beester
Contributor
First of all I'm not sure if this needs to be posted in the technical forums or needs to remain in incidents & accidents. It obviously is an incident that might be of some interest but I don't think it necessarily needs to be "peer reviewed" by recreational divers who might make wrong assumptions. So moderators, by all means move this post if it's not appropriate.
BACKGROUND: Last week I spend a holiday diving wrecks in the 50-90m range with a close friend. We both are GUE trained, he is an RB80 diver with considerable experience, I'm a T2 diver with less experience (about 80 trimix dives in T1 (normoxic) range and about 20 in T2+ (full tmx) range). The whole week we had been diving or on our own or joined by local GUE trained JJ/RB80 divers (all of which I know from previous years diving). On one of the earlier dives we were joined by a local OC diver (X) who we didn't know. The diveshop owner told us X was a GUE trained tech diver, and introduced us. He knew all the other divers and we did a light T1 dive with him, with everything going as planned, nothing out of the ordinary.
Fast forward a couple of days.
THE DIVE: On this particular dive we were planning a dive to a wreck which was torpedoed in coastal waters. We would dive with 5 divers, me (OC) and my RB80 buddy would be joined by X (OC), and 2 GUE trained JJ divers that we know well would join us as well. The JJ divers knew X well.
The wreck lies in 88m depth (bottom) and we planned for an avg of 80m (260ft) and 25-30' bottom time depending on how long our conservatively calculated minimum gas would last. . The whole team would use the same standard gases (JJ divers as bailout), 12/65 bottom, 21/35 1st deco/travel, 50% and 100%.
During the planning of the dive I noticed that diver X was writing down the plan a bit odd (he wrote down every minute of stop we would do, while we tend to not write everything down, but would say this depth range 1' stops, this depth range 2' stops, total time on 21/35, 50 and O²), but although I found it a bit strange I brushed it aside as being just a little odd. I mean everybody writes his plan down in his own way... as long as we agree to a plan all should be fine.
We started our descend and he was a bit slower so me and my buddy stopped our descend for him to catch up. When we reached the wreck we had a nice dive, our buddy X seemed a bit absent, not reacting immediately to signals, but nothing very very much out of the norm. At 25 minutes I asked him about min gas and he told me we could continue for 5 min. All 5 of us started our ascend at 30 minutes at 81m avg with us 3 facing about 2 hours of deco (40' on 50% and 55' on O²). The 2 JJ divers had stayed a bit shallower for the last part of the dive (later they told me about 75m).
FIRST HICKUP: Arriving at 57m I signal to my RB80 buddy to switch to 21/35 which he does after standard check from my side. I switch next, standard procedure... when I sign to our buddy X to switch I see that he already switched (no team check), so I swim next to him to double check that he's on the correct gas, we continue the ascend.
2ND HICKUP: At the end of the 24m stop I switch to backgas to prepare the switch to 50%. I signal to diver X to do the same and he gives me the question mark. I point to the reg in my mouth and the boltsnap hanging from it to show him I'm on backgas and he needs to switch... he realizes and switches. We ascend to 21m, I switch to 50% (my buddy watching) and vice versa and I point to him to switch. While trying to switch he starts decending again. I move with him (buddy in RB80 stays at 21m, because for him it's more difficult to suddenly change depth) and stop him from switching at 25m, we ascend and he switches at 21m. He seemed a bit alarmed by his drop of buoyancy at this stage because he kept closer to the ascend line.
3RD HICKUP and start of clusterfck: Up to this point I'm not alarmed yet, me and my RB80 buddy have already glanced eyes at eachother and exchanged signals to watch him more closely but no alarm.
RB80 buddy does a tank rotation at 21m, I do 1 at the 18m stop and we keep ascending. About halfway through our 9m stop I'm wondering when he is going to do a tank rotation to get his O² in front. I signal to him to rotate but he doesn't seem to realise to rotate tanks. I do the signal again pointing as well to my O² tank in front and he starts the rotation. It's a mess... I'm now alarmed. I signal my RB80 buddy to watch me and I keep close to X, while he is really taskloaded and descending. I'm about 1 m from him face to face and signal to him to stop and check his buoyancy. We reach 13m when I touch him and he snaps out of it, finally stopping the descend at 15m. I help him with the rotation and we move back up to 9m. We swim back closer to the ascend line. I tell him to switch to back gas which he does but he doesn't clean up his 50% reg which remains looped around his neck. I switch and we ascend to 6m. We all switch to O² (us 2 keeping a check on his switch) and my buddy asks him to clean up his 50% but he doesn't realise. We keep close to him and also signal the JJ divers who were already at 6m a bit longer (less avg depth). X seems more and more stressed.
