Recognizing Potential Problems

[Deefstes]

OK, I seem to be vastly outnumbered so I'll back down But not before making one last post.

I don't want to be seen as advocating diving against your better judgment. I agree 100% that any sense of unease is a good enough reason to call a dive. What I wanted to get across though was that I'm sure many senses of unease can be belayed through proper communication.

My wife and I have communicated to each other that neither of us will continue a dive against our better judgment which means that if I see my wife having some sort of trouble and I ask her if she wants to terminate the dive she will do so if she is uncomfortable. And the flipside of that is that, if she says that she is OK, she really is OK and I can drop my sense of unease and enjoy the rest of the dive.

 

[Sas]

OK, I seem to be vastly outnumbered so I'll back down But not before making one last post.

I don't want to be seen as advocating diving against your better judgment. I agree 100% that any sense of unease is a good enough reason to call a dive. What I wanted to get across though was that I'm sure many senses of unease can be belayed through proper communication.

My wife and I have communicated to each other that neither of us will continue a dive against our better judgment which means that if I see my wife having some sort of trouble and I ask her if she wants to terminate the dive she will do so if she is uncomfortable. And the flipside of that is that, if she says that she is OK, she really is OK and I can drop my sense of unease and enjoy the rest of the dive.

Yea sure. I think though from how you come across as a person and diver if you had a problem you would communicate it before they felt the need to abort a dive for your sake and then your buddy could make a much more informed decision. I know I would find this the easiest to do with my partner personally (though he doesn't dive, but I still think he would be the easiest person to call a dive on if he did!)

There are times though when buddies may not communicate that they are uncomfortable, for various reasons, and that is what people are mostly talking about here I think rather than deciding if a problem in your buddy should end the dive on their behalf without communication from them. So I think if body language does not equal what they are saying something is up. But yea, I totally agree that you should try to communicate first to find out what is wrong rather than bailing at the first sign of anything slightly off. I just don't give an OK signal unless I am ok. I hardly ever call a dive even when something has gone awry (unless it's major) because I communicate things to my buddy before they become major. I might not always do this, everyone makes mistakes or misjudges themselves from time to time but that is what I aim for.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I would like to hear from people regarding a recent dive I had.

Started out with a pretty long surface swim. No problems there. Relax for a bit before beginning descent. As we begin our descent, my buddy starts having problems with a leaky mask. A couple quick adjustments to the mask at the surface and we start heading down. We got to our planned depth with no problems and away we went on our heading. Within a minute I notice my buddy is having a problem with the mask leaking again, but nothing major. I'm very familiar with this buddy and I just got the feeling that something wasn't right. I know where this buddy likes to be in the water compared to me and every time I looked over they were vertical in the water and either behind me in respect to the direction we were going or foot below or above me depth wise. These are all things out of character on our dives together. So I made it a point to keep checking that everything was OK. Then the buddy started cramping up. Buddy would remove one and then get another and remove again. Each time I got the OK sign. At this point I just had a bad feeling about the dive. The body language was out of the ordinary throughout the entire dive for my buddy and the more I thought about it the more it made me nervous. So I gave the signal to ascend to our safety stop at 15ft. My buddy was unable maintain neutral buoyancy so I held onto their BC and kept us both at that depth for 5 minutes just hovering to try and avoid any more cramping problems while swimming. We finish our ascent and talk about all that went wrong. My buddy asked me why I called the dive so soon (25 minutes into dive we planned for about 40 minutes). I just said that too many things seemed to be going wrong and I had a bad feeling about it.

So I guess what I'd like to hear from people is how they have dealt with similar situations. Did I wait too long to call the dive? Should I have recognized the out of character body language in my buddy sooner? Did I overreact to the situation given that my buddy didn't feel the need to call the dive? Any input is appreciated.

Ignoring the problems your buddy was having for a moment ... the statements I highlighted above are all the right reasons to call a dive. In this case, you weren't doing it for your buddy's sake ... you were doing it for yours. When people get distracted with little things going wrong ... particularly when they lead to bad feelings and nervousness ... it's time to get out of the water. Because that's when you can overlook other issues that might lead to bigger problems.

Diving accidents are seldom the result of just one thing going wrong ... they are usually caused by a chain of events that build upon each other. Always listen to that little voice inside of you who is telling you that things aren't right ... it's trying to keep you alive.

It seems I'm in a minority here (if not the only one) who thinks that you might have overreacted. That said, I'm not saying you should have acted differently, if all ended well and your buddy was happy in the end, then kudos to you.

The point I want to raise though is this; Your buddy is ultimately responsible for his/her own safety. You're not making any mention of how deep the dive was but if you had planned on a BT of 40min I'm assuming it wasn't to the sort of depth where you'd have reason to believe that your buddy's judgement was impaired.

So, if your buddy tells you that he/she's OK, why call the dive? Your buddy might not be having the greatest dive ever but would he/she really prefer to end it prematurely? He's the one with the issue, let him make the call on whether or not to thumb the dive.

Like I said though, I'm not berating you for the decision you made, I'm just saying that I would probably have done it differently. It's great to have a regular buddy who's habits and mannerisms you get to be familiar with. I'm fortunate to also have a regular buddy (my wife) but our agreement is that I won't make decisions on her behalf unless I've got good reason to believe that her judgment is impaired. We also have an agreement that she will not continue a dive because she feels "obligated" towards me or anyone else. The same goes for me as well.

This means I know that she will thumb a dive if anything's wrong, meaning I don't have to thumb a dive on her behalf because I think something is wrong.

The problem I have with this is twofold ... first, while your buddy is responsible for his or her own safety, so are you. Distractions like what were described in the OP can ... and often do ... lead to bigger issues that can impact the safety of both divers. It is up to ALL divers in a buddy team to determine their comfort level ... and if any one of them is uncomfortable with the dive, it is appropriate to call that dive. If you're taking your role as a dive buddy seriously, you begin and end the dive together. So if one person is having problems, all team members are responsible for addressing those problems. In effect, any member of the buddy team can call the dive at any time for any reason. There is no "overreact" about it ... safety is ALWAYS the first priority.

Second problem is simply this ... it is extremely common for divers who are having a problem to go into denial, either because they really determined to do the dive, or because they are worried what their dive buddy will think and therefore put an inappropriate amount of pressure on themselves to continue even when they know they should not. As someone who dives often with newer divers, I've come to recognize this tendency ... in particular with those newer divers ... because they want me to think well of them. That is the wrong thing to do. But recognizing that your buddy is having a problem, it will sometimes be up to you to decide that enough is enough and throw a thumb. Sometimes what I'll do is tell them I'm cold or something, to take the pressure off of them for thumbing the dive.

You'd be surprised how often I am told after the dive ... "I'm glad you called it, I was thinking about it but didn't want to spoil your dive".

My reply is "The only way you're gonna spoil my dive is if you put me in a position where I have to rescue you".

In this case, for multiple reasons, I believe the OP did the correct thing. If anything, I'd have pulled the plug sooner ... when it became clear that the dive buddy was continuing to have problems. Multiple issues lead to stress ... stress leads to bad decisions ... and bad decisions lead to accidents. Break the chain of events before it gets to that point ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[redacted]

While I feel the end result was probably correct, I think I would have worked more with my buddy on the problems and let him/her make the call. But if I thought my buddy might not make that call when it needs to be made, I'd do what you did AND consider whether this is the buddy behavior I want to dive with.

If I turned the situation around and did a dive with my buddy who became so concerned as I worked through some minor problems that he/she decided to call the dive for me, I probably would not be real happy.

 

[cmaha76]

You can call a dive at any time for any reason and no good buddy should be angry with you. You might need to discuss the reasons and formulate a plan for future occurences, but they should be 100% ok with your decision.

How would you all handle a similar situation with an insta-buddy? You think they aren't ok, they insist they are... do you go ahead and thumb the dive, or believe them. If they're actining weird enough to make me feel off, I thumb it.

 

[seaducer]

Uhm, I'm not sure how a court of law fits in with this scenario. Are you suggesting that, had the OP not called the dive and his buddy died, he'd have to convince a court of law of him not being culpable?

Yes, that is exactly what I am saying. Perhaps not in a criminal court, but distraught family has a way of blaming survivors and retaining counsel.

You can drown in a duck pond, but that's not the point I was getting at. I made no reference to the depth suggesting that deeper dives offer a greater risk to drowning. I was saying that on a deeper dive, one might have more reason to suspect that your buddy is not mentally acknowledging his/her distress due to narcosis. At a shallow depth, even though we all know that you can still drown in it, at least he'd have little reason to suspect serious narcosis and consequent impaired judgment.

