Unusual occurance In Cozumel

[ERIC.K]

Returned from trip to Cozumel, great diving and enjoyed ourselves but I was surprised to see one of the Overweight divers breathing off of the divemasters octo during one of the dives. The dive guest apparently breathed through his tank and then notified the divemaster of the near OOA situation but we/he continued the dive using the divemasters tank. Never seen that before, we had a medium sized group but i'm thinking the divemaster felt he could handle the situation at depth. We all ended the dive after I felt that we should have. We all surfaced as a group. The only thing I can think, and I wish I would have asked him, was he thinking he shouldn't seperate the group and ascend the diver with an OOA situation, he could have given anyone of us the dive flag and acended under it, dive depth about 50 ft, maybe he felt doing a safety stop and then decending back to the group would have been too much of a hassle....thanks

 

[Texas Girl]

he could have given anyone of us the dive flag and acended under it, dive depth about 50 ft, maybe he felt doing a safety stop and then decending back to the group would have been too much of a hassle....thanks

I had a DM do exactly that, handed me the reel/flag to deploy, he ascended with the other divers, came back down and continued the dive for another 30 minutes with my husband and me. He still had plenty of air after all of that.

 

[redacted]

I've seen a DM share air with a known air hog, well before the AH was low on air, to extend the dive a bit. It was part of their plan made before the start of the dive.

 

[Ayisha]

The first time I saw that, it surprised me that they continued the dive while sharing air. I've seen it several times since in Belize and recently in the South Pacific.

 

[Charlie99]

I have done the same sort of air share on drift dives in Cozumel when paired up with an instabuddy with significantly higher air consumption. The insta-buddy used my air for a while about 1/3 of the way in the dive, in order to extend his dive. He was never OOA. He was never low on air. He never went below the agreed upon ascent pressure. Air sharing is not the same as out of air. Air sharing is not necessarily an emergency.

What we did was no different than me having an 60 cu ft tank and him a 100 cu ft tank. It's just that we transferred the extra 20 cu feet to him while underwater.

 

[TASea]

The DM sharing air doesn't seem to be such an unusual occurrence in Coz...I saw it happen twice last week. Surprised me a little.

 

[tjmills]

I have done the same thing with buddies who were newbies when we were in Belize. It isn't the matter of letting them get to the OOA situation but to make sure they don't get that low and to extend the dive for the rest of the group. Never that deep btw. If everyone is comfortable then at the very least it is good practice for them. Now I don't necessarily condone it but in the right situation it is an opportunity to practice while you are diving. Before the safety stop we switched back so they could finish normally.

Why does this have to be such a bad thing. Why does everyone panic about this kind of stuff?

 

[ERIC.K]

I felt it might havebeen rather risky, never seen it before, however it did run rather smoothly, it just felt that if this diver was that mich of an air hog, him breathing from anothers tank felt like you were borrowing from peter to pay paul.

 

[miesemer]

I viewed a similar incident in Coz where the dive OPs videographer went low or OOA about 2/3rds through the dive and ended up sharing with the DM/guide. He rode on the back (knees holding the tank) of the DM while sharing air and continuing to shoot video until the dive was over.

 

[wnctarheel]

I had that happen to me once. I was in belize and had a hard time clearing my ears.
by the time i got down i looked at my pressure and i was about 500lbs below what my buddy was at. the dm saw us looking at our gauges and came over and when he relized what was going on he gave me his spare. I was never low on air and we only did this for about 5 to 10 min. at that time i started to use my reg and by the end of the dive i had more air that my buddy.