Half of Dead Divers on Their First 20 dives

[sabbath999]

There's also another angle to consider.

I work in an office with 12 other people. I am the only certified diver.

However, 6 of the 12 people in this office have been diving, and two have experienced accidents on a dive.

The other five have all done "discover scuba" resort experiences. One of them went OOA on his discover dive (at 70 feet.... and yeah, I know they aren't supposed to do that but he broke away from the group to go exploring on his own) and the other severe barotrauma in both ears from not clearing properly.

On the OOA diver, they basically got a couple hours of inadequate instruction and jumped off a boat on "trust me" dives with an unethical dive operator in the Caribbean. They put one DM down with 16 discover divers... and yeah, that's wrong. Our guy ended up bolting to the surface (his first ever dive), thank goodness he wasn't injured/bent.

He thinks I am insane for doing something as dangerous as scuba diving, has sworn off it for life (as if jumping off a boat in calm, clear, Caribbean or Hawaiian waters with a full air supply and an experienced buddy team is "extremely dangerous" )

The other situation, the guy is a pilot so he dealt with his ears like he does when he is flying instead of doing it the way the instructor showed him... waiting until later to clear instead of doing it early and often.

My point is that we might want to consider that not all of these deaths are by certified divers, not by a long shot. People die on Discover dives, and they die uncertified.

 

[boulderjohn]

If it turns out that more than 50% of divers underwater on 'average' at any given time have fewer than 20 dives, which I believe is likely, then on average the inexperienced divers are actually safer!

Do other people think that is probable? If so, the diving industry has some bigger problems than I thought.

Well, the thing that makes me think that a high percentage of people underwater at any given time are inexperienced is the often-mentioned fact that more than 90% of those getting OW certification do not continue to dive.

I've heard that 'statistic' mentioned often with the dive community, but never seen any references that support it. Frankly, I think it is very much an 'urban myth'.

I believe the 90% of divers not continuing to dive comes from PADI, and I'm not sure how they came up with it.

I am very sure that PADI has never said anything like that. You may have seen it on one or more of the many unsupported attacks on PADI you see on SB. This past fall I was in lengthy discussions with PADI related to an article that will be published in the PADI professional journal this spring. In one exchange I said that a large percentage of new divers (I was not specific) do not continue with the sport, and the response was that this was not true, that there is no reliable data on that anywhere, and that this idea is being promoted without any supporting data by people who push the idea that instruction was so much better decades ago.

On the other hand, I have taught a number of refresher courses for divers who were certified 10-25 years before, did one vacation, and did not dive again before their upcoming trips. An other common scenario is people taking refreshers because they learned to dive when they were young and then felt they had to give it up while they were raising a family. Now that the children are older, they are planning to take it up again.

Whenever I teach a class, I ask people why they are learning to dive, and I would say that the vast majority are taking the class in anticipation of an upcoming vacation, the likes of which may not be repeated for years. I myself could have been in that situation. I was certified in anticipation of a vacation trip to Cozumel. I hoped to do 2-3 days of 2 tank dives there, and my wife and I were planning to take trips like that roughly every other year. On that schedule, it would have taken me 8-10 years to reach the 20 dive level, and I would have been a perpetual beginner trying to remember how to set up my gear.

 

[TSandM]

I'm with you, John . . . I got certified in anticipation of a trip to Australia. I really had no vision at all of how diving was going to fit in my life after that trip.

What amazes me is the number of people I've talked to who got certified and never did another dive. Even when they tell me they enjoyed their certification class!

 

[Geekhybrid]

I've found this thread very interesting and personally relevant.  I fit into the category described in this thread as the diver who certifies and then barely dives for years after.  In my first two years I dived about 12 times, mostly in Asia and in tropical waters.  The thought of diving in the frigid waters of LA didn't appeal to me until I decided to improve as a diver, which seemed unlikely doing a handful of dives a year.   

