Is it worth practising OOA?

[west0ne]

The risk is lower, but it is not absent.

A couple of years ago a student in an OW class at the University of Alabama died in a pool session when he got an air embolism on an ascent. The skill the student was doing was not within the agency standards, and the instructor was not properly monitoring the situation. I never heard how the lawsuit turned out, but it was not looking good for the instructor when last I heard.

If the DM pulls either of those tricks on the diver and the diver heads to the surface holding his breath and dies as a result, the DM will be very quickly expelled from the agency for violating standards and will have no legal leg to stand on in the following liability trial.

No, I don't know what agency you are talking about, but I also don't know any agency that allows those practices at the OW level.

To be fair I am 6'2" and can stand up with my head clear of the water in the pool so we aren't talking about a deep pool, it's the local leisure centre pool but I take your point that nothing in diving is risk free but it is almost real work practice, I've had my reg knocked out by a trainee diver descending without looking straight on to me in the quarry. I was happy that reg recovery came as second nature.

 

[Thalassamania]

A very effective drill we did in my OW course was when the instructors had our training buddies line across the edge of the pool and submerge underwater. The rest of us were about half the width of the pool away from them (everyone in about 3.5ft of water) we submerged and they shut our air off. We knew what was coming but the people on the other side did not. Furthermore, they were facing the wall. Made it to my buddy, he turned around but I just couldn't hold my breath any longer and had to stand up. Only about 1 or 2 people actually made it, signaled no air and got the Octo from their buddy. It made a ooa experience very real. After that training I txt my friend who I will be diving with telling her I'm never letting her more than an arms length away or so when we go diving. Also I seem to check my spg every 5 min. Haha! That situation scared the ba-gesus out of everyone in the class, very effective. Sent from my DROID BIONIC using Tapatalk 2

Fairly SOP for an O/W class back in the 1960s. It was an important skill because that was how you knew the dive was over ... you ran out of air.

There is some merit in the notion that familiarity dispels panic. One of the biggest factors that degrades from diver reaction in an OOA situation is undoubtedly their psychological response and control. That said, the logic of taking risk, to reduce risk is also flawed.

It is not just familiarity, it is also identification of the somatic feelings that lead to panic and the instillation of drills to take their place that can teach someone to head it off. That said, your "logic" of: "taking risk, to reduce risk is also flawed" is a bit odd. We increase risk by overtraining free ascents, a full flow and go with weight belt drop. We have never had an injury doing this and this has been part of the core skill that has lead to a perfect safety record for divers who were trained that way. Care to explain?

Greetings Deefstes and yes I do practice OOA often and believe it is well worth the time to do so. It does not benefit anyone to run a tank empty for a drill! You can simulate the feel of a real out of air in the pool, in shallow water by feathering the valve. I am sharing this story to help you understand the severity of doing this skill at depth for a drill. I was diving with a new diver who wanted to see what a real OOA was like. With no communication he swam over and carefully shadowing me shut my air off! NO I AM NOT KIDDING! We were at 40' in a public lake, vis around 20' and I immediately knew there was no air available from my reg. I turned gave him the OOA signal then removed his alternate and cleared it. It was a short hose so it looked like I was breast feeding! While sharing air, he reached back and turned my air back on. What happened next was actually quite remarkable. Once safe we surfaced and the situation was rather tense as you can imagine. The instructor on the dive was livid and it became very apparent that this diver had no ill intentions but simply did not think this through at all. The end result was that we had a heart to heart talk and worked everything out. I now am extremely militant about anyone performing skills with out fully discussing them before hand. If I see a OOA sign it is full on drill or no drill it does not matter. It might not be a member of your team that runs out for whatever reason and you are the closest gas. The faster you can donate and end the emergency the better chance to stem off any hint of panic! Then calmly solve the issue while making a safe ascent. CamG Keep Diving....Keep Training....Keep Learning!

Again, pretty standard stuff back in the day, a bit presumptuous today.

The risk is lower, but it is not absent. A couple of years ago a student in an OW class at the University of Alabama died in a pool session when he got an air embolism on an ascent. The skill the student was doing was not within the agency standards, and the instructor was not properly monitoring the situation. I never heard how the lawsuit turned out, but it was not looking good for the instructor when last I heard. If the DM pulls either of those tricks on the diver and the diver heads to the surface holding his breath and dies as a result, the DM will be very quickly expelled from the agency for violating standards and will have no legal leg to stand on in the following liability trial. No, I don't know what agency you are talking about, but I also don't know any agency that allows those practices at the OW level.

We have used precisely the exercise that led to this problem as a core skill for our entry level classes. The problem was not with the skill, it was with the lifting of the skill out of the sequence and context in which we use and the elimination of the proper training that must be conducted prior to the skill by an instructor who had no idea of what she was doing or why she should (or should not) be doing it.

 

[n20junkie]

OOA drills are very very unrealistic.

From experiance, the OOA diver WILL take your regulator, you will transition to the octo.