2 min on O² he graps the ascend line... I ask what's the problem and he gives me the signal of cramps in his calves. I tell him to keep tight and I stretch his legs. He signals cramps are gone, but he keeps the line in his hand. About 10 min in O² deco my buddy is on Xs left side and sees that his 50% is almost empty and triggered by this checks his 7L O². Only 50b after 10 min of O², we signal one of the JJ divers and tell him that X has only 50b O² left. JJ diver moves down (was at 4m) and I and my buddy give him a bit of room. He signals to X to hand him the 50% while he prepares his O² bailout. This action triggers X to check his own O² manometer and he bolts... and realising he is almost out of O² wants to grab his backgas reg but takes the 50% reg (this I only saw from a bit more distance because I had made room for the JJ diver to assist).
They both start ascending... X gets floaty feet and me and my buddy move in to get his feet down but he gets entangled in the ascend line and in the end we have to let go. He floats up to the surface with the JJ diver assisting, me and my buddy stay descend back from about 4m to 6m. Missing about 40' of O² (JJ diver about 20').
The JJ diver assists X, gets his 50% off, gives him his O² and they start ascending again after about 4-5 min. We keep X sandwiched for another 35 minutes with him hanging on the rope, looking very depressed but without any visible DCS symptoms and a clear reaction to our regular checks. The 2 JJ divers go up after about 10 minutes leaving us with hime and we keep X down for another 25' after which we slowly ascend... Deciding against him doing an O² break (didn't want to taskload him any further... keep the rope in your hand and breath in and out camly).
On the surface X seems ok, the boat picks us up, JJ divers are ok, me and my buddy also ok. We ask if X needs O² but he says no, and after a check he seems to be ok (everybody monitored him during the boatride back and next 2 hours).
So what did we learn:
- Not to take a referral for granted when it comes to this kind of dives. The JJ divers told me he was GUE trained but apparently when asking he told us he had done fundies but had then continued doing TX training with another agency (ie not knowing all our procedures?). Not sure how to approach this in the future. The GUE JJ divers we both knew very well and we had done T2+ dives with them, we assumed because X knew them very well and was accepted on the dive by the JJ divers that he had the same training.We also had already done a T1 dive with him in the beginning of the holiday and he seemed very solid so this enforced this feeling even more. Better communication is needed or only diving these kind of dives with people we know very well.
- We missed some early pointers which could have clued us in on his experience or different style of training (the way he wrote down the planning), etc.
- We were slow as well on the first real clue (gasswitch on his own at 57m), and didn't realise as well when he started getting behind the curve.
- As a group we could have mabye done better managing the slow progression of issue after issue after issue. In the end we couldn't keep him down.
- In water recompression. Not really the case because he was asymptomatic when they descended again, I felt it was the right idea of the JJ diver to get him down again once X caught his breath and his tanks were rotated.
In the end these were incidents but could have become deadly. If this had happened deeper (for example in the 36m-21m range) and he had ascended from this depth it would have been very ugly.
B
BACKGROUND: Last week I spend a holiday diving wrecks in the 50-90m range with a close friend. We both are GUE trained, he is an RB80 diver with considerable experience, I'm a T2 diver with less experience (about 80 trimix dives in T1 (normoxic) range and about 20 in T2+ (full tmx) range). The whole week we had been diving or on our own or joined by local GUE trained JJ/RB80 divers (all of which I know from previous years diving). On one of the earlier dives we were joined by a local OC diver (X) who we didn't know. The diveshop owner told us X was a GUE trained tech diver, and introduced us. He knew all the other divers and we did a light T1 dive with him, with everything going as planned, nothing out of the ordinary.
Fast forward a couple of days.
THE DIVE: On this particular dive we were planning a dive to a wreck which was torpedoed in coastal waters. We would dive with 5 divers, me (OC) and my RB80 buddy would be joined by X (OC), and 2 GUE trained JJ divers that we know well would join us as well. The JJ divers knew X well.
The wreck lies in 88m depth (bottom) and we planned for an avg of 80m (260ft) and 25-30' bottom time depending on how long our conservatively calculated minimum gas would last. . The whole team would use the same standard gases (JJ divers as bailout), 12/65 bottom, 21/35 1st deco/travel, 50% and 100%.
During the planning of the dive I noticed that diver X was writing down the plan a bit odd (he wrote down every minute of stop we would do, while we tend to not write everything down, but would say this depth range 1' stops, this depth range 2' stops, total time on 21/35, 50 and O²), but although I found it a bit strange I brushed it aside as being just a little odd. I mean everybody writes his plan down in his own way... as long as we agree to a plan all should be fine.
We started our descend and he was a bit slower so me and my buddy stopped our descend for him to catch up. When we reached the wreck we had a nice dive, our buddy X seemed a bit absent, not reacting immediately to signals, but nothing very very much out of the norm. At 25 minutes I asked him about min gas and he told me we could continue for 5 min. All 5 of us started our ascend at 30 minutes at 81m avg with us 3 facing about 2 hours of deco (40' on 50% and 55' on O²). The 2 JJ divers had stayed a bit shallower for the last part of the dive (later they told me about 75m).
FIRST HICKUP: Arriving at 57m I signal to my RB80 buddy to switch to 21/35 which he does after standard check from my side. I switch next, standard procedure... when I sign to our buddy X to switch I see that he already switched (no team check), so I swim next to him to double check that he's on the correct gas, we continue the ascend.
