. I bet the full BSAC report from 2009 has a much more detailed description of the accident.

Edit: the reports available on the BSAC website only go back to 2012.

 

[CuzzA]

People above are quoting 18m/minute ascents. Have you ever managed an 18m/minute ascent? I’d put money against it. Have you done it while sharing air? When did you last conduct a deep air share ascent?

I assume you're talking to me since I said, once the first diver went OOG and there wasn't enough gas for both to finish the dive that I would make a fast 60ft/ minute ascent and then finish off what gas is left at the safety stop. To answer your question, yes, I have done this in a similar situation on a NDL dive. We managed a 60ft/ minute ascent from 100 ft. while arms locked and then hung at 20ft. for extra time. Fortunately there was no true OOG rather an SPG failure, but none the less we treated it as an OOG situation. The goal was simple, get shallow to extend our gas. I'm not an instructor and nor was my buddy, but we both realized the urgent need to get off the bottom.

I'm not sure why a 60ft/ minute ascent rate is so shocking to you in an emergency. After all, that once was the standard and for some still is. I screwed up. I should have bet you money first.

 

[Wookie]

I assume your are talking to me since I said, once the first diver went OOG and their wasn't enough gas for both to finish the dive that I would make a fast 60ft/ minute ascent and then finish off what gas is left at the safety stop. To answer your question, yes, I have done this in a similar situation on a NDL dive. We managed a 60ft/ minute ascent from 100 ft. while arms locked and then hung at 20ft. for extra time. Fortunately there was no true OOG rather an SPG failure, but none the less we treated it as an OOG situation. The goal was simple, get shallow to extend our gas. I'm not an instructor and nor was my buddy, but we both realized the urgent need to get off the bottom.

I'm not sure why a 60ft/ minute ascent rate is so shocking to you in an emergency. After all, that once was the standard and for some still is. I screwed up. I should have bet you money first.

I have no issues with 60 FPM. Especially from very deep (say 300 feet to first stop at 100 feet). It's still way slower than your slowest bubbles.

 

[johndiver999]

It takes a lot of air to bring yourself and a buddy up from depth if the buddy is panicked. They can easily use 3 times the normal amount of air and if you are the donor and the victim is flailing about, your air consumption is going to increase to some extent as well. So you have an air consumption rate of 4 or 5 times “normal”.

600 lbs might be a lot of air to leave 130 feet with ( if alone and calm), but if the victim is freaked out, and the ascent is not perfectly executed, there are going to be serious problems.

When people say they all ran out of air, that seems to be missing the point. Some ran out and others failed to reserve enough for their buddy.

When considering air reserves, you might be able to justify much smaller reserves when alone, compared to when buddy diving. Too bad nobody took a pony bottle.

 

[Wookie]

When considering air reserves, you might be able to justify much smaller reserves when alone, compared to when buddy diving. Too bad nobody took a pony bottle.

But it was meticulously planned.

Of course, I don't get in the bathtub without a pony.