stgcph
Registered
The reason I tell this little story is, that with the input from this community, it may help other divers, who, like me, are not very experienced, in making the right decisions in situations like this.
In February when diving off Dauin on the southern tip of Negros in the Philippines, i was buddied up with a Chinese guy who we can call Mr. Ho. We went off in the morning on the boat together with the local DM and we were only the three of us. I had been diving the previous days with the same DM and had got to know him as a serious and safety minded person. Mr. Ho spoke very little English but he was a nice guy and we all got along well using single words, gestures and body language. After the first two dives it turned out, that Mr. Ho was an air hog as well, and we had to end the dives after around 25 minutes as he ran low on air. It was a bit annoying of course, but to me not really anything to make a fuss about Mr. Ho being such a nice guy and all. Some bottom-time more or less, who care, there were other days and more dives ahead. After a good, long SI we went for the third dive and although we stayed close together, I admit that I didn’t keep my eyes on Mr. Ho all the time. So when I looked to check for him I was somewhat surprised to see that he was now on top of the DM holding on to the DM’s tank valve and breathing from the DM’s Octopus. I thought it was quite a funny configuration (photo below) and as I figured the DM was doing it “for my sake” I went along and continued the dive. The DM was one of these professionals that apparently stop breathing when under water, so we had another 15 minutes dive time and time to do the safety stop.
Only afterwards did I consider that it was probably bad judgement on my part that I did not make the decision to end the dive immediately. In the unlikely event that I had an OOA situation, my options were to do a CESA (we were at about 15 meters at the time) or to snatch the Octopus out of the mouth of Mr. Ho. I would have had only little chance of success though, as Mr. Ho was quite a big guy and would probably not have accepted this without putting up some “argument” that I was unlikely to win (and also, this would have been extremely impolite). Last option was to buddy-breathe with the DM, which would mean three persons now sucking from the same tank and which would also be a rather crowded situation with Mr. Ho dangling from the Octopus.
I guess this is a variation on the “trust me-dive”, which has been discussed a lot on this forum. I had confidence that the DM would not do anything to compromise safety and so I switched off my own thinking. This could be said of Mr. Ho as well.
What would you have done?
Mr. Ho on DM's octopus
In February when diving off Dauin on the southern tip of Negros in the Philippines, i was buddied up with a Chinese guy who we can call Mr. Ho. We went off in the morning on the boat together with the local DM and we were only the three of us. I had been diving the previous days with the same DM and had got to know him as a serious and safety minded person. Mr. Ho spoke very little English but he was a nice guy and we all got along well using single words, gestures and body language. After the first two dives it turned out, that Mr. Ho was an air hog as well, and we had to end the dives after around 25 minutes as he ran low on air. It was a bit annoying of course, but to me not really anything to make a fuss about Mr. Ho being such a nice guy and all. Some bottom-time more or less, who care, there were other days and more dives ahead. After a good, long SI we went for the third dive and although we stayed close together, I admit that I didn’t keep my eyes on Mr. Ho all the time. So when I looked to check for him I was somewhat surprised to see that he was now on top of the DM holding on to the DM’s tank valve and breathing from the DM’s Octopus. I thought it was quite a funny configuration (photo below) and as I figured the DM was doing it “for my sake” I went along and continued the dive. The DM was one of these professionals that apparently stop breathing when under water, so we had another 15 minutes dive time and time to do the safety stop.
Only afterwards did I consider that it was probably bad judgement on my part that I did not make the decision to end the dive immediately. In the unlikely event that I had an OOA situation, my options were to do a CESA (we were at about 15 meters at the time) or to snatch the Octopus out of the mouth of Mr. Ho. I would have had only little chance of success though, as Mr. Ho was quite a big guy and would probably not have accepted this without putting up some “argument” that I was unlikely to win (and also, this would have been extremely impolite). Last option was to buddy-breathe with the DM, which would mean three persons now sucking from the same tank and which would also be a rather crowded situation with Mr. Ho dangling from the Octopus.
I guess this is a variation on the “trust me-dive”, which has been discussed a lot on this forum. I had confidence that the DM would not do anything to compromise safety and so I switched off my own thinking. This could be said of Mr. Ho as well.
What would you have done?
Mr. Ho on DM's octopus