Half of Dead Divers on Their First 20 dives

[Crush]

I think there are some diving environments which are simply inherently stressful. Four immersions in Puget Sound's cold, green murk are not enough, I think, for most people to feel truly COMFORTABLE in that environment. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if most divers who dive here have a higher level of tension at the beginning of a dive. The only way to deal with this, as a novice, is to keep OTHER, avoidable stressors to a minimum -- to do easy dives in familiar settings where water conditions (eg. current) do not add to the stress.

That sounds like my intro to diving - 36F, vis was 20 ft (at best, often less), and we were diving 7mm wetsuits + gloves + hoods. Even to those who are not claustrophobic, the full thick wetsuit + hood + gloves will do a number on you. Putting your face into that ice cold water just adds to the stress. I have become more comfortable with such diving through repetition and because I was fortunate to not have any bad experiences.

 

[diver 85]

Don't know about the answer to your Q but these numbers don't surprise me a bit....

 

[flots am]

For example, does following a divemaster around the reef in Cozumel constitute "being supervised"?

That's actually one of my hot buttons.

Alsmot every underwater emergency I've seen has been with vacation divers with a DM, however in each case, the DM was inaccessible to the diver having problems because of distance or physical constraints like too far up-current, wrong end of a swim-through, can't be located, etc. This isn't to say that there are no other emergencies, and I've certainly heard of a number of rebreather and cave diver deaths, but for recreational diving, they've nearly all been on "supervised" dives.

People go diving "with a DM" and feel safe, when it's actually less safe than diving with a well-trained buddy.

From my perspective, anything more than "one good kick away from grabbing distance" isn't "supervised".

flots.

 

[drdaddy]

I think there are some diving environments which are simply inherently stressful. Four immersions in Puget Sound's cold, green murk are not enough, I think, for most people to feel truly COMFORTABLE in that environment. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if most divers who dive here have a higher level of tension at the beginning of a dive. The only way to deal with this, as a novice, is to keep OTHER, avoidable stressors to a minimum -- to do easy dives in familiar settings where water conditions (eg. current) do not add to the stress.

Puget Sound's cold, green murk - actually the Pacific NW's "cold, green murk".

I can still remember something "unexpected" that happened to me as a young diver. Coming in from a jetty dive, I got a bit shallow (20 ft) at the end of a finger. I was pulled up and over through the rocks to the other side of the finger. I learned, but there were other experiences that I learned the hard way as well. I've always been a cautious diver, but there are always new experiences. During this tumbling I remember thinking - "never hold your breath". This obviously came from my training. I think that Eugene Skin Divers Supply which does much of it's training in Hood Canal/Puget sound does a good job as any. I've heard, "if you can dive in the cold murky Pacific NW waters, you can dive anywhere". I've found this true.

Also, about the 60 year old who doesn't dive in the cold Puget Sound. I keep diving in the cold water - it's conditioning that makes the difference - and I keep conditioned to the cold water in a 7mm farmer john.

 

[liuk3]

Another disturbing development to me is also the dive professional (instructor and DM) with less than a couple of hundred dives. To me, that is also like the blind leading the blind. I never went professional since I felt I would be doing students a grave disservice if I could not share any relevant dive experience with them. I seem to be hearing more and more zero to hero instructors going from OW to instructor in 6 months or having less than a couple of hundred dives logged and becoming an instructor. We're not only churning out OW students quicker, but we're also churning out the instructors training them quicker as well...

 

[jl_va_21]

How many of those divers died alone, versus how many supervised?

I think this is part of a larger group of stats that DAN put out a couple months ago. I'll have to look up the specifics (I'll post them if I find them), but I think the number is large (maybe half again - of total fatalities) that occur during a period of buddy separation (if a buddy was there at all in the first place).

I've only been diving for a few years now, but its funny how my perspective has changed on a lot of this. Especially for things like out of air ascents and other risky situations. In the classes they teach you about things like what to do when you run out of air. Nowadays I've gotten a little smarter and decided its best not to run out of air in the first place

 

[Downing]

I read somewhere, I think in Dive Training Magazine, a while back that a lot of accidents tend to happen when divers get around 50 dives under their belt. The point being that at that point, many divers are removed in time from their training and tend to become over confident in their abilities and more lax in their preparation.

