Equipment Trends: The BCD

[boulderjohn]

Great argument for the weight belt, as at least a significant component of weighting.....of all the weighting options for divers--specifically the myriad of integrated weight systems, many of which are far from intuitive to use--the Weight belt is something that pretty much any diver can figure out how to work, and how to dump....especially the rubber freedive weightbelts.

You did notice that one (and possibly two) of the cases I mentioned were wearing weight belts, didn't you?

 

[jzipfel]

Probably. Jack's in late December or early January? I got a Halcyon BP/W when I got back home.

Yep. That was us.

 

[danvolker]

You did notice that one (and possibly two) of the cases I mentioned were wearing weight belts, didn't you?

I can think of two more cases where the diver drowned at surface, because they panicked and could not remember how to remove their integrated weight...
The big issue is panic though....there are some people that panic easily, with most others in a wide range....
The ones that panic easily, and badly, really can't be divers....I have seen people like this actually forget even how to swim, as the panic overtakes them--even dog paddling is too much--they just thrash.

Which is to say....if just mild panic, the thought is reduced but still possible....the weight belt is still simple and most buddies will know how to remove a weight belt from a buddy....where as you CAN NOT say that most buddies know how to get their buddy out of his/her integrated weights....some just don't make sense...add some fear and panic in the buddy scenario, and both can drown....

Personally I have NEVER used integrated weights...just don't like the idea of them. I had no interest when Carmichael created integrated weight pockets for Halcyon....I saw it as fluff for some dealers, but NOT as something we would ever push as a DIR "optimization"

On the other hand, my wife Sandra uses them sometimes, so obviously I am not trying to push my ideas on anyone....just offering

Then again, I use fins that create so much thrust, that I can carry a good sized anchor, when freediving ---with no BC, so any worry or panic is not feasible with the tiny amounts of weight involved with another diver or myself on scuba....
Which of course, brings me to why good fins and propulsive technique, is almost equally as important as is the choice of BC and Weights
Sadly, fins and propulsive techniques get very little instructional time.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Surprisingly enough, there have been a number of cases in which overweighted divers reached the surface in an OOA situation and were unable to stay there because they either could not drop their weights or did not think to drop their weights. After a joint review of the causes of dive fatalities with DAN, PADI added the emergency weight drop on the surface to the OW course for just that reason.

I myself know of several cases.

• One was a woman in Seattle who got to the surface OOA and could not stay there.
• Another was a case in San Diego in which a diver was having trouble on the surface at the end of the dive. The DM jumped in the water to assist and foolishly had him take his BCD off before taking off the weight belt. He was apparently unable to remove his weight belt when he subsequently sank to the bottom.
• In the Florida Keys a few years ago, a man went OOA and managed to get to the surface and could not stay there because of being overweighted. He had a new BCD with integrated pockets, and neither he nor his buddy could figure out how to get the weights out. He ended up trying to share air with another diver whose rental regulator set did not include an octo. They tried to buddy breathe, and both drowned.

IMO, overweighting is THE BIGGEST ISSUE in diving these days.
This is a bigger problem to me than what bc or what weight system is used, this trumps them all.
The woman you mentioned who was OOA at the surface and then went down. If the woman had been properly weighted she should have been able to hold a stop with no air in her BC at 15 feet with tank pressure at 300 to 500 psi.
She came up with a completely EMPTY tank and couldn't stay floating, what does this tell you. Regardless whether she had a weightbelt or integrated, she NEVER should have had that much weight that she couldn't remain on the surface with air in BC or not.

I can add another story for you. Also in San Diego, CA back about 15 years ago. Two guys do a beach dive. While they are out doing their dive the surf picks up. They head in and cautiously wait outside of the surf zone to time a lull in the sets to get in. They see an opportunity and start in. Once in the surf zone the two get separated and are just trying to get to the shore. One diver makes it the other doesn't. They find the other diver on the bottom drowned 50 feet from the shore in 15 feet of water with the inflator elbow on his BC broken off and his weights still in his BC. They concluded that the diver got overwhelmed in the surf, was already OOA so he couldn't inflate his air cell to establish buoyancy, couldn'd find a reg (not that it would have done him any good), and was grossly overweighted which when the inflator broke off all his air escaped and he went down. He obviously panicked and could find his weights or forgot all about dumping weights and he died....50 feet from shore.

