A Different Perspective on Safe Diving

[TkdDiver]

Really great piece. Thanks.


"The older we get, the closer Death routinely lurks. Each year brings less of a margin for us to work within and remain untouched."

True. You might also add that the younger one is, the more invincible one THINKS he is. No healthy 20 year-old SERIOUSLY thinks about death. Those who engage in hazardous recreational activities and are mature enough to take it seriously might know in their brains that they could die, and dutifully study and practice ways to mitigate the risks. There are probably 20 year-old instructors out there who parrot the party line about how what they are doing could kill them and how seriously they take it. But do they really BELIEVE they could die? That THEY could die--not someone else. I am not so sure.

I just want to say that I am a 22 year old male diver that after 130 dives just had my first "back to jesus" dive last weekend. I was diving with my team member (I like team member over buddy) and we had both gotten complacent about checking our gear before the dive. Never mattered much before cause we're awesome and I'm invincible, but not that day. We had to deal with several issues at 88' including a partial valve closure which became an out of air situation, a lost octo during said out of air, to a dump valve failure on my wing, to a rapid ascent ( 60' in 70 seconds). He and I are both fine with no lasting issues, fyi. That was the first time in my diving career that I really went "oh s**t" and in response to that dive my team member and I are creating a better predive checklist that we will do every time before entering the water and work on our underwater communication so we can better understand what is wrong with each other.

 

[Neilwood]

I just want to say that I am a 22 year old male diver that after 130 dives just had my first "back to jesus" dive last weekend. I was diving with my team member (I like team member over buddy) and we had both gotten complacent about checking our gear before the dive. Never mattered much before cause we're awesome and I'm invincible, but not that day. We had to deal with several issues at 88' including a partial valve closure which became an out of air situation, a lost octo during said out of air, to a dump valve failure on my wing, to a rapid ascent ( 60' in 70 seconds). He and I are both fine with no lasting issues, fyi. That was the first time in my diving career that I really went "oh s**t" and in response to that dive my team member and I are creating a better predive checklist that we will do every time before entering the water and work on our underwater communication so we can better understand what is wrong with each other.

You survived and will (almost certainly) never get in to the same complacent mindset.

Do all you can to keep Death as a distant speck on the horizon.

 

[bowlofpetunias]

I am very much a visual person. The OP's writing has created the image of Death and Complacency lurking in a way that makes it more REAL for me. Seems to me that some people use the name Murphy instead of Death Rose by a different name and all but both consider Complacency to be their best mate!

Sometimes Complacency is so insidious that we allow Other's Complacency to blunt our responses. I certainly admit to letting highly experienced, supremely confident and skilled divers get away with behaviors I would never have tolerated in a "lesser diver". When I tried to nicely change the behavior I was firmly "put in my place". I felt I didn't have the training, diverse experience and skills so I backed off. In the end one of these divers chose one last time to swim away from me with Complacency. Too many other little decisions had allowed Death to hover close by and it closed the gap.

The sad thing is that we get away with those little things often enough that we start considering them to be "nothing" until the ship hits the sand!

 

[gypsyjim]

Op, well said. Every day, every second of our lives death is lurking, waiting to take every one of us without a second of warning.Diving, motorcycle riding, and such do allow death to breath down the back of our necks more closely, waiting for any small mistake or miscalculation to snuff us out.Your words painted a graphic image of how fragile life truly is, and how our choices, lifestyles and activities do effect that risk, even when we do our best to stack the odds somewhat in our favor.