Experienced Divers and OOA emergencies

[Darnold9999]

Almost 300 dives drained my tank dry once. Had to use the reserve on the surface while being towed out of a strong current in a narrow channel with a tug and log barge headed our way. VERY glad I had the reserve. Wondered why it was getting really hard to get a breath when the tow stopped and I managed to get my head above water. Turns out I had exactly 0 psi in the tank. Had a pony but could not get to it easily as just hanging on to the rope was taking two hands.

Have seen a new diver go OOA once. Passive panic. At the time I didn't know such a thing existed. I didn't see her go OOA, but the DM I was buddied with did catch it. First I knew he had rocketed by me on his way over to a diver on a bouy line. He shoved a reg in her face and grabbed hold of her nose to nose. I understand she was bolting to the surface just about the time he arrived.

As it was explained to me after the dive, the diver watched her spg go to 0. Didn't tell anyone, no signal just OOA at 30 feet. Not sure what the DM saw but he did catch it and managed to control the diver and bring her to the surface safely.

 

[Splitlip]

35 years never gone OOG nor has a buddy.

Now diving with J-valves and no SPG, we might go until it got stiff, then drop the valve. Never had to share air.

 

[CoralSeaMan]

On my first ocean dive, 1 week after my cert dives, I was 1) too deep for my training (90 feet); 2) too excited to pay attention (drift dive on a wall); 3) almost certainly suffering from narcosis. My buddy swam up, shoved my SPG in my face and it said 500 PSI. I just knew my SPG was broken. Then I saw he had 750 PSI and realized we really were almost out of air at 90 feet. We got to 40 feet before I ran out. We shared air and got out fine.
It has never happened again and is unlikely to. I have become a lot more attentive. Besides after several hundred more dives, I do not use air so fast.

 

[nereas]

The best way to deal with an OOA diver is to hand him/her your long hose, with your arm fully extended, then use that same hand to ward them off with, as you put your bunge'ed backup in your mouth with the other hand. Then get ready to push them away with your feet, if they start clawing at you for your own reg as well. That way you at least keep a safe distance away from them.

A person in this situation is likely to do a lot of harm to you, and so that needs to be dealt with in advance.

 

[Zieg]

The best way to deal with an OOA diver is to hand him/her your long hose, with your arm fully extended, then use that same hand to ward them off with, as you put your bunge'ed backup in your mouth with the other hand. Then get ready to push them away with your feet, if they start clawing at you for your own reg as well. That way you at least keep a safe distance away from them.

A person in this situation is likely to do a lot of harm to you, and so that needs to be dealt with in advance.

I've also had three OOA's occur to divers around me.

One was because the diver just cracked his valve to check his air prior to the dive, he signaled he was OOA and that he needed to share. This was back when no one carried an octo, we buddied all the way to the surface, text book operation.

The second was when a kid ran out of air, forgot what to do, sat there. I gave him my octo, all was fine.

The third, a couple of us solo spearfishing, he failed to notice his bottom time and air, ran out of both, stopped on the line, saw me, we started buddy breathing until his computer cleared.

In only one of the three cases did anyone panic, and then he didn't grab, attack, claw, or anything.

 

[Sas]

I have had two situations where I have had to share air already . I personally have never come close to running out of air as I like to play it pretty safe.

The first one was with a buddy I dived with fairly regularly so wasn't going to post about it properly but think I will now as there are a lot of lessons to be learned from it, for me at least! Anyway, I did a buddy check on the surface as did the charter (the one I go on always does their own checks of divers). We jumped in the water, he descended without me (I descend slow because of my ears) so I met up with him at 26m (first bad sign as I always ask people to descend with me together), he swum inside the submarine like we agreed however, was in front of me or would swim behind me the whole time rather than side by side like I prefer and then a minute after we were inside he gave me the OOA sign so I put him on my occy, during this he was making twisting motions with his hands so I turned his tank valve half a turn and screwed it up as I turned in the wrong way (but it showed me his tank valve was hardly on at all, I don't know why as it was fine on the surface). I purged it and air came out (guessing it was the rest of the air in the line) I signalled it was ok now and gave him back his reg, anyway, he signaled OOA straight away so he went back on my occy whilst I turned it the right way. So the two OOAs were a combination of both of us screwing up. Though he told me after he had been having difficulty breathing immediately on the descent but waited until we were INSIDE a wreck at 28m without a clear ascent before telling me he was in trouble so the whole issue could have been avoided fairly easily if he had not tried to continue the dive without being able to breathe properly.

