Fresh diver OOA

[Imla]

Hi...

I'm a fresh diver. Got my PADI OWD in the beginning of august this year. This happened on my 15th dive. My previous dives had been my OWD dives (6, pr Norwegian regulations), then 3 dives out of course setting, but two of them were with the instructor I had on 4 of my OWdives (Which is also D2 in this story). On two of these three dives I experienced some problems with too little weights. THen followed 5 dives within the AOWD package. (Night, Nav, PPB, Deep and Wreck)

So... to the incident in question.

Gear: Bare Neoprene Drysuit (Rental), Oceanic regs and 1stage, 300Bar 10L steel tank, hood, gloves, zeagle tech bcd.
Location: "Muren" in the Oslofjord, Norway

"Muren" or, "The Wall" is a constructed wall in the oslofjord made to ensure that large ships would need to pass the Oscarsborg Fortress to get to Oslo. This wall is one of the reasons why the German cruiser Blücher were sunk in the beginning of WW2.
In the picture it looks like an inverted L of shallow water. On the bottom part there is a short stretch in the wall with deeper water to allow for sailboats and boats that go deeper than 5m to pass. Due to currents, divers need to go deeper than 12m to pass to avoid being taken to the other side of the wall.

(Now.. this is what I wish I HAD been told)

This day we were three people going diving. Me(14 dives in total), D2 (Who had been my instructor for the last half of my OWD) and D3 who was a Divemaster. (In other words, I was feeling pretty safe)

While we are doing our preparations on shore, I ask them to show and tell about the divesite, seeing as I've never been there. The way they describe the wall, I envision it going in a straight line from "where the shore meets the L" up to the fortress. (Island up north) I the ask them if there are any special conditions I need to be aware of. We talk a little about current, but I was never told that because of currents, and the opening for boats, divers need to be at "point zero" before ascending.

We agree on divetime of max 60min, to let everyone know when at halv tank, and 50Bar left when surfaced. (300bar 10L steel tank) (Sorry for using european denominations. I don't know the equivalent american) So far, so good.
We get in the water. Good weighting. Have Superb (as good as a newbie can at least) buoyancy. Calm breathing. Really enjoying the dive.
Here is where I start to err. I assumed I could trust the instructor to do the navigation, as I had never been there before. I know from earlier dives that I spend a lot of air getting submerged, and then my airconsumption is reasonably low, so turning back at half tank has usually gotten me back up at 50Bar.

Anyways, happily diving along I signal my buddies that I am at half tank. I get the ok sign back, and we continue. Hmm.. Ok... I'm not familiar, so I follow. I Then signal at 120, and at 100, and at 70. My buddy (Who was not working as an instructor at the time.. this was a fun dive) then turns around. I get to 60 bar, and signal that I want to go up for the safetystop. We are now at 55 minutes. I get confused when buddy signals a BIG NO!!. We then ascend to 5m and swim along. Ok.. My thought is that we are now doing the safetystop while swimming. Fair enough. When my 3min were done, I signal once again that I want to ascend. Once again he signals no, and to continue swimming. This repeats every 10 bar untill 20 bars. I really start getting worried, and when he signals to descend, I'm very confused at what to do. Eventually I chose do descend because I can feel the current. We stay really close to each other, and at 10 bar and 15m, I stop. He prepares his octo and with a couple of calming breaths before the change, I change from my reg, to his octo just a couple of breaths short of me being empty. (I was at 50bar at 60 min, when we should have been topside)

I feel really embarrased, and not just a little bit angry. I am usually a person who believe in safetyrules, and that adhering to standards saves lives. (I'm a nurse, and I work in a prehospital setting). However, I also obviously had a problem switching from the mental opinion of D2 as my instructor to him just being a buddy.

My problem with this dive came mostly with what he said after the dive. He said he consciously swam further to teach me a lesson to always remember that you not only need to inform of your air left, but also that you want to turn around. Unfortunately, after this experience, not only have I learnt that I'm the boss of my dive, but also that I will never trust a buddy again. I am quite certain I would have gotten the point if we returned with 30 bar left when on top, and I am a little bitt baffled that he would consciously take the risk of me going out of air and the potential risk of panic, when the simple remedy was to turn around. (Now, I do fully understand his point, and lesson is absolutely learned...)

Now... My lessons...
Take responsibility
Be absolutely sure you know the divesite (Or be very clear on who is navigating)
Trust own instincts
I do not panic very easily
I DO have a good grasp on my airconsumption, and the annoying part was that I knew for quite some time I would be OOA

So... Am I right to be embarrased... Or can I pin at least a little bit of this faux pas on my buddy... considering they never told me I need to be back at point zero before I could ascend?

I'm sorry for the rambling, but this is really bothering me.
I've had about 20 dives so far after this. Some good. Some with challenges (buoyancy and stuff) but nothing like this.
Hope someone can help me work this out.


Oh... and I am never going OOA again!

 

[ktomlinson]

Sounds like one hell of a way to teach you a lesson! It does sound like you learned the correct lessons though.

 

[Rod.]

Imla,
Thanks very much for the detailed description and analyses of both the situation and your experience. As a newly certified OW diver this month with only 10 dives completed, this was very valuable information for me. I will dive responsibly!

