DM blew me off

[TSandM]

What was the discussion on the boat BEFORE the dive? It appears that you were diving as a gaggle, and not in buddy teams -- was there any discussion of what would happen when the first person ran low on gas? Some operators share gas, the way you did the first time; others send buddy teams to the surface, and yet others expect you to go up when your gas is low. Although I have my own opinions of which strategy is best, what really matters is that there should have been a plan in place, and everyone should have understood it.

On the other hand, you are the diver doing the dive. When you reached 50 bar, you had to make a decision. Your decision in both cases seems to have been to cede responsibility for deciding to the DM. At 50 bar, you either need more gas or you need to end the dive; in the first situation, you were given more gas (which, unless that was discussed ahead of time, you should not have expected to get). In the second, once the DM did not offer gas, you should have ended your dive at that point. Being caught underwater with inadequate breathing gas supplies is entirely your responsibility.

The bottom line is: Before the dive, decide who is diving with whom, and how a low-on-air diver is going to be managed. Be prepared to end a dive alone if you have to, and never put yourself in a position where you are at risk from being too low on gas to be safe underwater. Do not expect professional dive staff to perform basic responsibilities of diving for you.

 

[Scuba_Noob]

As a certified diver, you are responsible for yourself at the end of the day. You should not go into a dive expecting someone else to take care of your tasks. You are responsible for your air management. You are responsible for diving within your comfort zone.

You knew you had high air consumption, so you should have let the DM know before the dive. You should have had a plan about what you would do when you reached 50bar or lower, as part of your detailed dive plan. If your plan involved others (i.e., using a buddy's octo), then they should have been informed beforehand. In all honesty, I don't support of sharing air to extend a dive.

I make a detailed plan before every dive, not necessarily written but at least verbalized with my buddy. Direction, max depth, what air to turn, what air to ascend, what air to safety stop, signals, distance from each other, and so on. And if my buddy doesn't follow the plan, I have alternative courses.

By 25 dives, you should be able to lead your buddy group without the need of a divemaster (though it might be nice to have one). It's not the divemaster's fault this time - you didn't inform him of your expectations.

 

[cb5150]

You said that you were writing this post to vent. Good, venting is healthy. It allows us to decompress and begin thinking clearly.

Now that you've vented you anger/frustration/whatever...open your mind and go get some more training immediately. Practice your gas management skills locally before you plan another diving vacation. Learn to take care of yourself so that you don't have to depend on a DM for every dive.

 

[nimoh]

I am a bit of an air hog as well, and whenever I dive with an unknown group, I let them know ahead of time. I know my surface consumption rate, and once we determine the depth we are diving, I do a rough calculation of how much time I can be there before I reach my minimum gas. So, before the dive, I let the other divers know that I will be ending the dive around a certain time. I generally get one of two responses to that.

1) signal me, and I will ascend with you
2) signal me, and I will continue diving until I am ready to ascend

I prefer the former answer, but accept the latter. The reason I prefer the former is that when I ascend, I am taking their redundant gas supply with me (assuming they are not diving independent doubles or carrying a stage). When I dive with my normal buddies, the answer is always the former.

I suggest reading Bob Bailey's gas management article, and doing the same.

NWGratefulDiver.com

 

[brnt999]

It blows my mind some of the responses I am getting to this.
I now have 25 dives and have learnt how to breath properly and am no longer an air hog.
I think what irritates me is as I look back is that there are DM's out there who would dissregard the saftey of a diver on their first dive. I am thinking about the next new diver who dives with this DM. Don't DM's and the industry in general have an ethic to look out for the saftey of the divers who they take money from. I repeat it was my first dive since passing the course. I didn't know I was an airhog because I had no experience. My first dive and rightly or wrongly I expected the DM to fill me in on what the procedure was. I guess I wasn't trained properly. So--you industry professionals--you take our 450 dollars for the course-you don't train us properly--and then you blame us if something goes wrong? What is the industry's responsibility? From what I have seen dive shops bend over backwards to pass everyone--does anyone ever fail? I don't have that much experience but I have seen divers who are certified and should never dive without a DM hanging onto them. I am sure all of you have seen the same thing. My experience is that professional, responsible dive shops take responsibility for who they take out diving. when someone is new their antennae goes up and they keep an eye out. In Cozumel and Isla Mujeres I saw dive shops specifically assign DM's to watch over a couple from Asia, and a mother and daughter who the dive shops recognized needed extra support and shouldn't be left alone. They took their money and they took professional responsibility. There recently was a young Asian woman who died in a diving accident. You can read about it on the other board. It looks to me like--and I am speculating--she was inexperienced--in a little over her head and none of the professionals took responsibility to look out for her. Judging from some of the attitudes on here it doesnt suprise me.