That made sense to me as I thought about how I had become a little less vigilant over the years about doing buddy checks, dive planning, etc. I resolved to refocus on safety.

 

[boulderjohn]

I think training lacks not so much in the final quantity of what is taught, but in the watermanship and comfort level training.

The following is from a slide from the Consensus Discussion at the fatality workshop:

Most common causes are gas supply problems,
emergency ascent, cardiac health issues,
entrapment/entanglement, and buoyancy issues.

Divers have gas supply problems, followed by emergency ascents, followed by AGE. That is the biggest training preventable problem. Reading through all the slides, you see buoyancy issues are right up there as well.

Not long ago I served as an assistant for the pool sessions in an OW class. Divers did all skills (other than the obvious exceptions like hovering) anchored to the floor of the pool on their knees. They did one lap around the deep end of the pool attempting (with little success) to swim with proper buoyancy--that was the only time they were not stationary on the floor of the pool. At no time did they check their air supplies during the sessions except the one time the instructor talked about its importance and asked them to look at their gauges. They then went off with another set of instructors to do their OW work. I was told by someone who was there that all skills were done kneeling in the sand. I don't know if they were asked to look at their air supplies during the OW dives.

All of that is within standards for OW instruction, and the process is staunchly defended by many.

I don't see how divers trained this way will feel comfortable with their buoyancy. I don't see how they will develop the habit of checking air supplies. I don't see how they will be comfortable enough in the water to have a good enough time on their first dives to want to continue the experience. I don't see how these divers will have the comfort level needed to deal effectively with an emergency.

From my experience and the experience of a number of other instructors who teach differently, it takes no more time (actually less time in our experience) to teach students to perform skills while neutral, practice swimming neutrally, and check their gauges (and their buddy's gauges) frequently. It takes no more time during OW checkout dives to require students to perform all skills in mid water and check their gauges (and their buddy's gauges) frequently.

All of that is within standards as well.

All it takes is the willingness to do it.

 

[DevonDiver]

I read somewhere, I think in Dive Training Magazine, a while back that a lot of accidents tend to happen when divers get around 50 dives under their belt. The point being that at that point, many divers are removed in time from their training and tend to become over confident in their abilities and more lax in their preparation..

Yep. Just browse this forum and count how many times the phrases; "I haven't had a problem with this" or "I've never experienced that" have been used by novice (50-100 dive) divers to 'disprove' the safety advice or to excuse some deviation from recommended safe diving practices.

 

[Bubbletrubble]

Most participants in this thread are hastily interpreting dumpsterDiver's statistic as an unacceptably high % fatalities for inexperienced divers (≤ 20 dives). Stu S., Subcooled, and Damselfish are correct in that we can't draw such a conclusion from that particular statistic (assuming that it is true). In order to arrive at that conclusion, we would need additional information, more specifically, the breakdown of total dives conducted by inexperienced divers (≤ 20 dives) vs. the number of total dives conducted by experienced divers (> 20 dives) within the sampling timeframe. It was interesting to learn that PADI alone hands out 600,000 - 900,000 basic OW certifications per year.

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.

Yes, this would be a much more useful statistic.

This was one of the many stats discussed at the DAN Fatality Conference last year. The powerpoints and video from the meeting can be found here.

Five of the presentations have been sent for publication in Undersea and Hyperbaric Medicine and the whole proceedings are being written up now.

If you download the videos from the DAN page but don't have much time, check out Drew's presentations. That was the best data presented at the meeting.

@Gene_Hobbs: Thanks very much for the link to the videos.

I watched Drew Richardson's presentation. To be honest, I had a very difficult time sitting through the entire talk. His slides were too text-heavy, too many slides were unreadable (too much info), and the delivery was very dry. I realize that he's the President and COO of PADI, but he wasn't communicating effectively in this presentation. Was he having a bad day? IMO, it would have been far more interesting for him to discuss a few "representative" incidents than to waste time comparing the last couple of decades to each other. Such a comparison didn't yield anything truly insightful. What a shame.