Catastrophic loss of gas during air share drill

[Diver0001]

Thanks for your post (and by the way it’s her not him).

Sorry. It's the first time I've seen this name.

You helped me put a finger on one thing that was bothering me in some of the posts both in this thread and several others in the incidents. I am always wondering how people get blamed for being stressed or how things should not be stressful at all. To me that sounds unnatural and kind of competition talk: The great diver just floats around unstressed and reacts with casual ease to everything when the wimps admit that things affect them.

I think you need to read it differently. Stress is the first link in a chain that will end in panic if you don't control it. Suggestions (criticisms) offered by people like redhatmama are often doing two things (1) reinforcing the need to control stress so it doesn't start to control you and (2) offering some tactics by which to do this (stop, breathe, think, do ... etc).

It's not so much macho talk -- at least I don't think so in her case, sometimes it is -- but offering points for reflection and suggestions for improving your performance.

Also, adrenaline is like a drug. A little may enhance performance but a lot will render you incapable of performing at all.... Maybe with this in mind you can see some of this "criticism" in a new light.

R..

 

[xiSkiGuy]

Fleeing to the surface is a knee-jerk instinct that we spend a lot of time and training hours trying to "unlearn". Why would you want to reinforce this behaviour?

Unfortunately, most training agencies and instructors seem to teach heading for the surface, instead of solving problems at depth. It's not until you get to intro tech training that the surface is seen as a bad thing.

 

[DandyDon]

Stress is the first link in a chain that will end in panic if you don't control it.

Saw this covered some in my Rescue training book. Stress can lead to a more focused approach with more energy, or just the opposite. Can't count on the outcome, just do your best - like these divers did.

 

[piikki]

Also, adrenaline is like a drug. A little may enhance performance but a lot will render you incapable of performing at all....

Wasn't that kinda like the point I was trying to bring up?

Maybe with this in mind you can see some of this "criticism" in a new light.

I admit some weakness paying much attention to advice that places the emphasis on negating my having had any brain activity during the incident. Stumbling around and thinking aren't exclusive. And as stated, feeling some stress does not always mean lessened performance. Being there first time, for sure for me, lowered the effectiveness. I still think we pretty much used all the available information to make a reasonable decision, even though the handling of all the parts of the process might not have been eloquent.

We miserably failed the clean up which is bad becuse at that point situation was in control, and all we had to watch was depth (knowing air would not run out). The only excuse we have is that we were so close-up with the regular octo that peripheral vision was kind of limited as well as space for handling the hose. If the trip was longer, I am sure it would have occurred to one of us sooner or later but it should have been routinely done after OKs were exchanged.

 

[TheRedHead]

I respectfully disagree, piikki. Stumbling around can be a very bad - and even deadly - thing to do. Diver0001 was correct in I was not offering criticism just to criticize and be macho. And I think you are digging in your heels a bit here. I realize you are a new diver and your incident occurred at a benign depth. But at the limits of recreational diving, stumbling around can be fatal. I think it is a good habit to stop, think, breathe then act. I didn't see that in your description, but on the other hand, I never meant to imply that you had a lack mental activity.

Posts often come off as something other than intended. I didn't think dumpsterdiver was seriously suggesting a pony bottle, but I was wrong.

 

[Vayu]

I think the divers did fine. They learned some things, worked some gear out, and are safe. What more do you guys want? Like many here I do not think a pony bottle is the answer.

Diver0001 already quoted this but for different reasons:

2. Hell yes, if you can't flee to the surface have enough gear to bail yourself out! Don't depend on a buddy!

All I've got to say is that if you cannot depend on your buddy then you have a bad buddy. Making the buddy system work involves communication between buddies and commitment to the system.

If you don't have a buddy, don't dive.

-V

 

[dumpsterDiver]

I think the divers did fine. They learned some things, worked some gear out, and are safe. What more do you guys want? Like many here I do not think a pony bottle is the answer.

Diver0001 already quoted this but for different reasons:

2. Hell yes, if you can't flee to the surface have enough gear to bail yourself out! Don't depend on a buddy!

All I've got to say is that if you cannot depend on your buddy then you have a bad buddy. Making the buddy system work involves communication between buddies and commitment to the system.

