I can't help but notice....
- Thread starter wgw04024
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I get that impression, too. Older divers tend to be more experienced. They suffer from not just susceptibility to medical issues, but also complacency. Also, the very experienced divers increasingly have access to tools like rebreathers and DPVs that enable them to push limits like never before.
Capt Jim Wyatt
Hanging at the 10 Foot Stop
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A lot of people assume that dive fatalities occur primarily with new divers without much experience, but if you go through the DAN fatality reports, you will see that fatalities are spread out throughout the diving population, and newer divers are not overwhelmingly represented. Each year a fair number of instructors and technical divers make the fatality list, as well as a wide variety of experience levels in between. Experience has nowhere near the correlation that overall health, obesity, and age have.
PaloPinto
Contributor
I agree, at 31 I often find myself as one of the youngest people on a dive boat.
OkByMe
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I don't think it is diving that is going to kill me, I think it is skiing. Few years ago, after the ride to the top and looking out over "china girl", Daughter says "you are going to ski that?" me, why not, been doing this a long time. Son-in-law says "that's not in the job description - we'll watch and meet you later." Everything is going fine... I over take another skier and pass him at the narrows where the canyon gets steep. For NO REASON AT ALL.. I bust it, just as the skier I passed, passed me. I lay there and look at one of my ski's about 75' above me. Well I hang out for a while thinking another skier coming through will see it and bring it to me. Nope, I stick the ski I have in the snow and pound my way up to the one I lost using my elbows and knees, crawling because the snow is too loose to stand up without going to my thighs. I reach the ski, roll over disturbed about how hard my heart was pounding. I could see my chest move through the jacket. 9,000 feet might have had something to do with it, me being in my sixties might have something to do with it, just doing yard work and gardening and climbing the occasional ladder for exercise might have something to with it.... But all I could think of was that I'm going to die right here, right now, and my kids are going to be pissed, I know they were waiting until I got old so they could out-ski me and now they will never have the opportunity. That thought got me to laughing out loud, just as another skier pulled up and asked if I needed help... I could only shake my head yes until I stopped laughing. In a few minutes the old heart got back to normal and I finished the run.
Another angle of observation:
A straw pole among the doctors and operators at the hyperbaric chamber I've helped out at concluded the fat, the old and the dehydrated get bent most frequently. My observations from the docks conclude this is the most common characteristics of vacation divers as well.
Difficult to conclude if there's as a significant cause and effect correlation or simply a coincidence in demographical distribution.
Another issue I've considered is the large amount of unreported near misses. If the diver doesn't end up dead, I suspect the young 'shake it off' and don't publish at a greater rate. Perhaps this is a stereotype?
.... It just so happens I'm happy diving with the aged or rounding divers... Far less likely to accidentally wear my wetsuit or enamor my date. Underwater, there's far more important factors than body type or age in what makes a good or safe buddy.
We're all going to die somewhere doing something. Myself, provided I conveniently float up for scooping up in a dip net, would like to die underwater doing what brings me peace.
Dive safe,
Cameron
A straw pole among the doctors and operators at the hyperbaric chamber I've helped out at concluded the fat, the old and the dehydrated get bent most frequently. My observations from the docks conclude this is the most common characteristics of vacation divers as well.
Difficult to conclude if there's as a significant cause and effect correlation or simply a coincidence in demographical distribution.
Another issue I've considered is the large amount of unreported near misses. If the diver doesn't end up dead, I suspect the young 'shake it off' and don't publish at a greater rate. Perhaps this is a stereotype?
.... It just so happens I'm happy diving with the aged or rounding divers... Far less likely to accidentally wear my wetsuit or enamor my date. Underwater, there's far more important factors than body type or age in what makes a good or safe buddy.
We're all going to die somewhere doing something. Myself, provided I conveniently float up for scooping up in a dip net, would like to die underwater doing what brings me peace.
Dive safe,
Cameron
KevinNM
Contributor
There is a patten with motorcycle riders and pilots that the two peaks for serious accidents are the very new and the very experienced. Luckily new scuba divers tend not to be doing highly dangerous dives, unlike motorcycles and planes where all accidents are potentially very dangerous.
I agree, the statement on accident frequencies related to novice divers is highly debatable. Here is the BSAC report for 2016. The graph, even if some categories are looking a bit odd, speaks for itself.
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