DAN missed the boat ...

[DA Aquamaster]

Ultimately, I guess we shouldn't be surprised that the approach of "buy more gear" promoted by the largest dive agency has leaked over into DAN. People seem to be prepared to buy a band aid fix for problems with their wallet rather than fix the underlying problems. Quicker to buy a pony bottle (how many people on this thread stated they were going to do so after reading this) and "fix" a potential problem rather than look at fixing the real problem with some practise or training. Just like more people will buy "fat reduction pills" rather than spend the time in a gym or cut back on eating. Sadly, I am sure we will then start seeing accident analysis that points to incorrect deployment of pony bottles through lack of training or practice as the primary reason for fatalities. There is no silver bullet here. Adding more gear without practice and training simply increases the complexity of the dive. And additional concern will be those who look at your "emergency redundant gas supply, aka, pony bottle or whatever) as a means of extending a dive by giving the diver more gas available. Then of course, we will have to look at adding a second pony bottle for "emergencies".....

Thanks for the memories. I remember hearing the same basic logic with regard to octos being nothing more than a crutch for divers who were too lazy to learn how to buddy breathe or do emergency swimming ascents.

As posted previously, even if the buddy system worked in the accident in question, it may not have produced any better result.

 

[Blackwood]

Good god that was a long thread. I need a break.

You did however miss the fifth thing Joel got wrong ... that's not DCS, that's bubble pumping on the second dive.

I'm glad someone else picked up on that.

After reading the article yesterday, my thought was that he likely wouldn't have suffered such a severe hit had he not bounced after his dive.

we moved on past that and tens of millions of recreational dives are conducted perfectly safely every year by open water divers.

I can down a sixer, hop on a Hayabusa and get home without a scratch.

That no accident occurred isn't evidence that a d(r)ive was conducted safely.

Yeah, sure, it's painful to call a dive when you've spent big bucks to go somewhere special and bottom time is important. But your health and safety needs to be the priority ... always.

I'm going to repeat that, because it bears repeating.

 

[Bismark]

Thanks for the memories. I remember hearing the same basic logic with regard to octos being nothing more than a crutch for divers who were too lazy to learn how to buddy breathe or do emergency swimming ascents.

As posted previously, even if the buddy system worked in the accident in question, it may not have produced any better result.

Sounds like you already bought stock in a pony bottle manufacturing company. Congratulations, I am sure you are going to get rich.

 

[Geoff_H]

I can down a sixer, hop on a Hayabusa and get home without a scratch.

That no accident occurred isn't evidence that a d(r)ive was conducted safely.

That is a disingenuous attempt at a rebuttal. If you had tens of millions of people downing six packs and driving home on their fast bikes you would have tens of thousands of serious accidents and many fatal crashes every year.

We do have millions of "short open water course" divers diving every year, and the accident rate is nowhere near as high as your example. As I said before, it could be lower and we would all like it to be zero. But banging on the "this wouldnt happen with longer training" and "this wouldnt happen with unified team diving" drums - however correct - simply doesnt do anything to solve the problem.

 

[TSandM]

But banging on the "this wouldnt happen with longer training" and "this wouldnt happen with unified team diving" drums - however correct - simply doesnt do anything to solve the problem.

I disagree. I think it does do something to solve the problem, and it does it because this stuff is being written on a public forum, and all kinds of people are reading it. If we talk about the importance of buddy cohesion, and talk about diver positioning and communication options, and we talk about the inadvisability of bouncing after a relatively deep dive, people are going to read what we write and some people are going to learn from it.

I think what we often forget is that those of us who are writing on these threads are generally people with enough experience to have an opinion. For every one of us who posts, there are probably at least ten more who lurk and read, and maybe are made to think about something they never thought about before.

Hopefully, people will come away from this thread with the idea that there is a problem, which is buddy separation, and there are a couple of ways to deal with it. One is to prevent it, which IS possible, although it requires thought and effort on the part of the divers. The other is to make each diver completely self-sufficient, and dive together through convenience, rather than necessity. Each approach has its drawbacks or its own requirements -- team diving requires some training and practice to execute well, and ponies require some training and practice to utilize smoothly and safely. People will consider the options and make their own choices, as people always do.

