What would you do: Molested at 100' by an OOA Diver

[tomfcrist]

Purposefully running OOA at 100' was part on my diver training with the Navy and a prelude to doing a SCUBA doff and don in 100 FSW (which is more scary on the way back down than it is the emergency ascent). I know what you're saying Tom, but I can't help but think that Divers today are much too dependent on technology. If there's one thing that I've learned is that every piece of man-made equipment will fail in time (regardless of excellent maintenance). I even experienced a malfunction with a $8M Saturation System a few years back that almost cost the lives of 8 Divers. Divers should dive within their safe diving envelope (SDE). I believe more focus should be given on this during diver training.

I hear you and understand your point, however your experiance in Navy dive school was designed to be far safer than the average joe doing this deliberately. As you stated, you had safety divers, and probably briefed and debriefed multiple contingency plans. The statement Beanojones put out there was that people in this day and age, with no discernable support staff regularly plan and execute dives with no SPG and no J valve.......Knowing that they are going to run out of air. I would assume that if as a Navy diver today you were to execute a dive plan that way, you would be standing tall in front of the man in about 3 minutes. Nobody should condone this type of reckless behavior.
I completely understand the concept of performing these skills for training, but disagree with performing them on every dive just because you can. We have enough problems in this industry with divers getting killed due to stupidity or lack of fundamental skill sets, we dont need to re-enforce this type of behavior.

 

[boulderjohn]

No argument about purposely running out of air....in the context of the 60's, the typical diver was more of an adventurer, they had much less concern for potential dangers--mostly because they would KNOW they were up to any challenge, and could handle anything ( mindset, I am not saying they absolutely were...some were
Also, there was no "culture" of smart behaviors.....

Dan, what you have just described is the typical mindset of young people, especially men, in their late teens and early to late 20s. It is a well-known product of brain development. That's how old you were then. Maybe it is you and the people you hang out with who have done the most changing. In fact, statistics indicate that the entire scuba population has aged considerably since those days. Back then it was pretty much a young man's sport. That is no longer true.

 

[TSandM]

I love you guys beating the drum of the "good old days". But the fact is that, now that we don't use J-valves and we DO have pressure gauges, and we DO understand gas management principles, there is no excuse at all for running out of gas. The rare equipment malfunction that will empty a tank will almost always give the diver time to reach an alternate air source. The malfunctions that stop your air supply instantly are very rare, and even then, one SHOULD have a buddy to hand will enough gas to end the dive.

Sounding the horn of doing 90 foot equipment dons and 100 foot CESAs is just plain wasted energy. We should spend time stressing proper gas planning and monitoring to our students, not teaching them strategies for handling what should be a vanishingly rare circumstance. Look at the DAN data -- people aren't dying because some OOA diver came up to them and tethered their hands. People are dying because they run out of gas and don't cope with it well. Let's teach them NOT to run out of gas!

 

[DCBC]

I hear you and understand your point, however your experiance in Navy dive school was designed to be far safer than the average joe doing this deliberately. As you stated, you had safety divers, and probably briefed and debriefed multiple contingency plans. The statement Beanojones put out there was that people in this day and age, with no discernable support staff regularly plan and execute dives with no SPG and no J valve.......Knowing that they are going to run out of air. I would assume that if as a Navy diver today you were to execute a dive plan that way, you would be standing tall in front of the man in about 3 minutes. Nobody should condone this type of reckless behavior.
I completely understand the concept of performing these skills for training, but disagree with performing them on every dive just because you can. We have enough problems in this industry with divers getting killed due to stupidity or lack of fundamental skill sets, we dont need to re-enforce this type of behavior.

I couldn't agree more. This wasn't done to justify or reinforce anyone undertaking such a dangerous procedure. I was simply relating a person experience, which seems prevalent since the thread has drifted a long way off of the OP initial question.

 

[agilis]

Ahhhh the days of a plastic back packs ,for those who wanted comfort, and web harness's with a steel 72 and an off the rack wetsuit with a horse collar that had a CO2 cartridge for emergencies.

Anyone remember the old Bend-Matic I think it was made by Scuba-Pro with Agent X to monitor nitrogen? Bend-Matic was the nick name because they were pretty much useless.

Sure. Bendomatics, we called them. Scubapro' s Automatic Decompression Computer. Now there are fools who push the envelope with contemporary computers, looking for the least conservative models and and attempting to maximize ND limits.

I freely admit that the greatest number of dives and all of the deep wreck dives, etc., I've done were done many years ago, using those plastic back packs, j valves, and off the rack wet suits. I'm too old forthose kinds of dives these days, just on a statistical diver mortality basis, though I still can fit into the clothes I wore in my 20s, run and work out almost daily, and all the rest. I may well die under water, but it will not be because I'm (or someone else is) doing something stupid.

Even back in the old days, when breaths got tight and I activated my j valve, I did not tarry. It's not just getting killed. Your quality of life will diminish as you age, but there is no good reason to accelerate the process for a few cheap thrills and there are a lot of people making their painful way through life who know exactly what i'm talking about. I realize this far more now than I did when I was young, but my momma didn't raise any fools.

Being a Jersey boy I've known a few killers in my time. I remember one, vividly, because he was a relative. He had a thing for women, and when he was 70 the husband of one of his girlfriends found out what was going on and began looking for him. This sweet old guy shot the deceived husband to death.

"Johnny, I'm F'n 70 F'n years old. He was 37. I had no intention of spending my life in a F'n wheelchair. BAM. Problem solved." He got clean away with it too. I mentioned this episode at the party after his funeral and his remaining old buddies all had a good laugh.

