Is "learning the hard lesson" necessary?

[Tyger]

You don't have to face something while diving for it to apply to diving. Was that your first experience like that? No saline sprays, nasal inhalers, swimming, neti pots, bath tubs, etc? If it was, interesting.

I suppose it was sort of like a neti pot (I thought they ran it in one side and out the other rather than spit?) not that I've done that before. But when I go swimming in a pool I goof around in the water a lot, and since I don't use a nose plug, occasionally that does result in water up my nose. I suppose that would have prepared me for the seawater up my nose. So a point well taken.

I also want o comment that I work with divers of all experience and certification levels, and contrary to what seems to be the prejudice of many posters against so-called "newbies," I find divers who have recently completed training are good divers. They almost all remember their training and apply it, even in problem solving.

If diving is like other things I have done, that won't last long for some people. In rock climbing, there are things analogous to the buddy check, ascent, and descent procedures. Not doing them could result in injury or death. Most new rock climbers are taught them and follow them religiously. But I see very few people completely stick with them after they get more experienced. However I'm afraid of heights, so for the times my fear tries to kick in and say "Hey, you're way too high, what if you fall?" then I can confidently remind myself that I am properly secured, because I know I followed the right procedure, and get over the feeling.

Which brings me to...

IMHO, there are two factors which, when combined, inevitably trigger panic:

1) Belief that you might die. (Threat) Regardless of the reality, if the individual perceives a risk of imminent death they will suffer an extreme degree of stress. That stress may be manageable, depending on their psychological tolerances, but is often dependent upon...

2) A sense of helplessness. (Resolution) Again, regardless of the reality, if the individual perceives no immediate resolution to their dilema they have no barrier against the instinct to resort to an irrational fight or flight response.

That makes a lot of sense. I actually did experience helplessness during a dive, but it wasn't over anything life threatening. I was trying to find my console to check depth & air and I couldn't find it. The clips on the rental BC I was using weren't great at actually holding the hoses, so it was floating around somewhere behind me, and try as I might I couldn't find it. Eventually my fiancee retrieved it for me and clipped it back in, yet again. In retrospect I should have tried the same arm sweep used to recover the 2nd stage, on the other side, so that is one time I could have better followed training. I can see how that frustration and helplessness could easily have turned into panic if it had been something life threatening though. (I was fairly shallow at the time, close to the bottom, and knew I had plenty of air, I was just checking to be in the habit of checking.)

 

[flots am]

Examples of what? How a dive can go wrong despite your training, experience, and or best efforts? Try human error for starters. Which TSandM has already given a perfect example of in this very thread. Seriously dude... if you need examples of this perhaps you should retire from diving altogether.

"He had been certified in warm, and had never practiced mask skills in Puget Sound. He was completely unprepared by his reaction to the flood, and quite ashamed; he almost quit diving that day."

Her example was a diver diving in conditions he wasn't trained for, not "human error." This is clearly warned against in all the OW classes and materials I'm aware of.

There are undoubtedly things you can't prepare for, like Alien Abduction, however these are rare enough that I'm not concerned. AFAIK "Dolphin Rape" is more like what you get from a horny ill-mannered dog, not a guy with a knife while you're jogging in the park at 4am.

I will never die in a cave. Know why? I'm not trained for cave diving and won't go into one.

I will never die in the Blue Hole. Know why? Because I am trained for deep dives and won't do it without the proper equipment and buddy. With a good buddy, the right training and gas planning, the BH becomes a safe, "Hey, that's pretty cool!" dive instead of an unknowing brush with death.

Know your limits. Dive as you were trained. If you don't have enough training, get more. You'll live a long and happy life.

flots.

