General Vortex Incident Discussion

[PfcAJ]

When you're older you won't see it my way ... but you will see it very differently than you do now. I guarantee it.

But let's run with your perspective for a moment ... what you say about raising training standards is all very nice ... it's been discussed ad nauseum here on ScubaBoard for years. How do you propose to do it? How, then would you propose to get everyone to buy into it?

Here's your chance ... you can succeed where everyone who's ever tried implementing training standards in the past has failed.

Tell us how you'd change the world ... please be specific.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

In regards to the bolded part... I don't think everyone thats tried has failed. I can think of two 3 letter organizations what have been doing pretty good, thus far (although I might disagree with some details of one or both of them from time to time).

My real concern/passion is with cave diving and cave diving safety. I think Sheck did a helluva job in making the sport safer across the board, but it has since come to a near standstill. Unfortunately, when someone dies in a cave, it directly impacts the rest of us who love and enjoy the sport. I hate it when people die, but I also hate it when I can't dive places. That's why I get into these threads.

Sheck came up with 5 great rules of safe cave diving. It is foolish to think that these are the end all and be all. At the moment, there IS a system out there that doesn't result in fatalities when it is followed. THIS is what should be taught, from start to finish, imo. The other stuff, unfortunately, does have fatalities attached to it. This is not a piecemeal thing, its all or nothing. Poor Ben got a partial education out of order, and he's gone.

I think instructor shopping should be eliminated (base price across the board per locale), instructors should be held to a high standard, complaints need to actually be dealt with, students should have to progress no faster than at a certain rate and report what they went over in class IN PRIVATE to the next higher authority in the agency, cavern should be replaced with a skill refinement class, and if anything can be standardized, it should be, and it should be standardized based on real logic. Valve drills, s-drills, basic 5, fin kicks, etc. I went diving with a guy who passed intro to cave and couldn't even perform a frog kick. Somethin ain't right.

You get people to buy into it by trimming the fat. If you don't produce a good intro (or c1) diver, the next instructor inline MUST say something. You know, ethics. Personal integrity of the instructor base. Open standards, transparency. An overall reworking of the system. Its tough, its uncomfortable, and people's feelings might get hurt, but it WILL save lives.

I'm continually astounded at how one way of diving does not produce deaths, but the every man for himself personal preference easy way out was...does. I fully believe that Ben was taught something he shouldn't have been, "passed", got an ego boost, and killed himself (notice how different this is to what I posted above). All the while, he thought he knew enough because no one put him into a position to show him a higher standard or effectively communicate how little he really knew.

And Steve, of course SM didn't cause it. It facilitated it.

 

[Hetland]

Limit instructors to the demand, or as many as you can manage.

Yes, let's make dive training even more expensive! Let's take time away from good instructors so that they can deal with the bureaucracy of this extra management!

Require the student to fill out a dive log for every dive, 1 paragraph. Depth, time, passage, etc. Write what happened, what THEY did wrong, how they will fix it. It would make a great record for the student as well. Would be good for records for the instructor for insurance, and the agency could see what's going on. Sure, you could lie, but very few students would be down to lie on a course they're paying for about short cutting skills.

Really? You do remember that most people dive for fun? If you require people to write a book report on their training, I guarantee that the vast, vast majority will short-cut the !@#$ out of it.

If you want to write a critique of your dive instructor, you can find the address you need to send it to on the internet.

For basic cave, video valve drills, s drills, lost line w/ blacked out mask, on line exits, etc. Doesn't have to be professional quality, just show the student what he/she did wrong, and show the agency that drills were done.

So instead of giving you (the student) his undivided attention, the instructor will be concentrating on doing a good job on the video so that he doesn't get in trouble with his training agency. I want MY instructor on my ass, not on a camera.

And who's going to watch these videos? Who's going to pay someone to remain meaningfully interested?

 

[Dirty-Dog]

Sometimes you just gotta let Darwin take his due ... it's how we keep from breeding a race of idiots ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

I think it might be too late...

 

[cavediver256]

I'd be willing to bet his training never involved stage bottles at all.

And it wouldn't surprise me to find out that some of the issues shown in that picture are a direct violation of what he was trained to do.

Wouldn't be the first time I've seen someone ignore their training ... and everything I've read about this young man suggests to me someone with a serious case of "I'll do it my way" ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Well why wouldn't his training involve a stage bottle or two??? I mean one of the arguments I have heard over and over again for OW SM is that more gas is better, redundancy, blah blah blah...so why stop with two bottles??? Hell lets do two SM bottles and 4 stages and 2 safeties. (just save the O2 bottle for the decompression course)

I will go onto say this Bob, someone with your skill level and years of diving experience should have no problem with learning a new discipline such as SM. I am just not sure whether it is something a still "wet behind the ears" OW diver should be tackling.

I don't see what is wrong with learning to dive in a single tank and paying your dues and working your way into a set of double cylinders....no matter the configuration. That method has seemed to work quite well for more than a few years....... it worked for me, and I will bet it worked for you too. This whole "too far, too fast" method of training has cost more than one diver their life.

 

[PfcAJ]

So instead of giving you (the student) his undivided attention, the instructor will be concentrating on doing a good job on the video so that he doesn't get in trouble with his training agency. I want MY instructor on my ass, not on a camera.

And who's going to watch these videos? Who's going to pay someone to remain meaningfully interested?

The instructor could always get a helper to video the class...

