Who has been in a reall OOA situation, whether you or your dive buddy?

[Nemrod]

For years we dove with J valves. Each dive, by todays standard, was OOA. The valve triggered at 300 psi and we ascended at 60 fpm to the surface.

Certain dives, an example the Oriskeny, every time I have been out there somebody went either low air or no air. Just simply too deep and usually a lot of current and 80 cf is not enough for most divers.

N

 

[James R]

Yikes...if I had to dive the O on a single tank, it would be a FX100 for sure.

 

[rongoodman]

A couple of years ago in a dive off Playa, with me, another client and a DM, the other client came to me and asked for air. I think he was just low, rather than completely out. The DM was a little surprised when she looked around and saw him on my long hose, but there was no drama involved.

 

[Edward3c]

To add the John's list.

DVs were most likely to fail having just been flooded. Constantly flooding the DV between breaths was asking for a reg failure.

 

[diversteve]

Went OOA once. Shorediving on Curacao. Coming back in from about 80' I noticed some turtles feeding nearby. Knew my gas was low but I followed one down and filmed him till I heard the "click". As Wookie mentioned, Atomic regs give til they can't. So I filmed about a minute more then stood up...

Did I mention the turtles were in 5' off the beach...

 

[drbill]

In the early days (60s and early 70s) OOA was probably a lot more common given the lack of SPGs and the use of J-valves. I know on a few occasions I ran low and tried to pull the level to open my J-valve reserve... and discovered that it had already snagged in kelp and I was running on empty. Back then I rarely dove deep so it was just a simple ascent from a reasonably shallow depth. On several occasions since SPGs became common I have intentionally let myself run low on air to film something special, but only in pretty shallow (15-20 ft) water.

The worst OOA incident I'e ever had was with a nearly full tank. Planning on a 40 ft max depth dive, I ended up following a bat ray to about 80 fsw. Because I had planned a shallow dive, I didn't strap on my pony bottle like I usually did when diving solo. I exhaled and went to take another breath... and there was nothing coming out of the reg. I immediately began an instinctive ascent, keeping it fairly show (total ascent time of 70 seconds from about 80 fsw). Quite out of breath at the surface so I manually inflated my BCD and floated a while before swimming to shore.

Why was I OOA with a nearly full tank (3 1/2 minutes into the dive)? When I did my head first descent, something inside the tank dropped down right into the dip or debris tube and clogged it, restricting all air from exiting the tank.

 

[boulderjohn]

For years we dove with J valves. Each dive, by todays standard, was OOA. The valve triggered at 300 psi and we ascended at 60 fpm to the surface.

In the early days (60s and early 70s) OOA was probably a lot more common given the lack of SPGs and the use of J-valves. I know on a few occasions I ran low and tried to pull the level to open my J-valve reserve... and discovered that it had already snagged in kelp and I was running on empty. Back then I rarely dove deep so it was just a simple ascent from a reasonably shallow depth. On several occasions since SPGs became common I have intentionally let myself run low on air to film something special, but only in pretty shallow (15-20 ft) water.

A thread a couple of years ago commented on an ironic disadvantage of today's superior equipment. Participants from the J-valve era agreed with Newrod and drbill that the J-valves tended to give you little or nothing when you were expecting more. Consequently, many and perhaps most divers had experience with CESA, and they were confident in their ability to reach the surface safely under those circumstances. With OOA being such a very rare event these days, divers do not have the experience and confidence to handle it properly when it happens. They are likely to panic and make a rapid, breath-holding ascent, which a joint PADI/DAN study indicated was the most common preventable cause of dive fatalities.

I attended a workshop a couple of years ago in which the session leader differentiated between an event and an emergency, if I recall the terms precisely correctly. An event is essentially something that happens that should not be a problem if handled properly. If handled improperly, it becomes an emergency. Under that definition, going OOA is an event that should be handled routinely using the procedures taught in all OW classes. When it is mishandled, it becomes an emergency.

 

[Fish in a Barrel]

The nearest I ever came was when I failed to open my tank all the way during a drift dive in Coz. When I reached the bottom, at about 70 feet, I checked my computer and it was flashing "LOW AIR" and reading something absurd like 70PSI. I was a pretty new diver at this time so I had to reason out what the problem was. I knew I'd had a full tank at the surface, and there hadn't been a spectacular bang and burst of bubbles, so that air was still in there. The only substantial thing between the tank and the computer was the valve so... I reached back, opened it up all the way and continued the dive. I was ashamed of jumping in with the tank barely on, but also a little proud of handling the problem correctly and without panicking.

 

[LeFlaneur]

Right you are, nimoh I was confusing the terms

Still, I feel like we did learn true buddy breathing more than a decade ago.

 

[Bob DBF]

A thread a couple of years ago commented on an ironic disadvantage of today's superior equipment. Participants from the J-valve era agreed with Newrod and drbill that the J-valves tended to give you little or nothing when you were expecting more. Consequently, many and perhaps most divers had experience with CESA, and they were confident in their ability to reach the surface safely under those circumstances. With OOA being such a very rare event these days, divers do not have the experience and confidence to handle it properly when it happens. They are likely to panic and make a rapid, breath-holding ascent, which a joint PADI/DAN study indicated was the most common preventable cause of dive fatalities.

Two other factors helped back then, the first is that we normally ascended at 60'/min with no safety so it was only 2 min to the surface from 120' at a normal surface, and the second was that the regs were unbalanced so more air was available to breathe on the way up than a balanced reg will give.

In addition a lot of people used a K-valve rather than a J-valve, and the old timers thought it (J-valve) was an equipment solution to a skills problem.



Bob