 

[toliver66]

This is the post I was refering to:

I would definitely agree that panic is the last result of being faced with a situation you can't resolve, despite trying. But near-panic -- the urge to bolt -- can be much closer than that. I have told my embarrassing story about descending on a shut-off regulator, and getting about five or six feet underwater when I "ran out of gas". My initial reaction just stunned me -- it was to have a huge adrenaline rush and start swimming for the surface as fast as I could. Within a half second or so, my rational mind said, "You idiot, you have your stage turned off," and I fixed the problem. But it was a huge education in how even someone with all the training I have and all the diving I've done can be faced with something unexpected and have to make a rapid and big effort to take oneself in hand. The brain just doesn't want to be underwater when the body can't breathe or is heavily stressed, and the surface looks like a real good option until the cerebral cortex can take control and start giving rational orders. ANYBODY who thinks that they have trained and dived PAST the point where they can experience that primal urge is kidding themselves.

But you obviously can't tell the difference between "human error" and lack of "training" so maybe someone does need to take you by the hand and show you some examples.

As for the rest of your silly ramblings... they are neither relevant to the subject at hand nor do they even make any sense. Once again it is obvious all you want to do is argue a moot point.

 

[flots am]

But you obviously can't tell the difference between "human error" and lack of "training" so maybe someone does need to take you by the hand and show you some examples.

Although scary, TS&M's incident could have been prevented by training, practice, judgement and buddy skills, especially given the agency she trained with which is very big on all four of the above.

As for the rest of your silly ramblings... they are neither relevant to the subject at hand nor do they even make any sense. Once again it is obvious all you want to do is argue a moot point.

Obviously training, practice and good judgement are of no value in preventing problems, and I have no idea why I'm bothering you with them.

flots.

 

[Them]

I suppose it was sort of like a neti pot (I thought they ran it in one side and out the other rather than spit?) not that I've done that before. But when I go swimming in a pool I goof around in the water a lot, and since I don't use a nose plug, occasionally that does result in water up my nose. I suppose that would have prepared me for the seawater up my nose. So a point well taken.

The "advanced" use of a neti pot is "in through the nose, out through the mouth". Yeah...ugg.

I'm the same re: water play. A lot of time playing in surf, in swimming pools, etc. and I've never actually panicked, even when tumbled repeatedly in rough surf. That doesn't mean I've always done the right thing or am necessarily immune to panic, I just have a body of experience that another diver with a similar dive count may not share.

-----------

Although scary, TS&M's incident could have been prevented by training, practice, judgement and buddy skills, especially given the agency she trained with which is very big on all four of the above.

I think you are missing a basic truth.

Sometimes, despite training, tools, practice, judgment, resources, buddies, best intentions, experience, benign weather, and everything else... people fail to do what they "should" be able to do. It's not comforting, it doesn't lend itself to pithy slogans, but sometimes the best you are capable of at that moment isn't enough. Everyone who does anything real is eventually forced to come face-to-face with that fact. However, since it's what you might call an underlying truth...a truth which permeates every other truth...it is often easier and always more comfortable to deal with when ignored.

When dealing with our evolutionary inheritance of reflexive behaviors, it is always possible that a billion years of evolution will outweigh even a decade of strenuous training. If that happens under water, you are going to have a bad day.

 

[flots am]

Sometimes, despite training, tools, practice, judgment, resources, buddies, best intentions, experience, benign weather, and everything else... people fail to do what they "should" be able to do. It's not comforting, it doesn't lend itself to pithy slogans, but sometimes the best you are capable of at that moment isn't enough.

Without trying to throw TS&M under the bus, jumping in with your air off is something that a pre-dive check would have caught. This wasn't divine intervention or a spectacular fringe mechanical problem or being caught in a freak storm that wasn't in the weather forecast, it was just "not following training." Which is exactly what I said earlier.

flots.

 

[toliver66]

Although scary, TS&M's incident could have been prevented by training, practice, judgement and buddy skills, especially given the agency she trained with which is very big on all four of the above.



Obviously training, practice and good judgement are of no value in preventing problems, and I have no idea why I'm bothering you with them.

flots.

Yes dear... you are absolutely correct and I am completely wrong. My oh my what was I ever thinking?

---------- Post Merged at 02:31 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 02:28 PM ----------

Without trying to throw TS&M under the bus, jumping in with your air off is something that a pre-dive check would have caught. This wasn't divine intervention or a spectacular fringe mechanical problem or being caught in a freak storm that wasn't in the weather forecast, it was just "not following training." Which is exactly what I said earlier.

flots.

