Why the long...................hose?

[decompression]

So....today I had another reason, in the pile of reasons of why a Donatable longhose should be a consideration for a lot of divers.

On a wreck today, I witnessed this;

Two divers, obviously paired, working their way forward from the aft at about 100'.......one signaled to the other low air and gave the anchor sign. They came up to about 70' but were quite far from the upline. Very soon after diver A communicated that he was low on air and wanted to "share air", diver B wasn't sure what to do until diver A signaled "out of air". Diver B fumbled a bit as he reached for his Octo/inflator and eventually donated his primary on a 40" (guess) hose. By this time they were ascending quickly from about 50'. Diver B was exhausting from his drysuit and so was A but A was unable to deflate his BCD (looked like B's wasn't very full. They stayed together through the fast ascent to the surface, no safety stop. But I could see that they looked frustrated in that they couldnt control the ascent without risking the donated reg coming loose.

So, a few things stand out.
1. A long hose would have given the separation needed to calmly deal with the ascent.
2. A necklaced second would have minimized/eliminated the fumbling for an octo.
3. A streamlined octo/inflator works great until you need to use it. Tough to exhaust when it's in your mouth.
4. Luckily both divers were relatively calm, the outcome could have been much worse than a missed safety stop.


Moral, choose your equipment wisely and practice your procedures.

 

[Caveeagle]

Never thought of #3 before, but that's a great point

 

[Trace Malinowski]

I once pulled an OOG drill on a girlfriend who was taught by her PADI instructor to keep the additional second stage in a snorkel keeper. It was hysterical! She was yanking on it with all her might and the silicon keeper stretched out like the Stretch Armstrong toy from the 1970's, but wouldn't relinquish its hold. I was slowly blowing bubbles and as I feigned death, I reached for my wetnotes and wrote: GUE 1, PADI 0.

The long hose won't solve poor skills and poor equipment choices can hamper good skills, so as Jay states in the moral of his story: Equipment choice + practiced procedures = team success.

 

[drrich2]

3. A streamlined octo/inflator works great until you need to use it. Tough to exhaust when it's in your mouth.

Seems like you'd take it out of your mouth to exhaust, then replace. I agree it's apt to be more cumbersome to deal with (I use one) in an air-sharing situation, but that's a trade-off for not having a separate hose & 2nd stage to deal with the rest of the time.

I once pulled an OOG drill on a girlfriend who was taught by her PADI instructor to keep the additional second stage in a snorkel keeper. It was hysterical! She was yanking on it with all her might and the silicon keeper stretched out like the Stretch Armstrong toy from the 1970's, but wouldn't relinquish its hold.

That brings up a question. I've never used, or tried to use, a 7' long hose setup. I don't think most OW students get trained with that, and I suspect those who do probably have better-than-average instructors. So, let's say for sake of argument the long hose style arrangement suddenly became standard agency practice for, oh, say, SSI or PADI. What are the odds mainstream-trained newbies would find a way to screw it up in real world OOA scenarios? Would it really cut down on badly handled OOA situations?

Richard.

 

[Diver0001]

gave the anchor sign.

Out of curiosity, how do you guys make that sign? What we do in my little circle of friends is to use a sign with one hand flat, palm up and the other hand using the first two fingers bent and touching the palm of the first hand.

You used to see this sign being used to indicate to students in a pool to go to the knees but it's clear as an anchor sign too. We decided on this because the ASL gesture for anchor involves using two hands and the bent fingers as well. The ASL gesture also involves a long arm motion, which we decided to eliminate by using the upturned palm as a reference.

So what do you use?

R..

 

[JohnnyC]

I don't necessarily think it even needs to be a "long" hose, more so a longer hose and primary donate. A bungee'd second and the primary on say, a 40" hose routed under the arm with a "right" angle adapter is super streamlined, and works very well for primary donate in the OW environment. It offers enough separation once you swipe the hose over your shoulder, it's easy to donate, there's no need to fumble for anything.