Then I read your incident about the diver that had his BC removed and went down because of his weightbelt? Wait a minute, doesn't the rig ADD weight so taking off his rig would/should have meant that he should have been more buoyant than with his rig on. Unless it was an empty AL80 and a positively buoyant jacket in cold water....hmmm.
The DM wasn't trained to dump weights (of any kind) first?

A BC IS NOT a surface floatation device! It's supposed to be a buoyancy compensating device at depth not on the surface.
It's not supposed to be an elevator...dump air sink...pump air float. How many divers overweight themselves to require air in their BC's to stay on the surface? Does anybody else see a problem with this...being reliant on a bag of air to stay floating on the surface.

I'm still a firm believer that the best way to teach somebody proper weighting and buoyancy control is to take away their BC. If a person can learn to fine tune their weighting and buoyancy without the use of a BC then they have truelly mastered the two. I know this would never happen to 99.9999% of divers, but perhaps it's something to think about if for nothing more than an exercise and an experience.
With most people, if they were to attempt no BC diving they would have to be pryed off the bottom with a crow bar they'd be so heavy, if they used the same formula they do with their air bags. No wonder people get so freaked out when they hear about no BC diving.
Definitely would be a humbling experience no matter what school of training they're from or where they intend to go in their diving.

 

[boulderjohn]

IMO, overweighting is THE BIGGEST ISSUE in diving these days.
This is a bigger problem to me than what bc or what weight system is used, this trumps them all.
The woman you mentioned who was OOA at the surface and then went down. If the woman had been properly weighted she should have been able to hold a stop with no air in her BC at 15 feet with tank pressure at 300 to 500 psi.
She came up with a completely EMPTY tank and couldn't stay floating, what does this tell you. Regardless whether she had a weightbelt or integrated, she NEVER should have had that much weight that she couldn't remain on the surface with air in BC or not.

I agree 100% and have made the same argument many times on ScubaBoard. If you are properly weighted in a single tank dive, staying on the surface with an empty tank should not be a problem. If for some insane reason you wanted to go back down, that should be a problem.

Then I read your incident about the diver that had his BC removed and went down because of his weightbelt? Wait a minute, doesn't the rig ADD weight so taking off his rig would/should have meant that he should have been more buoyant than with his rig on. Unless it was an empty AL80 and a positively buoyant jacket in cold water....hmmm.
The DM wasn't trained to dump weights (of any kind) first?

You may have misunderstood from my description. The man in that case was not OOA, and it is not clear from the description what kind of problems he was having that led to the DM entering the water and taking off his BCD. The BCD was inflated and should have helped keep him buoyant. The DM certainly should have known that the weights come off first, but we will never know what kind of lapse in thinking led to that error, because he committed suicide shortly after the incident.

 

[rhwestfall]

I'm still a firm believer that the best way to teach somebody proper weighting and buoyancy control is to take away their BC.

Its interesting you say that. When/where i learned to dive (College, as an actual physical education class - all equipment supplied), there was a limited supply of BC's in the inventory. We had something like 4 jackets and maybe another 4-6 horse collar rigs. We actually spent much of the skills portion using bare plastic back packs.....

 

[ams511]

A BC IS NOT a surface floatation device! It's supposed to be a buoyancy compensating device at depth not on the surface.
It's not supposed to be an elevator...dump air sink...pump air float. How many divers overweight themselves to require air in their BC's to stay on the surface? Does anybody else see a problem with this...being reliant on a bag of air to stay floating on the surface.

Why aren't they? My understanding is that this was the original purpose of the first BCs. To help divers establish buoyancy on the surface. The early BC were modified aviation life preservers (Mae Wests) so they would float an unconscious individual face-up. The horse collar BC's were an evolution of this design. A jacket BC also floats a diver face up only back mounted BCs don't. As Dan points out a skilled diver doesn't need a BC under water, however a tired diver on the surface with negative tanks does.

I realize that manufacturers do not want to say BCs are life preservers because then they would need to meet Coast Guard regulations which they probably couldn't do. It would also open them up to additional liability.

I am not trying to argue with you and I know you are not the first to say this. However, I don't think this was always the case.

 

[danvolker]

And this is maybe the crux of the issue.....with today's high volume classes some shops rely on in their business model, they run too many students to spend the proper time with each to get them neutral---and instead, have the vast majority saddled with much more weight than they should have--and some times much more than is even safe....

