Diving "Etiquette" and the lack thereof

[bowlofpetunias]

At the risk of taking an unpopular stance, I'm going to disagree with some of this.

Going on the assumption that the entire dump valve broke, (because I've had one do this before), as he vented to submerge, it could cause a more rapid air loss and subsequent descent than the buddy might initially be able to keep up with. Especially if they have any sort of equalization problems and need to descend slow.

Additionally, if there are potentially other divers below, just dropping the weight belt is not an optimal situation either.

Long and short of it is, that like most incidents, there really isnt enough information from any of us to "armchair quarterback" it to the best possible conclusion. The best we can do is speculate and propose potential courses of action based on the information available and inferred.

I would think that the dive briefing included depth for the site, so the diver was aware that there was a hard bottom. At this point its tough to tell if the descent was completely out of control til they crashed into the bottom, or if they just choose to use the bottom as a platform to sort the problem out. From the original post, it doesnt seem to have been a panic situation, so I'm going with the latter thought.

Makes sense CD (as usual).

The JoyfulLee has stated that she is going to read and not post here anymore. I wish you would reconsider that.

I hope you can see that there are a number of us here who would honestly like to know more facts about this event so WE can learn as well as others who may read this thread later.

We have all made mistakes and learned from them. I think it is admirable when someone is willing to come out and say... "This is what happened... this is what I did" and give people a chance to learn.

It is not about attacking anyone it really is (and should only be) about learning how to prevent major incidents. It is about learning how others react in emergencies... indeed what others consider emergencies so we can react appropriately in the future to similar events.

I have been reading this thinking about my 19th dive when my borrowed BDC bladder tore off at the inflater hose. We realized the problem at the surface after my giant stride off the boat. I got back to the boat and my buddy(who had stayed close) and I decided to do the dive anyway. It was a relatively shallow dive in a protected bay, the dive OP knew what was going on, I could go up the anchor line any time I wanted or fin up since I wasn't overweighted and I had heaps of air. We stayed close to the anchorline had a reasonable dive and got it fixed when we got back to shore. According to the responses here some would think we did the wrong thing Would I handle it differently after 400 dives... probably do the same thing but be more comfortable than I was then. See now people can take a few shots at me too if they want and I can probably learn something more from them too.

 

[bowlofpetunias]

JoyfulLee, what I hear in the original post is that you were frightened for your buddy, and angry that the other diver didn't provide the help you think was needed. Fear often turns to anger . . . I ended up having to apologize to one of my teammates on Sunday, because I got into a situation that frightened me, and I blew up at him, and I was much harsher than the situation warranted. I think that's kind of where you were, and what the almost unanimous reaction has been is to tell you that there wasn't that much to be frightened about, that the other diver probably did what was appropriate, and that you both may have brought his reaction upon yourselves by the manner in which you were conducting your dive.

We dive as buddies because things go wrong. Equipment sometimes fails, and even more often, WE fail -- in technique, in planning, in decision-making, or whatever. Your buddy is there as redundant thinking, as well as redundant gas and redundant gear. When you are alone in the water, you have said to the diving world that you have decided you can handle your issues alone. There are people who dive solo, and people who dive in pairs but with a solo mentality -- but in general they have or should have reached a level of competence where they can handle the vast majority of problems with equanimity by themselves. It sounds as though your BF actually did this -- assessing the loss of buoyancy and deciding not to continue the dive, and ditching weight and swimming up. We can ask some questions about appropriate weighting, if he could not swim his single tank rig up without dropping weights, but in very thick neoprene, this may be possible. Nonetheless, he coped and ended the dive safely. This was what the other diver clearly thought he would do, and it's probably what I would have expected, had I run into a solo diver with a torn inflator hose. I would also have expected that such a diver, if he felt unable to cope alone, would have emphatically signaled me to stay with him and assist.

I don't know why you guys feel that descending separately and catching up maybe later on a drift dive, when you're as inexperienced as you are, is a valid concept, but then again, I'm a died-in-the-wool team diver, and such a thing is inconceivable to me. But if you guys feel that strategy is acceptable, you both need to be prepared to handle anything the dive throws at you -- and that includes failures of buoyancy AND gas loss, as well as entanglement, getting lost, losing a mask, or any other number of diving problems. Me -- I'm not at all happy about planning on coping with those things alone, so I dive with a team.

Yesterday, we got our butts chewed in a class for being unable to keep our team together and on the descent line, in about three feet of viz in significant current. That's because we believe that being together and there for one another is the highest priority in diving. You can make other decisions, but then you have to live with the consequences of them.

Mull this over, and decide whether you want to revise your diving practices a bit.

Brilliantly put!

 

[Diver0001]

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A ScubaBoard Staff Message...

We've been asked to intervene in this thread but I'm not going to censor anything (yet).

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[Jrock1062]

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Further, the DM should have counting people and should have discovered a missing diver at the start of the dive rather than the end.



Off point but DM's in Jupiter never do a head count in the water on the boat before you go in and after everyone is back on the boat so know one is left behind ...DM,s they are more like a guide to follow you and your buddy are responsible for each other

Just Glad everyone is back safe and we learn from this

 

[toefa]

Well the responses may have been not what the OP expected, but i am for one grateful.

There is a ton of knowledge that has been passed on here, i hope if something similar happens to me i will be able to draw upon these tips!