The integrated octo's are nice in this case, is somethig probably already in your hand or super familiar to your hand.

There are no signals given, your underwater and out of air. Its life or death. And signals are instantly forgotten.

My father had his reg fall out of his mouthpiece at depth,not only did he get no air, he sucked in water and was choking. Scared my mother out of the water. That look in someones eyes as they are seconds from drowning are something you will never forget. I now carry a pony bottle just because of this. Self rescue is my goal.

 

[DaleC]

From my experience there is no telling what an OOA diver will do but the odds they will react logically increase if they have practiced the process before hand.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned using a J valve to simulate the experience of going OOA. Find a vintage equipment diver to buddy with and try it. The two sensations are very similar. Unless you have a plugged dip tube you should experience a graduated reduction in air flow coupled with increased resistance drawn out over a couple of breaths. And yes, I have gone OOA at 100' (and solo at that) but, because I'd used J valves in the past I knew what was happening and simply switched over to my redundant air source. No panic.

The video camera has turned out to be the most dangerous piece of equipment I've ever carried - lesson learned.

 

[DevonDiver]

From experiance, the OOA diver WILL take your regulator, you will transition to the octo.

What experience?

I've never had someone snatch my primary, not in 20+ years. Situational awareness on behalf of the donor can ensure this never happens.

My father had his reg fall out of his mouthpiece at depth,not only did he get no air, he sucked in water and was choking....I now carry a pony bottle just because of this. Self rescue is my goal.

In this example, self-rescue was immediately possible via 2 obvious options: (1) Victim can breath from regulator sans mouthpiece, (2) Victim can can breath from their own alternate air source. No pony is necessary for this scenario.

Panic was the issue here, not a detached mouthpiece. A competent diver, with good awareness and adherence to buddy skills, would be in a position to assist in this scenario without recourse to any equipment or techniques beyond what is taught at OW level. Likewise, the victim has many solutions at their disposal - if able to access those solution by retaining a calm, analytically mind... or having been taught an effective pattern of response in the first place.

 

[Deefstes]

My father had his reg fall out of his mouthpiece at depth,not only did he get no air, he sucked in water and was choking. Scared my mother out of the water. That look in someones eyes as they are seconds from drowning are something you will never forget. I now carry a pony bottle just because of this. Self rescue is my goal.

I'm confused. This may seem like a good idea to you but to me it actually sounds counter productive. A diver has two fully functional regulators, one of which the mouthpiece has become detached. He also has plenty of air on his back. Still he nearly drowns. How on earth would he be any safer if he had more gear and more complexity to his setup? The way I see it, if you can't "self rescue" when your biggest gear malfunction is a detached mouthpiece, then no amount of extra gear will be of any help. In fact, the extra gear would rather hamper you if anything.

 

[boulderjohn]

I've never had someone snatch my primary, not in 20+ years. Situational awareness on behalf of the donor can ensure this never happens.

In my only experience being near (but not part of) a real OOA emergency, the diver took the alternate from her buddy. Sometime after that, because of a similar statement in a ScubaBoard thread, I aske most of the instructor with whom I worked what their experiences were. In 100% of the cases that they knew of, the OOA diver reached for the alternate.

 

[DevonDiver]

Thanks John... that's my experience too. It's why we (the dive community) shouldn't peddle urban myths as facts.

I don't believe that 'primary snatching' is a big issue. Either the victim is in control (reacts as trained) or out-of-control (bolts to surface). There isn't likely to be any state of 'panicked problem solving'.

 

[Them]

My OW instructor promulgated the "they'll grab the reg outta yer mouth" idea. He specifically trained that we were to grasp our alternate by the hose and interpose the reg between the OOA diver and our own mouth/reg so that if the OOA diver reached for the reg in our mouth they would find our alternate first.

He also told a 1st person anecdote about a real-world OOA event he was part of (as the air source). It was described as though it was the only non-training OOA he had personally participated in, and it did not include any regulators ripped from mouths, so I suspect he would go in the "never had it happen but says it does" bucket.

 

[DevonDiver]

My OW instructor promulgated the "they'll grab the reg outta yer mouth" idea. He specifically trained that we were to grasp our alternate by the hose and interpose the reg between the OOA diver and our own mouth/reg so that if the OOA diver reached for the reg in our mouth they would find our alternate first.

IMHO, the right idea (donate, rather than passive), but based on the wrong premise. If you (the buddy) can pro-actively anticipate and provide for your buddys' needs, then you will reduce their incident stress and move towards the rescuer 'taking control' of an incident.

He also told a 1st person anecdote about a real-world OOA event he was part of (as the air source). It was described as though it was the only non-training OOA he had personally participated in, and it did not include any regulators ripped from mouths, so I suspect he would go in the "never had it happen but says it does" bucket.

As I said, 'the promulgation of urban myths'.... not that any dive instructor has ever 'bent the truth' to award credibility to the tales they've heard second-hand...