 

[Wookie]

It blows my mind some of the responses I am getting to this.
I now have 25 dives and have learnt how to breath properly and am no longer an air hog.
I think what irritates me is as I look back is that there are DM's out there who would dissregard the saftey of a diver on their first dive. I am thinking about the next new diver who dives with this DM. Don't DM's and the industry in general have an ethic to look out for the saftey of the divers who they take money from. I repeat it was my first dive since passing the course. I didn't know I was an airhog because I had no experience. My first dive and rightly or wrongly I expected the DM to fill me in on what the procedure was. I guess I wasn't trained properly. So--you industry professionals--you take our 450 dollars for the course-you don't train us properly--and then you blame us if something goes wrong? What is the industry's responsibility? From what I have seen dive shops bend over backwards to pass everyone--does anyone ever fail? I don't have that much experience but I have seen divers who are certified and should never dive without a DM hanging onto them. I am sure all of you have seen the same thing. My experience is that professional, responsible dive shops take responsibility for who they take out diving. when someone is new their antennae goes up and they keep an eye out. In Cozumel and Isla Mujeres I saw dive shops specifically assign DM's to watch over a couple from Asia, and a mother and daughter who the dive shops recognized needed extra support and shouldn't be left alone. They took their money and they took professional responsibility. There recently was a young Asian woman who died in a diving accident. You can read about it on the other board. It looks to me like--and I am speculating--she was inexperienced--in a little over her head and none of the professionals took responsibility to look out for her. Judging from some of the attitudes on here it doesnt suprise me.

Wait a minute here. You said that you completed 6 dives after your OW course in Thailand. Are you now saying you didn't complete those 6 dives? My first dive after OW was on a deep wreck in Oahu, and I was in wayyyy over my head, so to speak. It took me all of 5 minutes to "get that" and go for more instruction. I didn't need 25 dives to tell me when I was beyond my limits.

The industry varies widely depending on where you are and who the clients are being served. If I were making a guess, I'd guess that about 10% of instructors worldwide teach a shoddy course, 80% teach bare standards, and 10% teach an excellent course. You don't hear about the 90% who are happy with their training, you only hear about the 10% who seem to do a lousy job. I'm not assuming your instructor did a lousy job, but I do assume that a 2 day course makes it very difficult for you to hear and absorb all of the information provided, especially that part about "don't dive beyond your training and experience".

If you don't tell your shop/divemaster/diving professional how you expect them to act on a dive, then they surely won't act the way you expect. I would never expect a dive professional who may merely be a guide (even if they are called "Divemasters", that only implies a certification level in some parts of the world, it does not mandate it) to be responsible for my profile regardless of the situation. It is not the responsibility of dive guides or divemasters to "look out for you", as you suggest. That is your responsibility. If you can't be responsible for yourself, you need to enter into a specific contract with someone who will be responsible for you.

 

[GrumpyOldGuy]

It blows my mind some of the responses I am getting to this.

You are going to get a range of responses depending on the diver and WHERE THEY DIVE.

In my primary locations (So Cal and New England), the DM's don't even get in the water with you unless you are in a class. You are taught from OW on you are responsible for yourself and your buddy. Period. End of Story.

In other areas, groups dives lead by a DM are common with a lot more er.. supervision. It gets more people into the sport, but leaves divers unprepared when crap happens because the line of what you are responsible for and what the DM is responsible for gets very fuzzy.

SB posters tend to be honest and sometimes a bit heavy handed. If you post anything resembling a close call, you will get some criticism because no matter how good you think you are, you could do better. Better some crit and hurt feelings than a body bag.

 

[brnt999]

I completed 6 dives in Thailand. This experience happened on the first two of those dives.
Maybe your experience jades you to the experience of a new diver. A new diver who blows thru a 3 day ow course is still green. I emphasize with new divers and can recognize many of them are a little freaked out--on edge-the first few dives after completing the course.

 

[Hatul]

I am writing this, as much as anything, to vent and get it off my chest.
...

After completing 25 dives I have been with a number of DM's, and have observed many other DM's with their groups, and they all were professional and saftey conscious and the well being of the divers in their groups was the first priority. But as I look back on the first dive it still irritates me this partcular DM blew me off. I think what I learned from the experience is you can't put your life in someone elses hands--you can't rely on anyone else but have to look after yourself. With what I know now I would act before I got to such a low air situation, but on a first dive, to a certain extent, you don't know what is normal and you are more dependant on the DM.

I think you have the answer in the last two sentences of your post: ultimately you are responsible for your safety. At 50 bar you signal your buddy, the DM, that you're low on air and need to go up, and if he does not respond, you go up on your own at 30 ft/min with safety stop.

One of the problems here was that the DM had a conflict of being the dive guide and your dive buddy at the same time. Also when you signaled him that you were low on air, no matter how exasperated he was he should not be playing mind games at the expense of your safety, and should have made sure that you're safe, especially considering that you're a new diver. Normally you're buddied up with another diver and when one of you is low on air, you both come up and end the dive.

 

[Scuba_Noob]

I completed 6 dives in Thailand. This experience happened on the first two of those dives.
Maybe your experience jades you to the experience of a new diver. A new diver who blows thru a 3 day ow course is still green. I emphasize with new divers and can recognize many of them are a little freaked out--on edge-the first few dives after completing the course.

Although I empathize that you were a new diver then, your responses aren't really evoking an empathetic response.

It seems that all your blame is on the divemaster, when you need to take part of the responsibility yourself, even as a new diver. Perhaps you didn't understand that after Open Water, you are expected to be an independent diver, and perhaps that is partially the fault of your instructor. If you aren't completely independent (which no one is after OW), then you're expected to let others know and develop your skills to an adequate level with experienced divers.

But if you don't communicate your concerns with the DM beforehand and communicate that you were a completely new diver, then what do you expect? Do you expect the DM to read your mind?

I know some of these responses seem overly harsh, but we are trying to be constructive here with the criticism, so please look at this without an emotional or personal element.