Does setting explicit priorities help make better real-time decisions during a dive?

[DougCoDiver]

Like Steve_C stated getting out alive is priority number 1. I would add getting your buddy out alive is number 2. new, or returning divers like me, divers need be working on skills like bouyancy a lot. Knowing where ones buddy is, is important for my first two points.

I was taught that if you cannot maintain trim you a not properly weighted and if not properly weighted you cannot maintain good bouyancy control. Always check where your buddy is.

 

[kr2y5]

they will remain in control of both buoyancy and trim because these activities does not require any "thinking", they are second nature (muscle memory).

I presume you did not mean that, but the way it reads, it suggests this might be universally true in all conditions... even in low-vis, in midwater with no visual reference point, in a current with upwellings, or after just been task-loaded by something else, etc., I'm a bit skeptical that one can always maintain perfect buoyancy/trim without ever occupying a meaningful portion of their mental bandwidth. I have always been told I have very good buoyancy (maybe not?), but on the last dive, there was a minute or so, when "maintain fixed depth" was the primary thought on my mind, "don't smash into something" a distant second, and everything else was just barely lurking on my mental horizon. If I hadn't lost my buddy by then, I definitely wouldn't have had 100% of my mental bandwidth to allocate to tracking their position. It definitely makes sense to me that in adverse conditions, one has to make choices, and the priorities are not always immediately obvious.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

IMO buoyancy, trim and awareness should be "muscle reflexes" and have no or little impact on task-loading. a Buddy going up or down (couples of meters as you indicated) during task-loading, will either go straight up or down. I also struggle to see how up/down buoyancy is going to help with buddy awareness.

You can task-load a GUE diver silly, but they will remain in control of both buoyancy and trim because these activities does not require any "thinking", they are second nature (muscle memory).

When the sh1t hits the fan, you only have your skills and if these are shaky the rest might not matter.

My 2 cents.......

... there were GUE divers on this dive ... I guess you'd have to just have been there to comprehend that at this particular site you don't always have complete control over your buoyancy and trim no matter how good you are ... sometimes you're going to go where the water movement decides to take you, and a few feet of separation between buddies can put you each into completely different flow patterns.

To respond to Krzys ... maintaining buddy contact is the absolute priority. It's why ... for the first time you've ever seen ... I would not allow a 3-person buddy team, particularly since both me and my buddy were carrying cameras. This dive was good experience for you because it was beyond anything you've experienced before ... but there were more experienced divers who didn't fare any better than you did.

Awareness is the key ... eye contact and communication with your buddy were the first priority. Your buoyancy control skills were more than adequate ... but as you noted, your priorities placed style (in particular, trim) above team cohesion. On THIS dive, you may have to do things you wouldn't normally do in order to maintain the latter. I sacrified a glove by grabbing a handful of giant barnacles when it looked like my buddy and I were about to go in different directions ... and she did the same. We hung on till the current changed enough for us to stay together. This is a split-second response in the 10-15 foot vis we had ... and understanding that what was causing the potential for separation was a transient whirlpool that was going to pass us by within a handful of seconds if we were able to just maintain our position. In our case, Jody was taking her cues from me, and reacting to what I was doing in order to keep us together. That's something the team needs to anticipate and discuss beforehand ... and why your buddy afterward suggested that you should dive together in less challenging conditions before doing something like that again. She's a very good, experienced diver who understands that a big part of team cohesion is knowing what to expect from each other ... which is more difficult to do when you're diving together for the first time.

Diving is often circumstantial ... and your priorities have to be based on the circumstances. On a dive like this, maintaining the integrity of the buddy team takes precedence over everything else (except breathing ... ) ... in the case of me and my buddy, both carrying cameras that are normally a high priority for us, we both clipped them off once we got out into the main flow and realized we were in for a wild ride. At that point, reset your priorities, make it about staying together, and sacrifice whatever else needs to be sacrificed to meet that priority. Once the conditions change ... and they did ... you reset your priorities again to match the conditions.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

---------- Post added April 15th, 2015 at 08:16 AM ----------

The one absolute priority is staying alive and returning that way.

