The importance of your buddy and having your own equipment..lesson learned

[buton]

My wife and i were diving in the dominican republic two weeks ago, we were doing Rubens Reef near saona island. we are kind of new, my wife has 35 dives i have 22.

So this was our first diving vacation, this was our fourth dive of the week, my wife was taking video so i was keeping and eye on here as she is my buddy, we were so amazed by the corals fish, the vizibility was great, i mean it was a hell of a dive, best ever...

we both have our same equipment, regulators and computers WITH ALARMS SET..


the site had a little current and i looked at my computer Air Integrated(mares puck) i still had about 1100 psi. we were on a group of 12 divers with 2 DMs, we were at the end, so i started to hear and a alarm and it was not mine( we have alarms set on our computers at 750 psi) my wife was still diving with her happy face and it was weird because she always beats me up on air, so i swim to her and i took his computer and it was her alarm she had 750 Psi of air, SO DIVE IS OVER LETS GO UP, i got the attention of the DM and signal thumbs up..we were at about 50 feet, so we got close the three of use, the dm inflated the safety sausage while we were doing our safety stop and i did notice he got his octo really close to my wife, everything came out good, she got to the surface with 525 psi.


DM said the current might had something to do as she had to swim more.


So what i learned.;
BUDDY SYSTEM WORKs but be close to your buddy
Air integrated computers really help with the alarm, otherwise i do not know what would have happen.
Check air with your buddy regularly, not just when the DM tells you
750 psi alarm may be to risky should i set them at 950 or 900 psi?
Knowing your buddys equipment, alarm settings, where is located really help
Take care of the WIFE lol..

lesson learned

 

[PfcAJ]

I'm glad that all worked out for you, and good job with being attentive to your buddy. However, consider what would have happened if that alarm had not gone off. Its not like your bedroom alarm clock where you might just 'over sleep', if the one on your computer doesn't work, you've got a real issue on your hands.

Id like to recommend you simple check your spg (whatever form it may be in, air integrated, transmitter, or old fashioned brass and glass, type is of no consequence right now) often. Maybe every 5 mins until you really get a handle on how much gas you use at various depths. Work on this till you just 'know' what it is before you even look at it. Thats a powerful tool to have, and it will help you lose reliance on alarms to tell you very important information.

As far as a pre-determined PSI value to being your ascent with, I suggest reading up on the concept of 'rock bottom' or 'minimum gas'. There are some excellent essays both on ScubaBoard and the internet in general about this topic. I believe user Lamont has a link to one such essay in his signature line.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I agree with PfcAJ ... props for good buddy awareness, but please start training yourself to look at your air pressure at regular intervals. It's one of the most important skills you can learn.

You can also find an article on air management on my website ... as well as several other articles that could be useful for the newer recreational diver.

Again, very glad it all worked out for you, and that you had a great time diving. Remember what Diver Training Magazine says ... a good diver is always learning ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Bubbletrubble]

PfcAJ gave some great advice.

I'll share with you a few of my own thoughts:

