What Would You Do In This Case?

[dkatchalov]

Here's the situation that happened to me yesterday. Interested in others' opinions on what would they do in my shoes.

My second dive of the day, first was to 110fsw with a 90 minute SI afterwards.

This (second) dive was to a wreck that lies in about 110fsw. I planned my dive using my computer on the boat and v-planner the night before. Given the profile of my first dive and my SI, the safety stops (according to v-planner) were reasonable given my gas consumption, etc.

Got buddied up with two guys on the boat. One's never been to this depth before, looked a bit nervous on the boat. Both have been diving for just over 6 months (same as me). When we are in the water and start descending, the nervous guy is having trouble getting down. I inflate my wing and pop back up (I only got to about 3 metres) to make sure he is ok. In the meantime, his mate just drops down and doesn't even care that his buddy is on the surface floundering around trying to descend. So I figure that if I was to leave someone, it might as well be the guy on the surface, and start to descend after the first guy.

Descent was a straight drop to the wreck @ 110fsw. I catch up with the first guy at about 10m but for some reason he is swimming around rather than just sitting still. I have trouble keeping an eye on him and the shot line at the same time. Eventually I lose the shot line. We get to the bottom and my buddy starts finning to find the wreck (vis was crap). By that stage it is clear that the nervous guy is not with us. I make a decision to thumb the dive. I catch up with the other guy, tug on his fin and point at my computer to say "wait for 1 minute, then ascend". He looked surprised.

We sat on the bottom for about two minutes and then commenced our ascent. The ascent was very slow (15 minutes to come up from 33 metres) given by earlier dive and the relatively short SI. We did stops at 9m, 5m and 3m. During the stops, my buddy kept swimming around me. Constantly. He just could not sit still. This was driving me insane as I kept trying to do helicopter turns to maintain eye contact with him and kept losing my depth at the stops (+/- 1 metre). It was seriously annoying I just did not understand why he needed to keep swimming around me.

When we came up, the nervous guy was already on the boat. He was on oxygen, lying on the deck. As soon as I was out of my gear I came up to him and asked him what happened. He had trouble getting down and eventually dropped to 33m. He could not find us there and went up to 10m and did a 1 minute stop. He then didn't do a 5m stop and came straight up. He looked very shaken and like he had a mild panic attack. Whilst I was talking to him, his buddy (his mate, not just an insta-buddy) just sat on the opposite side of the boat. Didn't even come up and ask how his friend was doing and what happened.

So my lessons from all this?

1. I know that I am properly weighted and can descend fine. Next time, descend last so I can see everyone and ensure everyone has descended properly.

2. When I start my descent, keep an eye on the shot. Don't try and keep track of buddies if this means losing the shot (which is what happened yesterday - vis was terrible). Just track the shot line and expect buddies to do same. Meet on the bottom. This, however, means losing redundancy in a single-tank configuration. For example - I track the shot, lose buddy(ies), have a first stage failure (for example) and have to do a CESA from anywhere from 5m to 33m?! Same goes for buddy(ies). Big risk IMHO. But constantly keeping an eye on buddy (who was behind me in this case) means losing the shot.

3. Thumb the dive if the buddy group is broken. I was able to do this yesterday and am happy with my decision even though the two of us could have done the wreck.

4. On ascent, communicate with my buddy if he is being difficult (i.e. swimming around me). I should have signalled to him to bloody relax and just hang there and no freakin' swimming!!

Your thoughts?

 

[do it easy]

Some people like to swim around because they are cold or they aren't stable enough to stay still because their chakras are all verklumpt (center of gravity does not coincide with center of buoyancy). In this case, I just stay oriented and occasionally turn my head or look through my legs to watch them.

In a situation where I'm down but someone is still at the surface, I usually wait at 15' or 20', vis permitting, and give them a moment to straighten themselves out and increase their density. If that doesn't happen, then I go back up to either regroup or send them to the boat. Your situation is slightly different because one person was already down.

 

[neil]

Your thoughts?

1-110' is a seriously deep dive for anyone. Whether or not you want to do repetitive dives to a depth like this is something you should ask yourself AND do some research. I hate to quote something and not have the proof at hand, but there is some evidence in DAN research of repetitive dives past 80' or so to be risk factors in DCI. No doubt, other opinions abound.

2-Two is a buddy team, three is a crowd. Two strangers as buddies is asking for trouble on a deep dive. You would have been, in fact WERE, better off on your own. Not that I recommend that.

3-YOU seem to know what you're doing for the most part. Find others just like you and dive with THEM.

 

[dkatchalov]

In a situation where I'm down but someone is still at the surface, I usually wait at 15' or 20', vis permitting, and give them a moment to straighten themselves out and increase their density. If that doesn't happen, then I go back up to either regroup or send them to the boat. Your situation is slightly different because one person was already down.

Exactly. I had to make a decision who to leave & figured the guy on the surface is at less of a risk than a guy that has already started descending.