 

[dumpsterDiver]

Yes, I'm a fairly new diver with close to 40 dives under my belt. What I guess I'm not is thick-skinned enough to deal with argumentative comments. I want to learn as I love the sport. But I'd prefer to learn without people being mean in how they "teach" me with their commentary and prose. Don't get me wrong, some of the comments have been quite insightful while others have been downright combative. Those types of comments make me wish I never posted my comments.

FYI - to those who've asked - while Lee was descending due to equipment failure that I was unaware of, I was on the surface struggling to get down. By the time I got to the bottom, I assumed the current had taken him on with the group and I quickly tried to catch up and find him. Perhaps I should have stated that from the beginning of my post but I did not see it to be relevant.

Apparently no matter how I would state it, some of you lofty, more experienced divers would find a problem with what is written and a way to poke holes in it. Cest la vie...

I hve no problem with your post, you explain it well enough, but YOU lost your buddy, you should be trained to expect simple equipment failure like a torn corregated hose and the solution for "master Leee" was to simply swim up. If that was too hard because he was weak or over-weighted, then he should have dropped SOME of his weights. You and Lee really have no business doing drift dives in Jupiter if you can not handle simple poblems like this on your own.

My 11 yr old had the EXACT SAME FAILURE and he is such a good diver (and was weighted correctly) that neither of us noticed his BC held no air until the final normal ascent at the end of the dive when I noticed he had to kick more than I like to do the safety stop.

 

[Gen San Chris]

Seeing as he dropped to the bottom, sounds to me like he was over weighted! If your weighting is correct then you should be able to float neutrally boyant even with a gear problem! It would have been safer for Lea to drop one weight at a time until he was able to comfortably swim to the surface thus avoiding a run away ascent which is also very dangerous!

 

[ScubaSteve]

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A ScubaBoard Staff Message...

We've been asked to intervene in this thread but I'm not going to censor anything (yet).

This doesn't apply to everyone or to every post but please be respectful of each other.

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Please Richard, if you choose to censor anything, let the posters know because almost all of what I see here is information which is simply contradictory to what the OP wanted to receive and is therefore being deemed too harsh. Has the presentation always been perfect in every post? Nope but that is the case in any thread here on ScubaBoard. I think it is important that the posters know what they did wrong when a MOD is "forced" to edit or delete their posts. Again, I have read every post (and likely now forgotten 50% of them) in the thread and do not believe any of them warrant much afterthought. I for one will always try to comply with the TOS but if those are a moving target and I am not told, then it is impossible to comply.

To the OP, this has been said over and over but I am going to say it again. You need to look at what really happened and what is being said here (irrespective of whether you like how it is poresented). You have been given some amazing advice here by some people that I would be PROUD to call a mentor and I believe I am a competent diver. Mistakes were made and sadly, they were not made by the other diver for the most part. Go back to what you were taught, find fun safe places to dive and get underwater with LEE often. Make every dive a practice or training dive. Watch each other, stay close, practice skills.....do whatever but make sure that whatever you are doing, IS reinforcing the skills that you have both been taught. Do not believe that just because a diver has a lot of cards or a fancy title, they are a more skilled diver than another. Experience in most cases is what teaches us all of the hard lessons in life (and scuba). Our training is simply supposed to prepare us to handle those lessons with some level of competence and "skill" (I use this term loosely). As soon as somebody becomes complacent in the water (thinks they know it all, can handle anything or just stops treating each dive as a dangerous outing etc.), they become a danger to themselves and to everybody around them. Please do accept the information offered in this thread as the gold that it is and learn from it.

Safe diving to you and Lee

 

[oly5050user]

My significant other, Lee, and I just returned from drift diving in the waters off Jupiter, Florida. Lee is a Master Diver with over 200 dives under his belt. In his entire diving career he has never had a major incident underwater... until yesterday. Upon descent, his BCD inflator hose gave way. He heard a pop as he tried to discharge the air from his BC.

He sensed that something was wrong but his descent continued until he landed on the bottom on his knees with 80 feet of water above him. He then tried to inflate with no lift response. Little did he know but his bladder was quickly filling with water. One of the other divers on the drift dive saw what happened and came over to show Lee that his inflator hose was detached and broken. And then the diver swam away and continued with his dive.

Yes, you read this right... the diver saw a fellow diver in distress and he swam off and left the distressed diver! Nice diving "etiquette." (Good thing Lee didn't tell me this while we were on the boat or I would have had some choice words for this idiot.)

But I digress...Lee then decided he had to bale out on the dive due to the emergency situation. He made an attempt to swim to the surface. But his weights and lack of buoyancy worked against him. He decided to drop his weights and slowly swam to the surface.

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The diver who left Lee in distress may have not realized the situation as an emergency,just as an inconvience for Lee,which it sounds like it should have been with proper skills and abilities.Even tho that person should not have left Lee there.
I think "Master Diver" Lee with 200 dives should retake a ow course and get recertified..at least take a peak performance buoyancy course.
Clear case of too much lead...if he "dropped" his weights as you wrote and swam SLOWLY to surface,why was he even wearing any weight?Sinking uncontrolled to 80' tells me way too much lead..

As to an inflator hose not connected to bcd-so what...reconnect it or orally inflate bcd with 1 breath(if weighed properly) and continue dive.This is not an emergency situation for properly trained divers.
If it was not the inflator hose but the corrugated one ,then true you cannot orally inflate bcd obviously,but again,there is no reason to sink to 80' if properly weighed .

 

[DandyDon]

Welcome to the thread Oly. If you read it tho, surely you realize...