The BSAC incident report covers incidents reported by BSAC members all over the world, all UK deaths (whatever nationality) and should also have all deaths of UK divers abroad due to the coroners work here.
Diving in the UK is not like the blue water style SB people may be familiar with:
1. There are no guided dives. Either you are on a course or you are diving with a buddy/team/solo and responsible for yourself. That means planning a dive to at least some extent.
2. The vis is usually not so good. This means people cannot see the surface and are a bit less complacent about being able to just swim up. This also leads to there being no guided dives. You cannot have a group bigger than three in 2m vis.
3. The weather, sea conditions and season are not 'easy'. Getting in the water is a major achievement all on its own. The sort of diver who does a week once every few years in the Caribbean does not dive in the UK and is unlikely to be a BSAC member.
4. Here decompression diving is not technical, it is just diving. Not all club dives are deco dives but many are, especially the second dive following a shortish SI.
5. Most BSAC diving is organised by branches. There is a person (dive manager) responsible for the diving that day. By the book Safe Diving - British Sub-Aqua Club air, depth, stops etc are recorded by the dive manager. Inexperienced divers coming up with no gas, silly stops or generally behaving in a way likely to lead to an incident will end up having quiet chats about how that came about.
7. DCS evacuation and treatment in the UK is free to all.
Thus the spread of issues and reporting is going to be different.
Ken
Ps I left out the bit about gas calcs being easier in metric as then I would have to admit that doing stupid deco approximations based on time and depth in archaic units of measurement might lead to fewer deco incidents.
Diving in the UK is not like the blue water style SB people may be familiar with:
1. There are no guided dives. Either you are on a course or you are diving with a buddy/team/solo and responsible for yourself. That means planning a dive to at least some extent.
2. The vis is usually not so good. This means people cannot see the surface and are a bit less complacent about being able to just swim up. This also leads to there being no guided dives. You cannot have a group bigger than three in 2m vis.
3. The weather, sea conditions and season are not 'easy'. Getting in the water is a major achievement all on its own. The sort of diver who does a week once every few years in the Caribbean does not dive in the UK and is unlikely to be a BSAC member.
4. Here decompression diving is not technical, it is just diving. Not all club dives are deco dives but many are, especially the second dive following a shortish SI.
5. Most BSAC diving is organised by branches. There is a person (dive manager) responsible for the diving that day. By the book Safe Diving - British Sub-Aqua Club air, depth, stops etc are recorded by the dive manager. Inexperienced divers coming up with no gas, silly stops or generally behaving in a way likely to lead to an incident will end up having quiet chats about how that came about.
7. DCS evacuation and treatment in the UK is free to all.
Thus the spread of issues and reporting is going to be different.
Ken
Ps I left out the bit about gas calcs being easier in metric as then I would have to admit that doing stupid deco approximations based on time and depth in archaic units of measurement might lead to fewer deco incidents.
