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I wish I could say I'm surprised by the description of the accident, or by the responses in this thread. Sadly, I'm not.
While it's often true that these accidents occur because people were inadequately trained, that is not always the case. Over the past eight years I've made something of a crusade out of promoting gas management in my area ... providing free seminars on the topic to pretty much any dive shop or dive club that will let me speak. One thing I like to point out is that if you're diving with someone who's using a similarly-sized cylinder and uses their air at roughly the same rate you do, if you should run out of air it's unlikely they're going to have enough to help you very much. This seems to come as a surprise to some folks ... because they've been so ingrained with the notion that if you get in trouble, your buddy's there to help you.
But I always ask my audience ... "How many of you have practiced the out-of-air skills you learned in OW class since you got certified?" Almost always, a tiny percentage of those attending will raise their hand. My follow-on question is "How well do you think you'd do if someone swam up to you on your next dive and slashed their hand across their throat?" I get some head-shaking and murmuring ... and follow it up with my third question ... "Don't you think it would be a good idea to get comfortable with those skills before you actually need to use them?"
The reality is that even if you train someone to be completely comfortable with basic rescue skills during their initial training, unless they periodically practice those skills, they're unlikely to remember what to do when a real emergency happens ... because it's nothing like the controlled conditions of the class, and because they're giong to be stressed, and task-loaded and possibly too frightened to remember what to do. That appears to be the case in this accident, as it has been in others I'm familiar with.
If there's anything I can suggest to those looking for a take-away from this sort of tragedy it would be this ... don't assume you'll remember what to do. Even if you've been trained ... even if you received what you consider excellent training ... you need to practice your emergency skills from time to time, because the time you'll need to use them won't be a good time to have to put any effort at all into remembering what to do. And if you haven't practiced those skills since your OW training, it's very unlikely that you will remember ...
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
While it's often true that these accidents occur because people were inadequately trained, that is not always the case. Over the past eight years I've made something of a crusade out of promoting gas management in my area ... providing free seminars on the topic to pretty much any dive shop or dive club that will let me speak. One thing I like to point out is that if you're diving with someone who's using a similarly-sized cylinder and uses their air at roughly the same rate you do, if you should run out of air it's unlikely they're going to have enough to help you very much. This seems to come as a surprise to some folks ... because they've been so ingrained with the notion that if you get in trouble, your buddy's there to help you.
But I always ask my audience ... "How many of you have practiced the out-of-air skills you learned in OW class since you got certified?" Almost always, a tiny percentage of those attending will raise their hand. My follow-on question is "How well do you think you'd do if someone swam up to you on your next dive and slashed their hand across their throat?" I get some head-shaking and murmuring ... and follow it up with my third question ... "Don't you think it would be a good idea to get comfortable with those skills before you actually need to use them?"
The reality is that even if you train someone to be completely comfortable with basic rescue skills during their initial training, unless they periodically practice those skills, they're unlikely to remember what to do when a real emergency happens ... because it's nothing like the controlled conditions of the class, and because they're giong to be stressed, and task-loaded and possibly too frightened to remember what to do. That appears to be the case in this accident, as it has been in others I'm familiar with.
If there's anything I can suggest to those looking for a take-away from this sort of tragedy it would be this ... don't assume you'll remember what to do. Even if you've been trained ... even if you received what you consider excellent training ... you need to practice your emergency skills from time to time, because the time you'll need to use them won't be a good time to have to put any effort at all into remembering what to do. And if you haven't practiced those skills since your OW training, it's very unlikely that you will remember ...
... Bob (Grateful Diver)