What would you do?

[FishOutUvH2O]

. . . you try everything to slow down but can't, your heading up way to fast....in 24 seconds your going to be at the surface.

What do you do?

I guess since you've already tried everything to slow your ascent and can't, you're now doing an unplanned buoyant emergency ascent, so exhale on the way up and hope you don't explode anything or get bent.

Maybe you should describe the scenario in a little more detail.

 

[Peter Guy]

What would I do in this situation:

A. First off, after my buddy has gone onto my air supply, I'd turn off his air supply. There is no reason to let all that gas (air) escape and the bubbles themselves can be distracting. In addition, IF the reason for the free flow is a bad first stage, it could also lead to auto-inflating of the BC.

B. Since we both have air, there is no emergency any more -- merely a situation. I'll make sure he's OK (really OK) and then we will start ascending in a normal ascent -- that is, we are horizontal and facing each other. As long as he is really OK, there is no reason why he has to hold onto me and why I have to hold onto him. The only difference between this ascent and the one we did before is that he's breathing off my air and we are connected by at least 40 inches of hose.

C. Now, for whatever reason, we're ascending too fast, since we are in horizontal positions, it's easy to pull the butt dumps on both BC's to dump gas and since we're already horizontal, we flare (but I still don't understand why we're rising so quickly).

D. I'd also make sure I'd keep breathing -- long exhales, relatively short inhales -- LONG exhales.

That's what I would do.

BTW, most "integrated" BC's have shoulder dumps of one kind or another, and if you are face to face, holding onto one another, why not just pull the shoulder dumps and exhaust the BC's? EVEN IF that means you are letting go of your buddy, he's attached to you by his mouth (and maybe his hand) so he's not going anywhere (relative to you) as long as you ascend at the same rate.

I'm having a hard time trying to come up with the scenario that makes this all that difficult.

Also, since this is the first dive of the day, day two of a trip, you are probably not all that nitrogen loaded so your danger is really lung over expansion more than bubbling in all likelihood. If all else fails, exhale and enjoy the ride.

 

[firstdive2005]

Imasinker: Since everyone here is being kind to you, I will play the bad teacher, hopefully you live or survive the next round. Your words you write with your experience in freeflow suggest that you are very supersensitive about hearing correction or you have the NEED to make sure what you did was somewhat right. This is the drill in incident writing. Stop the subjetive writing, start objective writing. Just state exactly what you did, remove the terms "like I was taught". Next if more info is needed the experienced divers that can and will help will ask for this critical information to base solid skill moves based on their own experience usually and from their own schooling. Dont take any feedback from us as -your such a sh###y diver you should be sticking to sidewalks. ALL feedback is about wanting you to survive not about you personally. I applaud you for sending the question others will DEFINATELY benefit from it. kev

 

[TSandM]

It's all very well and good for all these people to say you have time to do this, or that, or the other thing, but I had an uncontrolled ascent from 70' when i had about that many dives, and I can tell everybody that in point of fact, you don't have much time to do much of anything; it goes amazingly fast.

Nowadays, when my brain works a bit better underwater, I think I'd be able to recognize whether I am the one who is excessively buoyant, or whether I'm being dragged up, and if the latter, reach for my buddy's BC to dump gas (of course, if it's my buddy's dry suit that's the problem, we're probably hosed). But if buddy is kicking wildly because he's scared to death (and the noise and the lack of vision from a freeflow is very unnerving, not to mention the awareness that it's your BREATHING GAS that's escaping into the water) there is not much I can do about that. But the one thing I would NOT do, unless I was absolutely sure I'd be serious injured otherwise, is pull my reg out of my buddy's mouth to avoid the ascent. I'd rather go to a chamber than escape unharmed and have my dive buddy drown because he panicked, or die of AGE.

 

[bamamedic]

hmmm....I recently had to do an air sharing ascent with zero reference while shooting a lift bag...that was...uh..."interesting", to say the least. Before then, I hadn't ever tried to ascend while air sharing. It was harder than I thought!