Actually, I'm newly re-certified. The first time was in 1968. I was OOA on my certification dive then. Once is enough.

Rod.




Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Imla]

Sounds like one hell of a way to teach you a lesson! It does sound like you learned the correct lessons though.

Well.. I would have preferred that we got up at decent leftover bars... and that he rather told me afterwards... I would have gotten the point.

 

[ktomlinson]

Absolutely! I don't condone his tactics and think they are irresponsible. You did pick out the important lessons and that is the good part.

 

[TSandM]

This is a very strange story. Although I do agree that the burned hand teaches best, I find the concept that an instructor would deliberately run a student (or even ex-student/novice diver) critically low on gas in what amounted to an overhead environment to be incomprehensible. And if the need for a "turn the dive" signal in ADDITION to notifying on gas was not briefed before the dive, then the instructor wasn't even setting up a good learning experience, because he was expecting you to come up with a novel and creative solution to a problem when you didn't necessarily have the baseline information and capacity to do so.

This is the kind of thing we do in technical dive training, but throwing new problems at divers is done there first in very shallow water, where, if the response is not as expected, the risks are low. You were in shallow water but in a place where you could not safely surface -- such a place is a virtual overhead environment, and to me, it is very bad judgment on the part of an instructor to stress a student in such a setting, especially a novice diver.

The lessons you took away were good ones, and I'm sure you'll remember them. But I wouldn't have taught them that way.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

After the dive, I would have made up some story and see if he would loan me his car keys,... then I would piss on his front seat...you know... just to teach him a lesson.

Sounds very irresponsible on his part due to the virtual overhead and current. Additionally, he should almost certainly have begun allowing you to share air, well before you got that low on air. It would have been much better to allow you to keep a larger reserve, assuming that was possible.

 

[k ellis]

This has always been a baffle to me. First the assembly line method of teaching students has been an argument for quiet some time. I mean you take 10 students out and teach them the absolute minimum and then turn them loose with a simple warning they should not go deeper then 60'. I have always been one to think scuba is one of the simplest things in the world to do but its not an over night skill. You see students constantly even in their 20th dive struggling with buoyancy and air management. They also are task loaded with all the joys of the diving world they want to take in such as coral reefs and shipwrecks. They have to watch their buddies and monitor their gas. Then they have to in many cases navigate an unfamiliar area which in itself can be stressful.

This guy was supposedly an instructor enjoying a little free diving time with a new diver so he should have known the first 30 or so dives are often the most impressionable. If a minor mistake happens and causes stress it can literaly scare a diver away from diving permanently. This would have in my opinion been much better handled in discussion rather then risking a all out panic that has the potential to cause a diver to fly to the surface and well we know what would happen then.

Dumpsterdiver is correct in that I would have went and pissed all over their door handle to their truck and only told them about it after he had opened the door. I have witnessed so many life threatening emergencies in my life from people who have almost burned to death, Shot and begging for life, I have witnessed babies born only to die later and I have witnessed heart attacks where people would be talking to loved ones about their big day tommorow and instead their loved ones had to make funeral arrangements for them instead of enjoying the planned day. Life is WAY too precious to gamble with when it comes to people who are not prepared to handle extreme risk.

How would this buddy have reacted if he had to explain to the local authorities that the O.P. was dead because he was trying to teach him a valuable lesson? Would he be charged would be entirely up to the D.A. (or the equivelant in the O.P.s Location) but he would definately not escape the permanent damage he will have inflicted on himself knowing he lead a person to their death and that the person was scared and begging to go to safety.

Sorry I just had to get this off my chest because it bothers me when people play with peoples lives!

 

[ScubaBB]

Very irresponsable behaviour of somebody who should instruct Safety First. But lukely you came out well and learnt the importance of a good buddy.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

Stories like this are one of thr reasons I wrote this post a few years ago :

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/ne...ering-diving/283566-who-responsible-what.html

It is also the reason I wrote my book. This is a safe sport if one stays within the confines of their training and experience. And if it is done with full information and effective communication. Both of the last seem to be missing here. Running a new diver low on air is not teaching, task loading, or giving them a good lesson. IMO it is criminally irresponsible. Whether you actually got hurt is irrelevent. The fact is you could have been. That is negligent. I wouyld never dive with that instructor again and would make a conscious effort to let people know what he did. Yes you are responsible for your own dive and dive plan but new divers usually are not told this in stark terms. It is danced around and sugar coated so that you don't get scared and rethink the whole idea of getting certified. That comes from a training model based on profit rather than skills and education.

You now have an idea of just how deficient your training was. You may have gotten the skills, but the knowledge and a base to make good judgment calls was left in the trash. Time to start going beyond the text book you used and away from the instructor you used. Find new resources of information, a new instructor, and perhaps new agency. Disregrd the marketing hype of fun, sun, and quick easy rewards. It's bull crap big time. Time to become a diver as opposed to an underwater tourist. That requires study, dedication, and experience with buddies who will not put your safety anf life at risk to teach you a lesson. It requires real work and the ability to pick out quality instruction and training courses as well as a quality instructor. I have a whole chapter on how to do that as well. I will post an excerpt later. At work now and don't have access to the file.