Half of Dead Divers on Their First 20 dives

[Stu S.]

That statistic may be a bit skewed as the "20 dives or less" group represents a large portion of the diver population. Our local instructor said that 90% of those he certifies are not diving a year later. And, Florida is a diving state.

If half the divers out there have 0-20 dives, and they have half the fatalities, is that unexpected?

More useful statistics would have the probability of a fatality for each dive for a 0-20 dive person compared to a 20-40 dive person, etc.

We should remember that SB members are super-enthusiasts and have a lot more dives that the average certified person.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Actually I'm not surprised by this statistic. I've dove with some new divers that seemed so edgy that it was like they were going to jump out of their skin any second. They were clingy and seemed to not have any self confidence. One little thing and they would freak and bolt.
Then after the dive they come up and are all excited about the dive and how great it was. They have no clue about some of the potential disasters they ducked without even knowing it.
I'm come up mentally exhausted and stressed out from watching them and they're just happy (grinning ear to ear) to have survived it and be standing on dry land.

I couldn't even imagine two of them buddying up and trying to do a dive fresh out of open water.

I think training lacks not so much in the final quantity of what is taught, but in the watermanship and comfort level training. Skin diving skills and acclimation training in the ocean prior to certification I think is a vital part that is gone from open water.

When I got certified I was already a pretty good abalone diver, so putting on scuba gear and going into the ocean was no big deal for me. I already knew what was down there and what to expect. But some students in my class really had a hard time. Most of them had never even put their faces underwater or ever even had a mask or fins on, it was all brand new to them.
Most of them were just getting certified so they could go on vacation in the tropics.

 

[vladimir]

That statistic may be a bit skewed as the "20 dives or less" group represents a large portion of the diver population. Our local instructor said that 90% of those he certifies are not diving a year later.

Those 90% are not contributing to the diver deaths--they're safe on their sofas. (Although I guess the dead ones aren't diving a year later either.) We would want to look at the portion who are actually diving and have less than 20 dives.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

That statistic may be a bit skewed as the "20 dives or less" group represents a large portion of the diver population. Our local instructor said that 90% of those he certifies are not diving a year later. And, Florida is a diving state.

If half the divers out there have 0-20 dives, and they have half the fatalities, is that unexpected?

More useful statistics would have the probability of a fatality for each dive for a 0-20 dive person compared to a 20-40 dive person, etc.

We should remember that SB members are super-enthusiasts and have a lot more dives that the average certified person.

Maybe there are so few divers with more than 20 dives is because all the others just DIED!!!

The statisic is crude, but of all the scuba dives made each year in this world, I bet less than 10% of them are made by divers with less than 20 dives. (I made up that last statstic). But if it anything like that, then the take home message is that the first 20 dives are relatively dangerous.

 

[Quero]

I remember learning that the beginning diver is MUCH more at risk of being killed. Today I was reading the DAN Publication Alert Diver and they indicated that about:

Half of all scuba dive fatalities occur to divers who have less than 20 total scuba dives.

I don't recall if this is a new statistic, but I find it pretty schocking. When I used to teach OW PADI diving, I lobbied my students pretty hard to IMMEDIATELY sign up for an advanced class. I always felt that if we can get them through a few more supervised dives, they will be much safer. Seems like this single statistic supports that idea.

Is this new data, or more of the same????

What's the average number of dives required for an AOW? Less than 20, probably.

I wonder what was the cause of death. Is there some egregious mistake that new divers make which can be rectified by the presence of a supervisor? Is there something about that modest amount of dives that makes it less likely the be commited or repeated?

If anything, maybe it speaks to the efficacy of OW classes culminating with such few dives. Having logged something on the order of 20 times that many dives, I still consider myself a beginner; I believe that mentality keeps me grounded as I seem to remember that, statistically, you start out high-risk, lower that risk with more experience, but that it eventually picks up again.

Really, I think we may be trying to rationalize the random.

dD, I took the same message away from the DAN report.

As for the utility of quick additional training, I think you both make valid points in respect to the parts of your posts that I've bolded--for most new divers, doing additional dives with an instructor or a competent mentor (like driving with a learner's permit for a time) before going out on their own with other newly-certified buddies is the best way forward. For people diving near their homes, finding a mentor/group/club can fulfill much of this function. Inexperienced divers can get tips, learn the dive sites, emulate their mentors.... For people diving in places far from home (like where I work), the easiest and best solution for inexperienced divers may be to dive more with an instructor. Since divers actually pay (a little bit) for an instructor's time, it makes sense to pursue additional formal training simultaneously for those who want this kind of special service.

Because I feel strongly that the minimum of 9-10 dives a student has after completing AOW (4-5 dives of OW, depending on the agency, and the 5 additional dives of AOW) doesn't really constitute sufficient experience to jump on a liveaboard to our top dive destinations here in Thailand, I offer Advanced Open Water courses as private instruction on our liveaboards, which typically provide 14-15 dives, for students who are interested. I tell my students that while only five of those dives are officially needed for the certification, I will be working exclusively with them on all 14-15 dives to implement what we start in each of the training dives; it ends up becoming a cumulative sort of training where each element intersects with and supports the development of the diver's skill set.

