Diver Panic (Video)

[bullfroger]

I watched the movie for a couples of times and I think uncfnp is right: she is not descending, but due to the fact that all the others are going up, she got stressed, than scared and in the end panicked. The whole stuff. As The Laconic said, is “a textbook panic”. But looking at her and at some of the other divers, I’m thinking this is somehow the result of the particular way the trainings are conducted. And I’ll explain myself. It was happening to me and I saw it in many other countries/dive centers etc. During the OW courses most of the time the instructor teaches the students to descent to the bottom, knelling over there, exercise the skills with the knees “stuck in the sand”. Even when they don’t have to do any exercise, just to “go around” , the technique is the same: down to the bottom, knelling (more or less), adjust the buoyancy and start swimming. Maybe that’s way the poor students (or later new certified OW) are absolutely terrified if they have to descend somewhere the bottom is hundreds of meters deep. They are used to stop their descent by the bottom. When they have to ascend, sometimes the “procedure” is similar: using the bottom to push on it. Or, instead of dumping exactly as much air as need it when ascending, terrified by the idea of “popping up as a champagne bottle’s cork”, the students purge completely the BCDs and then struggle like hell to go up. In my opinion the training should be more focused on mastering the buoyancy. Learning to perform all the skills in a neutral position and not by knelling on the bottom is really useful. If somebody kick your mask or regulator off, you should be able to solve the issue immediately, with calm and not descending first to the bottom for knelling.

Just some thoughts.

 

[bullfroger]

The look in her eyes tells it all. She is lucky to be alive. I agree she should end her diving career .

 

[2airishuman]

I have three observations:

1) It is unlikely that the young woman will attempt scuba diving again.

2) It seems to me that this is fundamentally about a lack of comfort under water. The buoyancy problems are merely a catalyst. It seems to me that the lesson that water cannot be breathed is best learned while snorkeling before undertaking an OWD class. If you can learn to keep a snorkel in your mouth, a regulator is easy, because a regulator isn't flooded by waves.

3) Without speculating about the chain of events in this particular situation, I wonder whether pressure from a friend or family member to become involved in diving contributes to accidents/incidents of this kind in general. There is a fine line between, on the one hand, building confidence and helping people overcome psychological barriers, and on the other, pushing them to do things they are truly not ready for.

 

[Coztick]

I wonder how many new divers see it as a high adrenaline, heart and hair raising extreme sport...not the correct frame of mind for sure.

 

[H20doctor]

she isnt paying attention .... she is swimming with her hands , to me that is New diver, unqualified diver , no experience ... the thumbs up is givin by the dive leader/ dive guide , she doesnt see it at all, and you can cleary see her turn and look and everyone is gone, except the othguide who is next to her , she still is not paying attention ... then she is trying to go up with everyone " thinking " she is going to go up by using her hands...Well she Isnt going up at all.. and The panic begins .. At no point in the video does she inflate her Bc ... I downloaded the video and scrubbed through it frame by frame... the dive guide never gets her reg back into her mouth, she is lucky she didnt drown on the way up , she holds her breath the whole time ...
conclusion to the dive video .... she shouldnt be diving , she need More training and 1 on 1 with a qualified scuba instructor

 

[scagrotto]

deeper by far than she was only a few seconds ago

Based on the other divers being abruptly, and apparently unexpectedly, above her it's possible that she felt like she was sinking, but as near as I can tell she couldn't have been anything more than a few inches deeper because she never touched the bottom. Unfortunately it's a really lousy video, so it's hard to really know anything more than some basics. Mostly I saw hands in front of the camera, lots and lots of bubbles, and a bunch of rapid looking from side to side.

The first time you see her she's too far away to really see much. The second time she looks to be at perhaps a 45º angle. That might means she's a bit negative, or just that she's got lousy trim. I can't tell if she's kicking in order to maintain her depth. The video clearly shows other divers in a completely vertical position, but without having any obvious difficulty.

When you see her again she's obviously using her hands in an ineffective manner, and once you see her feet (when the diver (DM based on the YT page?) who was filming finally figures out there might be a problem) she's kicking ineffectively too. I never see her do anything with the inflator hose, so I see nothing to indicate that her buoyancy would have changed. Based on that I think she may have been a bit negative, but mostly just seriously incompetent and unprepared for the requirements of the dive. That makes me think her panic resulted more from a perception of a problem than a real problem. She couldn't possibly have sunk more than another few feet and she still had air, so the only thing posing an immediate danger was her own actions.

could there be issues if you purged a regulator into someones mouth

If the regulator was in their mouth you could manage to overinflate their lungs, but that's not what was being referred to. If a panicing diver is refusing the regulator all that air blowing in their face might just give them the clue they need. If it's not actually in their mouth it's certainly not going to hurt them.