 

[Thalassamania]

Lynne is spot on. There are 125 posts in the thread, contributed by what? One to two dozen or so interested divers? But there have been over 2,500 hits on the thread. So either each of us has opened the thread 100 to 200 times or there are a hell of a lot of people out there who read it (and I hope, said, "Hmmmmm....").

 

[Boxcar Overkill]

Any discussion of diver safety is incomplete without acknowledging that a large percentage of dives will be done with ineffective and disinterested insta-buddies. I'm not sure that a public campaign will change that fact by very much, although it certainly couldn't hurt.

The problem, of course, is that no amount of training you have will make your partner a responsible dive buddy. The quality of your dive buddy, and thus your level of safety, is to some degree out of your hands (when you're with an insta-buddy.) Some people are uncomfortable with placing that level of responsibility on the shoulders of someone they've never met and whom may not be all that interested in diving the way they like to dive.

I'm lucky that my wife and I dive together, and I rarely dive without her. But I can see that many people on my boats don't have that luxury. I think if I were in that position, I would use a pony bottle, just for added precaution. Maybe it wouldn't hurt if people got that message, too.

 

[Web Monkey]

Any discussion of diver safety is incomplete without acknowledging that a large percentage of dives will be done with ineffective and disinterested insta-buddies. I'm not sure that a public campaign will change that fact by very much, although it certainly couldn't hurt.

The problem, of course, is that no amount of training you have will make your partner a responsible dive buddy. The quality of your dive buddy, and thus your level of safety, is to some degree out of your hands (when you're with an insta-buddy.) Some people are uncomfortable with placing that level of responsibility on the shoulders of someone they've never met and whom may not be all that interested in diving the way they like to dive.

The OP didn't get injured because he couldn't find his buddy and didn't get injured because he didn't have a pony.

He was injured because he didn't follow his training and went back down after emergency ascent, with almost no air, ran out of air and did a second way-too-fast ascent.

Had he stayed on the surface the first time, chances are excellent everything would have been fine.

In this case, staying safe did not require a buddy or a pony, it only required learning the OW curriculum and not doing the second descent, and especially not descending with:

• An empty tank
• No buddy
• After an emergency ascent

Terry

Edit: "OP" refers to the guy in the DAN article, not NWGratefulDiver, who I'm certain would not to any of the things in the original post.

 

[Blackwood]

That is a disingenuous attempt at a rebuttal. If you had tens of millions of people downing six packs and driving home on their fast bikes you would have tens of thousands of serious accidents and many fatal crashes every year.

I wasn't attempting to produce a proper analogy. So forget the motorcycle comment. I was simply stating that you can't look at the outcome only to draw a conclusion about the process.

That no accident occurred isn't evidence that a dive was conducted safely.

The OP didn't get injured because he couldn't find his buddy and didn't get injured because he didn't have a pony.

He was injured because he didn't follow his training and went back down after emergency ascent, with almost no air, ran out of air and did a second way-too-fast ascent.

ding ding ding

 

[Boxcar Overkill]

The OP didn't get injured because he couldn't find his buddy and didn't get injured because he didn't have a pony.

He was injured because he didn't follow his training and went back down after emergency ascent, with almost no air, ran out of air and did a second way-too-fast ascent.

Had he stayed on the surface the first time, chances are excellent everything would have been fine.

In this case, staying safe did not require a buddy or a pony, it only required learning the OW curriculum and not doing the second descent, and especially not descending with:

• An empty tank
• No buddy
• After an emergency ascent

Terry

Edit: "OP" refers to the guy in the DAN article, not NWGratefulDiver, who I'm certain would not to any of the things in the original post.

I see what your saying. But the original post by NWG was about what the proper advice of an agency like DAN should be.

DAN's first advice was that the diver should have remained topside after the first dive.

After that, when commenting on what could have been done about the free-flow, Dan said this:

What about a redundant, independent air source? The limiting factor for most planned dives is the amount of air available in the tank. For the unexpected event like a free-flow, a secondary alternative source of air to breathe is a good option.

The question that arises from that quote is, should DAN have recommended the buddy system instead of a pony bottle? That's what my point was directed at.