Watched student run out of air (happy ending... kinda long)

[ganu76]

I'll first start by saying that I'm now very, VERY hesitant about "tagging along" ever again with a student during his dive course. I've had others tag along with me, and I've tagged along with others... however the mutual understanding was always that THE STUDENT PAYS ATTENTION TO THE INSTRUCTOR AND NO ONE ELSE... PERIOD. (That sounds good in theory, but I now know that it's not always adhered to.)

Guam, June 27:

Durng a 6 week TDY to Guam/Alaska I was doing some much needed diving. A young guy that I work with was getting his diving certification, and on his last day of diving he was to do two dives with an instructor. Apparently the day before, the student had already asked his instructor if a friend could tag along and the instructor responded that he had no problems with that. That's sounds fine to me, so I tag along and just more-or-less stay out of their way and let them have their class. Before we ever got in the water I will say that the student didn't seem to be taking his buddy check that seriously, but as far as the actual dive goes, everything was fine. We dove, swam around, blew some bubbles, and got out. After about a 1:20 surface interval, we're getting ready to get back in for the 2nd dive when 2 car loads of mutual friends drive up. (About 6 guys in the cars.) They have their dive stuff too so the instructor lets them tag along. :sigh_2: ***Bad idea***, because now the student becomes distracted by these rowdy buddies and isn't paying attention anymore to his instructor. (At one point I had to point out how both the instructor and myself were suited up while the student was still gabbing with the newcomers.) We ALL begin our dive.... together.

During the snorkel to the dive site, I tell my buddy (the student) SEVERAL times that he needs to forget about the new group and worry about only his instructor. The student is supposed to be navigating out to a certain reef, but the whole time the other group is shouting "Is it over here? Do you see it? Hey, I think it's right here." The instructor was already wishing that he didn't allow that group to join him, so he separates our small group of 3 from the rest of them and the 3 of us begin our descent to 55 feet with the other group some 30-40 yards away from us.

We're swimming the reef for a few minutes and all is perfect. Everyone's air is good and the student is doing fine. We THEN see this lone diver swimming up to us. He's from the other group. Apparently he wanted to dive with us so he left his dive partner behind and crossed the dark blue water until he found us. ***Stupid***. The student again starts to get distracted by the newcomer and let's himself drift away from the instructor.

About now is when things start to happen. When the two groups DO eventually all meet up at a common fish feeder, the student basically stops diving with the instructor and is now diving with his buddies. The instructor makes the student separate himself from the group, so the 3 of us again swim away and now head back to the beach, ascending along the way.

During the entire dive, the 3 of us continue to check our air and relay info back and forth. During our return swim to shore (we're at about 30 feet) we notice that the student has A LITTLE less air than the instructor and I. (I have half a tank left at 1500 psi and the instructor has 1700.) We continue on, ascending as we go, and the student signals that he has 700 pounds... then 600... then 500. I'm still sitting at 1300 pounds myself. I look and I do not see any leaks in his set. Is this guy sucking THAT much air? The instructor is starting to get involved in our conversation when the student signals that he's out of air. I give him my octo and we're now sharing my 1200 pounds in about 20 feet of water. I grab his BC and we ascend to our safety stop. I will say this... during our safety stop I absolutely lost awareness of our depth and allowed the student and I to ascend too soon. We only completed 2 minutes of our safety stop before I noticed that my head was bobbing out of the water. I was still trying to keep a good hold on the student while watching my air (depth gauge was on the other side of the rented console.) My mistake there 100%... even though we only dove 55 feet for a brief minute or two (and stayed mostly at 45'), I STILL wish that I would have remained aware enough to maintain our safety stop.

I can't say for certain what caused the low-air situation. Throughout the entire dive I kept one eye on my buddy and one eye on the instructor, and I never saw any air leaks from my buddy's set. (That's odd, because the instructor says that he DID see air.) *MY* guess is that the student overexerted himself swimming around and playing with the fish (and friends) when we were at the fish feeder and he burned through his air.

