Considering PADI master diver

[MikeFerrara]

Hey guys, fatalities are only one measure, that others, and likely more sensitive, injuries and dropouts are completely unknown.

There are a lot of things that don't get counted or published. I've seen as many as half a dozen divers hit the surface with free flows and without their buddies in a single weekend at a local quarry. Buddy seperation, rapid ascent, no injury (this time) and it doesn't get tracked.

I was out in Lake Michigan and another boat on the same wreck had an AOW group diving. Half the group poped to the surface unintentionally and none too slowly from 75 ft. Capt, wouldn't let them back down and diving was over for the day. No one got hurt but they sure could have and DAN did not record the incident.

On one trip, I was DMing and another boat dropped a bunch of divers on the same wreck. They must have literally dropped them because they landed right on me. I got smacked in the head by a tank and shoves into the wreck where the zebra mussles cut me to pieces. BTW, DAN did not record my wounds or the fact that there was a boat load of people that had no clue how to descend.

My wife and I were on another trip with 4 other divers. One pair was a newly married couple who just got done with AOW. The girls tank sliped out of the bc (at the surface), pulled the reg out of her mouth, she got a little water in her mouth, paniced and smashed her finger some how trying to get up the ladder. They were done for the day. The other two guys who were diving together almost got in a dive. They got in before we did. On the way down to the wreck we passed them at about 20 ft. the one guy was carrying his weight belt in his hand. As they told the story, they had made it down to the wreck and his weght belt came off or something. He decided to go to the surface to put it back on...sure, go the the surface where you can put it on with the waves beating you to death instead of doing it down on the wreck where things are nice and quiet. LOL On each dive of that trip we cut our dives very short because having no one else show up down on the wreck, made us worry that there might have been a problem top side.

I could give lots more examples but the short of it is that we don't go out there on recreational charters anymore unless we can fill the boat with our own group. It just costs too much especially considering that you don't get to dive and if you do, you'll probably have to spend the whole time rescueing other divers.

 

[Thalassamania]

There are a lot of things that don't get counted or published … rescueing other divers.

And how many of the accidents dropped out of diving I wonder?

 

[MikeFerrara]

You know how you always read about the bad vis in our midwest quarries? The fact is that if you can dive them on a wednesday, it's really pretty good and sometimes downright fantastic. However, by about 10am on Sat. It's a silted out torn up mess. A lot of those divers probably haven't see it any other way.

At one quarry that I really love to dive there were 9 EMS responses in a single season. I was on the property when several of them occured and that isn't any fun. My son was working there when an AOW student hit the surface not breathing after losing a fin at 80 ft and panicing.

In that same season, I had to interupt decompression twice to descend and help other divers. Once it was an instructor and a student on a deep dive who didn't look like they were going to make the surface without help. What a mess that was. The other time it was a diver tangled up in a tree...or trying to wrestle it or...I don't know what the hell he was doing. Twice I had to interupt a class because of accidents or incidents. One was a missing diver that I and one of my DM's went looking for after getting my class out of the water. The other time there was screaning on the other side of the quarry and I sent my staff over while I stayed with my students who were in the water.

Lets see. A 3 1/2 hour drive (a full tank of gas at least for the round trip) $12 or so/head to get in, another $6 to park if you want to be anywhere near where you'll be diving + breathing gas. I would pay to be in the middle of that CF, why?

Oh, here's a good one. A few years ago, the put a new photo album out on the desk. In the entire album there was not a single picture of a diver that wasn't solidly planted in the bottom...not one.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Over the years I've had a number of people suggest that maybe things are just worse around here for some reason because they don't see this stuff. I don't think so.

Some former students of mine went to Hawaii...not someplace that I can or ever could afford to go. They baught one of those videos that some resorts make of the trip and sell. This video is now one of my prized posessions. I showed three videos in every class. I showed "A Deceptively Easy Way to Die" to warn divers about diving in overhead environments without training. I showed one video of highly skilled divers so students would know what good diving looks like before we even get in the water. And...I showed this Hawaii video. It's perfect. In one short video we have several extremely blatant examples of just about everything that a diver should not do. There is NOT one single buddy team in the whole group. We have head up trim where it can clarly be seen that even though the diver is several feet off the bottom their fins are disturbing the bottom. There are divers who don't even try to get neutral but just push of the bottom, give a couple of kicks while they sink and then push off the bottom again. There are divers standing on coral or vertical and negative and kicking the coral to stay up. The videagrapher is actually intentionally tearing coral apart to get actopus out so divers can play with it. There is dangling unsecured equipment in the extreme. The recreational dive industry at its finest.

 

[Web Monkey]

OK. Up to you. Keep on throwing away what data there is, saying it is "flawed", "wrong" or "incorrect". Ignore people like DAN who say diving is getting safer. Make up your own "theories" based on your own biases. Just do not expect the rest of us to buy into it.
-j-

Actually, I never said any of those things. I said there was no data. No data is a very different thing than incomplete data.

DAN is a very helpful agency, but they have no idea if diving is actually safer or not. They only have records of insurance claims and reported injuries not total dives or total divers.

Since they are no longer the only company providing dive insurance they can't even tell you if total claims are going up or down.

Terry

 

[MikeFerrara]

And how many of the accidents dropped out of diving I wonder?

I don't know how you could measure it but I know that lots of divers get certified, maybe take a warm water trip, then have a bad dive or two back home and just give up right then.

The industry has been pretty flat and has even had some down turns dispite the fact that HUGE numbers of new divers are certified each year.

In the time that I've been diving, the crowds have remained pretty constant although from year to year, the faces change. I haven't noticed any drastic changes in the number of charters running on the lakes and I think the number of dive shops around here has gone down. Just based on observation, I have to think that the turnover is huge and fast.