However, no one had an uncontrolled ascent to the surface.

I couldn't imagine ripping a working reg out of my buddy's mouth for any reason. Odds are, he's stressed, just had a freeflow which probably unnerved him a bit, and how you're both in an uncontrolled ascent. Taking a reg out of his mouth is just going to throw him a little closer to the edge of panic, if not over the edge entirely.

In a perfect world, he could've breathed off the freeflowing reg, and probably ascended on his own gas supply, but for some reason, that didn't happen.

From what I understand, uncontrolled ascents are not uncommon while air sharing...both parties are stressed, breathing rapidly, probably not focusing well on the normal tasks such as dumping air, and we all know that once you start ascending, your neoprene starts uncompressing, the ascent gets faster and faster, and it gets harder to arrest.

That's another reason I really like my long hose configuration. I've practiced OOA drills both ways (with a diver who donated his very short primary and went to an AIR2, and with a diver who had a 7 ft primary hose and donated that). The drill went a bunch more smoothly with the long hose diver, than with the AIR2 diver. For one thing, it was hard to control buoyancy while vertical in the water, with my face 6 inches from the other diver! Using the long hose gave each diver enough space to be able to control their own buoyancy much easier. It also allowed us to stay horizontal in the water, which helped us stay in a controlled ascent.

But I digress...

Were I in the situation you described, I'd have started dumping both his BC and my BC....that should stop (or at least slow down) the uncontrolled ascent.

I'd have communicated to my buddy "slow down" and shown him my pressure gauge to show that we still have plenty of air left.

Of course, I'd be careful not to close my airway off... an embolism on top of all that would just suck!

 

[drdaddy]

It appears to me that you are asking the question, "Should I have let my buddy go?". If that is the question, the answer is that you never make yourself a victim to "save" another - you'll just have two victims. However, if the real problem is the uncontrolled ascent. Maybe you (and your buddy) were underweighted and your tanks were empty (check buoyancy with empty tank) or maybe your buddy had panicked and wanted to get up to the surface in a hurry. In a panic situation, it is common to be so focused on one thing that you omit the alternatives. It is important for you to go through the scenario and realize that there were a number of alternatives to the uncontrolled ascent. If you had dumped all of your air, you should have begun dumping his. This is easy for me to say since I was not in your position. So the best thing to do is to ask the question - how did this happen and how can I make sure it never happens again? The answer to that is that was already given above. When you began sharing air - turn his off - and then begin your ascent together (I would recommend holding on to each other). Then for each of you - Don't use the BCD as an elevator and begin venting. Go over and over this situation - it will help for not only these kind of problems, but will generalize into other areas.

 

[Diver0001]

What do you do?

Well.... Slow down....

R..

P.S. Sorry I should have read that slower.

The obvious fact is that if you can't control your ascent then you're going to the surface. In this case if you really can't slow down then you need to just hang on. A rapid ascent is bad but you really can't let go of your buddy in that situation or you risk him drowning.

Question: Why, in retrospect, were you unable to control your ascent speed?

R..

 

[imasinker]

Imasinker: Since everyone here is being kind to you, I will play the bad teacher, hopefully you live or survive the next round. Your words you write with your experience in freeflow suggest that you are very supersensitive about hearing correction or you have the NEED to make sure what you did was somewhat right. This is the drill in incident writing. Stop the subjetive writing, start objective writing. Just state exactly what you did, remove the terms "like I was taught". Next if more info is needed the experienced divers that can and will help will ask for this critical information to base solid skill moves based on their own experience usually and from their own schooling. Dont take any feedback from us as -your such a sh###y diver you should be sticking to sidewalks. ALL feedback is about wanting you to survive not about you personally. I applaud you for sending the question others will DEFINATELY benefit from it. kev

Thank you!