Here is a video from one of the typical weekend classes we see at BHB...this was a group from somewhere north fort Pierce or Orlando I believe...This is a LEGAL aspect to a PADI class, apparently it is just fine to take a large group of students on a "tour", much like a "Resort course" on their first outing at the ocean. None of these divers appears to have been taught ANY scuba skills at all yet, and most are so heavy, that the moment they stop kicking, they fall to the bottom. A couple are so heavy, they just get up off the bottom occasionally, and are mostly pogo-ing along the bottom.

My contention, and I think Eric's, is that a group like this, will NEVER be broken down to individuals that need SPECIFIC Amounts of Weight--and they will mostly stay with the stupidly overweighted condition they began with. Some will learn to blow more air in their BC's to get more neutral in time--some will buy LARGER BC's that have more lift, to counteract all the weight. A small number, those with off the chart intuitions about diving, will figure out they are too heavy, and they will try to lose weight and find a more ideal balance--but this will be a very small minority from a class like this....and a large percentage, will decide to give up diving after certification, because they never had much fun, and were always so far out of their element.

Lastly, when I shot this, I was trying to look like I was not shooting it, because I did not want to change the behavior of students, or concern any of them...so this is not one of my sharper videos Never the less, it is disgusting to see what is fairly normal in the big weekend classes ( even though this is on the worse side of "normal").
Also, the photographer with them is "with" the class...so apparently they think this is the way a class should be done, and that capturing the moment shows only good stuff )
[video=youtube_share;LGcGU-I2jK4]http://youtu.be/LGcGU-I2jK4[/video]


Finally, in watching the end of this, it occurs to me that maybe the "instructors" of these huge classes, believe they "SHOULD" weight students so that they are heavy enough to easily stand on the bottom--as if this is potentially the most important aspect the student may face--being able to stand or kneel comfortably on the bottom....and I would contend that those that picked this up in their Instructor Training, should have been flunked if the IE was worthy of existing as a quality control tool.

 

[ams511]

Great argument for the weight belt, as at least a significant component of weighting.....of all the weighting options for divers--specifically the myriad of integrated weight systems, many of which are far from intuitive to use--the Weight belt is something that pretty much any diver can figure out how to work, and how to dump....especially the rubber freedive weightbelts.

The one complication though is for the BP/W diver. In a jacket you pull the buckle and the belt falls free. With a BP/W using a crotch strap the belt is going to get caught on the strap. This could pose a problem to a diver and his buddy not trained in using a BP/W.

Also, how can you forget the Chinese tourist that died diving off Miami Beach two years ago that was found wearing no equipment except for her weight belt.

 

[rhwestfall]

I am actually living out this thread in real life right now. I have been collecting parts to assemble a BP/W for my wife. She is the true example of a recreational diver. She does 1-2 "trips" a year, and gets in, at most, maybe 6 dives a year. Unlike me, she could care less of the tinkering I am always doing, and her gear is "whatever the shop sold her" from 20 years ago.

SO, here is what I am hearing:

1. that looks so uncomfortable (no padding).
2. crotch strap? That's not going to happen
3. it doesn't fit (going to need to adjust it some as I roughed it in)
4. no pockets (not like she carries stuff)
5. looks "intimidating"

Now, those things being said, I did the following:

1. put a set of neoprene shoulder pads on it ($12)
2. 1.5" crotch strap of very supple fabric, and explained that it isn't cranked tight.
3. talked with her of how "open" feeling it was on the front (and she liked that!)
4. deluxe harness (she has a build that truly needs the "pivot points" to fit her properly - another valuable score, and only $50)
5. minimized the d-rings (not so "intimidating")
6. will be working with her on "accessories" like a wrist slate, and a compact light so things store neatly, and effectively.
7. narrow wing (though it might be too tall for her as she is 5'-2")
8. emphasized that she might be down to a minimal (if at all) weight belt - she loathes them... solved with two XS pouches on the harness waist belt, tucked back against the plate.

Thankfully, she is more comfortable in the water than most fish, so I really don't have any problems with that....

My biggest challenge is getting her weened off her Air2 (don't mind her using it for most of the places we go, but we are doing some real cold water diving this early summer, and I don't trust it there), but that has nothing to do with the BP/w...

Anyone else have similar experiences to post??