Yes dear... you are absolutely correct and I am completely wrong. My oh my what was I ever thinking?

 

[Them]

Without trying to throw TS&M under the bus, jumping in with your air off is something that a pre-dive check would have caught. This wasn't divine intervention or a spectacular fringe mechanical problem or being caught in a freak storm that wasn't in the weather forecast, it was just "not following training."

Without disputing that... executing a pre-dive check correctly may be the thing you are at that moment incapable of doing, regardless of training. Humans make mistakes. That's why any even passably sane system has some sort of cross checking or error recovery involved. However, the flip side of that is that the more humans are involved in something, the more mistakes will happen. It's a harsh reality but it's the only one.

 

[Tyger]

Woah, a bit confrontational here.

I used to lock my keys in my car once or twice a year. My routine was to stop the car, turn it off, take the keys out, then get out. But taking the keys out was related to turning off the car, not getting out. So sometimes if there was something to do before getting out, I would set the keys down, fumble through something else, then forget to pick them up.

Now replace "stop the car" with "set up gear", replace "turn it off" with "get into gear", replace "take the keys out" with "do a buddy check" and replace "get out of the car" with "get into the water".

People are creatures of habit. If you associate the buddy check with gearing up, then if you fiddle around with things before getting in the water, you won't re-do it. On the other hand.

I retrained myself to associate grabbing the keys with getting out of the car. So now if I fiddled with something before getting out, I would still reach for the keys as I got out. And if they weren't there, I would stop myself and look for them before finishing.

Similarly, if a buddy check is associated with getting into the water, then no matter what you fiddle with, you'll feel the need to re-do it (As you really should) before getting into the water.

So that is still a situation, IMO, that proper training would avoid.

That said, it seems to me that one situation that no training can fully prepare you for is narcosis. (Keep in mind this is coming from someone who hasn't experienced it yet, so please correct me if I'm wrong.) You can work to minimize the chance of it, and drill yourself so you don't react badly when it happens, but when it does happen, you may still end up in a bad place.

So that could be a situation where diver error has nothing to do with things going bad.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

Without trying to throw TS&M under the bus, jumping in with your air off is something that a pre-dive check would have caught. This wasn't divine intervention or a spectacular fringe mechanical problem or being caught in a freak storm that wasn't in the weather forecast, it was just "not following training." Which is exactly what I said earlier.

flots.

So basically.. You are say diving is safe.. just follow all the rules, be trained well for the environment, don't make any mistakes and you will be fine.. Can't think of one thing that could hurt or kill a diver....

This is the exact kind of BS I've been telling my mother about diving since i was a teenager. I think she may believe it.. do you?

There are many, many things that can get you in trouble.

For starters, your buddy, you can not control a buddy, often you can not even pick them and yes they can most certainly kill you. there are an unlimited amount of behavoirs or actions your buddy can do to endanger you.

How about being attacked by a shark. I have had to fight off a few with bare hands and have even had to shoot one with a gun. I know several people who have been bitten, and some were deliberately attacked.

How about eels.. I've been bitten several times.

How about being stung and get an allergic reaction.

How about being run over by a boat. I know two people, one was killed, the other had both legs chopped off... I've been hit by a boat myself when the boat operator allowed it to drift into me (on several occasions).

How about a large sea turtle trying to bite, and mount you.. buddy had that happen.

How about sea state changing and you having trouble exiting the water over rocks.

How about squall develop and atmospheric visibility goes to 75 feet and the boat looses the diver.. seen that one too.

How about the boat losing the diver's float on a drift dive and you end up drfiting and almost getting run over by a boat.. seen that one too.

How about gear failure.. BC failure, hoses explode, o-rings extrude.. First stage fails and starts dumping air to the second stage. I've had all these things happen to me.

How about being entangled by essentially invisibile line in a strong current..

Seriously, NOTHING will happen.. just follow the rules and you will be fine...