• Learn not to rely on the audible alarm emanating from your (and your buddy's) dive computer. In fact, I would recommend you turn the alarm function off and commit yourself to checking your SPG regularly. As you correctly pointed out, you and your wife should also be checking each other's remaining air periodically.
• Read NWGratefulDiver's essay on gas management. It's critical that you and your wife understand the fundamentals of gas management. You asked for suggestions on what psi to set your audible computer alarm. Rather than rely on someone else's explanation, you will be much better served learning how to calculate that on your own...based on the depth, your gas consumption rate, your buddy's gas consumption rate, and size of your tank (service pressure, capacity). Since you are carrying your buddy's gas reserve, you need to be carrying enough gas at all times to get both of you to the surface (including stops) in the event that your buddy lost all of the gas in her tank.
• Practice air-sharing ascents with your buddy. It can be a little tricky for an inexperienced buddy pair to manage buoyancy and remain close enough in the water column to share air comfortably. In the scenario you described, some people might have also recommended that you deploy your octo and have it ready for your wife to use if she needed it. Along this line of thinking...if your wife had been even lower on air at depth, it might have made sense to share air before she got too low on gas. The reasoning behind this is that it's safer for the low-on-air diver to have some air in her tank in case of buddy separation, which can happen when the gas donor or recipient loses buoyancy control. This is something to think about in a true low-on-air scenario.
• Resolve to be an assertive diver when it comes to safety issues. During the pre-dive briefing, the DM might discuss certain parameters of the dive (max depth, turn-pressure, ascent strategy, etc.), but it's up to you and your buddy to come up with your own plan and execute it. In the scenario you described, it seemed as though you felt you needed to get the DM's approval to initiate ascent. There's nothing wrong with informing the DM of your intentions, but it's mostly out of courtesy that you do so. (Shooting a safety sausage from safety stop depth would be a good thing to do with boat traffic at the surface.) A positive side effect of being an assertive diver is that you are more likely to question a DM when/if he tells you to do something inconsistent with your training or experience. I've encountered a good number of DMs during my time as a diver. I've met some incredibly professional, capable DMs, and I've met some whom I felt were rather incompetent. In my personal experience, most DMs fall into the "good enough" middle category. YMMV.
• Losing track of one's remaining air supply is a sign that the diver isn't ready for the responsibility of operating a camera/video camera UW. It takes a great deal of situational awareness to dive safely/comfortably while snapping pictures and recording video clips. Prior to the audible alarm, I'd be willing to bet that your wife had no idea how much remaining gas you had in your tank either. For various reasons, many beginner divers express a desire to take along an UW camera on a dive. I always try to discourage that kind of behavior because it adds task-loading unnecessarily to the dive. The diver should have already mastered the logistical aspects of conducting a dive (adhering to a plan, navigation, keeping tabs on buddy, exercising good buoyancy control, maintaining situational awareness, etc.) before taking along a camera. There will be plenty of time for UW photography later.

Thanks for sharing your story.

[Edited later: I see that Bob posted while I was writing mine. Apologies for any redundancies in content.]

 

[dumpsterDiver]

All good advice and you should get in the habit of showing your gauge to your wife when you check it. Then she checks hers and shows you. If you get in the habit it is hardly a bother.

If you continue to dive, your hearing will be destroyed (like the rest of us) and you will only notice the beeping while reviewing the video....That's the way it is for me anyway...

 

[TSandM]

Thank you for sharing your story. You took appropriate action, and it's good that you actually heard the alarm . . . even back in the days when I dove with a computer that had them, I could rarely hear them (heavy hoods here in the cold water).

I have nothing really new to say, except to reiterate the recommendation to read Bob's article. Like everything else in diving, gas supply is much better managed proactively than reactively -- and if you know the proposed depth of the dive and the size of your tank, you can already know before you get in the water, how much time you are likely to have before you need to ascend. As you approach that time, you can be much more intensely observant of your pressure.

But the recommendation to build the habit of a pressure check at regular intervals is an extremely good one. Conditions can change your gas consumption, and they don't even have to be things you're terribly aware of. Yes, strong current or anything else that makes you work will increase your gas consumption -- but so will being worried about getting lost, or being uncomfortable with new or unfamiliar equipment, or any number of things that just make you a bit uncomfortable. It is FAR better to notice, early in the dive, that you are going through gas faster than you expect, than to have a sudden low pressure smack you in the face.

 

[Juardis]

just curious, did your wife hear her alarm?

 

[buton]

she was not paying attention to her SPG and Alarm thats what got me angry...

thanks for all your advice, i guess i have a lot of reading to do...

 

[Hatul]

What I don't understand is: if your computer is air integrated it should give some sort of remaining air time indication, either remaining bottom time or air time?

Without air integration, at 50 ft you should surface at about 500+50*10 or 1000 psi to be able to make it safely up in the event that you need to share air. With air integration you can use the computation of the computer to help with this. In that case it depends exactly how the computer comes up with the computed air time number.

Adam