Air share

[Raphus]

1 - An experienced buddy had regulator failure. He just went for my octo and then got my attention and we surfaced without incident.

2 - An inexperienced buddy with buoyancy control issues corked with arms flailing, yanking the regulator from my mouth on his way up. I just switched to my own octo.

All short hose.

As to your 7 foot hose, if you've upgraded without tech training, do make sure you practice your skills with the new configuration and get some feedback from other divers with more experience. I did the same as you a few years ago and everything seemed fine until 20 dives in I lost my primary and none of my normal techniques for retrieving a short hose worked.

Thanks for sharing your experience.
I did practice myself and then did some dives with tech trained guys and one dive with a tech instructor, was all fine.

Planning to do tech training soon. Just getting comfortable with the equipment atm.

 

[shurite7]

Thankfully I haven’t dealt with an actual out of air, but I have dealt with several very low on air or reg free flow. In each case the people showred me their gauge with very obvious signs of stress and concern, or gave erratic signs clearly indicating they were on the verge of panic. None grabbed or reached for my primary / second stage in my mouth.

The OP brings up a point that has been discussed before on SB, will a diver grab the reg out of their buddy’s mouth or follow their training. A few years ago at DEMA, I was in a seminar that covered this topic. The speaker stated there was no record of an out of air diver grabbing the primary out of another diver’s mouth. What was noted was the divers reverted to their training by giving the out of air sign and receiving an alternate second stage. In some cases the out of diver bolted to the surface. I’ve also read a report given by BSAC (if anyone has a copy of the report please post it) that came up with the same observations. This seems to debunk the concept an out of air diver will jerk/grab the primary out of a diver’s mouth before giving the out of air sign.

With all that being stated, has anyone reading these posts experienced a diver who grabbed/jerked the primary out of your mouth when another diver was out of air or had a reg problem (free flow for example)?

 

[Angelo Farina]

The year was 1979. I and my wife (at the time, my girlfriend) were on holidays at Lacona, Isola d'Elba, Italy.
A nice diving site called Punta Stella, on the south of the Island.
Crystal clear water, I remember that from the bottom I did see clearly our small fiberglass boat anchored above us.
Red coral, paramuricea gorgonias, and a lot of fish.
The environment was something as here, but with more fish:

We were around 38-40m, searching for lobsters for the dinner. We were diving twin tanks (as normal at the time) 2x10 liters at 200 bar, so plenty of gas. But we did only have ONE reg on each tank. Double regs were not so common at the time, although the tanks had a double valve system with reserve.

No BCD, of course, and no SPG.
The dive was planned at 42m max, 20 minutes, with deco and US Navy tables. After approximately 15 minutes, so already beyond the NDL, I did see a big lobster, retracting quickly inside a small tunnel. Like this one!

I did try to catch it, entering in the tunnel with the whole body, and leaving out just the end of the fins. I caught the lobster, and then I did try to come out with some sort of reverse kick (and some help pushing the rocks with the free left hand).
But I was badly engulfed in the tunnel. So my girlfriend did pull me out, pulling my legs. Doing that, the valve of the tank did hit several times the rock above me, and it did close entirely. So, after exiting the tunnel I had no air!
We started buddy breathing with her reg (a Scubapro 109+MK5, the same as mine - we are still using the same regs nowadays). Of course, at 40m, with a 6.5mm Rubatex wet suit, our buoyancy was quite negative, and coming up while buddy breathing a single reg, with no BCD, keeping the lobster in my right hand, was really hard...
When we reached the top of the wall, at 15m, we rested for a couple of minutes on the flat terrace above the wall. There I did think to what happened, I did understand that the valve had possibly closed, I gave it half a turn and voilà! the air was coming again...
So we did the planned deco and surfaced without problems, still with the lobster in my right hand, which was our dinner!
One week later, back in Parma, we did purchase two additional MK5+109. The whole concept of an octopus was not yet known here in Italy, and in my opinion it is still a very bad idea, because with an octopus I had suffered the very same problem.
Since then, we always did dive with at least two completely independent regs, on two separate valves. When some years later we did switch from twin tanks to lighter 15-liters steel tanks, in 1989, we did buy them with double posts and independent valves, because we did experience first hand how a valve can get closed unexpectedly...

 

[Blackcrusader]

OOA never.
Low on air few times. It were all under control as the recipient did not panic. All with long hose.

I've shared air to make sure a diver would get to the end of the dive then let them do the safety stop on their own air. I've never allowed a diver in my group to get so low on air as to not be able to either, call the dive and end it, or share air and make sure they get to end the dive in relative safety. I believe it's also good for people to understand sharing air can be a good thing and better to do it before an OOA situation arises..