Having said that all other priorities are adjusted depending on dive conditions which includes buddy cohesion. Dive conditions include the experience of the buddy. If diving with an inexperienced diver buddy connection moves from high on the list to very close to the top. Navigation is quite high also. In my personal opinion if one has to focus on buoyancy at the expense of other important things like navigation and keeping track of buddy, then there is a question whether they should be on a low viz, high current, frequent separation dive at all much less with an inexperienced buddy who could panic.

Navigation on this particular dive was simplicity itself ... maintain eye contact with the wall. The current will sweep you southward until it doesn't ... then it will reverse and sweep you right back where you just came from. When you get to the place where you got in, get out ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[TSandM]

Polished skills definitely help reduce the bandwidth demands on a diver in stressful situations -- that's precisely why GUE divers are trained to a high standard of performance, even in recreational classes, and why we continue to practice and to debrief and critique one another outside of classes.

But no amount of skill is going to overcome a sufficiently inhospitable ocean. For those who don't know the dive Krys is talking about, it's a narrow passage known for extremely high currents -- high enough to create whirlpools and to sink small boats. It can only be dived on small tidal exchanges, and precisely at slack, and on the day in question, the divers miscalculated and ended up in the water too early. When you do that, you have dived into a washing machine, and the sides of the drum are goose-necked barnacles that rip dry suits. You cannot return to your entry point (which is the only exit) against the current, so once committed, you are in there until the water changes direction and you can get back. As one might imagine, this is considered one of the most advanced dives in the Seattle region.

When things start to go south on such a dive, I think back on one of Diver0001's threads from long ago, on managing task loading. First you evaluate your gas supply. If you have air, you have time. Then you manage your buoyancy, because without that, nothing else works -- you can't control where you are, you can't stay with your buddy, and things become chaotic. Of course, if the reason your buoyancy is gone is because you are in powerful up or down currents, your priority has to be keep yourself safe -- avoiding dangerous depths or extremely rapid ascents. Water conditions like that can break up teams and panic divers. In that case, one has to back up and ask whether enough was known about the proposed dive, or whether people observed the site carefully enough to choose the entry time.

At any rate, I like Rob's sequence, which was Air, Buoyancy, and Communication -- and if the conditions mean that your efforts to maintain reasonable buoyancy control preclude communication, then I think something went wrong much earlier in the process.

 

[geoff w]

Wow - it sounds like Palau isn't the only place to use reef hooks!

Isn't setting explicit priorities an integral part of any dive plan, including contingencies of what to do if the execution doesn't go according to plan? Just like in the OW class everyone was taught if you get separated from your buddy, search for one, two or three minutes, then safely ascend to the surface, rejoin your buddy, then decide whether to continue the dive or not.

I dive with the same group a lot of weekends, and everyone gives me grief for always asking what the plan is when we start, since everyone assumes a plan in their mind, which usually matches the others but not always. While we don't usually have ripping currents here, our visibility can range from 2 ft to 20-30 ft typically, and in general we manage to stay together as a group (up to about 8 divers), even in crappy viz. Even though we don't talk about it explicitly, there are expectations for everyone to keep an eye out for everyone else, and if the group starts to have trouble seeing others, everyone slows down or stops to regroup. I'm often in the lead and look back / around often enough to make sure divers behind me stay in sight, and divers behind are responsible to looking ahead to make sure they don't fall too far behind the others. For the conditions you guys are describing, it certainly sounds possible but definitely challenging. The big problem for us is when there is a photographer in the group who becomes so transfixed with what's in front of their lens they lose sight of the group continually, so our general rule is taking images is OK as long as the conditions support it. Hunting lobster during the season can be problematic if someone is going through their air too fast trying to grab bugs, but in general everyone tries to be considerate of the group / team

 

[descent]

... In that case, one has to back up and ask whether enough was known about the proposed dive, or whether people observed the site carefully enough to choose the entry time. ...