Of course everything would have ended just fine had I not been there. (This is not one of those Let-Me-Pat-Myself-On-The-Back stories.) The instructor would have been the one to let the kid buddy breathe, but I WILL say that I'm glad to have been there for the "training" this provided. In the past we've all practiced skills on how to handle this type of scenario, but I'm glad that I was able to see for myself how important it is to [1] NOT leave your dive buddy (like that one lone diver did earlier) and how important it is to [2] remain aware of your air pressure. That's the "training" I'm glad I was able to experience.

The worst part of it? The student now has it in his mind that it was "equipment failure" since the instructor saw a leak (a leak that I NEVER saw). I really wish that this kid would feel some sense of responsibility instead.

Critique away. I already know not to ever tag along with a student who is too much of a social butterfly and not enough of a listening student. (Like I said earlier, I'll likely never tag along again. I never thought this kid would pay so little attention to his instructor and so MUCH attention to his buddies.)

 

[Insta-Gator]

Do as you will, but it was the instructor's call. You apparently handled yourself well, not as the "group" did. So, it's on the student to pay attention, not your responsibility. And if it's the last dive in his certification I believe those are generally "fun dives" because the skills have already been demonstrated in earlier dives. I hope he remembers the feeling of OOA and uses his training to avoid that in the future.

 

[dbulmer]

ganu,
Quite a lot went wrong here and I'll let others post their feelings but the one thing that screamed at me was that the instructor failed miserably in his duty of care to the student. Part of the duty of care is to get the student to understand how serious safety considerations are in diving and to ensure that the student is not put at needless risk.

 

[ZenDiver.3D]

This is on the instructor. He makes the choice on who goes with him and his student, if anyone. He allowed the student to lose attention. He didn't redirect him? I won't teach anyone who can't focus. The instructor allowed you to accompany them. He then allowed the other group to go along too. This was his bad choice. He made quite a few.

 

[SeekerOfJustice]

Seems as though you did a great job there! I too believe the instructor should have insisted on separation from the group. Floating up from the safety stop. Tough to pay attention to everything at the same time. Whew.

 

[oly5050user]

instructor never should have allowed ANYONE to 'tag" along..by doing that he/she can be made responsible for the entire group..As for missing safety stop,why even entertain the idea of making one in an out of air situation??Its called a safety stop not a decompression stop for a reason. During a training dive you were no where near a required safety stop, much less a deoo stop.Would have been much safer to get to surface in a controlled manner ,establish buoyancy on surface and end situation.Not a good idea for yourself to take responsibility for student divers either,being that you are not a dm or pro with liability insurance.

 

[DevonDiver]

Instructor needs to grow a pair and take control of the situation. It's his responsibility to ensure a safe and focused learning environment for the student.

If the student cannot be made to focus, or the distraction cannot be avoided, end the dive. There's a good lesson right there...

 

[TSandM]

The story is odd. It takes quite a leak to blow 1000 psi into the water in just a couple of minutes . . . A freeflow will do it, but that's not subtle, and everyone would have seen it. And the student was "just below you" in pressure just a few minutes earlier. Unless he got anxious when you left the group, it's hard to figure this one out.

At any rate, once he was out of gas, I do agree that it was the responsibility of the instructor to share with him and manage the ascent, but if he signaled to you and you got gas to him first, that's the situation you were saddled with. This is one of the problems with having non-instructional personnel "tag along", because the professional has legal (and moral) responsibility for the student, and at least in theory also has the training and experience to accept that responsibility. Although it sounds like you did fine, would you have been competent (and comfortable) coping with the student if the out of gas problem had induced panic?

It sounds as though the instructor made several errors in judgment, including misjudging the temperament of his student. On the other hand, you cannot avoid sharing dive sites with others, and the student needs to learn how to remain focused on HIS buddy and HIS dive.

My last comment is that maintaining buoyancy during air-sharing can be difficult, if you haven't practiced it. You've had an object lesson about this now! Practicing such skills on a regular basis does help (although you were attached to a brand new student, who almost certainly wasn't going to be able to pull this off with perfect poise).