I guess they associate the reg with diving

Your problem is that you're not thinking irrationally. A diver who spits out their reg definitely isn't associating the reg with diving. If there's anything happening that could properly be described as thinking it's definitely not about what the reg is for and what they should do with it.

 

[boulderjohn]

Your problem is that you're not thinking irrationally. A diver who spits out their reg definitely isn't associating the reg with diving. If there's anything happening that could properly be described as thinking it's definitely not about what the reg is for and what they should do with it.

I actually think there is some rationality into the decision to discard the regulator.

There is a physiological basis to much panic--it is not all in the head. If your breathing is interrupted long enough, as in someone holding a hand over your mouth and nose, you will go into full blown panic, and the reason is carbon dioxide buildup. That will create a real panic. You feel you have to breathe NOW! Many times people who are in a state in which they feel threatened for one reason or another will either breathe irregularly or stop breathing altogether. Carbon Dioxide will build up until they lose all rational sense. When they have gotten out of the situation, you will see them gasping for breath, the way she does in this video.

When this happens in scuba, there is the illusion that the regulator is unable to deliver air, and the diver will discard it. It happens a lot with heart attack victims underwater--including my nephew's mother-in-law. When she suffered a heat attack while diving, her blood was not circulating properly, and she had the illusion that her regulator was not working. When she went into panic, she discarded her regulator and bolted to the surface.

 

[Kevrumbo]

I actually think there is some rationality into the decision to discard the regulator.

There is a physiological basis to much panic--it is not all in the head. If your breathing is interrupted long enough, as in someone holding a hand over your mouth and nose, you will go into full blown panic, and the reason is carbon dioxide buildup. That will create a real panic. You feel you have to breathe NOW! Many times people who are in a state in which they feel threatened for one reason or another will either breathe irregularly or stop breathing altogether. Carbon Dioxide will build up until they lose all rational sense. When they have gotten out of the situation, you will see them gasping for breath, the way she does in this video.

When this happens in scuba, there is the illusion that the regulator is unable to deliver air, and the diver will discard it. It happens a lot with heart attack victims underwater--including my nephew's mother-in-law. When she suffered a heat attack while diving, her blood was not circulating properly, and she had the illusion that her regulator was not working. When she went into panic, she discarded her regulator and bolted to the surface.

It can even happen on post-dive/diveboat recovery, with hard physical exertion in large breaking swells and current, over-breathing the reg with water continuously swamping over you, trying to get back & board the diveboat: it literally felt like I was drowning on the surface. . .

 

[uncfnp]

I actually think there is some rationality into the decision to discard the regulator.

There is a physiological basis to much panic--it is not all in the head. If your breathing is interrupted long enough, as in someone holding a hand over your mouth and nose, you will go into full blown panic, and the reason is carbon dioxide buildup. That will create a real panic. You feel you have to breathe NOW! Many times people who are in a state in which they feel threatened for one reason or another will either breathe irregularly or stop breathing altogether. Carbon Dioxide will build up until they lose all rational sense. When they have gotten out of the situation, you will see them gasping for breath, the way she does in this video.

When this happens in scuba, there is the illusion that the regulator is unable to deliver air, and the diver will discard it. It happens a lot with heart attack victims underwater--including my nephew's mother-in-law. When she suffered a heat attack while diving, her blood was not circulating properly, and she had the illusion that her regulator was not working. When she went into panic, she discarded her regulator and bolted to the surface.

The opposite can happen as well, at least on land. Anxiety increases the breathing rate and volume and can lead to hyperventilation and overbreathing, feelings of breathlessness and the sensation you can't get a deep breath. I wonder if anxiety leading to panic on scuba might have some of the same reactions leading the diver to get rid of the perceived interference with breathing and to head for air.

You can see something similar in a panicked patient, they may try to actually remove a face mask giving them oxygen. Once the short of breath sensation starts, they want nothing covering their mouth.

 

[bada3003]

That's a pretty frightening video, and not one I'd show OW students in their first classroom session.

But maybe at some point in their training. Students benefit from viscerally seeing what can go wrong. May help scare off those who shouldn't be diving.

My trimix instructor required us to watch Shaw's video. There wasn't a need to discuss it in depth as the failures were driven home during training. It was one among multiple real-world data points that show how s*$@ can hit the fan, slowly or rapidly.

Hopefully OW instructors will utilize this clip and other real-world examples as tools, even if it means fewer people running around with OW certs.