No one needs to be embarrassed because they consumed more air than a more experienced dive partner.

Three OOA situations since 1986 were all dives with instructors leading the dive who did not pay attention to their gauges.

 

[Raphus]

I've shared air to make sure a diver would get to the end of the dive then let them do the safety stop on their own air. I've never allowed a diver in my group to get so low on air as to not be able to either, call the dive and end it, or share air and make sure they get to end the dive in relative safety. I believe it's also good for people to understand sharing air can be a good thing and better to do it before an OOA situation arises..

No one needs to be embarrassed because they consumed more air than a more experienced dive partner.

Three OOA situations since 1986 were all dives with instructors leading the dive who did not pay attention to their gauges.

The instructor went OOA?
Or did he not watch the students spg?

 

[Ayisha]

I shared gas with a buddy once, who happened to be an instructor. He had asked me to be his buddy that day on a LDS trip. He kept checking my AI computer during the dive, so I knew something was up, but he wouldn't let me see his.

We were at about 100 feet/30 m down on the Duane in the Florida Keys and way far away from our descent/ascent line. He finally showed me his gauge which showed 200 psi. I still had 2200 psi.

I handed him my octo and we turned around and calmly went back a long way towards the line. I eventually held the reg in my mouth because it kept getting tugged. I switched sides to no avail. I hated the s-curve and suddenly wished I had a long hose. I could not turn my head at all without the reg pulling out.

We made it back and did all of our stops that we had planned, with a little gas to spare. He told me afterwards that when his (big) camera was handed to him after jumping in, he almost lost it in the strong surface current and had to fight to get/keep it, and that's when his pressure went down and his gas consumption stayed up.

It took 6 more years and there were a couple of buddies I shared gas with who calmly had free(ze)flows in our extremely cold water and I handed them my octo and switched to my pony to not overbreathe the one remaining set of regs. I eventually switched to a 7' long hose, and yes, had training with it. No real low or out of gas scenarios since.

 

[mc42]

We were returning back to shore on an easy shallow dive in a big group. Recipient signalled he was getting low, but not OOA (around 500 psi or so), so I offered the longhose from my doubles to him and we swam underwater for about 5 minutes back into the sheltered bay. It was his first time using a longhose and it worked well to avoid a boring surface swim and remain with the group.

Given he wasn’t OOA, I offered the choice of donation, surfacing, or taking over the full stage of air I was carrying for practice, and he chose donation. Near the end of the dive someone else signalled low and I was starting to deploy the stage to him but I thought better of it and called the dive. We were safely back at the beach by then. But being a dual donor would have been interesting!

That was the first time I’d done a real air share outside of training, so I’m happy it went smoothly. I definitely feel it’s a skill that should be practiced more often. I’d done it many times in Fundies and tech training, but doing it with a random rec diver adds an extra level of difficulty.

 

[ginti]

I've shared air to make sure a diver would get to the end of the dive then let them do the safety stop on their own air. I've never allowed a diver in my group to get so low on air as to not be able to either, call the dive and end it, or share air and make sure they get to end the dive in relative safety. I believe it's also good for people to understand sharing air can be a good thing and better to do it before an OOA situation arises.

Same to me.

I received air once because I had a free flow in cold water. So I asked a buddy his regulator, closed my valve, and aborted the dive.

Another time I gave my regulator to a friend who had 30bar, and we still needed a bit before arriving at the line; since there was boat traffic, I didn't really like the idea to ascent with the SMB, and I also had a massive amount of air (I had a double 12l for a rec dive, not really appropriate ), so I decided to share and to look try to reach the line. This way I prevented my buddy to be too light at the end of the dive and a potential OOA

 

[Ukmc]

I have never had to share air, but witnessed low on air once. It was kind of “boring”. I think it was in Coz. DM saw that my buddy’s air went down to 750 half way into a dive... DM knew from a prior dive to watch him, so once he got to 750 he just gave him his octo, regular rec setup. They wanted us to go up as a group so worked out ok since we all were able to complete the dive.
What do you guys think about continuing the dive on air share? Theoretically we should have gone up. However, the rest of the group had 1500-2000 left. We had plenty of air to share if true OOA would have come up and the guy still had 750 ... (they stopped share at a safety stop)

 

[Centrals]

Dive as a group in the beginning and end as a group.
I have no issue with that.
I was diving in Thailand and at the end of one dive the dm decided to take one of the diver up because of gas issue. And since we were all under the dive boat already so she signalled us to continue for extra 10 mins after checking the spg of everyone.