Are you on good terms with Lady Luck?

[Jax]

More than talking to people who have been bent, I have been on the same team with people who have been killed while we were on the same job. Bent is easy. We have chambers that help us with that.

Interesting. Will you share the story and lessons learned on these deaths?

 

[TSandM]

Bombay High, it would be my guess that the commercial diving you do is carefully planned with the best resources available, to avoid having luck playing a role as much as possible. Kind of by default, the more extreme anything is, the easier it is for luck to interfere -- it's unlucky if someone makes an error with the deco schedule and you get bent.

But my original point was closer to Thal's analogy of the cone. Your decisions can affect the shape of it -- if you bring minimal resources to bear, your cone is narrow, with steep sides, and it takes very little to step outside of it. Bring lots of resources, and the shape is much broader and flatter, and you can tolerate a lot more in the way of issues before you're outside what is salvageable.

VDGM, I did not start the thread because of you. I started it because of the Cozumel accident, and what it made me ponder about people's diving habits and decisions. We ALL make risk decisions when we dive, because going underwater on scuba is in itself a degree of risk. If you're an Evil Knievel type, you don't mind (and perhaps even enjoy) planning an activity with very high risk. Most people aren't like that, and I'm quite sure the VAST majority of divers would like to come home from the dives they are doing, preferably without having had the stuffing scared out of them in the process.

A psychologist back East actually did a study of the mentality and personalities of cave divers. I'm not sure if he has published his paper, but I think he was surprised to find that cave divers, as a group, were actually pretty-risk averse and not terribly adventurous. I know that fits me; my stated ambition for cave diving is never to be frightened in a cave. To that end, I take a lot of steps to ensure I have the maximum resources practical to do each dive. I don't want luck diving with me.

I think it's a good idea to get even standard recreational divers to think about what resources they have available to them and how that compares with what the dive requires. For some people, their ability to manage basic buoyancy control is a limiting resource, and therefore they need to plan dives where nothing much else is needed. For others, the limiting resource may be gas supply, and they may not even know it -- see Errol Kalayci's essay about diving the deep reefs of Florida on a single Al80. I think one should KNOW where the dive is pushing the resources available -- if there is risk in one area, perhaps you can at least make sure that all other bases are covered.

I don't do the dives that the spearfishermen do, and I honestly don't understand the mentality that does them. But I think everybody should have the right to take the risks they want to take, so long as the decision to do so is an informed and thoughtful one. I'm not sure it always is, and I'm SURE that some people doing those dives (or the bounce dives that sparked the thread) haven't thought about the degree to which they are depending on sheer good luck to come home at the end of the day.

 

[VooDooGasMan]

Roto, brett does not inspire me, he is a dive figure in the dive education world, and I read his dives in the bahamas that he had others do to uncover the thought of what thal mentioned. The narcosis is a manageable aspect, where as the oxygen is known to be the danger. You can only find out yourself what your tolerance is, a book on it is just a guideline of the average.

The funny thing is that you are only held back from miss informed instructors. Brett had a wealth of diving experience and went on these dives, the others with him had to have trust in him or they would not try it. Most navy divers are already informed of this as they have done these many years ago.

A movie that I remember is Nite Tide, a dive that made a woman thought to be a mermaid go on a rapture of the deep dive to end her life, so not to kill another man she loved. The dive equipment was only, a aqua lung, no j valves then, backplate and harness. The rapture of the deep has been around for many years and has a following of danger to this day.

Jax, TS&M has made comments on my post of deep diving, Deep spearfishing, and did not get involved to the topic till I made a post that also made others bring out there experience, and I posted that it was good to see this brought out and that it should be taught as a form of diving, instead of frowned upon from instructors who have not the skill themselves to do it, cause it is been a brainwashed of it will kill you. Honestly I know that rapture of the deep is a way of diving, till you gain dive experience in it you will never understand it, Captian made a post Quote that said it all in that thread.

 

[VooDooGasMan]

Diving has nothing to do with luck at all, But if you are so pressed to think so good luck on your dives, till you come to that last moment, last breath, and you will then know it was because you made a mistake.

