Is it time to sink the CESA?

[The Chairman]

I still hear crickets from ALL mainstream agencies

NASE did not allow me to do a vertical CESA in OW when I first joined them. One of the many reasons I did. They didn't require snorkels then either, and that has changed, but I don't think the CESA has. I think RAID is the same way.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

NASE did not allow me to do a vertical CESA in OW when I first joined them. One of the many reasons I did. They didn't require snorkels then either, and that has changed, but I don't think the CESA has. I think RAID is the same way.

I agree that CESA in the open water is a bad idea. Which is why I don't do it anymore. However, I do teach in confined water going at an angle to extend the time it takes to reach the surface. Is it perfect? No, but one thing that I'm coming away from this discussion is to stress the importance of proper weighting as it would apply to performing an emergency swimming ascent (I already discuss it extensively for the sake of depth control).

With regards to snorkels, I thought (and someone please correct me if I am wrong) that being a WRSTC member means snorkel in open water. Now maybe RAID does it intelligently, and say just at the surface, so students swim at the surface with a collapsible snorkel, fold it up and put it in a pocket before going under the surface.

 

[HBVetera n2312]

You all bring up another HUGE pet peeve of mine and that is proper weighting. I see so many divers blowing this off and it definitely contributes to an uncontrolled ascent. I always stress that adding or subtracting all that junk hanging off of the BCD affects buoyancy, a hood, a camera, thickness of gloves, etcetera. The buoyancy check at the surface is a critical, I mean critical step I see getting blown off because people are in a hurry to get deep. I definitely spend a lot of extra time with students and fellow divers conducting a buoyancy check to the point of bringing a bucket with extra lead to the beach or boat and working through the procedure. I like easy diving and it starts with this procedure. I really don't like hearing a student ask me how much weight they need and then I'm just guessing. We just walk right through the procedure. It is a pain in the butt on the beach, but makes for an easier dive if done.

But like most critical accidents, there is a chain of events that needs to be broken by prevention and risk mitigation. Out Of Air accidents aren't caused by just one thing, it's a chain of mistakes. As Instructors, we should be stressing how to break that chain. But when all else fails, the CESA may be the last option for a diver to save themselves. So it is a function of a bunch of things going wrong and removing this technique from training will not give the diver a viable option to survive in a controlled manner.

Like I mentioned before, I've had dive buddies bolt to the surface and when I got up there to check on them, they said they freaked out because something bumped them, or they thought they heard a boat screw (which surfacing is the worst thing to do) or they dropped their camera. Lots of less than critical things other than OOA have caused divers to bolt and expose themselves unneccessarily to an air embolism event.

I guess the bottom line is panic. We can reduce the onset of panic by teaching risk mitigation, the accident chain of events, buddy breathing, and giving a viable option such as the CESA. If there is another technique, I'm all ears.

 

[Diving Dubai]

What if (in a real situation) you lose the ability to get air from the tank AFTER you have exhaled? What if you were deliberately heavy when the problem developed, like say you were on the bottom and trying to be stable to take a photograph? What if there was no way to add air to your BC? What if you (as some people advocate) have zero ditchable ballast?

I can think of a lot of potential situations, which COULD make an actual CESA much more challenging than a relaxed 30 second swim in a pool where you know the surface is just a few feet above your head

I can hopefully answer this and put to bed other people's "Pet theories" since I've actually made a CESA for real

In my case I hadn't run out of air, I had two redundant cylinders, each over 3/4 full - with was rather annoying - I had a Laryngospasm

The symptoms are the same, you can't breath - although in my case I was looking at 2 SPG's mentally saying WTF!

I happened to be a 22m in crystal clear vis of the Red sea - so the surface seemed within touching distance. and at that point had 500+ dives behind me in fairly challenging conditions

Of course you only realise you cannot breathe after the exhale (unlike in training where you prepare yourself)

I did waste a small amount of time by swapping regs (spitting one out putting the other in - automated response) I probably took 10 seconds in all before I fully reacted and headed straight up.

According to my computer my ascent rate was around 20m/min - I don't recall it screaming away - I had more pressing issues. I do (still) remember the clarity of thought - the best way to describe would be for the reader to imagine reading 4 different columns of text, simultaneously and understanding them completely

Your diaphragm is working hard trying to inflate yoru lungs (they can't ) if I experienced any expansion of the gas in my lungs, I certainly didn't feel it.

My focus was on the surface. I do remember thinking it seemed a long way away. I was kicking hard (using dive rite XT's) so using oxygen, again I remember it felt like hard work.

