Down deep...things to remember

[Snowbear]

Just a throw out . . .
It's late in the dive, both divers are reaching their turn points (not doing thirds here) and one has a catastrophic hose blow out.


Needless to say, this thread will probably gravitate to all sorts of outlandish combinations and permutations of possible, but not probable, emergency situations.

Why would a hang bottle be a better solution than the dehosed diver breathing from the buddy's gas and doing an ascent? They planned their dive's turn pressure based on rock bottom, right? Or did they figure they didn't need to plan their gas management because they knew a hang bottle would be available?

 

[Rick Murchison]

Please give me an example of an "unforseen" emergency that would best be mitigated by a hang bottle.

No need for the hypothetical here, we can leap right to the specific.
A hang bottle or two could likely have saved the Rouses. No need to argue whether that would have been the best solution or not - a hang bottle would have allowed them the time to send a note topside for more gas, and turned a double fatality into a great sea story.
Rick

 

[Uncle Pug]

On the other hand... if they had been carrying their gas with them instead of staging it they wouldn't have needed *saving*.

Not to mention if they had been using the correct gas, ect. ect.

(Page 274)

 

[boomx5]

A hang bottle or two could have saved the Rouses.
Rick

So could've a bit of Helium in their mix.

 

[The Kraken]

Why would a hang bottle be a better solution than the dehosed diver breathing from the buddy's gas and doing an ascent? They planned their dive's turn pressure based on rock bottom, right? Or did they figure they didn't need to plan their gas management because they knew a hang bottle would be available?

Well, Snowbear,
I'm pretty much hanging on your side of the fence on this one. Nothing takes the place of properly planning a dive and employing adequate safety equipment.

I do imagine, however, that there has been and will be a fatal situation or situations, in the entirety of diving history and in its future, that could have been, or could possibly be prevented with the use of a stage, or hung bottle.

 

[OE2X]

I've dove a bunch of times with Pug off of his boat and mine. We've never had a hang bottle on any of the dives. Besides Ricks scenario, needing a hang bottle equals poor planning. FWIW - you'll be lucky to find a more competent diver to buddy with than UP. What you assume to be a cavalier attitude about not allowing incompetent divers on his boat is hardly that. Neither one of us are willing to take out divers that don't plan their dive and then stick to their plan. Part of any plan is contingencies.

Plan your dive for rock bottom or plan your dive with the law of thirds. This will take care of your buddy team.

Last month I was on a charter with eight others to dive some wrecks. There was a hang bottle at 20'. On the last dive my buddy and another team came up the wrong line. The four of us finished out a one hour dive with deco, with the lowest (back gas) tank being 1000 psi. We had a 50' surface swim to the boat. We made a mistake on which line to ascend and it's a good thing that we had all planned and stuck to our dive. Had we blown off our plan because there was a hang bottle, then someone would have gotten bent.

 

[stu_in_fl]

---- from the original post
---- a bottle hanging on the line just in case someone is low on air.
---One member of team is very low on air a while before we get back to our line

This was not unforeseen... hence the hanging bottle.

Hanging a bottle is not the appropriate mitigation IMO.This was not unforeseen... hence the hanging bottle.

Hanging a bottle is not the appropriate mitigation IMO.

Many operators in the Keys hang a bottle "just in case", as they do not necessarily know who would be on their boat and their experience etc. - so in that case I would say an operator taking "tourists" or "day trippers" would be mitigating some risk by having a bottle (although all divers are responsible for their ownb dive plans and managing their own air).

In this case, the person being low on air was a reasonably recently certified diver (although had done AOW and Nitrox), and his originally planned buddy had not made it to the boat (hence the buddy team thing) - as previously mentioed we should have taken more note of this and made sure the dive was turned earlier - next dive, we were back at the line in plently of time and he did an ascent with someone from another group on the same boat, while we continued.

 

[Uncle Pug]

It is frequently the case that the exception is made the rule. This is unwise.

Not speaking of you Stu nor your situation... this is just where my post came up in the queue.

 

[The Kraken]

Hey, Pug, perhaps you could rename them "Darwin Bottles"!

 

[OE2X]

Many operators in the Keys hang a bottle "just in case", as they do not necessarily know who would be on their boat and their experience etc. - so in that case I would say an operator taking "tourists" or "day trippers" would be mitigating some risk by having a bottle (although all divers are responsible for their ownb dive plans and managing their own air).

This is a very different scenario than what Q was roasting Pug over.

The bottom line though is no matter who you are, the need to use a hang bottle equals poor planning or poor gas management. This is the point that UP is trying to instill in people reading this.