Seeking Input on Low Air - No Air Situation

[flots am]

heavy current moved boat, anchor was not near wreck and had to resurface, take off equipment, reposition boat, re-enter and do second decent. Visibility was 40 or less, rough sea, water colder than prior day with current. Wreck was long, and we began to report our air readings as we were making our way along the wreck and away from the anchor line.

"Reporting air" to the DM seldom works out well. It's your air and is keeping you alive. You should never be on a dive where returning to the surface requires anything more than your buddy.

We were already getting a little concerned, which could have upped our air usage. Guide continued to end of wreck and when we turned to return to anchor line where fighting strong current. Were instructed not to surface but to get back to anchor line. Seeing my low air, I used guide’s extra reg part of the way to anchor and then tried to finish with my air.

That's easy for him to say. As an OW diver, you should never be on a dive where you can't surface without first returning to the entry point. I'm not sure how old you are, but more than a few people have had heart-attacks trying to swim against the current back to the up-line.

Whatever dive you do, you need to arrange ahead of time what you'll do if you can't make it back to to the up-line/boat. Generally this involves shooting a SMB so the boat sees you, then doing a normal ascent and waiting for pickup.

If you're somewhere that this isn't possible, you probably shouldn't be doing the dive until you have a lot more practice in similar situations.

so looking for insight or wisdon. Always trying to learn.

• Don't dive where you aren't comfortable and qualified.
• Don't trust the DM with your life. There's no guarantee that he's capable of saving it.
• Dive your own dive with your own buddy.
• Have an easily workable plan for how you're going to safely end the dive if things go badly.
• Have a reliable "lost buddy" procedure and follow it.
• Don't run out of air. You have a computer or pressure gauge and need to know how much it's going to take to get you back to the surface.
• You need to read your gauge at least every couple of minutes.

flots.

 

[boulderjohn]

No offense to DMs, but my biggest lesson is to not trust the DM. Had that desire to leave the group but felt torn to do what DM was instructing. If I had gone back when I wanted, I would have been out of the water and then 16yo would have had a buddy.

In the DM's defense, perhaps he was operating under the assumption that you were a certified diver and were responsible for your own gas management.
...
For the sake of completeness, if we are looking for parties to blame, it wouldn't be unreasonable to include your OW instructor in the conversation. One of the most important things a scuba instructor can teach a student is to dive within the student's training and experience. Abdicating responsibility for one's gas management presumably goes against the training your instructor provided.

Unfortunately, gas management is not a part of the basic curriculum for scuba instruction for any of the major agencies that I know. You can't blame the instructor for not teaching what is not part of the curriculum. Many of the suggestions for the writer, although valid, contain information that is not a part of normal basic OW instruction, and we can't expect such divers to know it.

The DM knows this. The DM knows that divers have not had this training. It takes a whole lot of courage to leave the DM, turn around, and head back to the line. That was the right thing to do in this case, but not many beginning divers would do it, and the DM should not expect anyone to do it.

And so I do place the blame for this on the DM. He is in a professional leadership position knowing that the people under his charge are trusting his leadership without the training to override his decisions. He should have acted differently.

But, now that you know this, go out and learn these important dive planning skills so that you are not putting your life and the lives of your children into the hands of someone like this. I ignored my first incompetent DM at my 32nd dive. I ignored my second incompetent DM not long after that. The first took courage. The second was just a matter of doing the right thing.

 

[Crush]

Unfortunately, gas management is not a part of the basic curriculum for scuba instruction for any of the major agencies that I know. You can't blame the instructor for not teaching what is not part of the curriculum. Many of the suggestions for the writer, although valid, contain information that is not a part of normal basic OW instruction, and we can't expect such divers to know it.

My basic OW was ACUC. Our requirements far exceeded those of the more popular dive agencies, yet I too was told to "hit the surface with 500 psi" without someone telling me how to achieve this end. I learned how to do this on SB. boulderjohn is right - if it isn't taught, you can't expect it of a basic OW diver.

 

[Bamabowtie]

I want to thank everyone who posted in this thread. You guys are really posting some amazing stuff. Those two articles that were posted are an invaluable source of information and I am going to read them until I can repeat them backwards. Thank you everyone.

 

[Dr Wu]

would start carrying a Pony bottle. Go out and get yourself a Luxfer 40Al and sling it as a pony. In the water they are about nuetral and once you start swimming you forget it's there (in a good way).

Yes. That's exactly what he needs. A second tank that will allow him to continue to ignore the amount of gas in his primary.

 

[merxlin]

I would start carrying a Pony bottle. Go out and get yourself a Luxfer 40Al and sling it as a pony.

Yes. That's exactly what he needs.

Glad you agree Wu. Oh wait, that's not what you meant is it. Selective quoting can be a bit misleading.

A second tank that will allow him to continue to ignore the amount of gas in his primary.

Carrying this bottle is by no means calculated into your dive you still base your dive off only your primary cylinder. This should only be used in an emergency except for practice.

I believe the rest of the quote counters your point quite nicely. If he is going to dive with both his sons, being trained and carrying a redundant air source is not a bad idea in my opinion.

 

[tt5five]

I've learned a lot. Just to answer a few questions noted above, the exact air numbers were signaled to the DM, multiple times and at multiple levels. This was our deepest dive and we were really watching our air pressure. Also, there was no confusion over the desire to return or later desire to immediately surface, as the response signals were clearly to continue to follow and stay with DM. We clearly signaled our need and desire but erred in continuing to follow DM. No excuses, just clarifications.