 

[vshearer]

I see the advice often given to students going into cave diving to get familiar with and start cavern in doubles. So leaving out the question of where SM is applicable, why shouldn't the same advice apply for learning sidemount and then going thru cave training via that route? And who is to say Ben, or anyone, shouldn't follow that path? I understand the argument that SM "facilitated" this tragedy, but over-regulation is not the answer.

 

[Hetland]

Sheck came up with 5 great rules of safe cave diving.

And look where it got him.

In regards to the bolded part... I don't think everyone thats tried has failed. I can think of two 3 letter organizations what have been doing pretty good, thus far.

It's all becoming quite clear now.

I'm a little surprised now that it's the SM that you're so focused on. Didn't Ben violate basically every DIR rule there is? Seriously, he even had stickers on his tanks I'd bet. And God knows you're going to die if you have a boot on your tank.

My real concern/passion is with cave diving and cave diving safety.

Really, then why do you continue to focus only on the side mount issue? You refuse to look at any other aspect of this incident as an actual cause (exceeding training, too deep, wrong gasses, wrong regulators)

I think Sheck did a helluva job in making the sport safer across the board, but it has since come to a near standstill.

Sheck came up with 5 great rules of safe cave diving. It is foolish to think that these are the end all and be all.

Really? Because it's the same handful of things that continue to kill cave divers. When sharks with frikkin' laser beams start killing cavers, then we'll name the "don't dive with sharks that have frikkin' lasers" rule after you.

At the moment, there IS a system out there that doesn't result in fatalities when it is followed. THIS is what should be taught, from start to finish, imo. The other stuff, unfortunately, does have fatalities attached to it. This is not a piecemeal thing, its all or nothing.

My system has a 100% survival rate too, perhaps I should start teaching it to folks, and make sure that they all know that it is the only possible way to do things that will keep them 100% safe 100% of the time.

Poor Ben got a partial education out of order, and he's gone.

IF Ben's dead, then he killed himself. A class could not have stopped him, even if the Kool-Aid was part of the curriculum.

I'm continually astounded at how one way of diving does not produce deaths, but the every man for himself personal preference easy way out was...does.

I don't want to drink your Kool-Aid dude! Most people dive for fun, and thousands of divers without their DIR cub scout patch don't die every day. You're not going to convert people by forcing them into your club.

I fully believe that Ben was taught something he shouldn't have been, "passed", got an ego boost, and killed himself (notice how different this is to what I posted above). All the while, he thought he knew enough because no one put him into a position to show him a higher standard or effectively communicate how little he really knew.

People told him. He didn't listen. If a locked gate didn't stop him, nothing short of a beat-down would have.

 

[vshearer]

It also seems pretty clear Ben is not in the back of the cave, which means he isn't there at all or maybe under a sand slide? In which case his training or lack thereof may not be relevant. I am not defending his actions in any way, just trying to point out the question of what happened is still unanswered....

 

[PfcAJ]

Like I said, I'm less concerned with non-cave divers. I like them too, but I also like having cave access.

Sheck died breaking his own rule. I know this. Ben died breaking many of Sheck's rules too. I wonder if Ben would have thought he was able to dive Vortex without that class. Why did he even take it? I sure would like to ask his instructor.

Most (all?) cave instructors teach Sheck's rules. I think there should be more "rules" added to the list. Since they teach Sheck's rules, does that all make us part of the Sheck Club? I wouldn't want that koolaid shoved down my throat... Its a good thing it was, those rules have kept me alive on more than one occasion. The rest of the rules I follow have kept me alive many times, too.

People don't die diving deep air, either. But then again, some do. People don't die making visual jumps...then again, some do. People don't die switching to unmarked bottles, but then a few do, as well. People don't die solo...but every once in a while...some do. People don't always die on rebreathers...but...some do. Some folks even SM and don't die, but some do. Some don't die diving an unbalanced rig, yet some do. Heck, even Sheck almost bit it because of an unbalanced rig.

I'm looking for BEST practices to be taught. Thats whats missing from a lot of cave training. I wasn't born into dir/gue/pick your letters diving. I went through other classes, first. That is often overlooked whenever I say something on here.

 

[Dive-aholic]

But how much time can you really spend teaching non cave skills in SM? I don't mean that in a sarcastic way, but what do you spend the time doing?

Maybe there's a course outline that can teach me more about this course. Right now I'm just struggling to figure out what you spend 2 days doing. With an off the shelf Sm rig, you're essentially naturally trimmed out, are you not? Now, I'll admit that once I went towards making my own unit, I had to dick around in the pool quite a bit testing things...but I don't think that type of thing is what people are showing up to PADI courses with.

I don't know about any other instructors, but most of my courses involve lots of repetition - building muscle memory. My students typically end their 2 days with very sore arms from all the valve drills they have to do. I just finished teaching a 2 day Twinset course today...oh wait, maybe I shouldn't have taught them how to dive twinsets since they're only cavern trained and don't need to learn how to dive twinsets until they start their cave training! Maybe I shouldn't have taught the cavern students I have this weekend how to dive sidemount before signing up for a cavern class either. In addition to everything else taught in a cavern class, let's have them learn how to dive sidemount during the class...or better yet, let's just have them do it in a single tank because that's safe.

To address your other comment, most divers are not naturally trimmed out with off the shelf rigs. There's still a matter of making adjustments to to get everything trimmed out. Oh, by the way, your cylinders are not trimmed properly in your photo... :mooner: