Albany woman dies diving off south jetty in Newport, Oregon on Sunday.

[Crush]

I've been thinking about the idea of orally inflating more often. Good idea to practice it in calm conditions, but at sea - I really like to keep my reg in my mouth until I'm back on the boat.

DandyDon, it is possible to orally inflate your BC while under water. You know this but, for the benefit of others, the oral inflator is on one hand, your reg is *firmly* in the other. If you can manage this under water (and it isn't tough) you can do so in choppy water. It's all about practice.

 

[DandyDon]

DandyDon, it is possible to orally inflate your BC while under water. You know this but, for the benefit of others, the oral inflator is on one hand, your reg is *firmly* in the other. If you can manage this under water (and it isn't though) you can do so in choppy water. It's all about practice.

Yeah, but then you see tourists in Coz with a dozen dives and a new camera. And cameras can be so distracting! Hell, mine got me to do a real CESA once. :blush: Holding the reg in one, inflator in the other to orally inflated, with a camera lanyard to entangle - or a camera they don't want to lose - touchy! When nothing else works, know how to ditch weights, or ditch the kit if needed - altho I do like to stay with my gear.

 

[Hatul]

It's possible she had a failure of the BC to hold air. I can see her panicking and not problem solving, but why would her buddy not dump her weights?

 

[Diver0001]

It sounds to me like neither of them were problem solving.

I have something I call my "ABC" rule for problem solving that I teach to OW students. In a nutshell the ABC is rule says to sort out problems in the following order:

1) AIR. make sure everyone has air. That could have meant in this case that the husband could have given his wife his own octopus for a moment since he evidently wasn't out of air yet, or he could have told her to put in the snorkel if the problem was that she was getting washed over by waves. In any case, the "A" would have avoided or delayed the panic and taken the edge off of the time problem.

2) Buoyancy. Step 2 is to ensure everyone has proper buoyancy. That means neutral while diving and positive on the surface. If they had been taught the ABC rule then "forgetting" to establish positive buoyancy, however they decided to achieve that, would have been much less likely

3) Step 3 is to communicate, make a plan for further steps (do we swim to the shore or call for assistance, that kind of thing). The idea after A and B is that you are no longer in danger of dying and you are back to "diving" again so step three is about how to carry on after the problem.

PADI has the "stop, breathe, think, do" principle but personally I find my "ABC" rule more goal oriented because when the poop is hitting the fan you may not have time to pause and consider the situation before doing anything and the ABC rule allows you to organize your thinking so you're doing the highest priority things first and getting everything done as efficiently as possible and in the right order.

R..

 

[Tortuga68]

I started this thread in hopes that someone with more information could fill in the blanks. Given the scant information provided, we could all come to the obvious critiques, but they are somewhat meaningless verbal showboating without specific information

Welcome to the SB A&I forum

 

[peterbj7]

In an emergency it is the poorly learned skills that are forgotten first.

 

[TSandM]

Rob, one of your usual very good posts.

When I came to ScubaBoard, one of the first threads I found was your post on "Managing Task Loading". I thought, and still think that it was a superb thread with tons of good stuff for people to think about.

 

[lavachickie]

Welcome to the SB A&I forum

Yeah, silly me. But it's all good.

 

[Charles21093]

"One of the instructors we know orally inflates his BC every time he surfaces."

I like this idea. In my one (so far) OOA incident I knew I had enough in my lungs to make the ascent from 30' (exhaling the entire time). However, when I broke the surface my reflexes kicked in and I hit the inflator button and stopped kicking. Bad gas management was compounded by this automatic reflex and I went right back under.

 

[SeaHorse81]

It sounds to me like neither of them were problem solving.

I have something I call my "ABC" rule for problem solving that I teach to OW students. In a nutshell the ABC is rule says to sort out problems in the following order:

1) AIR. make sure everyone has air. That could have meant in this case that the husband could have given his wife his own octopus for a moment since he evidently wasn't out of air yet, or he could have told her to put in the snorkel if the problem was that she was getting washed over by waves. In any case, the "A" would have avoided or delayed the panic and taken the edge off of the time problem.

2) Buoyancy. Step 2 is to ensure everyone has proper buoyancy. That means neutral while diving and positive on the surface. If they had been taught the ABC rule then "forgetting" to establish positive buoyancy, however they decided to achieve that, would have been much less likely

3) Step 3 is to communicate, make a plan for further steps (do we swim to the shore or call for assistance, that kind of thing). The idea after A and B is that you are no longer in danger of dying and you are back to "diving" again so step three is about how to carry on after the problem.

PADI has the "stop, breathe, think, do" principle but personally I find my "ABC" rule more goal oriented because when the poop is hitting the fan you may not have time to pause and consider the situation before doing anything and the ABC rule allows you to organize your thinking so you're doing the highest priority things first and getting everything done as efficiently as possible and in the right order.

R..

This was very helpful. Thanks for posting it.

"One of the instructors we know orally inflates his BC every time he surfaces."

I like this idea. In my one (so far) OOA incident I knew I had enough in my lungs to make the ascent from 30' (exhaling the entire time). However, when I broke the surface my reflexes kicked in and I hit the inflator button and stopped kicking. Bad gas management was compounded by this automatic reflex and I went right back under.

This, too.