Let's be honest, a full long hose is designed to offer divers air sharing capability through a restriction. For an open water diver, it's probably something that new divers won't want to deal with, and realistically they don't need to. However, there's definitely a better way to deal with hose routing and air sharing that isn't quite the giant change in paradigm that sends new open water divers into a tizzy. Would going to that sort of configuration be safer and easier? Probably. However, I'm not seeing too many incident reports where going OOG and being unable to secure another air source is causing issues, so I doubt it's really even on any agency's radar. Honestly how often is it killing divers? If there's no need to improve the process, why bother dedicating the resources to it? Doesn't mean I agree with the idea, but I can see why the agency's don't care.

 

[Diver0001]

A possible configuration that we don't often talk about, but you do see from time to time, is the short-hose primary and an "octopus" on a 5ft/1.5m hose.

R..

 

[Diver0001]

However, I'm not seeing too many incident reports where going OOG and being unable to secure another air source is causing issues, so I doubt it's really even on any agency's radar. Honestly how often is it killing divers? If there's no need to improve the process, why bother dedicating the resources to it? Doesn't mean I agree with the idea, but I can see why the agency's don't care.

Johnny,

I *am* actually reading that out of the statistics but not only for the reason of not being able to secure an octopus.

IIRC DAN is reporting that 56% of fatal diving accidents are triggered by LOA or OOA situations.

Now, apart from the obvious "prevention is better than cure" line, which is relevant and important, what would a LOA or OOA diver be trying to do?

Find an AAS, right? Reasons they may not be able to do so might range from panic to poor configuration choices to poor buddy contact, but in all of those cases -- more than 1/2 of dead divers -- we need to ask ourselves if the configuration was causing a complication.

For my own students, I obviously hammer on "prevention" but we drill the bejezus of the AAS exchange. I also have what I call my ABC rule for organizing thinking in an emergency in order to keep panic down.

A is AIR ..... first things first, everyone needs a working regulator

B is BUOYANCY ..... as soon as everyone is breathing we get back to diving. We hold on to each other (I teach specific grips for this) and make ourselves, in principle, neutrally buoyant as a team.

C is COMMUNICATION .... once we are breathing and we are diving THEN we decide as a unit what to do. Ascend, try to fix the problem, whatever. This stage is always initiated with an OK and confirmed by the other diver with an OK.

In my opinion, standards have been tightened up quite a bit about the prevention aspects but I think more can be done. If standards were more specific to train the ABC rule and spend more time on AAS exchange while neutral swimming then the number of accidents would be even lower.

Since we don't have any convincing research done on the complications related to configuration I'm teaching the "trad" config to my OW students. I make them aware of their options but I figure if they can make it look good with a secondary on a fairly short hose then any improvement to that will only make it easier. That's my pragmatic solution for now.

R..

 

[JohnnyC]

Johnny,

I *am* actually reading that out of the statistics but not only for the reason of not being able to secure an octopus.

IIRC DAN is reporting that 56% of fatal diving accidents are triggered by LOA or OOA situations.

Interesting! I haven't seen those statistics. Do you have a link to the DAN study? Certainly DandyDon's incident reports are not a real primary source of information, but it seems like most of the reported incidents around the intertubes don't mention OOG as being the primary factor in fatal incidents. I'd definitely like to see the actual study info if you can find it. I have no problem rethinking the paradigm, but then again I've never had an OOG incident with a student or buddy that's been anything other than a non-issue. I always dive with a long hose simply because that's what I've used since going beyond OW, so I can't say whether or not my own configuration has played a part in the relative relaxed nature of any OOG incidents I've been involved with.

I can certainly see buddy separation a being the overwhelming factor in not being able to secure a viable air source in an OOG incident. I think it would be harder to evaluate equipment configuration as the tipping point in a fatal incident.

 

[RainPilot]

Out of curiosity, how do you guys make that sign? What we do in my little circle of friends is to use a sign with one hand flat, palm up and the other hand using the first two fingers bent and touching the palm of the first hand.

You used to see this sign being used to indicate to students in a pool to go to the knees but it's clear as an anchor sign too. We decided on this because the ASL gesture for anchor involves using two hands and the bent fingers as well. The ASL gesture also involves a long arm motion, which we decided to eliminate by using the upturned palm as a reference.

So what do you use?

R..

I use the "boat" sign and then the arm chop indicating direction, it differentiates direct ascent (thumb up) from a nav decision.