Diving "Etiquette" and the lack thereof

[Thalassamania]

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I enjoyed your postings, so I will respond for Joy. I am the "Lee" in Joy's post.

My gear was a 5mm jumpsuit, 5mm high boots, 2mm hood, HP steel tank .. 100 cu in .. 34% EAN, 2 weight bags .. 12 lbs each, back inflation BC.

Joy and I were both about 3 feet under the surface. I had my inflator in my left hand and was holding it above my head. I was pressing the discharge button and slightly tugging upwards on the mechanism. While I was discharging air, my corregated inflator hose seperated from the bc as if it had unscrewed. The bc filled with water.

I knew I had a problem but was not aware of precisely what had happened. My decent was at an appropriate rate so I prepared for landing. When on the bottom, a diver showed me the end of the detached inflator mechanism. He signaled me that he did not know what to do. He then swam off to catch up with the others.

My thought process was that my dive was over. My plan was to go to the surface in a controlled manner.

I started swimming the rig to the surface. At twenty feet off the bottom (83 fsw) I noticed that I would soon be over-breathing my reg and blacking out was a possibility.

I jettisoned my weights. My bouyancy became neutral to slightly positive. I made my assent slowly, conserving my energy.

Addendum: The root cause of the gear failure is under investigation and is currently inconclusive.

I thought I said that.

 

[Diver0001]

Yeah. Just re-read Lee's post.

Lee, you did fine in resolving the situation, but I would say you were over weighted.

That was my thought too. He had something like 10-11kg of weight with a steel tank and a 5mm suit.

It was good judgement to dump the weightbelt but Lee I would strongly advise you to do a proper buoyancy check with that gear. It wouldn't surprise me if you could cut back your ballast by 40%

R..
p.s. Incidentally, I've had this very problem before but I showed it to my buddy and he was able to screw it all back together under water. In my case it hadn't broken, it was just loose.

R..

 

[Deefstes]

BCs are implicated as #2 risk of problem with gear failure in diving accidents...

I find this comment an interesting one. Could you give more details perhaps? (I guess the thread has been hijacked before so another hijack is probably not that bad).

I don't know much about technical diving but I can imagine that BC's (or wings I should say) are crucially important then. But with recreational diving, if an accident occurs as a result of your BC failing, is it really the BC's fault or is it your overweightedness?

 

[DandyDon]

I find this comment an interesting one. Could you give more details perhaps? (I guess the thread has been hijacked before so another hijack is probably not that bad).

I don't know much about technical diving but I can imagine that BC's (or wings I should say) are crucially important then. But with recreational diving, if an accident occurs as a result of your BC failing, is it really the BC's fault or is it your overweightedness?

Not "tech diving" really, just scuba diving which is usually done with a BC. Problems can arise if you're overweighted, out of air to inflate, inflator problems, lose connections, etc. Many can be resolved easily, I have had to orally inflate when an inflator came lose and again when I surfaced OOA :blush:, but panic lurks - especially in waves. When in doubt about ability to float on the surface, drop weights!

You need to log into your DAN member account to read their accident reports here: https://www.diversalertnetwork.org/medical/report/index.asp

I think there is a chart of equipment problems related to deaths, but I can't find it at the moment.

 

[Deefstes]

I see, but it is as I expected then. A BC failing might trigger an accident but it isn't really the reason for the accident. The reason is that the diver had too much weight and had to depend on a bag of air to keep him/her from drowning, so when the bag of air doesn't work (which can be expected to happen from time to time), the diver drowns. Have I got that right?

 

[DandyDon]

I see, but it is as I expected then. A BC failing might trigger an accident but it isn't really the reason for the accident. The reason is that the diver had too much weight and had to depend on a bag of air to keep him/her from drowning, so when the bag of air doesn't work (which can be expected to happen from time to time), the diver drowns. Have I got that right?

Oh diver deaths are rare enough that it's difficult to really say what the common causes are. Many of the few deaths that do happen occur on the surface tho, from BC failure combined with diver mistake and/or panic.

Too much weight might not be a big risk, depends on the BC, like my big one has over 40# of lift, so even if I am 10 pounds over it can handle it if nothing goes wrong. Of the things that can go wrong, a partial list would include OOA to inflate, inflator hose coming lose, inflator connection unscrewing (had that one once), inflator fails with debris or lack of servicing, dump valve unscrewed, cable tie breaks, dump valve failure, dump valve o-ring failure, etc. Pays to know yours well, inspect it often, and safety drill on possible problems. Anyway, if you ever have a problem that cannot be resolved safely, lead and pouches are replaceable, and DAN might even pay the lost gear claim. GET POSITIVE.

 

[Diver0001]

I see, but it is as I expected then. A BC failing might trigger an accident but it isn't really the reason for the accident. The reason is that the diver had too much weight and had to depend on a bag of air to keep him/her from drowning, so when the bag of air doesn't work (which can be expected to happen from time to time), the diver drowns. Have I got that right?

Not the way I see it.

Most (almost all) accidents are rooted in errors of judgement, not in equipment problems. Equipment problems can cause someone to respond inappropriately (like panicking from a free-flow) but the free flow isn't the cause of the accident. Failure to deal with the free-flow is the cause of the accident.... see what I'm saying? I'm saying that within the realm of recreational diving, assuming the diver doesn't have a heart attack or something of that order under water that the root cause of almost all accidents comes down to human error.