 

[drbill]

Although I have done a number of dives in which others felt I was lucky, I felt sufficiently prepared in terms of available gas and proper management of it. I can think of two very deep (180-200 ft) dives where I altered my plan and could have tempted lady luck to intervene. In both cases it was due to finding an unusual subject to film at depth that increased my required deco time beyond what I had anticipated. I usually like to double the "required" deco time to play it safe. In both cases I had enough gas to fulfill the required deco obligation, but not enough to double it.

Lately I've not been adding my pony bottle to my rig due to an injured knee and the added weight topside. Although I usually dive solo, I have been fortunate in having buddies on a number of dives where this was the case. However, I really shouldn't be doing some of the dives I have without a pony for redundancy. I have done CESA's from as deep as 75-80 ft... but have no desire to do another one. I figure lady luck has been kind to me... perhaps because she never shines on me when I play cards and figures she owes me.

 

[boulderjohn]

However, I really shouldn't be doing some of the dives I have without a pony for redundancy. I have done CESA's from as deep as 75-80 ft... but have no desire to do another one. I figure lady luck has been kind to me... perhaps because she never shines on me when I play cards and figures she owes me.

When we talk about Thal's cone concept or perhaps the idea of a spectrum of diving practices, with extremely safe at one end to foolishly risky at the other, I think a dive that can end successfully with a 75-80 foot CESA would be within the zone of relative safety.

In the two threads that recently ended, a 75-80 CESA to end the dive safely was not a remote possibility. They were dives which really had no safe alternative in case of an unanticipated problem.

 

[g1138]

I think luck has a big factor in diving. Luck determines what you'll see and what you'll encounter.
The way I see it, Luck itself is determined by what everyone else chooses to do individually and how those actions (or even in-actions) affect you. It's not something that no one has control of, we all take an equal part in determining the luck of others.

Some people will dive for years on end and never see a Ghost Pipe Fish. Then they take their son out on their first dive ever and see one within 5 minutes of splashing in.

Some fishermen will choose to cast then cut their snagged line. There's your entanglement hazard.

For those cave and wreck divers out there, you may not think of luck governing your well planned dives, but I think differently.
There are some wrecks and caves that are inhabited by life. Suppose you spooked a fish down a corridor and it knocked the silt off the ceiling?
I don't have to be a tech diver to know that that's not impossible, improbable maybe.

 

[boulderjohn]

Diving has nothing to do with luck at all, But if you are so pressed to think so TS&M good luck on your dives, till you come to that last moment, last breath, and you will then know it was because you made a mistake.

OK, I have to admit I am thoroughly confused by the totality of your arguments, both in this thread and in others. I am sure it is my fault for being a poor reader. I am going to try to sum up what I understand about what you are saying. Please correct any errors I make.

The OP's point was that much of diving is extremely safe, but as divers push beyond recognized recreational limits without adding additional safety factors, such as are learned in technical diving training, luck becomes a greater and greater factor. At some point, a dive can only be completed without injury or death if everything goes well. Such a diver is relying on good luck as a key part of the dive plan.

You are disagreeing. You are saying that dives to 200-300 feet on air with no buddy and no additional safety factors are perfectly safe dives. You do them all the time, and you applaud others who do them. You are saying that no luck is involved. Nitrogen narcosis can be controlled; O-rings don't go bad; hoses don't break; regulators don't fail; entanglements do not occur--if anything goes wrong, it is the diver's fault for making some kind of mistake. Is that an accurate summary?

The two threads that led up to this one were examples of the safe dives about which you rhapsodize. In one, three divers planned a dive to 300 feet. One of them got narced and went to 400, with a second in pursuit. Because of that extra 100 foot descent, they ran out of air during the ascent. One of them is still fighting for her life, one will never dive again, and the other, the one who did not go to 400, may come out OK. In the other dive, two divers at the end of a day of fishing decided at twilight to go spear fishing past 200 feet on a single tank of air. Although they entered the water together, in the world of spear fishing they are not actually buddies and do not watch out for each other. One of them never made it back to the surface, and the other did not have sufficient air to search for him more than for a moment.