In the end the Laryngospasm clear at approx 10m, my exhale was so violent that my mask flooded. That was when I saw my buddy. She'd seen me fly off, at first thought I'd seen something big, but then her instinct took over - she told me later she's had trouble keeping up with me.
Post dive, in hindsight, I realised I might have done things differently (I wasn't releasing air from my BCD) -

Had I thought about all my training, I'd have ignored it anyway, since my priority was to be on the surface. I suspect most people will do the same. I wasn't concerned with a controlled ascent rate. Not being able to breathe meant I wanted to be at the surface its as simple as that.

 

[HBVetera n2312]

Thanks for posting that! Real lessons come from real situations. Excellent read.

 

[TMHeimer]

We'll just have to agree to disagree. Here's a few more reasons:

1) I've met a dozen or so instructors who can not teach anymore and it's obvious to me that this happened due to a bad CESA. Why do you think we have so much instructor burn out? It's wrong to require instructors to put themselves at risk.
2) Monkey see: monkey do! It's simply a horrible example for the students. They see their instructor doing bounce dive after bounce dive. Hey, if the instructor does it time after time, it can't be that bad, can it? Every dive should have one descent, and one ascent with a safety stop. There should never be a time you say "Dive as I say, not as I dive!" Your students want to dive JUST LIKE YOU, so set the example on every dive. Be the example on every dive.
3) I alluded to this earlier, but if you spend more time teaching how to be neutral, buddy awareness and gas management, they simply won't run out of gas and if they do, they'll have redundant air in the form of a buddy. An ounce of prevention is worth 500 psi.
4) Divers are still getting hurt. Obviously, what we're doing ain't working. None of them wouldn't have gotten hurt if they had never run out of gas. Again, an ounce of prevention is worth 500psi.​

1) Agree. I'm not qualified to find the best solution.
2) Agree to a point. Bad example for students to see. I shore dive mostly to 20-30' and do come up once in a while to check exactly where I am. That won't hurt you. It can be explained to students.
3) Agree, but many divers dive solo whether it is recommended or not, whether they are Solo certified or not. We would be ignoring this fact of life. With no buddy my feeling is CESA becomes quite a bit more important, and consider my point about catastrophic failure (no one's really addressed that yet). As well, though buddy awareness is very important, separation does happen, especially in waters with limited viz.
4) I assume they are getting hurt somehow with lung overexpansion injuries (not exhaling on the way up?--you'd see that, no? But maybe not exhaling enough and still lung problem?). I would be interested in how they are getting injured and seeing some statistics. This brings in the discussion about whether certified divers should practice CESAs. Over a season of 50+ dives I may do 6-7 CESAs--no problems yet. No point in learning it once if you never practice it.

We agree to agree and disagree I guess.

Here's a funny one--
When I was taking AOW years ago I asked my instructor when we were discussing CESA--
"What do you do if you're down 80 feet, lose your buddy and are OOA"? He said "You do one anyway".

 

[NAM001]

IMO cesa has to be done virtically. you cant navigate and dodge things on the surface when you are horizontal. You may be coming up in or near boat traffic. It by nature and design is a shallow water last resort effort so you have to think of it from the basis of dire necessity when time of important.

 

[TMHeimer]

IMO cesa has to be done virtically. you cant navigate and dodge things on the surface when you are horizontal. You may be coming up in or near boat traffic. It by nature and design is a shallow water last resort effort so you have to think of it from the basis of dire necessity when time of important.

I think by "horizontally" they mean only in the pool (not deep enough to come from bottom to surface in 9 feet or so). I haven't heard of anyone talking about horizontally in open water. Makes no sense. Maybe I'm wrong on that.

 

[HBVetera n2312]

Awesome discussion by the way

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

So I looked up laryngospasm: Laryngospasm: Causes, Treatment, First Aid, and More


What are the symptoms of a laryngospasm?
During a laryngospasm, your vocal cords stop in a closed position. You’re unable to control the contraction that’s happening at the opening to the trachea, or windpipe. You may feel like your windpipe is constricted slightly (a minor laryngospasm) or like you can’t breathe at all.

The laryngospasm won’t normally last too long, though you may experience a few happening in a brief time span.

If you’re able to breathe during a laryngospasm, you may hear a hoarse whistling sound, called stridor, as air moves through the smaller opening.

So the first paragraph talks about a minor laryngospasm where you can breath but you feel that you can't. The third paragraph, I read an implicatio that there are severe laryngospasms where one is unable to breath.

Second paragraph "won't last too long." Tell that to someone underwater.

So do I understand correctly that one suffering from a severe larynospasm may be able to exhale but not inhale? Not sure if there are any medical professionals participating in this thread, as if exhalation is not possible in the most severe case, then there is no chance to avoid lung over expansion injury.