 

[Bubbletrubble]

Kids... (at least that's what your buddy and his friends sound like)

The instructor was the one who allowed you to tag-along on the class dive. For a typical basic OW class dive, it really shouldn't have been too difficult for him to focus on the lone student while still keeping an eye on you as another "buddy." It's not an ideal situation, though, since it could easily develop into a situation where any of the divers involved could be distracted. Definitely not the best learning conditions for a student. Fortunately, Dive #1 seemed to go OK.

The instructor was the one who allowed the other 6 divers to tag-along on Dive #2. He probably should have made it abundantly clear that the group of 6 was actually conducting its own dive...whereas the student, you, and he were a separate buddy team conducting a dive coincidentally at the same dive site. Stating this in no uncertain terms would have gone a long way to avoid: (1) the lone diver from attaching himself to your group mid-dive and (2) the student from being distracted by friends diving the same site.

In the student's out-of-air (OOA) situation, it sounds like the instructor was not as vigilant/involved as he could have been in the team's gas-monitoring, particularly as you ascended gradually to 30 fsw. I can't say for certain since I wasn't there, but it's possible the instructor is making this out to be an "equipment issue" because it would somehow excuse the fact that his student went OOA on a class dive. It's also possible that there was a legitimate reg leak on the student's gear, the student's SPG was malfunctioning, the student's reg was not working properly, or the student wasn't being entirely truthful when signaling his remaining gas supply (I've heard second-hand stories of this). Some of these possibilities might be excluded according to what you witnessed during the dive.

We've all dived with newbies that consume gas at an alarming rate. The student's rapidly diminishing gas supply shouldn't be considered that unusual. It's good that he was signaling to you his remaining gas supply. It's troubling, however, that the student was aware of his rapidly diminishing gas, yet didn't do anything about it, e.g., give the "thumbs up"/"surface" sign to the rest of the buddy team, until he went completely OOA. You should be commended for following your training. You shared air with the OOA buddy and got him to the surface safely. It might have been helpful to begin air-sharing earlier. Keep that in mind next time you're confronted with a low-on-air (LOA) buddy.

On a dive like the one you described, omitting 1 min. of a 3 min. safety stop isn't a big deal at all. The safety stop is optional anyway, and, in fact, it was initially implemented to slow the overall ascent rate. All things considered, I would have opted to skip the safety stop intentionally in this rescue scenario. My thinking is that the sooner you get the OOA newbie to the surface, the safer he'll be...provided that the ascent rate was controlled and the student didn't hold his breath.

On a side note, in my PADI class a number of years ago, I recall my instructor telling each student to surface with no less than 500 psi in the tank. This made me wonder (and ask aloud) how much gas it would take to ascend safely (including a safety stop, if desired) from a given depth while still maintaining enough of an emergency reserve to share air with a buddy (in case he went OOA). My question during class led to a discussion that touched on the principles of gas management. If you'd like to learn more about this, please refer to NWGratefulDiver's excellent online essay on the topic.

This may not have been an issue on the dive in question, but...
With a new-to-me (insta-buddy?) diver, I prefer to see his/her SPG with my own two eyes during a mid-dive gas-check. There are lots of different ways to signal remaining gas with hands/fingers. Flashing signals can be confusing at times. Seeing the instrument just makes the gas-check unambiguous, in my opinion. It also removes the possibility that your buddy is purposefully conveying incorrect gas info (because he's ashamed of having such a high consumption rate?).

Keep practicing shared air ascents. They get easier. It's possible that either you or the student (both?) wasn't dumping gas from his BCD during the ascent and this contributed to unintentional surfacing. That's the kind of situation that task-loading can create. With experience, you'll be able to head off OOA incidents before they even happen. Share air sooner if you can, put measures in place to remind newbies to check their gas supply as frequently as needed, plan the dive conservatively, and remove distractions (if possible). Hopefully, the instructor learned a number of things from this near miss.

I highly recommend taking a rescue class when you feel like you're ready to take one.