We were 5 minutes into the first dive of the day at 80 feet. Hovering over the deck I hear a sound to my right and see my buddy engulfed in bubbles. I have never experienced this before, I have only been diving three months.

Here's what I did.

Buddy went free flow.
I reached out to him pulled him close to me as he was grabbing at my octo.
He had one hand holding his free flow octo one hand grabbing at my octo.
He grabbed my octo and began to breath.
Not being able to see anything because of the bubbles I moved the free flow octo to his side and cleared the view to see his face.
I signal ok he signals ok
He signals up, I replied ok
I noted the time and depth, held him in one hand, lifted and vented my inflator
I looked up making sure we were not under anyone or anything.
I fin upwards slow and looked at my computer on my wrist noted our depth was aproaching 70 feet.
I looked at him, looked up and felt we were moving to fast.
I looked at him and didn't notice anything strange, emptied my bcd, we were now really moving fast
I feel the air move in my drysuit, I put my hand up under my hood, pulled my neck seal to vent off air from my drysuit and got soaked in the process
I seen the bright sun light felt the temperature change and new we were about to surface.
looked at him and we popped up at the surface.

My computer had three warnings, and logged the ascent time as 24 seconds from 80 feet.

With all do respect, my dive buddy reads this forum, and I am sure he knows what happened. He is a good guy that just got caught in a bad situation. It wasn't untill a few weeks later I realized what happened. I remember looking at my dive buddy who was holding my octo and holding me. Being it happened so fast it seems he didn't deflate is bcd, dump his air and we are both wearing drysuits. I was too busy trying to figure out what to do at this time. I remembered what I had to do, but it went so fast. The reason I asked the question was to see the input from divers, new and not new. It is easy to say now what I should have done. This goes to experiene for me. I was wondering how many people would have said, I would let him go. I was asked that a few tmes. This was a situation I faced, and could have done many things different. This was why I posted the http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/general-scuba-equipment-discussions/263742-air2-octo-inflators.html. I was wondering what could be done in that situation with that type of octo, to find other helpfull resources to help understand and hopefull prevent something like this from happening again. Next time I may not be so lucky but you can see I have learned something. We went to the hospital, we were fine, total 8 minutes and being the first dive we didn't suffer any complications.

Please remember I was a brand new diver, it may not sound so serious to those experience but to me it was.

Have any of you any simular situations you can reflect and talk about. How did the experience change you?

 

[SteveAD]

A few weeks back there was a thread asking if it was ever ok to yell at students. The general consensus was that the only time a real yell was appropriate would be to stop an impending action that would be likely to cause injury. Yelling underwater really doesn't work very well for me, but I think we could carry the same concept to hitting.

Assuming the dive is within no stop limits, an excessive ascent rate (even 120 fpm) is not immediately life threatening so I will not abandon my buddy or pull my reg back from him. If necessary I would ride up with him exhaling all the way.

It sounds like the ooa diver may have been borderline panicked or at least target fixated on "get to the surface NOW". The OP did not mention the exact cause of the fast ascent. Is the ooa kicking like crazy? crushing the inflator? If I think it's the best/quickest way to break that fixation and get his attention on me, I would smack the ooa diver to get him to stop whatever he is doing. But it should not ever have gotten that far.

The situation sounded well managed until the ascent began.

* Buddy had a freeflow
* Reg was handed off-buddy now breathing happily-no more emergency, but still freeflowing.
* Communication OK's exchanged-ascent signalled

Like Peter said, the freeflowing reg should have been shut off at this point. Ascending thru a cloud of bubbles can be disorienting. If the freeflow was due to a first stage failure, the inceased IP could have caused the bc to autoinflate without action on the part of the diver.

 

[micklock]

What do you do?

I would switch to my redundant air supply. And if diving with a buddy hopefully he would also have a redundant air supply, either a pony or doubles, Personally I use independent doubles. If I was diving in warm clear water I would be more comfortable diving to 80' on a single tank.