Bigeclipse
Contributor
I was just thinking about something which happened to 2 divers I know. It was an OOA situation. The non-OOA diver was pretty experienced but this was their first out of air incident and the OOA diver was pretty new to diving (just got Advanced open water diver). So let me describe the dive. We were diving a cold deep dive (which I understand some argue against anyways). The depth was right at about 95ft and the bottom temps about 45F so we are talking 7mil suits or drysuits. it is a wreck dive with a decent line that goes to the wreck. We all get to the bottom of the line (4 of us, two buddy pairs). Everyone flashes the ok sign so my buddy and I proceed first to the wreck while the other 2 follow behind us. We get to the wreck and I notice the other two are not there so im thinking maybe they are checking out a different part of the wreck (the site is a big circle so im thinking they went right while we went left). This lake has about 20ft of visibility. Anyways, it turns out that the recently certified diver's regulator failed and he was getting mouthfull of water with every breath, and his backup reg did the same! (we found out later that he had not had them serviced since he purchased them and they were very old regs so who knows when they were last serviced!) All his previous dives that weekend were in warmer shallower water so im thinking the cold and depth contributed to the failure and why they functioned on the other more shallow dives. Fortunately they both survived and told us the story. When his regs failed he looked to his buddy and signaled OOA! That buddy immediately took the reg in his mouth and donated it to him allowing him to get a breath but in the panic of it all he could not find his spare regulator so signaled back to the OOA person to give it back so he could get another breath. The OOA person then decided to simply do an emergency CESA to the surface. It was a bloody mess and they are both fortunate to be ok. Needless to say, he got new regulators and now on every dive they practice OOA drills and such (assuming they have extra air and time to do so).
This all got me thinking...unless you have OOA procedures basically burned into muscle memory, would it just be better to do a CESA? The reason I say this is what if the OOA person didnt find that buddy right away, thus spending a little more time down below and when they go to do a CESA end up drowning on the way up? What if as soon as they had a failure, instead of looking for a buddy just start immediately doing a CESA? Of course you dont want to shoot to the surface either, due to embolisms and such but I think most people could probably CESA from 100ft and be ok, assuming they had the last breath of air to do so. This is all speaking in terms of rec diving and not tech diving where deco is an issue. For me, I only have one dive buddy that I trust. We do many drills all the time. If he is not available to dive and I dive with others, I treat it like a solo dive and prepare as such. (Honestly, I tend to dive sidemount doubles OR sling a 40cu on rec dives. I like to be overly cautious)
This all got me thinking...unless you have OOA procedures basically burned into muscle memory, would it just be better to do a CESA? The reason I say this is what if the OOA person didnt find that buddy right away, thus spending a little more time down below and when they go to do a CESA end up drowning on the way up? What if as soon as they had a failure, instead of looking for a buddy just start immediately doing a CESA? Of course you dont want to shoot to the surface either, due to embolisms and such but I think most people could probably CESA from 100ft and be ok, assuming they had the last breath of air to do so. This is all speaking in terms of rec diving and not tech diving where deco is an issue. For me, I only have one dive buddy that I trust. We do many drills all the time. If he is not available to dive and I dive with others, I treat it like a solo dive and prepare as such. (Honestly, I tend to dive sidemount doubles OR sling a 40cu on rec dives. I like to be overly cautious)