If you don't have a buddy, don't dive.

-V

I don't think the divers did particularly good or bad in this situation. I like to say that any dive that ends with noone getting hurt and no gear being lost is a good dive. So I guess they had a good dive. I know I've done many things underwater that were stupid, not just non-optimal, as I view the originally described situation.

My original comments were made because I was honestly surprised that a loose hose connection at the first stage, at a depth of 18 feet, was apparently perceived as a significant problem to the people involved and also to others here.

If the similar situation occured at a depth of 120 feet and the divers had been down a while, I would view this situation as COMPLETELY different and very serious. Under this scenario, I think the response would have been to get the wife off the long hose and on to her own tank, add a little air to the BC's and start the ascent. I would not delay the ascent to screw with a tank, especially a rental one. I myself would probably continue to breath from the leaking tank on ascent and keep a sharp eye on the guage. If the air looked like it would run too low, I would switch over to the wife's octopus, if I had no pony bottle. This would likely preserve my ability to use the power inflator.

I was taught from day one to deal with diving problems on the bottom and not run for the surface, but again this "incident" was ridiculously shallow and they could have just come up, established bouyancy and shut the leaking tank down.

WITH REGARD TO THE BUDDY COMMENT: I often dive alone and when I dive with a buddy I try to be attentive and provide assistance as needed. I certainly have been given assistance by various buddies in various situations, but this is more along the lines of: "it is easier for him to untangle me than for me to do it myself". However, I would be completely uncomfortable on a dive if I thought that my life truely depended on a buddy. I TRY to be self-sufficient on all my dives and I'm reasonably confident that if I have a single failure of any one piece of my gear that I will live to tell about it.

I carry a pony bottle on most any dive and I think other people should also. If some people perceive this advice as an unnecessary crutch to offset an inability to handle diving emergencies, that is fine. I can freedive to 80 feet on a good day, but I know that if I had a "real" regulator failure at 70 feet, when I'm tired, negatively bouyant and breathing hard, it is likely that I wouldn't be able to talk about it later. It is honestly difficult for me to understand how divers seem to feel comfortable without, what I perceive as, a viable degree of redundancy. In my opinion these two divers would benefit from some added degree of redundancy. Again, the pony bottle comment was not sarcastic.

 

[TSandM]

I think there is a difference between "stumbling around" which is meant to describe not having a plan, not knowing what to do next, and generally being ineffective, and "stumbling around" which means we were trying to do the right thing but not being very graceful about it. My first air-share drills with the longhose were so not things of beauty -- all the steps got accomplished, but with loss of buoyancy and trim and a lot of flailing. Nonetheless, they were good things to do. As you practice things like this, your facility and efficiency and economy of motion improve. To have managed what you did in 18 feet of water WITHOUT corking to the surface is a nice thing to have pulled off. To do a debrief afterward and think about how the decision-making could have been improved, and how the steps could have been changed or what was left out is PRECISELY the way to use the incident as a learning experience.

 

[Diver0001]

My original comments were made because I was honestly surprised that a loose hose connection at the first stage, at a depth of 18 feet, was apparently perceived as a significant problem to the people involved and also to others here.

I don't think the seriousness of the problem itself was the topic of discussion. All along the topic of disucussion has been how they handled the problem they had.

I think you've been diving for so long that you've forgotten how it felt the first time you had a real problem to deal with. Try putting yourself in their position, not only in terms of the problem, but also in terms of the experience level. I know it's hard but it will help you understand Piikki better, I think.

Nevertheless you've tried a couple of times to bring up this point and it's worth discussing. How serious was the problem itself? Did it warrant an air-sharing ascent? Were there other options (like just surfacing) that may have been equally effective? Were the divers showing a tunnel-vision with respect to teh solution and perhaps reject a better solution? Did they choose this solution becasue they were already engaged in an air-sharing drill or because it was the best solution? How much time would they realistically have had to deal with the problem using stop-breathe-think-do or something similar? etc etc.

R..