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The Great Blue Hole: Business as Usual
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Scott from LongIsland
Contributor
It seems like you are trying to deflect the blame away from yourself or others that dive the blue hole when they shouldn't be doing so. I read your blue hole thread and the incident was entirely your fault. you admitted such there, albeit begrudgingly so. What is the relevance of how it would be "in BC"?
look out for #1 and don't expect others to...third world country or not.
themagni
Contributor
Absolutely, we agree 100%.
There's a very fine edge I'm trying to walk here. First and foremost, I accept the full blame and responsibility for what I did to myself. I knew better than to do those dives, especially under those circumstances. Throughout my long thread, I repeatedly stated that the accident was my fault, and that is why to this day I have not named the shop. I wasn't qualified to do the BH, it was dangerous, I wasn't aware of the serious risks, I compounded that by gorging on an all-you-can-eat buffet of stupid choices, and that's 103% on me. I can't make that disclaimer on every post.
What my point was here is that it's a totally different reality from what I encounter at home. My guess is most people who are going to [vacation spot] are also encountering this completely alien outlook for the first time. The primary concern is probably not for your welfare, but for your influx of money and with that, the potential damage to the tourism industry. You will be the only person that gives even a partial **** about your own health, and that is not something that is made immediately apparent. Given the number of private messages I got at the start, this happens way more often than tourist divers and operators are willing to admit. I figured I was a dead man walking, so I posted everything that happened to I could, you know, say goodbye honestly. (I was thinking of OSC's "Speaker for the Dead", to be quite frank.) It's way less embarassing to sell your gear on Craigslist and never speak of diving again.
Anyway, this shift in outlook means you will get chances to hurt yourself that you wouldn't encounter back home. For example, I won a boat dive trip to go see some stuff locally at 130'. (Cloud sponges) The boat owner simply won't take me until I upgrade to Nitrox. (Come to think of it, why haven't I upgraded my gasses yet?) Travelling, I would be asked, "you paid in advance? Okay then, go ahead." The safeties are off without any warning, and even Plan CF can't be run properly. I did not educate myself on what the risks were and what could possibly go wrong, and that's where everything went wrong. We expect to hear these risks from the DM guiding the dive. If we're tourists, we don't.
Would have to agree with you. The big problem is that if the dive company/guides are prepared to take you past your cert or level of competency, you can expose yourself to risks you are unaware of at the time. Often the transition from diving within cert for the first few dives at a site, to exceeding cert and also ones level of understanding is very subtle. As I keep saying "You don't know what you don't know until you get there, and then often its far too late".
An example is if you are not certified in Nx and are using it, how would you know about MOD and the associated risks. Clearly you may not. But there you are, someone has encouraged you to use Nx and then without the required knowledge, you could easily exceed MOD. Not right, but in the rush of wanting to dive and thinking more O2 must be better than less O2 and lack of knowledge on the subject all make it a bad mix.
The general trait in the world is to respect and assume (and I use these words very loosely) people who have more training and experience, or who are leaders in their field (normally) will do no ill. The truth is that financial conditions, work conditions in many countries make these assumptions invalid. The dive guide may try and dive safely, but their prime consideration may well be their continual employment over safety and the sticking to strict adherence to cert levels. A practicality of life in their economic zone.
On this basis it is the diver who needs to ensure they don't exceed their cert, but due to the excitement, naivety etc this is not a realistic outlook. Let the diver beware!
Something we should all practice but human nature being what it is, often gets thrown out the window.
Chilly_Dipper
Contributor
Ok could see an insistence on taking the deep dive course for that but not a Nitrox specialty. The nitrox course doesn't cover any of the things you would be required to be aware of for a deeper dive such as increased gas consumption, deep stop requirements, and dive planning. That being said I am aware that you would gain an increased bottom time with Nitrox but that isn't why you should be required to take a course to do the dive.
SPARKMEL
Registered
Being a newly certified diver i am astonished by what i am reading here. I have only 12 ow dives and find it mindblowing that someone can use a tank of air so quickly. My instructor drummed it into me that air is your lifeline and to test everything in detail. I would certainly be furious if any DM or instructor wanted to use my air to prolong someonelses dive. Your octo could be the difference between life and death. I have learned very quickly that you are responsible for your own safety. Why should i risk my life being stupid ??
tanksforthememories
Contributor
It has been said before but bares Repeating Nitrox can cause oxygen toxicity beyond P02 of 1.4 so approx 110ft. You wouldn't/shouldn't dive to 130ft on nitrox it can kill you!!!
gcarter
Contributor
flots am
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You weren't in my class, or I would have imparted my universal underwater acknowledgement for a stupid request:
- The DM can (supposedly) take care of himself. If he wants you to do something stupid, that's his problem and he'll have to learn to live with the disappointment.
- The only person you're really responsible for underwater is you, and to a lesser extent, your buddy.
- Anybody who isn't you, doesn't get to have your gas unless they're out of air and you think you can share without endangering yourself.
- If they are out of air, and want yours, they've demonstrated their incompetence, and their dive (and your dive) is now over and you're both going up.
That's mostly right. You need air to stay alive underwater, however the whole point of an Open-Water No-Decompression dive is that the surface and all the air you could ever use, is always available. If you run out of air and are diving within the no-decompression limits you should be able to safely surface at any time. If you can't, you're diving outside of your training and are just taking a spin at the Wheel of Death.
The Blue Hole is one of these dives. If you ran out of air at a really bad time (just before your planned ascent, for example) and simply swam to the surface, there's a really good chance you would get to check out your DAN insurance or worse.
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