At the end of a 14-15 dive AOW course over four days of intensive diving, the divers who have gone through this kind of course really do show huge improvements. I should note here that it's possible to do the AOW with a regular dive staff member on just about any of our liveaboards, and in that case, the student gets specific training attention for the 5 dives leading to the cert. The other 9 dives will be with a regular dive master in a regular group of divers. Either way, the OW followed by an intensive 15 dive trip which includes instruction in AOW gives these divers 19-20 dives and a real leg up in their skill development.

 

[knowone]

We have foreign or non local folks come over here and they go
"Look surfing" and they go and they drown.

We have non foreign local folks see a flooded creek and they go
"Look mud and faeces" and they go and they drown.

 

[DevonDiver]

I wonder what was the cause of death. Is there some egregious mistake that new divers make which can be rectified by the presence of a supervisor? Is there something about that modest amount of dives that makes it less likely the be commited or repeated?

If I remember correctly, poor buoyancy control and running out of gas were two of the major issues associated with scuba fatalities. Both of those are more likely to occur to new divers, as they don't have their buoyancy control down,

I'd imagine that there was a variety of 'causes of death', with a stong trend towards drowning and lung-overexpansion injuries. Most of these divers do succeed to making it to the surface, before subsequently being killed. Burst lungs from the ascent catch them at the surface. Bad buoyancy means they sink back down and are lost.

However, the 'causes of death' rarely tell the full story...and certainly do not sufficiently explain the nature of the incident leading to fatality or how this links to the statistics which show that it primarily effects novice divers.. The 'cause of incident' is more relevant - and this allows the consideration of psychological factors that may contribute to the death.

IMHO, the death of novice divers stems primarily from psychological issues, which pre-dispose the diver to a critical skill failure. These may include:

1) Increased tendancy to panic.
2) Inability to control panic.
3) Panicked mental state leading to abandonment of effective dive procedures.
4) Over-confidence leading to unsafe diving practices.

Linked to these psychological factors are a number of key weaknesses, that reflect the state of the novice divers' training and experience:

1) Inexperience leading to under-assessment of risks, which causes the diver to enter situations that they cannot deal with if an emergency occurs.
2) Inexperience leading to over-assessment of risks, which creates a high degree of stress and increased likelihood of panic.
3) Inability to assess personal capability, in relation to dive requirements.
4) Emergency skills not sufficiently 'ingrained' to be reliable under pressure.

 

[Doubler]

I believe the stat but what does that say about the other 50%. I would wager the majority of the remainder are experienced divers i.e Cave, Deep Tech, Wreck, Rebreather, you know, your envelope pushers. There is probably another large portion that are experienced, but way out of shape for strenuous diving resulting in health issues leading to a dive fatality. I live up here in the Puget Sound area and have never dove here and have zero plans too. One major factor in that decision is that every time I read about a death up here it seems the diver is over 45, I'm 60 so give me warm southern water any time. So stats are stats take away what you want. My take away is the 50 % of divers that die in the beginning made fatal errors do to inexperience, the remaining 50% of experienced divers died from pushing the envelope or equipment failure during that push. Having been an envelope pusher in my youth I now prefer to stay in my comfort zone.
And for Bob:

Jim

 

[Ripple in still water]

It would be interesting to know how many of these divers were diving without a DM. OW certification allows you to just go out and dive with anybody else who's certified. If both divers are new, you've potentially got the blind leading the blind with no sighted aide (the DM) around.

 

[DevonDiver]

OW training/certification is supposed to prepare that person to dive independantly without supervision. The OW course provides all of the required knowledge and skills needed to do that and ensures that the student has an acceptable degree of competancy in those skills.

Furthermore, the restrictions/recommendations given by agencies to certified divers, emphasising the buddy system, conservative dive practices, depth limitations etc, serve to reinforce the basic tuition they are given and increase the divers' safety.

It's a relatively sound concept for training/certification...

Where OW training falls down, is in its focus only on the possession of skills/knowledge as the primary aspect of incident avoidance.

In most scuba incidents, I would argue that it wasn't a lack of skills/knowledge that caused the incident. Rather... it was an inability to utilise the skills/knowledge/procedures that they possess. For novice divers, that inability stems from the fact that psychological factors cause them to react inappropriately to emergency stimulus and/or otherwise fail to adhere to the training and recommendations they had been given.

IMHO, the majority of recreational training agencies fail to address the issue of student psychological preparedness before certifying them for unsupervised diving. This is the issue that results in a disproportionate percentage of novice divers becoming fatalities.

The first training course (PADI, SSI) that effectively deals with psychological issues is the Rescue Diver course. That is also often the novice divers' first deliberate encounter with high stress scenarios. It is the first time they are advised and trained in how to deal with dive stress. As expected, the incident of diver fatalities decreased dramatically at Rescue Diver level. Psychological preparedness is the key.