Anyway, the saga continued. After we exited the sub after I fixed his tank, I signaled for an ascent a few times as I was totally over the dive, he shook his head and kept on swimming around the outside of the wreck, I tried to stay with him as best I could even though I wanted out of the dive but about five minutes later he grabbed another diver's occy, this diver brought him back to me and I took him to a hang tank at 5m where he did a safety stop. So yea, that was a pretty full on dive with me but I guess no one got hurt. He still blames me for the whole thing saying "you turned off my air" and chooses to ignore all the other problems on the dive... I know *my* screwups on that dive and they will not be repeated, but I don't think he thinks he did anything wrong at all. Anyway, I have not dived with him since.

The second time was low on air situation only. Me and my buddy were on a drift line with about seven other inexperienced divers (on an AOW class) who had never drifted before. Anyway, I wanted to leave the line and just do a drift with my buddy but the instructor asked if we could take the end of the line as that is where they put the most experienced divers (hah! we both had about 50 dives at the time). Drift lines have only ever been trouble for me (entanglement mainly as some divers will swim around you and the line gets everywhere) so I should have said no really. My buddy had to fin *hard* the whole time to keep the line straight as people were all over the place and I knew there was something up as he got that wide eyed look and I could tell he was burning through his air.

Anyway, he signaled the ascent when I asked him if he was ok and indicated he was down to 40 bar (this would have made his SAC 1.3 instead of the usual 0.65). A minute later when we were at about 7m, he signalled 20 bar so I shared air with him for our safety stop as we figured he was so overexerted a safety stop was a good idea and I still had over half a tank, we did one until my tank was at 50 bar. He ended up with a massive CO2 headache and we skipped the rest of the day's diving. But yea, again no one got hurt and we learned a lot. He could have made it on his own to the surface without a safety stop (as it was a NDL dive) to be honest so would have been unlikely to go OOA, but it would have come close!

I hope I never have to share air again to be honest. Twice in the six months I have been certified with only 67 dives is pretty bad...

 

[El Orans]

A good diver never runs OOA.

And a diver who runs OOA is not a good diver.

Hi, my name is Laurens and I'm not a good diver.

I ran out of air once at the end of a shallow dive (single tank, 10L) while doing a safety stop. My buddy didn't check his air as he was using freshly filled doubles and I was too focused on the skills we were practising. I was handed a regulator within a few seconds after indicating OOA.

No big deal.

 

[piikki]

Only time I have faced a possibility of an OOG was during my first year as a diver. This happened with rental gear and when I was trying the long-hose set-up for the first time.

Anyhow, the situation was a result of an O-ring extrusion on the first stage. (That Poseidon sure pushed a lot bubbles and fast!) What made things even more interesting was that we were doing an air share drill at the time the problem started. Made for an interesting few seconds.

We were shallow and made it up on buddy’s gear after a lot of swapping and shutting off my tank in nick of time.

 

[Standingbear56]

It happened to me only once. At the end of an 80 foot sport dive, my reg had an uncontrollable free flow. Since my partner and I were both instructors, it was no problem. He just handed me his octo, and we finished the ascent and safety stop. Once on the surface, I switched to a back up regulator and the 2nd dive went off without a hitch.
Safe Diving,
George

 

[Darnold9999]

The best way to deal with an OOA diver is to hand him/her your long hose, with your arm fully extended, then use that same hand to ward them off with, as you put your bunge'ed backup in your mouth with the other hand.

While I agree this is the best way in most cases, in the only OOA situation I have seen it probably would have lead to a tragedy, whereas the way the DM handled it the diver made it to the surface no problem. Your way she bolts to the surface.

The situation was passive panic in a very new diver - holding a reg out at arms length may or may not have worked, I suspect not as she had tossed her reg and was about to bolt. (As told after the fact. I only saw the situation as the DM arrived - DM mask to mask with the OOA diver.) Grabbing her, pushing the reg into her mouth, getting eyeball to eyeball and calming her down was a much better solution in this particular case.