2ND HICKUP: At the end of the 24m stop I switch to backgas to prepare the switch to 50%. I signal to diver X to do the same and he gives me the question mark. I point to the reg in my mouth and the boltsnap hanging from it to show him I'm on backgas and he needs to switch... he realizes and switches. We ascend to 21m, I switch to 50% (my buddy watching) and vice versa and I point to him to switch. While trying to switch he starts decending again. I move with him (buddy in RB80 stays at 21m, because for him it's more difficult to suddenly change depth) and stop him from switching at 25m, we ascend and he switches at 21m. He seemed a bit alarmed by his drop of buoyancy at this stage because he kept closer to the ascend line.
3RD HICKUP and start of clusterfck: Up to this point I'm not alarmed yet, me and my RB80 buddy have already glanced eyes at eachother and exchanged signals to watch him more closely but no alarm.
RB80 buddy does a tank rotation at 21m, I do 1 at the 18m stop and we keep ascending. About halfway through our 9m stop I'm wondering when he is going to do a tank rotation to get his O² in front. I signal to him to rotate but he doesn't seem to realise to rotate tanks. I do the signal again pointing as well to my O² tank in front and he starts the rotation. It's a mess... I'm now alarmed. I signal my RB80 buddy to watch me and I keep close to X, while he is really taskloaded and descending. I'm about 1 m from him face to face and signal to him to stop and check his buoyancy. We reach 13m when I touch him and he snaps out of it, finally stopping the descend at 15m. I help him with the rotation and we move back up to 9m. We swim back closer to the ascend line. I tell him to switch to back gas which he does but he doesn't clean up his 50% reg which remains looped around his neck. I switch and we ascend to 6m. We all switch to O² (us 2 keeping a check on his switch) and my buddy asks him to clean up his 50% but he doesn't realise. We keep close to him and also signal the JJ divers who were already at 6m a bit longer (less avg depth). X seems more and more stressed.
2 min on O² he graps the ascend line... I ask what's the problem and he gives me the signal of cramps in his calves. I tell him to keep tight and I stretch his legs. He signals cramps are gone, but he keeps the line in his hand. About 10 min in O² deco my buddy is on Xs left side and sees that his 50% is almost empty and triggered by this checks his 7L O². Only 50b after 10 min of O², we signal one of the JJ divers and tell him that X has only 50b O² left. JJ diver moves down (was at 4m) and I and my buddy give him a bit of room. He signals to X to hand him the 50% while he prepares his O² bailout. This action triggers X to check his own O² manometer and he bolts... and realising he is almost out of O² wants to grab his backgas reg but takes the 50% reg (this I only saw from a bit more distance because I had made room for the JJ diver to assist).
They both start ascending... X gets floaty feet and me and my buddy move in to get his feet down but he gets entangled in the ascend line and in the end we have to let go. He floats up to the surface with the JJ diver assisting, me and my buddy stay descend back from about 4m to 6m. Missing about 40' of O² (JJ diver about 20').
The JJ diver assists X, gets his 50% off, gives him his O² and they start ascending again after about 4-5 min. We keep X sandwiched for another 35 minutes with him hanging on the rope, looking very depressed but without any visible DCS symptoms and a clear reaction to our regular checks. The 2 JJ divers go up after about 10 minutes leaving us with hime and we keep X down for another 25' after which we slowly ascend... Deciding against him doing an O² break (didn't want to taskload him any further... keep the rope in your hand and breath in and out camly).
On the surface X seems ok, the boat picks us up, JJ divers are ok, me and my buddy also ok. We ask if X needs O² but he says no, and after a check he seems to be ok (everybody monitored him during the boatride back and next 2 hours).
So what did we learn:
- Not to take a referral for granted when it comes to this kind of dives. The JJ divers told me he was GUE trained but apparently when asking he told us he had done fundies but had then continued doing TX training with another agency (ie not knowing all our procedures?). Not sure how to approach this in the future. The GUE JJ divers we both knew very well and we had done T2+ dives with them, we assumed because X knew them very well and was accepted on the dive by the JJ divers that he had the same training.We also had already done a T1 dive with him in the beginning of the holiday and he seemed very solid so this enforced this feeling even more. Better communication is needed or only diving these kind of dives with people we know very well.
- We missed some early pointers which could have clued us in on his experience or different style of training (the way he wrote down the planning), etc.
- We were slow as well on the first real clue (gasswitch on his own at 57m), and didn't realise as well when he started getting behind the curve.
- As a group we could have mabye done better managing the slow progression of issue after issue after issue. In the end we couldn't keep him down.
- In water recompression. Not really the case because he was asymptomatic when they descended again, I felt it was the right idea of the JJ diver to get him down again once X caught his breath and his tanks were rotated.
In the end these were incidents but could have become deadly. If this had happened deeper (for example in the 36m-21m range) and he had ascended from this depth it would have been very ugly.
B
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