You were quite active in the second thread, praising the divers and seeing nothing wrong with their plan. The consensus of the spearos who saw nothing wrong with the dive plan seemed to be that the lesson to be learned from the incident is that sometimes people die on scuba, even on safe dives like that. It happens. Get over it.

Is this an accurate summary of how you feel? I am just trying to get a handle on it.

 

[boulderjohn]

For those cave and wreck divers out there, you may not think of luck governing your well planned dives, but I think differently.
There are some wrecks and caves that are inhabited by life. Suppose you spooked a fish down a corridor and it knocked the silt off the ceiling?
I don't have to be a tech diver to know that that's not impossible, improbable maybe.

Those things absolutely can happen. That's why cave and wreck divers train intensely for what to do in such cases. That's why they carry special equipment to help them to survive when that happens. I am planning to get into a swimming pool soon with some of that equipment and practice so that I can work effectively with it in total darkness. Proper use of training and equipment does not eliminate risk, but it cuts it down considerably.

On the other hand, when a macho diver without that training gets into such a situation and has neither the training nor the equipment needed to survive, then their odds of survival are not nearly as good. That is why the largest percentage of people who die in caves are people who have no cave training and are not supposed to be there; people whose inflated opinion of their skills pushed them to put themselves into a situation where everything had to go right for them to succeed.

To put it into perspective, there is believed to be only one person in the history of cave diving who died without violating one of the 5 basic rules of cave diving. Parker Turner was trapped when a cave-in cut off the exit, and his buddy was only able to escape when down to his last breath. Every other fatality involves someone who had no such training or who, for some reason, ignored that training.

 

[Thalassamania]

I've pondered this for a while, and I'd like to disagree.

Those who are NOT drawn to the adventure sports - rodeo, skydiving, motorcycling, diving - are the risk-adverse. Therefore, those that are drawn to the adventure sports are the risk-tolerant, the risk-takers, and the thrill-seekers.

Those that choose to continue to move into riskier sectors of the adventure sports either carefully address the risks and plan and prep for them (risk-takers), or those that feed off the thrill of the risk. (thrill-seekers). Generally, IMO, the thrill-seekers tend to have a more caviler attitude to all the trappings of safety.

But even in the riskier sectors (like tech and cave), there are some that absolutely must tag every safety checkblock, and others that might assess the risk of the unchecked block and accept the additional risk.

It seems that people discover others' risk tolerance, and tend to gravitate towards those with equal tolerance.

In other words, "Birds of a feather flock together."

I have to disagree. I am highly risk-averse. Despite that I have found myself in any number of "tight" spots. I survived precisely because I am risk-averse and had taken great care that the radius of my cone was as large as possible due to the combination of personal skill and the selection of gear.

Really? Maybe you should talk to someone who's been bent . . .

However, your attitude is the epitome of what I have been saying. Some divers absolutely will not recognize what could go wrong.

In my circle of normal diving buddies I can only think of less than a handful who have ever been bent.

Interesting. Will you share the story and lessons learned on these deaths?

That would be little gain here, except for pandering to prurient interest, as they were commercial diving accidents.

Bombay High, it would be my guess that the commercial diving you do is carefully planned with the best resources available, to avoid having luck playing a role as much as possible. Kind of by default, the more extreme anything is, the easier it is for luck to interfere -- it's unlucky if someone makes an error with the deco schedule and you get bent.

But my original point was closer to Thal's analogy of the cone. Your decisions can affect the shape of it -- if you bring minimal resources to bear, your cone is narrow, with steep sides, and it takes very little to step outside of it. Bring lots of resources, and the shape is much broader and flatter, and you can tolerate a lot more in the way of issues before you're outside what is salvageable.

Yes, but let us make clear that "resources" are the combination and synergism of your skills, your team's skills, your gear, your team's gear, and everyone's training as part of a team. Wow, the word "team" comes up a lot when you start inventorying your resources; doesn't it?

VDGM, I did not start the thread because of you. I started it because of the Cozumel accident, and what it made me ponder about people's diving habits and decisions. We ALL make risk decisions when we dive, because going underwater on scuba is in itself a degree of risk. If you're an Evil Knievel type, you don't mind (and perhaps even enjoy) planning an activity with very high risk. Most people aren't like that, and I'm quite sure the VAST majority of divers would like to come home from the dives they are doing, preferably without having had the stuffing scared out of them in the process.

