Diver in travel group kept running out of air and sharing on every dive?

[uncfnp]

Welcome to ScubaBoard where training and high standards are optional.

Like @Nick_Radov said, number of dives is no indication of talent or training.

I’ll add to that by saying the title of “instructor” carries almost zero weight in my book.

I remember the days when solo diving, split fins and pony bottle references resulted in “you are going to die.” In fact, the solo forum use to require membership separate from the general forum. Seems our style of diving was considered too risky for the general SB audience.

To my knowledge no one has said yes this is the way to do it. We have offered real life experiences and personal choices.

 

[BRT]

I think most everyone agrees that chronic, casual air sharing is a bad thing. There is some flexibility in opinions on how to correct the situation.

Please explain why chronic, casual, consensual air sharing is a bad thing? People looking on, as the OP was, do not have a clear idea of what is happening. I'm not talking about OOA. The OP assumed that the diver receiving air was OOA, simply because they were sharing air. I am confident, from my experience doing this, that the person was not out of air. They simply used air faster than others in their group and extended the group's dive by sharing. We have a buddy that we have done this with for years. Bigger tanks? Yeah, we bring 120's while we dive 80's. This buddy, very simply, was an air hog. My wife doesn't breath underwater. When the divemasters are at minimums she commonly has 12-1400 lb left. I'm not as good as her but we both commonly run the DM's out of air. So our buddy often spent part of his dive on my wife's regulator. Sometimes on mine. Not because he was OOA. But because we knew he would get low on air and need to go up before us. We got used to telling new DM's that we might do this because it gives them wide eyes if they don't know what is going on. We don't bother telling everybody else on the boat. I fail to see the danger in this but would be happy if someone explained it to me. I suspect that any of the three of us is better at sharing air than someone who doesn't do this often.

For the record, our air hog friend has improved a lot over the years and with a larger tank can now hold his own.

 

[Eric802]

Please explain why chronic, casual, consensual air sharing is a bad thing? People looking on, as the OP was, do not have a clear idea of what is happening. I'm not talking about OOA. The OP assumed that the diver receiving air was OOA, simply because they were sharing air. I am confident, from my experience doing this, that the person was not out of air. They simply used air faster than others in their group and extended the group's dive by sharing. We have a buddy that we have done this with for years. Bigger tanks? Yeah, we bring 120's while we dive 80's. This buddy, very simply, was an air hog. My wife doesn't breath underwater. When the divemasters are at minimums she commonly has 12-1400 lb left. I'm not as good as her but we both commonly run the DM's out of air. So our buddy often spent part of his dive on my wife's regulator. Sometimes on mine. Not because he was OOA. But because we knew he would get low on air and need to go up before us. We got used to telling new DM's that we might do this because it gives them wide eyes if they don't know what is going on. We don't bother telling everybody else on the boat. I fail to see the danger in this but would be happy if someone explained it to me. I suspect that any of the three of us is better at sharing air than someone who doesn't do this often.

For the record, our air hog friend has improved a lot over the years and with a larger tank can now hold his own.

I don't recall seeing "consensual" in the post you're almost responding to.

 

[Celt]

I think she should get a medal for coming up with the perfect solution for having to carry gas. I could see her only needing a 3 ltr tank.

 

[Joneill]

You don’t know how much air this diver had left. You don’t know what her motivations were for sharing air. You’re making assumptions based on a 2nd hand description that’s not very precise to begin with, written by someone who also had no way of knowing how much air this person had when she began to share air.

As described, I agree that it doesn’t appear to be good dive management, but it also doesn’t constitute an OOA emergency.

Right - we’re all making assumptions based on the limited information provided. Regardless, by any sane measure, what is described is extremely odd behavior, especially moving from diver to diver to share air. Even if not OOA, she had to be low or why would she need to share?

I’d also be concerned that since she needed to share air at the end means that she had insufficient safety reserves if things went sideways just a bit earlier - just bad practice and no one will convince me otherwise.

 

[arew+4]

Please explain why chronic, casual, consensual air sharing is a bad thing? People looking on, as the OP was, do not have a clear idea of what is happening. I'm not talking about OOA. The OP assumed that the diver receiving air was OOA, simply because they were sharing air. I am confident, from my experience doing this, that the person was not out of air. They simply used air faster than others in their group and extended the group's dive by sharing. We have a buddy that we have done this with for years. Bigger tanks? Yeah, we bring 120's while we dive 80's. This buddy, very simply, was an air hog. My wife doesn't breath underwater. When the divemasters are at minimums she commonly has 12-1400 lb left. I'm not as good as her but we both commonly run the DM's out of air. So our buddy often spent part of his dive on my wife's regulator. Sometimes on mine. Not because he was OOA. But because we knew he would get low on air and need to go up before us. We got used to telling new DM's that we might do this because it gives them wide eyes if they don't know what is going on. We don't bother telling everybody else on the boat. I fail to see the danger in this but would be happy if someone explained it to me. I suspect that any of the three of us is better at sharing air than someone who doesn't do this often.

For the record, our air hog friend has improved a lot over the years and with a larger tank can now hold his own.

If it's your pod and your plan it's fine with me, but say this guy has an issue and needs some extra gas to get thru it, but he's already sucked you and your wife down to safety stop time. Now what? You all get bent so he didn't have to surface early?

 

[scrane]

Please explain why chronic, casual, consensual air sharing is a bad thing? People looking on, as the OP was, do not have a clear idea of what is happening. I'm not talking about OOA. The OP assumed that the diver receiving air was OOA, simply because they were sharing air. I am confident, from my experience doing this, that the person was not out of air. They simply used air faster than others in their group and extended the group's dive by sharing. We have a buddy that we have done this with for years. Bigger tanks? Yeah, we bring 120's while we dive 80's. This buddy, very simply, was an air hog. My wife doesn't breath underwater. When the divemasters are at minimums she commonly has 12-1400 lb left. I'm not as good as her but we both commonly run the DM's out of air. So our buddy often spent part of his dive on my wife's regulator. Sometimes on mine. Not because he was OOA. But because we knew he would get low on air and need to go up before us. We got used to telling new DM's that we might do this because it gives them wide eyes if they don't know what is going on. We don't bother telling everybody else on the boat. I fail to see the danger in this but would be happy if someone explained it to me. I suspect that any of the three of us is better at sharing air than someone who doesn't do this often.

For the record, our air hog friend has improved a lot over the years and with a larger tank can now hold his own.

You're right. If it is consensual, and the parties are familiar with common procedures and capacities, there is minimum risk. I was thinking of the situation described in the OP. Expecting non emergency free air from strangers is at best presumptuous and rude.

 

[mcohen1021]

I don't recall seeing "consensual" in the post you're almost responding to.

Shhhh, he's making things up

 

[mcohen1021]

I think she should get a medal for coming up with the perfect solution for having to carry gas. I could see her only needing a 3 ltr tank.

Exactly, we'd all be her pony

 

[BRT]

I don't recall seeing "consensual" in the post you're almost responding to.

Nope, but consensual is where I would draw the line. And I suspect that everybody who shared air in this incident was in on the game.