In my short, less than 100 dives, career of diving, I feel like I've already had a few near miss incidents: descending with my snorkel in my mouth, feeling pressure and stress to get in the water to keep up with my group on a boat dive, neglecting buddy checks, striding off a boat with my tank turned off, over-reliance on dive leaders...  I managed to cope with or resolve each, but they all could have had quite serious consequences. I suppose I've tended to think of each as a boneheaded error and learning lesson, which they were, but it wasn't really until I took my Rescue Diver cert a few months ago that I've begun to understand the risks in diving and how to prevent, manage and or recover from my own an others' diving mishaps. 

Open Water certainly was much about safety, and did teach essentials which i retained.  I've found Advanced classes helpful and fun in growing as a diver.  But Rescue has by far done the most to expand my understanding of diving and safety for myself and others.  Its increased my awareness as a diver and I've come to see safety on a more systemic and ongoing level.  I feel it's been the most essential course I've done since OW, has made me a safer diver than OW did, and cant think of a reason why it couldn't just as easily follow as the second course an OW diver could take. Given my own minor, but potentially serious mishaps, the OP's stat has a ring a truth about it to me. So why not allow, even urge divers to take this class as the next step in their diving education, especially if the OP's initial stats are true?

 

[Bubbletrubble]

Open Water certainly was much about safety, and did teach essentials which i retained.  I've found Advanced classes helpful and fun in growing as a diver.  But Rescue has by far done the most to expand my understanding of diving and safety for myself and others.  Its increased my awareness as a diver and I've come to see safety on a more systemic and ongoing level.  I feel it's been the most essential course I've done since OW, has made me a safer diver than OW did, and cant think of a reason why it couldn't just as easily follow as the second course an OW diver could take. Given my own minor, but potentially serious mishaps, the OP's stat has a ring a truth about it to me. So why not allow, even urge divers to take this class as the next step in their diving education, especially if the OP's initial stats are true?

In the current PADI course progression, AOW (A = "Advanced" or "Adventure") is a prerequisite for Rescue. Even if one could take Rescue right after basic OW, I wouldn't recommend it because, in my experience, divers at that level don't possess the mental bandwidth to attend to things going on around them and typically don't have buoyancy control dialed in completely. One important thing that I learned in Rescue class was being able to recognize potential escalation of a minor issue and know how to intercede to stop it from becoming a serious problem. Moreover, I've found that the value of a Rescue class increases exponentially when a student can use previous experience to view a rescue scenario in a certain way. Novices don't have access to that mental "library" of experience which informs/directs thinking through a best course of action during a rescue.

I think there's something to be said for learning basic OW skills, having time to master those skills, implementing them in real-life outside of class, expanding the breadth of dive experiences, and then finally adding Rescue techniques to that skill-set.

A separate question is whether some/more rescue skills should be incorporated into the basic OW curriculum. If done in a thoughtful way with allowances for a beginner's limited training and relative lack of experience, I wouldn't see any harm in that.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

We already do. Panicked diver rescue at the surface, unconscious diver from depth, rescue tows while stripping gear are part of our OW class standards. I also add no mask swims, supporting a diver at the surface while assisting with dumping weights and/or solving a BC inflation issue, and most important - strict adherence to buddy principles.

 

[Bubbletrubble]

We already do. Panicked diver rescue at the surface, unconscious diver from depth, rescue tows while stripping gear are part of our OW class standards. I also add no mask swims, supporting a diver at the surface while assisting with dumping weights and/or solving a BC inflation issue, and most important - strict adherence to buddy principles.

@Jim Lapenta:
Do you specify CPR certification and first aid care for divers as a prerequisite for basic OW?
(Frankly, I wish this were the case with all scuba certification agencies.)

What skills do you teach in Rescue class?
What was your rationale for not incorporating such skills in the basic OW curriculum?

 

[boulderjohn]

In my short, less than 100 dives, career of diving, I feel like I've already had a few near miss incidents: descending with my snorkel in my mouth, feeling pressure and stress to get in the water to keep up with my group on a boat dive, neglecting buddy checks, striding off a boat with my tank turned off, over-reliance on dive leaders...  

If it makes you feel any better, I will bet that anyone who does through more than 40 dives will have done just about everything on that list at least once. I know I did every one of them myself early in my career.