Depth is irrelevant. I had a night dive scheduled at a local inlet (max depth 20 feet 6m) and earlier in the day my father had undergone surgery to remove a cancerous tumor on his thyroid. He and my mother insisted that I go dive, since it is as often as not therapy for me. I was so out of it over my father that I had vertigo, my buddy didn't notice and it ended up freaking me out to the point I was laying on the bottom with the world spinning and I and could not stop it. Laying on the bottom is out of character for me, as is not returning an ok signal. My buddy kept going and I soon started to hyperventilate and could not control that either.l Luckily I got enough control of myself to surface on my own and get out. Total BT by my computer was 25 minutes, I had about 300PSI in the tank when I checked my guages the next day. Needles to say I could have died, depth was not an issue, and my buddy should have recognized that long before it got serious by my not behaving normally. We no longer dive together.

On a dive not long ago I finned funny because I had knocked my right thigh on the boat before the dive. My wife didn't know this and asked me if I was OK and if I wanted to terminate the dive. I replied that I was OK and that I did not want to terminate the dive. I'd have been seriously miffed if she decided to call the dive on my behalf because I was obviously having issues. I know I'm swimming funny, I know why I'm swimming funny and I know that I'm fine to complete the dive, I don't need someone else to decide for me whether or not I'm fine.

Or you could have been finning in a funny way because you were having a heart attack, and like a great many people who do are in complete denial about it and insist everything is ok. Or let me ask this, were you on a dive with current? Perhaps you hurt you leg bad enough that while it may not feel like it at first, it will become nearly useless should you need to really swim hard. It could set you up for needing to be rescued, or make you worthless should your wife need assistance. If it hurts enough to force you to swim noticabely different, how is she to know you are truly ok?

but I still trust that my wife will call a dive when she's not comfortable and I'm glad that she trusts me to do the same.

Good, the only question is, is it ok for her to be uncomfortable with what she observes you to be doing?

Allow me to make that call then please.

No sir, buddies can call for any reasons, including reasons that pertain to you, whether you like it or not.

OK, I concede, "overreacted" is perhaps a strong word. But to be fair, I made it clear that I was not telling him he should have done things differently and I was not berating him. I simply wanted to add another perspective which anyone is free to ignore if they don't agree.

And to be fair, I am not trying to pick on you, or beat you up, or be argumentative. I am saying that it is bad form to challenge anyone for calling a dive, for any reason. As someone else has said, if this is a chronic issue with someone calling dives, perhaps you choose to not dive with them anymore. But as long as your buddy is paying attention to you, and has your best interests in mind and calls a dive, you can't ask for more than that.

 

[aquaregia]

I think people will often say they are Ok when they are not.

No kidding. I had a buddy give me the OK right after surfacing, then proceed to flail around yelling that his BC was leaking and almost drown himself.

 

[TSandM]

it is extremely common for divers who are having a problem to go into denial, either because they really determined to do the dive, or because they are worried what their dive buddy will think and therefore put an inappropriate amount of pressure on themselves to continue even when they know they should not.

I've been guilty of this. This is when your buddy asks you, "Okay?" and you return, "Okay", but you aren't, really. You're COPING, which is a different thing.

On our recent Mexico trip, I noticed my husband was kicking funny. He was dropping his knees in a way he generally doesn't do. I asked him if he was okay, and he said he was. He then proceeded to make a big situational awareness error of the sort he gives me grief about -- he was coming out last, and swam right over our jump spool without picking it up. Over the next couple of days, he kept insisting he was fine, and making those kinds of errors. He was having sciatica. His leg hurt when he kicked, and he was clearly spending way too much time focused on that, and on how to reduce the pain, and it seriously affected his competence. Once we got the pain reduced, he went back to being the good diver he is. But he was diving impaired at the beginning, and had we been doing dives I was nervous about, I probably would have told him I wasn't comfortable doing them with him. The dives we were doing, we other two teammates felt comfortable picking up the slack.

Where and when to say "enough is enough" is going to be relative to the relationship between the buddies, the size and complexity of the dive, and the degree of comfort of the better functioning buddy. But I'm with everybody else -- there is always another day to dive, so long as this one doesn't end badly.

 

[seaducer]

No kidding. I had a buddy give me the OK right after surfacing, then proceed to flail around yelling that his BC was leaking and almost drown himself.

Yeah, it is all Hollywood's fault. Nobody likes to ask for help until it is almost too late.

 

[Herk_Man]

Missed something in OP's post that made my comment irrelevant. Never mind.