 

[dkatchalov]

1-110' is a seriously deep dive for anyone. Whether or not you want to do repetitive dives to a depth like this is something you should ask yourself AND do some research. I hate to quote something and not have the proof at hand, but there is some evidence in DAN research of repetitive dives past 80' or so to be risk factors in DCI. No doubt, other opinions abound.

2-Two is a buddy team, three is a crowd. Two strangers as buddies is asking for trouble on a deep dive. You would have been, in fact WERE, better off on your own. Not that I recommend that.

3-YOU seem to know what you're doing for the most part. Find others just like you and dive with THEM.

I agree about the repetitive deep dives. I did think long and hard about whether to do them or not and that's why I cut my plan on v-planner the night before with conservatism of +2 (default). The stops were reasonable and I decreased my planned bottom time from my computer's maximum to ensure I have adequate reserve of gas to do my stops on ascent. My previous dive that day, I only spent < 10 mins at 110fsw. Total run time for the first dive was 30 mins, so I wasn't at maximum depth for very long.

 

[divenutny]

Diving in a group of three typically means someone will get lost. Particularly when one diver is descending or swimming without watching the group. Even better is is he left the descent line. This forced you to make a few decisions that made your dive tougher. Personally, I feel you made the best decision given the situation. If I diver moves from the descent line, you have to decide to stay on/near the line or follow the diver. If you watched for the line, you would have been separated from the diver. Who knows what the outcome might have been.

I would discuss what happened with the divers, attempting to learn from the dive. IMHO, the first diver made the big mistakes. He descended without paying attention and left the descent line. If both of you stayed on the line, the third diver should have found you.

 

[Web Monkey]

Exactly. I had to make a decision who to leave & figured the guy on the surface is at less of a risk than a guy that has already started descending.

FWIW, if I have to make a choice, I'll always stay with the most problem-prone or newest diver. If the guy on the bottom is even half-way qualified, he'll surface when he figures out that he's alone.

A diver that can't get down will almost always have other problems later, and will most likely need help even on the surface.

Terry

 

[dkatchalov]

FWIW, if I have to make a choice, I'll always stay with the most problem-prone or newest diver. If the guy on the bottom is even half-way qualified, he'll surface when he figures out that he's alone.

A diver that can't get down will almost always have other problems later, and will most likely need help even on the surface.

Terry

Hey Terry. That's an interesting angle.

FWIW both my buddies had a similar level of experience. Perhaps I should have stayed with the guy on the surface? To be honest though, he decided to still descend even after he lost us from view completely (his own words). IMHO that is crazy (given the depth & his lack of dives to this depth) and I never thought he would do this (I thought through the options when I started my second descent and thought to myself that the nervous guy is likely to just kick around on the surface and go back to the boat, never thought he will still descend and think he can find us on the bottom when vis was bad).

 

[dkatchalov]

One thing I forgot to mention is that once we were in the water, we were about 15 metres from the shot line. The nervous guy signaled to go down straight away. I told him to swim right over the shot and descend on the shot line b/c I knew that there is no way that you will find the wreck (it isn't that big) if you were to descend 15m away from the shot (you could not see the line at all from that distance).

When we were back on the boat, the nervous guy told me "told you we should have gone down straight away and not swum to the shot" (as if to say if we haven't swum over to the shot he would have been fine & would not have had any problems). I've done this wreck and other similar wrecks in the area before and know that given the vis and the size of the wrecks (small), if you lose the shot during descent, you lose the wreck. Simple.

 

[TSandM]

This is actually similar to the situation in b1gcountry's thread. Descents are critical times to keep a team together, and a difficult one, because it's one of the places where people are most likely to encounter problems, whether it's discovering that a piece of gear is not working correctly or discovering they're underweighted, or their ears won't clear.

There is no good answer to what to do when you have one team member at depth and another on the surface. I faced this in Fundies several times, and all the answers are wrong I'd have been tempted to stay with the guy on the surface, because he's having some kind of trouble; but then you've left the other guy in the water alone, and you can only hope that he'll recognize that he IS alone and come back up. This is where discussing separation protocols beforehand is so important. I've had the experience of getting separated on descent in very bad viz and finding myself alone. I surfaced, and sat there for what seemed to be an awfully long time before anybody else came up. (I'm sure it was more than one minute!) But I knew that the people I was diving with, although they might look for me a bit, WOULD eventually come up to regroup. That's what kept me from trying to descend and find them, which is what your surface buddy eventually did. In low viz, that's almost never going to work, but having all three people going up and down looking for each other is a recipe for problems.

What's really too bad is that your buddy who was nervous to begin with has now had a scary experience, which will likely make him even more nervous the next time (if there is one).

Oh, and don't be too hard on your swimming buddy. One of the hardest things to learn is to be STILL. If your gear isn't balanced, you can't do it, and you HAVE to fin or allow yourself to tilt into whatever position your weighting forces you into. Getting your gear balanced and learning the back kick are the two things that make it possible to do long descents or ascents as a team and keep everybody in eyeshot of one another AND the line.