Those who scorn my attack from a panicked diver solution are obviously far better people than I can ever aspire to being, considering the philosophy I absorbed growing up.

 

[danvolker]

Dan, what you have just described is the typical mindset of young people, especially men, in their late teens and early to late 20s. It is a well-known product of brain development. That's how old you were then. Maybe it is you and the people you hang out with who have done the most changing. In fact, statistics indicate that the entire scuba population has aged considerably since those days. Back then it was pretty much a young man's sport. That is no longer true.

Probably that is the issue...in my case, I did so many incredibly stupid and dangerous things in the 70's and 80's, that finally I made some behavioral changes...kind of like if you give a rat an electric shock every time it tries to enter a doorway --sooner or later even the rat will learn to stop trying to go into the doorway

 

[mathauck0814]

People are dying because they run out of gas and don't cope with it well. Let's teach them NOT to run out of gas!

There she goes talking that common sense again...

 

[elmer fudd]

Who are these people that are diving with no SPG or J-valve? What boat or shop allows it? What instructor or guide would get in the water with someone so unprepared? Heck, you don't even hear about people doing this nowadays over on the vintage forum.

 

[danvolker]

I love you guys beating the drum of the "good old days". But the fact is that, now that we don't use J-valves and we DO have pressure gauges, and we DO understand gas management principles, there is no excuse at all for running out of gas. The rare equipment malfunction that will empty a tank will almost always give the diver time to reach an alternate air source. The malfunctions that stop your air supply instantly are very rare, and even then, one SHOULD have a buddy to hand will enough gas to end the dive.

Sounding the horn of doing 90 foot equipment dons and 100 foot CESAs is just plain wasted energy. We should spend time stressing proper gas planning and monitoring to our students, not teaching them strategies for handling what should be a vanishingly rare circumstance. Look at the DAN data -- people aren't dying because some OOA diver came up to them and tethered their hands. People are dying because they run out of gas and don't cope with it well. Let's teach them NOT to run out of gas!

Lynne,
I know it is fun to lump this in as some of us talking about "the good old days"....
That is not really how I see it at all.

We live in a time when kids and adults refuse to use history to see the obvious patterns in the world today--things that have happened 100's of times, and are happening all over again now....****note....see footnote at end....**
And worse than this, is the pervasive REVISIONISM , which is masterfully applied by the Dive Industry and Training Agencies.

When I talk about skills that were mandatory in the 70's by NAUI....skills that were later dropped in the basic course, after PADI showed-- with superior marketing and spectacular growth at NAUI's expense....that less skills and modular courses would infuse more MONEY into the training agency and into the hands of Instructors and Shops. This is not me talking about the good ole days...this is me remembering that expediency won out over quality.....the move was to try and make the largest chunk of the American population into divers as possible BECAUSE OF THE MONEY that could be made with a higher percentage of the population desiring to become divers....this had NOTHING TO DO with a better appreciation for how people should be trained. It had only to do with more market share.

While statistically there must have been a few bad instructors in the early 70's, I think most students turned out then, could survive much harsher conditions than students turned out today. I think the median skill went way down, to a point that supervision is almost mandated to beyond AOW, whereas in the early 70's, a NAUI Basic underwater cert meant that a diver 3 weeks out of the 8 week class, would probably be a strong and safe in the water as a newly minted DM today, that just did the ABC's of modular classes to DM--though this DM today may not be able to handle many of the extremes that the 70's diver had already been called on to answer. It's not the good old days going on.....it's the frog in the slowly heated water going on, and headed to boiling.

Somethings are better now...some plans, some gear, some procedures....but this is also at the cost of us having allowed many divers to become certified, who either: could not possibly have had the abilities to complete the basic courses in the 70's--------OR, would have needed an 8 week or longer course to gain the skills required for a cert and who got the cert in a small number of days-and never had the time to gain the skills.


As to revisionism and dislike of what History can teach us today:
***Democracy & the Fall of the Athenian Republic -- Alexander Tyler

 

[DCBC]

Anyone remember the old Bend-Matic I think it was made by Scuba-Pro with Agent X to monitor nitrogen? Bend-Matic was the nick name because they were pretty much useless.

I had an SOS Decompression Meter in the early 70's. I know SOS made the meters and they were re-branded by Cressi, ScubaPro and a few other companies.

---------- Post added June 13th, 2013 at 02:42 PM ----------

...The rare equipment malfunction that will empty a tank will almost always give the diver time to reach an alternate air source. The malfunctions that stop your air supply instantly are very rare, and even then, one SHOULD have a buddy to hand will enough gas to end the dive.

I don't think this was remotely a good old days discussion. Malfunctions still occur; an in-fact DAN has noted that 15% of diving fatalities have been attributed to this.

I agree that a Buddy SHOULD be available, but this doesn't seem to be the practice. Of the DAN Diving fatalities from 1992-2003, the most frequent trigger that led to a fatality (41%) was insufficient gas. Where were the Buddies? Compounding this is that the Buddy System is taught, but not every certification teaches divers how to lend assistance submerged. What message is this sending?

Sounding the horn of doing 90 foot equipment dons and 100 foot CESAs is just plain wasted energy. We should spend time stressing proper gas planning ...

Absolutely, but why not do both? Train students in proper gas planning and teach the skills required to perform an emergency ascent within the diving envelope recommended by the certification agency (for the level which they are certified). Why should diver's that are not carrying redundant gas be diving deeper than they can safely reach the surface independently? A more realistic approach to the hazard of OOA emergency is warranted.