 

[Bubbletrubble]

Unfortunately, gas management is not a part of the basic curriculum for scuba instruction for any of the major agencies that I know. You can't blame the instructor for not teaching what is not part of the curriculum. Many of the suggestions for the writer, although valid, contain information that is not a part of normal basic OW instruction, and we can't expect such divers to know it.

@boulderjohn:
First of all, let me preface my comments by saying that your voice is one of several that I respect here on SB. You're a thoughtful teacher, and everyone knows that teachers are pretty neat people.

I agree that what we often refer to as "gas management" here on SB is not taught by the larger scuba instructional agencies. (Huge oversight.)

In my post which you quoted, I was talking about the simple "gas management" that PADI teaches -- arrive at the surface with 500 psi. I apologize for the confusion. Reviewing what happened to the OP, there's clearly a discrepancy between what went down and the mantra be-back-on-the-surface-with-500-psi. Why did this occur?

We can all probably agree that the OP's dilemma was created, in part, due to a conflict between following/listening/relying on an authority figure (the DM) and adhering to the PADI gas management dictum. I think it's the instructor's job to give his/her students the tools to successfully navigate real world scenarios that the diver might see following certification. The OP's situation is not unusual at all. In my limited experience, I've witnessed firsthand a couple different versions of this very situation play out. Fortunately, both incidents had good outcomes.

During my PADI basic OW class, our instructor led a discussion at the end of our training that was filled with "What would you do if...?" scenarios. In retrospect, these were synthesis-type assessment questions. Some were tricky. Some were straightforward. All were designed to test the extent of our understanding of the training. It's been quite some time, but several of those scenarios have been burned into my memory:

• What would you do if you lost sight of your buddy underwater and couldn't find him/her?
• What would you do if you're in a buddy team of 3 divers and one buddy went left while the other went right?
• What would you do if you're in a buddy team of 5 divers and, all of a sudden, you only counted 3 other divers in your field of view?
• What would you do if you're diving in two buddy pairs and you lost sight of the other buddy pair?
• What would you do if the DM leading your boat dive went into a cave or other overhead environment?
• What would you do if your buddy inexplicably descended deeper (100+ fsw) than the two of you had discussed during pre-dive planning?
• What would you do if your computer stopped working during a dive?
• What would you do if you exceeded your NDLs (table or computer)?
• What would you do if you were trying to change a setting on your dive computer and you and your buddy missed part of the DM pre-dive briefing on a boat dive?
• What would you do if you're finning hard to keep your head above the surface of the water...and you're getting tired?
• What would you do if you got a leg cramp but your buddy didn't notice and left you behind?
• What would you do if your buddy gave you "the thumb" on the dive but everything seemed like it was OK?
• What would you do if your buddy started making fun of how much air you use?
• What would you do if your buddy wanted to go diving but you weren't comfortable with the dive conditions (high surf, current, low vis, rough seas, etc.)?
• What would you do if your buddy kicked your mask off of your face?
• What would you do if you started feeling really cold on a dive...so cold that it was difficult to think clearly?
• What would you do if you found yourself breathing really fast/hard underwater and the reg felt like it wasn't giving you enough gas?
• What would you do if you reached your agreed upon turnaround pressure and your buddy or the DM pushed on with the dive (rather than turning around)?

That's all I can remember now. We discussed all of this over lunch. The best part about the discussion was that he didn't just spoon-feed us the answers. We came up with possible courses of action -- some more sensible than others. Furthermore, he asked us to come up with ways we could avoid getting into such tough situations in the first place.

I can't say for certain, but I suspect that this "What would you do if...?" discussion was not specified in any of the PADI standards. Was the discussion a good way for the instructor to see if his students "got" it? Absolutely.

I'm not blaming the instructor, the DM, or the OP. I'm saying that all three parties should be part of the conversation in determining who/what was responsible for a potentially dangerous situation.

 

[h90]

Turn pressure is the pressure at which you decide it's time to turn the dive and return to your exit point. When diving under certain conditions, you need to be more conservative with this pressure, because as you found out, it may take considerably more to exit.

It is best to have some idea of this pressure discussed in your pre-dive plan. However you may find the need to adjust it to the conditions you find once you get into the water.

As rough over the thumb:
50 bar remaining air after the dive as safety.
Half of the remaining pressure for 1 way (lets say 200 bar tank pressure gives 125 bar as turning point).
Considering the currency brings me to the exit point.
Considering that on the way I may go slow and watch things but go back straight it would be too conservative.
Swimming against the currency on the way back changes everything.....

 

[Doc Harry]

....Our biggest mistake was continuing to follow the DM. (He was a very experienced DM with lots of dives and lots of certifications hanging on the wall.)....

In my old career of Naval Aviation, there are detailed investigations of accidents and mishaps. One of the causative scenarios often found in these investigations is an old, experienced pilot paired with a young, newbie pilot.

The young newbie pilot often notices that there is a major problem, but fails to mention anything because... well, the old, experienced pilot "must know what he is doing..." and you end up with flying machines in pieces on the ground.

Current pilot training now emphasizes that newbie pilots must learn to speak up and be assertive if they feel that something is wrong, especially when flying with senior aircrew.