Didn't you do a Buddy check?![]()
IMO, the standard buddy checks have a deficiency that makes it too easy to make a mistake like this. When you suit up, in most cases the very last thing that you put on are whatever you put on your wrists, which often includes a computer. It is perhaps the easiest thing to miss. Then you do your buddy check. At what point do you check to see if you put those last items on your wrist? In almost every different buddy check system I have seen, there is nothing specific enough to point to those items.
Let's take the PADI B-W-R-A-F system. On which of those 5 items does it occur to you to make sure you put your computer on your wrist?
About 7-8 years ago I read on SB of a related incident. A man was preparing to do a dive on EANx 32, and at the last minute he changed his mind and switched over to an air tank. He forgot to change his computer. He took it near the EANx 32 limit and got bent. Based on that incident, I wrote a suggestion to PADI that they change the BWRAF system to add and I for instruments. That I would remind you to check to be sure you had all your dive measuring devices on you and properly set. The response was enthusiastic. They told me everyone thought it was a great idea, they were working on a new acronym, and it would start being implemented when the next manuals came out.
It obviously never happened.
So I decided to implement it myself. I teach my students to use BWRAIF, the mnemonic we use is Bruce Willis Ruins Another Independent Film.