I dont whether there are similar threads for this as Scubaboard is maybe the forum with the fastest cycle Ive been.
I want to know whether anyone of you has ever had, met, seen or experienced divers with dangerous habits?
And did you do something about that?
Its not a post for flaming, just for experience sharing with everyone, and maybe some lessons can be learnt from this.
Ive met a diver in the past, on one trip with him, he hardly came out without trouble. He was supposedly the more experience diver than some of us from the certification level and the number of dives he logged.
One of the problem, there were few times he shot up to surface because his tank was empty. Most of the dive we did was multilevel dives starting from 20-40 meter. By the time he shot up, the rest of the group still had about half a tank, so we didnt think of possibility that someone might OOA, especially when he didnt inform us and most of the time he also didnt know it.
He was a Rescue Diver and I suppose its not something we needed to teach him, and the DM always reminded us to do the safety stop once we hit 50bar.
We were concerned of course when he shot up from 30meters, he was lucky he didnt get any bent at all, but he told us he didnt know his tank was empty and he isolated himself while we tried to talk to him. Maybe he was embarrassed so we tried to talk to him in private, but found out that he didnt feel anything wrong with himself. Of course, after the first incident, the DM monitored by asking his air a lot of times, but it was indeed not easy to make contact with him, as he finned anywhere liked.
We guessed there were few factors that led him to consume all his air in very short time.
1. Maybe because of buoyancy control, while usually we enjoyed the dive by hovering, drifting, he finned everywhere, he never stopped, when he got too far in front, he would turn around and finned back. I did similar thing in my OW course because I was not buoyant enough to stay still.
So excessive finning maybe caused him fatigue and increased his air consumption.
2. He was over geared and over-sized-geared, its not a lie at all to say that he changes his equipment everytime there are something new, he purchases the best and the most high tech equipment, which might not be necessary for leisure diving, and many of his equipment were oversize, his Bcd was almost twice his body width, and he even attached two gigantic pouch, a lot of accessories etc.
3. He had equipment related stress. He had flooded wide angle mask because by the time he bought it, he tested it with his strap on, so of course he didnt know it was too big. He had many many other equipment failures which had very huge possibility to send him into one of the statistic.
But worst of all, he didnt want any feedback from us or had a slight thought that he might be wrong, but instead, he blamed all his misfortunes to the rest of his group, his buddy, his gear and even the dive crew. It was really hard for us to try to make him dive safer. On the boat, he would be all too busy with his equipment, he jumped out before he was sure which one was his buddy (we did group buddy system, but we had immediate buddy in pair), and he didnt pay any attention to his buddy.
On surface interval, he isolated or bragged about himself when the dive went well for him (which is less than 50%).
We tried, for soft way to hard way, the result, nothing. After that trip, he ditched us and told others not to dive with us again. But his reputation grew faster than that.
I dont mean to use this post to bad mouth somebody. But I kept on wondering how to deal with this type of diver, and everyone was talking about when he would become a statistic, although we are pissed off with him, its not a thing we want to hear.
Other dangerous habit I saw from divers who disturbed marine life for either photography or for fun.
Those who put small creatures on the hand for photograph after almost destroying the habitat, those who stepped on corals to achieve the balance to take picture, or even I saw DM who wrote his name on hard coral.
I didnt say anything to them, which I think I should.
I want to know whether anyone of you has ever had, met, seen or experienced divers with dangerous habits?
And did you do something about that?
Its not a post for flaming, just for experience sharing with everyone, and maybe some lessons can be learnt from this.
Ive met a diver in the past, on one trip with him, he hardly came out without trouble. He was supposedly the more experience diver than some of us from the certification level and the number of dives he logged.
One of the problem, there were few times he shot up to surface because his tank was empty. Most of the dive we did was multilevel dives starting from 20-40 meter. By the time he shot up, the rest of the group still had about half a tank, so we didnt think of possibility that someone might OOA, especially when he didnt inform us and most of the time he also didnt know it.
He was a Rescue Diver and I suppose its not something we needed to teach him, and the DM always reminded us to do the safety stop once we hit 50bar.
We were concerned of course when he shot up from 30meters, he was lucky he didnt get any bent at all, but he told us he didnt know his tank was empty and he isolated himself while we tried to talk to him. Maybe he was embarrassed so we tried to talk to him in private, but found out that he didnt feel anything wrong with himself. Of course, after the first incident, the DM monitored by asking his air a lot of times, but it was indeed not easy to make contact with him, as he finned anywhere liked.
We guessed there were few factors that led him to consume all his air in very short time.
1. Maybe because of buoyancy control, while usually we enjoyed the dive by hovering, drifting, he finned everywhere, he never stopped, when he got too far in front, he would turn around and finned back. I did similar thing in my OW course because I was not buoyant enough to stay still.
So excessive finning maybe caused him fatigue and increased his air consumption.
2. He was over geared and over-sized-geared, its not a lie at all to say that he changes his equipment everytime there are something new, he purchases the best and the most high tech equipment, which might not be necessary for leisure diving, and many of his equipment were oversize, his Bcd was almost twice his body width, and he even attached two gigantic pouch, a lot of accessories etc.
3. He had equipment related stress. He had flooded wide angle mask because by the time he bought it, he tested it with his strap on, so of course he didnt know it was too big. He had many many other equipment failures which had very huge possibility to send him into one of the statistic.
But worst of all, he didnt want any feedback from us or had a slight thought that he might be wrong, but instead, he blamed all his misfortunes to the rest of his group, his buddy, his gear and even the dive crew. It was really hard for us to try to make him dive safer. On the boat, he would be all too busy with his equipment, he jumped out before he was sure which one was his buddy (we did group buddy system, but we had immediate buddy in pair), and he didnt pay any attention to his buddy.
On surface interval, he isolated or bragged about himself when the dive went well for him (which is less than 50%).
We tried, for soft way to hard way, the result, nothing. After that trip, he ditched us and told others not to dive with us again. But his reputation grew faster than that.
I dont mean to use this post to bad mouth somebody. But I kept on wondering how to deal with this type of diver, and everyone was talking about when he would become a statistic, although we are pissed off with him, its not a thing we want to hear.
Other dangerous habit I saw from divers who disturbed marine life for either photography or for fun.
Those who put small creatures on the hand for photograph after almost destroying the habitat, those who stepped on corals to achieve the balance to take picture, or even I saw DM who wrote his name on hard coral.
I didnt say anything to them, which I think I should.