But...new divers are the ones who spend the most in the shortest period of time at a dive shop. They're the ones you want. When I had a shop, I had plenty of established divers who never baught anything who used to come in just to keep me company. LOL

It was also fairly common to have divers we had never seen before come into the shop wanting to sell their brand-new hardly used at all equipment. these were usually not happy people and I remember one guy who was on the verge of violence and I thought I was going to have to call the police or fight him or something. They come in with equipment they spent $2000 for and think they should be able to sell it for close to that. They are not happy when you tell them that you can buy it new in the box for half that and, used, it isn't worth that much. They really don't take it well when you tell them that since it's a brand you don't sell, can't service and so on, that you don't really want it at any price. E-bay probably helps keep some of those people away these days.

Of course, the smart thing to do is to invite these people diving and maybe sell them some more stuff. Unfortunately by this time, they usually seem to have their mind pretty well made up that they are done diving.

When divers first move from "rec" to "tech" is another time when they drop a ton of cash. We can already see that this is the next big move for the recreational agencies and shops.

 

[Web Monkey]

Lets see. A 3 1/2 hour drive (a full tank of gas at least for the round trip) $12 or so/head to get in, another $6 to park if you want to be anywhere near where you'll be diving + breathing gas. I would pay to be in the middle of that CF, why?

So what are you complaining about? It's great practice !


On my last dive with Princess on Grenada, I had to rescue guy after he did a backroll (no air, no buddy, no idea that his air was off, paniced), towed an out-of-shape tourist (who was yelling "I can't make it!") to the new boat and explained to 4 divers that bleeding and pain wasn't normal and that the big coral scrape should probably get some medical attention.

DAN never heard a word about any of it.

Terry

 

[MikeFerrara]

So what are you complaining about? It's great practice !


On my last dive with Princess on Grenada, I had to rescue guy after he did a backroll (no air, no buddy, no idea that his air was off, paniced), towed an out-of-shape tourist (who was yelling "I can't make it!") to the new boat and explained to 4 divers that bleeding and pain wasn't normal and that the big coral scrape should probably get some medical attention.

DAN never heard a word about any of it.

Terry

I don't think I have many more rescues in me. I think the last one did it for me. Well that one wasn't really a rescue cus I just watched. I've posted about it before and once just recently but to recap...a mom, dad and little Jr. diving. They're on the wing of the plane at Gilboa. 30 ft of clear pretty warm water. I see two of the divers wrestling or something and then they are trying to ascend. They were negative, pointed toward the surface and kicking but not going anywhere...until they fall off the edge of the wing and drop another 10 ft or so into the bottom and then they're in zero vis. All I can see is this big broiling cloud. When they did start up, they never dumped and just about did a moon shot. The third diver, the child, was off floundering around on his own. The thing is, I didn't realize it was such a young child at the time and I kept my distance and just watched, though I did follow them to the surface. Once they hit the surface and started swimming toward the dock, we dropped back down and finished our dive.

When we were getting out of the water, moms gear was still piled up on the dock and dad was going back and forth hauling it away. This very small boy comes up and asks me if I need help with my gear. I thank him and tell him I'm fine. That's when he started telling me about his dive with his parents and about watching his mother get pulled from the water screaming. He was the third diver that was off on his own while mom and dad did their best to kill themselves. There was nothing wrong with mom, BTW. She just decided that she was unconfortable. What the heck, if someone is at 30 ft and doesn't know how to ascend, they probably should be uncomfortable.

So sure, certify the 10 year olds. Teach the whole family together. Tell them how safe this is. Tell them how easy it is and how the class is only a few hours long. I don't know how long that whole CF is going to stick in that little boys mind but I'm not going to forget it anytime soon. Some of this stuff is just (or should be) criminal and I don't have any more patience for it. Safer than fishing from a dock huh?

But hey, this isn't data. It's just my opinion and everyone knows that diving is getting safer. The kid just watched his mother get pulled out of the water screaming. It doesn't count unless she dies or the kid dies. What I wouldn't I give to have someone from DAN or one of the idiots out of the office at one of the agencies in the water with me when we get to watch some of this crap? Wouldn't I love to go through their useless standards with them line by line and explain just how it is these divers come to be there? But, they're the experts. That'll be the day.

 

[k4man]

but dont you need a bunch of cards to achieve buoyancy? I mean, with enough cards, you wont have to carry lead.

a point I agree with, totally!!

and if you look at my signature, you'll notice I am one of the card-carrying-fools-with-too-much-money-to-spend-on-MSD-certification

thanks, I like my shiny cards....makes me feel SPECIAL!

 

[fisherdvm]

So sure, certify the 10 year olds. Teach the whole family together. Tell them how safe this is. Tell them how easy it is and how the class is only a few hours long. I don't know how long that whole CF is going to stick in that little boys mind but I'm not going to forget it anytime soon. Some of this stuff is just (or should be) criminal and I don't have any more patience for it. Safer than fishing from a dock huh?

Funny how you mentioned about the 10 year old.

That just REALLY BUG me, big time. I read again, in a diving magazine the LDS gave me...

"Diving is safer than bowling"....

When was the last time you read a life insurance policy that exclude bowling??

Then the comment,

"Diving is safer than being a passenger in a car".....

When was the last time you worried about drowning, out of air, equipment failure, "life support" system while you were in a car?

Puppyphallus!!! Cut the marketing baloney, and focus on the fact!!

10 year old children can't even wipe their buttoxen well enough, and you expect them to worry about "air emboli" with "rapid uncontrolled ascend", "ear barotrauma", "ruptured tympanic membrane", "nitrogen narcosis"... etc. etc..

I have spoken to 3 local LDS and not one, not one, question how mature my son is, before they wanted me to sign him up for OW.