Incident on 80m (avg) - 30 min BT dive

[beester]

I took the words "soften the blow a bit" to imply gentle.

I believe (but since I don't speak the language have to go on what the JJ divers told me) that they told him that he has a son and a wife and should seriously evaluate his options. Maybe more training or more slow progression. One of the JJ divers proposed to mentor him.

 

[Asteve]

I am not a tech diver.
Question: When I take on a buddy just how much danger/risk am I committing to? The guy bolted to the surface, you went after him blowing a dec stop. Did you know if you had time for this, before going back down to finish dec? Was this a mistake, I know it worked out for the best out come but....?

I understand about training but when I get back on the boat I am thinking about doing harm to the guy, he put me in harms way, he lied about his experience.

Thanks for posting this. A lot to think about.

 

[Diver0001]

I am not a tech diver.
Question: When I take on a buddy just how much danger/risk am I committing to?

Literally life and death. This is why most tech divers will only dive with people they know and trust.

 

[sunnyboy]

Yeah.... seriously mate... I'm looking at this as an instructor......

If someone makes a mistake -- even a big one -- then (a) they need to be thoroughly debriefed -- which I am not sure happened in this case -- and (b) hammering them with criticism and negative feedback is unlikely to improve their progress. In this case we are talking about a technical context, which is normally unforgiving, but even in that context if you want someone to progress then you still need to address them in a way that makes learning possible.

In this case you had someone who was still shaken from the experience. What are you going to do? Rip their head off and **** down their throat? It's already happened. Is this what you are suggesting with not being "soft"? That you "kill them" with words?

We obviously see this a lot in technical training. Being "direct" is MOST OFTEN confused with being aggressive or even rude, insensitive, blunt, crude and rough. Does any of that help the student? No. It helps the instructor feel macho but the student does not progress. This is the one BIGGEST problem in technical training!

If you want the student to progress, no matter the level, then you have to give them *feedback* not *criticism*.

R..

Holy ****, you must have had some real ***holes for instructors to be that angry.

I stand by what I said. The quote was "soften the blow". I guess it depends on how you interpret this, but too often I've seen that as allowing something serious to be trivialized, which does no-one any favors.

However, at no time did I say "rip him a new one". You are the one putting your anger at terrible instructors into my mouth.

Yea, I've had s****y ninja-wannabe-navy-seal instructors, and watched a few besides. I agree 100% that yelling and swearing and "ripping someone a new one" is not only terrible teaching methods, it almost never works.

We agree on a full debriefing, but it must be honest even if that does hurt feelings. Again, no need to be angry or rude or miserable, but honest. The fellow might not be here were it not for the actions of the other divers, and he needs to be totally aware of that fact. Ideally he should be mentored by the team to turn this into a really positive learning experience.

 

[ChicagoScubaDiver]

Im sure your local GUE Instructor could vet the individual, or at the least know where to look to get some insight on the divers training and abilities.

 

[beester]

I am not a tech diver.
Question: When I take on a buddy just how much danger/risk am I committing to? The guy bolted to the surface, you went after him blowing a dec stop. Did you know if you had time for this, before going back down to finish dec? Was this a mistake, I know it worked out for the best out come but....?

I understand about training but when I get back on the boat I am thinking about doing harm to the guy, he put me in harms way, he lied about his experience.

Thanks for posting this. A lot to think about.

Good question. It depends I guess and is a very personal decision. I'm milling over this myself to be honest and don't have a clear cut answer to that one.

I'll do my utmost to help someone in my team (in this case it was not someone I knew but he was in my diving team for this dive) and I expect the same from my buddies. In the end we are all human and all can have a bad day (mind you I never hope to have such a bad day as this guy had, but I digress). When I did T1 (normoxic trimix) my instructor who is a very well known GUE instructor told me the story of a very very deep dive where his buddy toxed out (CNS hit) and he had to bring him up with 2 hours + of deco. They kept the reg in his mouth and kept him breathing and he lived. He mentioned this because we were discussing this exact case. How far to go and what to risk to try to help a buddy. His point was that as a team you really have the capacity to help a team mate, don't give up too soon.

In this case it wasn't a sudden catastrophic failure but a slow but steady progression of issues that are becoming worse and worse and worse. In a sense we didn't realize how bad our X friend felt, or how far behind the curve he was... he wasn't communicating his issues which is like a second nature for me when diving with my GUE buddies, and would have helped a lot.

Also to be clear I didn't go up with him but the JJ diver did (who had about 20 min less deco at that point and skipped "only" about 20 min).... Would I have gone up with him, yes from 6 m for sure, I think most things can be still fixed in some way (go back down, decompression chamber) if you skip 6m or 3m stops. But the hard question is what if this snowball of issues started at the bottom in some way and progressed as steadily as this one and had gotten out of hand during the deep ascend, or the 57m switch for example. Not so clear... we might have ended up blowing out ourselfs trying to help him... and going up from 57m, or even 36m and ommitting 2 hours of deco...I don't want to sound a drama queen but that's a death sentence in my book and if it really would have gone out of controle I would have let him go from that depth and not follow up.

In the end me and my RB80 friend were not really shaken up...we acted and tried to help him as best as we could... RB80 guy joked when we swam to the boat... "at least deco went by very fast this time".

 

[Diver0001]

...snip...

I stand by what I said. The quote was "soften the blow". I guess it depends on how you interpret this, but too often I've seen that as allowing something serious to be trivialized, which does no-one any favors..

I understand.

 

[PfcAJ]

Vetting dive buddies is hard. Fine line to walk between "being a dick" and "being prudent". Not an easy task. Rule number 1 is tough.

 

[Grumpy Fish]

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

I have a question. I'm a Tec 1 diver about to do Tec 2. But if you are Tec 2 how was it that you were doing a close to 2 hr deco in the first place and a dive to beyond 250ft?

As for X, I understand your frustration but that's why I only Tec dive with GUE divers I know are GUE Tec trained.

Happy to read that no one was hurt. It could have so easily gone horribly wrong.

 

[PfcAJ]

I have a question. I'm a Tec 1 diver about to do Tec 2. But if you are Tec 2 how was it that you were doing a close to 2 hr deco in the first place and a dive to beyond 250ft?

As for X, I understand your frustration but that's why I only Tec dive with GUE divers I know are GUE Tec trained.

Happy to read that no one was hurt. It could have so easily gone horribly wrong.

There isn't really a "class" for stuff beyond T2. You can get a t2+ card after 25 dives but you learn the the how to in t2 class. Experience and mentoring takes you farther.