Interesting how a dive can be doomed, even before anyone has entered the water.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

In this case, we planned to be in the water and ready to begin the dive promptly at 9 AM. The currents here are swift, and the plan is to ride the current in one direction just prior to slack before ebb ... then ride it back the other way just after it. Actual slack is only a couple minutes ... if that. Often the water just swirls a bit until it settles on the new direction. So timing is critical. However, there's a reason why they're called "predictions" ... and sometimes it doesn't happen exactly when it's supposed to. In this case, slack happened about 20 minutes later than predicted. One person, however ... OK, it was me ... was so focused on the occasion that I went by the clock instead of the observation. In my defense, the cove where we begin and end the dive is subject to a natural eddy, and it's difficult to tell from there what's happening out in the main channel. My buddy and I promptly began our dive at 9 AM, as planned. Apparently when the others saw us duck below the surface they assumed it was time to go ... and we all went for a nice ride ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[kr2y5]

they assumed it was time to go ... and we all went for a nice ride ...

Yup, and as a side note to this thread, that I think was the ultimate problem... some of us not taking 100% responsibility for evaluating the dive conditions on our own. You ducked in because you planned to swim just around the corner into a protected area, and wait for 20 minutes until the current lessens... we saw what looked like a decision without understanding the full context of that decision, which made this a "trust me" dive on our part (and, what's worse, without any "trust me" contract established beforehand)... The right thing to do was, for us, to pay close attention to the water movement, make up our own mind as a two-person buddy team, without trying to follow anyone else, and to exit as soon as we realized we made the wrong call. A good butt-spanking lesson in taking personal responsibility, indeed...

---------- Post added April 15th, 2015 at 01:47 PM ----------

In my defense, (...)

Bob, not needed... you made it very clear upfront that 3-buddy teams are not a good idea, and by extension, for us to try and make it into a broken, virtual 4-buddy team by blindly following you would have been even worse... especially without having any clue about what your plan actually was. Our spanking was well deserved...

 

[TSandM]

I don't think Bob PLANNED to swim around the corner and wait -- the wait wasn't particularly comfortable, as I read the story. I think he fell victim to the same thing that gave my friends a washing machine ride, the day I didn't get to do the dive because of equipment issues. He got in when the current charts SAID the current was dying, but it wasn't. The same thing happened on my occasion -- the group got in about 15 minutes too early, and had 15 uncomfortable minutes before the current died down. I was watching the water stream by, but had never sat and watched the site to see how it would change. Getting an hour to sit on the beach taught me where to look for the water movement. It definitely diminishes as the "proper" time for the dive comes up.

I think there are dives one should do, at least the first time, with people who know the site really well. If I were going up there to do it again, I would ping Jan Kocian and ask him if he would be willing to dive with me. I know of no one who does that site more often than Jan.

But, outside of the specific circumstances, the bottom line is that insufficient familiarity with a high-hazard site can result in problems in the water.

 

[Storker]

For those who don't know the dive Krys is talking about, it's a narrow passage known for extremely high currents -- high enough to create whirlpools and to sink small boats. It can only be dived on small tidal exchanges, and precisely at slack, and on the day in question, the divers miscalculated and ended up in the water too early. When you do that, you have dived into a washing machine, and the sides of the drum are goose-necked barnacles that rip dry suits. You cannot return to your entry point (which is the only exit) against the current, so once committed, you are in there until the water changes direction and you can get back. As one might imagine, this is considered one of the most advanced dives in the Seattle region.

:amazed:

If I'm ever in the Seattle region, please remind me that I've decided to sit out that dive on the surface...

[video=youtube;_VrFV5r8cs0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VrFV5r8cs0[/video]