I have even done some of them in the past year:

Feeling Pressure to Keep up: This is a serious one, and it can happen at any time in your life. I have recently been in several situations where I am supposed to be diving with people but for any of a number of perfectly good reasons I am far behind them. I remind myself not to hurry myself to the point of making a mistake, but it can easily happen. Just last month I was far enough behind that my buddy did not get a chance to check my gear before I went to the water, so I had a ...

Neglected buddy check: Fortunately this was not too serious because we always do another buddy check in the water, and fortunately just before I stepped into the water I tried to put a shot of air into my wing and discovered that I was about to ...

Enter the water with my air shut off: This is a good reason to be able to reach your valves! As for ...

Over-reliance on Dive Leaders: I thought I was beyond that until I was taking my cave training. I was in the lead until I turned the dive (having used 1/3 of my gas) and was therefore in the rear for the exit. I was casually following everyone out when I failed to see the instructor purposely take us on a wrong turn, with only the slightest gap in the line to show the mistake. I followed along blissfully, my head full of thoughts related to the dive and how I was doing on it, until the instructor turned the dive and took us back to the correct exit. We then discussed how my inattention had "killed the team."

So, it's great that you recognize the common errors, but unless you are a heck of a lot better than I am at these things, don't make the mistake of thinking you are done with them!

(BTW, the snorkel problem is solved by not wearing one.)

 

[Jim Lapenta]

@Jim Lapenta:
Do you specify CPR certification and first aid care for divers as a prerequisite for basic OW?
(Frankly, I wish this were the case with all scuba certification agencies.)

What skills do you teach in Rescue class?
What was your rationale for not incorporating such skills in the basic OW curriculum?

Bubble, no CPR/FA is not a prerequisite but I do strongly encourage all students to get it. But in classroom we do cover diving specific first aid for stings, cuts, decompression sickness issues, and the importance of O2. All my OW divers know I carry O2 and I am going to start showing them at a minimum how to hook up the reg and turn it on. First aid for hypothermia and hyperthermia are also discussed.
The rescue course requires CPR/FA/AED. O2 is optional but covered in class. Our rescue course is based on the CARE principle. Cognizance, Assessment, Rescue, and Evacuation.
The first part focuses on developing the skills necessary to spot a problem before it becomes an issue. Situational awareness, diver emotional/mental cues, gear issues, and our reactions to situations.
Next is Assessment and evaluation of situations, environments, rescue resources, diver fitness, diver skill levels, and when an incident occurs the hazards and difficulties that could be encountered, risks to rescuers, choice of rescue techniques and tools, etc.
Then the rescue itself. Methods, practices, reacting to different environments and conditions. all of these sections include in water exercises.
Finally evac. getting the vic ready, coordinating with local resources, recording vitals and details, preservation of gear for investigators.

I do things like have everyone set up their gear and then go for a walk. I will then make "adjustments" to the gear. When they come back it is up to them to find the adjustments in each others gear. I like to use small unobtrusive things to test them and will do several small things that may be nothing by themselves but together, underwater could be a real problem. And since I try to recruit divers to "just be there" having different setups really makes them think about the differences and realize that they do need to look at a divers gear if they will be diving with them.

No one ever told me to but when I am diving somewhere I am very aware of everyone's setup. Especially on a boat. In Puerto Rico it let me spot two divers whose tanks were coming undone and fix them on the way down. The divers were oblivious. I knew what kind of weight system everyone was using, where their releases were, and who warranted keeping half an eye on. I do that now as part of my pre dive assessment. It is now the same as checking to see where the O2 is. Anyone having an issue could possibly put me in a situation where I might need to help. I don't like surprises.

 

[String]

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.

If true thats interesting as its completely the opposite to the UK diving incidents and fatalities. Every single year for ages its the "experienced sports diver" level which is typically 50-100 dives that has the most incidents and the most fatalities.

Of course, most people wont do more than 20 dives in their life time. They'll do 2-3 a year so by definition, for some of these people 20 dives is a "lot".