A psychologist back East actually did a study of the mentality and personalities of cave divers. I'm not sure if he has published his paper, but I think he was surprised to find that cave divers, as a group, were actually pretty-risk averse and not terribly adventurous. I know that fits me; my stated ambition for cave diving is never to be frightened in a cave. To that end, I take a lot of steps to ensure I have the maximum resources practical to do each dive. I don't want luck diving with me.

It is risk-aversion combined with the ability to accurately calculate the risk that keeps such people alive; IMHO, you are on exactly the right track.

I think it's a good idea to get even standard recreational divers to think about what resources they have available to them and how that compares with what the dive requires. For some people, their ability to manage basic buoyancy control is a limiting resource, and therefore they need to plan dives where nothing much else is needed. For others, the limiting resource may be gas supply, and they may not even know it -- see Errol Kalayci's essay about diving the deep reefs of Florida on a single Al80. I think one should KNOW where the dive is pushing the resources available -- if there is risk in one area, perhaps you can at least make sure that all other bases are covered

You are forgetting that you can trade one resource off against another. Diving deep solo with a single 80, in warm, clear water, is no big deal if you are completely comfortable making a 150 foot free ascent, but that would not do you much good if you're at 250 feet.

I don't do the dives that the spearfishermen do, and I honestly don't understand the mentality that does them. But I think everybody should have the right to take the risks they want to take, so long as the decision to do so is an informed and thoughtful one. I'm not sure it always is, and I'm SURE that some people doing those dives (or the bounce dives that sparked the thread) haven't thought about the degree to which they are depending on sheer good luck to come home at the end of the day.

The mentality is the trade off of skill for other resources that you or I might demand because of our risk-averse natures. I not only want a comfortable way out of any situation, I prefer to have my choice of several equally fine solutions.

Diving has nothing to do with luck at all, But if you are so pressed to think so good luck on your dives, till you come to that last moment, last breath, and you will then know it was because you made a mistake.

Tell that to Parker Turner.

When we talk about Thal's cone concept or perhaps the idea of a spectrum of diving practices, with extremely safe at one end to foolishly risky at the other, I think a dive that can end successfully with a 75-80 foot CESA would be within the zone of relative safety.

In the two threads that recently ended, a 75-80 CESA to end the dive safely was not a remote possibility. They were dives which really had no safe alternative in case of an unanticipated problem.

Here's how it works for me, a standard high school pool is 25 yards, that's 75 feet. If you can plop into such a pool and without even thinking about it, swim to the other end, then (I'd suggest), that your "safety cone" is pretty wide down to 75 feet, but there it may very suddenly constrict. So you always need to be on the alert, in your planning for things that would buffer that constriction ... thus the argument about bigger tanks vs. doubles vs. a pony vs. a spare air ... e.g., that was why I was an "early adopter" of the FENZY.

Those things absolutely can happen. That's why cave and wreck divers train intensely for what to do in such cases. That's why they carry special equipment to help them to survive when that happens. I am planning to get into a swimming pool soon with some of that equipment and practice so that I can work effectively with it in total darkness. Proper use of training and equipment does not eliminate risk, but it cuts it down considerably.

On the other hand, when a macho diver without that training gets into such a situation and has neither the training nor the equipment needed to survive, then their odds of survival are not nearly as good. That is why the largest percentage of people who die in caves are people who have no cave training and are not supposed to be there; people whose inflated opinion of their skills pushed them to put themselves into a situation where everything had to go right for them to succeed.

To put it into perspective, there is believed to be only one person in the history of cave diving who died without violating one of the 5 basic rules of cave diving. Parker Turner was trapped when a cave-in cut off the exit, and his buddy was only able to escape when down to his last breath. Every other fatality involves someone who had no such training or who, for some reason, ignored that training.

It is fortunate that "macho" tends to go with skill and practice (not always, but often). Caves are kind of a special place, I tend to see them as fly-paper for the foolish.