In this case the diver had a failed BCD *and* too much weight but neither of those problems stopped him from keeping his cool and finding his way safely back to the surface. Someone else with that same problem may have freaked out and died from it.

As for tek diving, you'll learn and practice in your tek courses how to deal with a failed bcd when you don't have free access to the surface to make a buoyant ascent. The basic idea here is having a redundant source of buoyancy (like a blob) and how to deploy and apply as a tool for this situation.

R..

 

[Rick Murchison]

... the root cause of almost all accidents comes down to human error...

One of the tenets of mishap analysis is that there is always a human cause; that there are no mishaps without one or more of those.
What? How can that be? What about "acts of God?"
Allow me to illustrate:
Man walks out into a parking lot on a sunny day; lightning strikes him dead.
Obviously, this is a case of "when your time is up, your time is up," right? Well, yes, but from a mishap analysis viewpoint, where we must ID a human cause, after wading through stuff like electrocution and subsequent heart failure/nervous system collapse, we must conclude that the cause is a failure to accurately forecast where and when sunny day lightning will strike - that is, if we had predicted that lightming bolt and warned everyone to stay clear and they had, this mishap would have been prevented.
From that cause can flow a recommendation, even if the recommendation is to do nothing and accept the occasional mishap of this type because preventing it is just too hard at this time. We could probably spend our entire budget on trying to accurately forecast clear-air lightning and still come up short, so a "no-action" recommendation would be prudent. At least prudent for everyone except the next victim...
Notice that there is no blame involved in the process... that's the legal system's way, not the mishap analyst's.
Rick

 

[FredT]

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I jettisoned my weights. My buoyancy became neutral to slightly positive. I made my ascent slowly, conserving my energy.

Apparently from those numbers & with that rig you need about 6-8 pounds to adjust for air breathed during the dive, not 24.

The best time to jettison weight is on the boat deck (or in the garage) before the dive, the second best is to jettison IMMEDIATELY upon problem identification. You were late doing it on this dive as you went light headed before dumping.

 

[Cave Diver]

JoyfulLee - Two questions:

1) Can you expand in detail on the exact nature of the gear failure?

2) Did you witness any of the interaction between the two divers, or did you just hear about it after the fact?

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I enjoyed your postings, so I will respond for Joy. I am the "Lee" in Joy's post.

My gear was a 5mm jumpsuit, 5mm high boots, 2mm hood, HP steel tank .. 100 cu in .. 34% EAN, 2 weight bags .. 12 lbs each, back inflation BC.

Joy and I were both about 3 feet under the surface. I had my inflator in my left hand and was holding it above my head. I was pressing the discharge button and slightly tugging upwards on the mechanism. While I was discharging air, my corregated inflator hose seperated from the bc as if it had unscrewed. The bc filled with water.

I knew I had a problem but was not aware of precisely what had happened. My decent was at an appropriate rate so I prepared for landing. When on the bottom, a diver showed me the end of the detached inflator mechanism. He signaled me that he did not know what to do. He then swam off to catch up with the others.

My thought process was that my dive was over. My plan was to go to the surface in a controlled manner.

I started swimming the rig to the surface. At twenty feet off the bottom (83 fsw) I noticed that I would soon be over-breathing my reg and blacking out was a possibility.

I jettisoned my weights. My bouyancy became neutral to slightly positive. I made my assent slowly, conserving my energy.

Addendum: The root cause of the gear failure is under investigation and is currently inconclusive.

Lee,

Thanks again for taking the time to respond to my questions. I think your posting brought some valuable information and insight to the discussion and put an end to some of the speculation.

A few points about your post if I may:

1) Steel 100 tank, approximately ~ 9-15 lbs negative full. 2 x 12lb weight pouches = 24 lbs. Total negative weight ~ 33-39 lbs.

Not knowing specifics about your body type/size, etc. I can't say with certainty how much weight you need while wearing a 5 mil suit. Some people need more weight than others, but 30+ lbs does seem to be a bit excessively negative.

2) Having a problem on the descent like yours could be hard to diagnose. If you realized in time that something was wrong and your BC was venting too fast, one option would have been to roll to the left slightly, to trap any remaining air. This may have allowed you to retain enough bouyancy to return immediately to the surface without having to drop your weights, or to help maintain a more controlled descent.

3) I have mixed feelings on the actions of the other diver. He did stop and communicate with you, but he also left before you returned to the surface while knowing that you had a problem.

Ideally, your buddy would have been right there with you, so he wouldnt have been leaving you alone. Ideally, his buddy would have been right there as well, alleviating the need for him to have to leave you to catch up and providing another diver to assess the problem

4) Deciding to end the dive was a good choice. If you can't identify or fix the problem, your best solution was to return to the surface before the problem compounded. Being aware that you were over breathing the reg and taking appropriate action shows good decision making as well.

This incident may have highlighted just how much compression a wetsuit has a depth and the associated loss of bouyancy resulting from that.

If you haven't already done so, I would encourage you to read this thread: http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/ad...ons/286707-lets-talk-about-balanced-rigs.html

I would also encourage you (and everyone reading) to have a frank discussion with any buddies you may dive with, regarding expectations of each other, how to stay together, how to deal with seperation and how you will handle problems during the dive.

One of the most valuable traits in my regular dive buddy is our open communication. If a dive goes wrong, we discuss what happened, how we reacted, how we should have reacted and how to prevent it from happening again.

Thanks to both of you for sharing the experience and giving everyone an opportunity to learn from it. I'm glad everything turned out well for you both.